NEW 80
"I think that it'd be fun to be addicted to heroin! But only for about an hour; it probably gets old after that."
--Bill the Splut
2/27/05
I used to be on the Psychoceramics ML, dedicated to sites founded by the demented (psychoceramics--"crackpots," geddit?). Then it went away, and I forgot about it.
I was reminded of them today, when I was checking hits my site has had from search requests. I found myself right next to this guy. "You don't have to be crazy to like Bush, but it sure helps! And I AM!" Holy crap, let's run down the check list: One gigantic page, with links to his other rantings, which are also single, gigantic pages. Constant repetition of the same phrases and pictures. ALL CAPS and pointless color tags. Monocausation theory, this one being that "DEMONCRATS voted to BURN THE FLAG just 40 days before 911. COINCIDENCE?!" (he thinks not) Total divorce from reality. Tangents such as being against abortion and for Indian rights, leading to just plain non sequiturs, such as the out-of-the-blue rant against "George the Christ killer Carlin." Worship of a public figure as if he were God. The figure here is Bush, but even if it was Dawn Wells, I'd have to conclude "This guy's insane. By which I mean, INSANE."
Like most really INSANE sites, I had moments when I thought, "This is just a really weird joke." But no one makes a joke page that's as long as these things are. Or creates multiple pages to further prove their insanity, which just repeat the same phrases and use the same photos. Even if the insanity includes inventing a new political party, with a platform that consists of:
2-1,000,000 less abortions in the USA PER YEAR
3-Better treatment for poor American Indian tribes. Land swap under treaty for better lands.
4-increase in income for police and military
5-immigration slowdown until we regain control of the flow.
6-Complete elimination of drugs in the USA
7-use Indian tribes to patrol the borders.
8-FULL tax deduction for religious education
9-A ONE YEAR DRAFT FOR ALL AGE 19. HAPPY BIRTHDAY
10-Down payment guaranteed loan $10,000 for home buying or small business venture OR EDUCATION. requires 1 year of military service.
11-TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN FIRST FULL TIME.
12-STOP BUYING FRIENDS
13-STOP TAKING SS PAYMENTS FROM RETIRED MILITARY PAY. FOR GOD'S SAKE LEAVE THEM SOMETHING.
14. BASIC FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRAINING FOR ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL.
15. FREE BINOCULARS FOR EVERYBODY ON THE EAST COAST
16-ALL MEDIA HAS TO DISPLAY THE FLAG AND PLAY THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER ONCE A DAY
17-THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE HAS TO BE SAID IN ALL WORK PLACES, EVENTS, SCHOOLS AND ROCK CONCERTS.
18- THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE HAS TO BEGIN WITH "IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER"
19-THE GREAT WHITE FATHER IN WASHINGTON COULD HAVE A NICE TAN
20. IF YOU OFFEND ANYBODY UNDER FIRST AMENDMENT PRETENSES YOU MUST WEAR SIZE 29 CLOWN SHOES FOREVER.
It's the type of thing I once would've posted to the Psychoceramics ML, but they exist not. Except as an infrequently updated LiveJournal, and I don't see how one posts to that.
Here's the short version of my adventure with my emissions test.
1: Take the car to Suburban Mitsubishi in Vernon, CT, which I just mention so that I turn up on any web searches. I don't know how they are as a car dealership, but they SUCK at emissions. Yes, my car flunked, but did the guy in charge of the tests always have to be so rude? If you don't want to do emissions tests, hey, here's a brainstorm: don't do them. I'm pretty sure the state isn't forcing anyone. When the car fails, I say "I have a hole in my PVC valve. Maybe that caused it." "NO!" says Rude Guy. "The PVC valve has nothing to do with it!" like I'm an idiot. Cost: $20.
2: Go to a place near work to get the car fixed. Fixed for emissions, while tractor trailers belch filth into the sky every time they move, because they don't have to do testing. "Here's the problem," says garage guy. "There's a hole in your PVC valve." Cost: $200.
3: Car isn't accelerating like it used to after the fix. Bring the paperwork from the repair place to SUBURBAN MITSUBISHI IN VERNON CT. Guy is again very curt. Then, he throws me out because the repair place "didn't fill in this block on the paperwork! There's no point in us doing ANYTHING!"
4: Go to garage. Garage guy says, in disgust, "We didn't fill out THAT block, because we filled out THIS block!" Yes, it's not "fill out both," but "either/or."
5: Go back to SUBURBAN MITSUBISHI IN VERNON CT. Rude guy is getting his teeth cleaned, so a different and NOT rude guy takes over. He looks at the form and sends the car in for a retest. Rude guy, teeth all cleansed of the asses of customers he chews off every day, returns. He looks at the form, raises an eyebrow, probably because he realizes HE WAS WRONG LAST WEEK. Hey, I'm not the one who uses these forms every week as PART OF MY JOB. Car fails AGAIN! Hey, and guess who's rude and dismissive again? Hint: sparkling teeth. On the way home, I smack into the curb so hard that I'm sure I dented a fender. But there seems to be nothing wrong.
6: So BACK to garage. They promise to fix the problem that they didn't fix last time, only charging for parts (they're Caruso's in Bloomfield, and I name them because THEY WEREN'T ASSHOLES!). However, that curbside collision has busted a tire strut. Eventually, it's going to be like that shopping cart you always get at the supermarket, with that one wheel that goes in whatever direction it wants, which is "every one at once." So that needs to be fixed, too. Cost: Another $200.
7: Do NOT go a certain dealership in Vernon for the emissions re-retest, but the one across the street from the garage. When I get the call that the test is over, I ask, a bit surprised, "It didn't flunk?!" Woman at Midas: "Well, it studied harder this time!" Cost: $20.
8: Realize that since the last last fixing, the ignition doesn't want to turn. OH GREAT. I've never had to sink money into this car over the 7 years I've owned it, why NOW? Turns out that the key is bent. Bend key back, car starts fine. Cost: priceless.
3/1
Yesterday, the answering machine went off at the CRACK OF FUCKING DAWN, aka 8AM. As the Robo-Hawkings caller ID spat out the exchange, I blearily thought, "FUCK. Workin' today."
It was Chris, who calls out sick a lot. Fourth time in 2 months--I haven't called out that many times in 2 years. He had a fever. A fever of what? His measurement on the Preciso-3000 Thermonaton 4000: 99.8. A DEGREE higher than normal. "I'm being called in because he has a hangover!" I thought. And when was the last time I worked a Monday morning?! It was...Oh. It was that time I worked a shift I never worked, at a time I never worked, in a store I never worked in, and Fate introduced me to a little boy with enormous feet. One of the 2 luckiest days of my life, the other being the time Fate asked me if I wanted a little white girl in my life. Maybe that odd luck would continue.
I stumbled into the shower, and then all of a sudden "AUUGGHH!" I looked at my immediately-blackening thumbnail, without any idea of how I'd jammed my thumb into the wall. Who showers punching their thumbs into shower walls? Me, I guess.
I was greeted at work with the FUN! project of typing in, by hand, some UPCs that hadn't shown up in the inventory we'd done last week. 2000 UPCs. By hand. In my murky state, it was actually the exact type of drone work I needed. Would've become real annoying if I'd been conscious. And while I had to go to work early, that meant that I got to leave early! Four extra hours of leisure, ripped from four extra hours of sleep!
Byron was utterly mystified as to why I was home when it was still light out. Killsy only said "Where's my food?" I surfed and decided to watch a DVD before making dinner. Elf, if you're curious, and it was great! With plenty of time left to burn, I stuck in the next Netflix rental (old Gumbys--old Gumbys are WEIRD) and then all of a sudden "WHUHH??" I awoke at 10:15 in bed with my clothes on, and Gumby paused less than 10 minutes into the DVD, with no recollection of going to bed. I hate naps. I wake up not awake and feeling like shit, and it takes me forever to get back to sleep. I awoke feeling awful and awfully nauseous for most of today. Possibly, it had to do with the fact that I never ate more than a coupla hard-boiled eggs and several glasses of milk.
Bottom line: A lot less lucky than the days Byron or Killsy came into my life. But those days are held to a pretty high standard.
Funny! World O'Crap looks at some real Fundie arts'n'crafts 'n' recipes. I like the Toilet Paper Roll Jesus. Who looks almost exactly like Jesus' General's Republican Jesus. Hmm!
The Rutles II: Good idea, or does Eric need the money THAT badly? You don't see the rest of Python doing these things. I'll let you know over the weekend, when Netflix sends it.
(BTW, did I forget to mention that I'm seeing "Spamalot" in July? Or forget that I mentioned it?)
Inevitable: Spamalot brand SPAM.
A search for something else turned up the fact that I'm boring and I'm stupid. The same search also let me know that apparently there's some connection between me and "20 pix of hot 'n horny fat women showing off."
3/2
Interesting bio of an eccentric reporter, with an obsession for cattle mutilations and guns, who always kept an "emergency joint" hidden in his extremely ugly tie.
Newly declassified documents on the WWII British defense of Gibraltar, and how it influenced "Bond. James Bond." Worth a brief look for the freaky Italian scuba trooper and his human torpedo.
3/3
I just finished watching The Rutles II. It was the second longest hour watching a movie I've had since the unwatchable Glen or Glenda. Really really awful. Constant clips fom the original, with unreleased footage that's clearly unreleased for a reason. Plenty of celeb cameos who come on and say nothing funny. "Jokes" that go on and on, then get repeated. Idle even steals the "dueling documentarians" Python bit.
In a bid to make it even worse, it ends with a blooper reel of the celebs cracking up at themselves. Just to rub in how much they enjoyed getting paid to not make you laugh.
On the other hand, I enjoyed it more than being the guy who died 100 times in 12 hours, getting defibulated so many times that his chest had 2nd-degree burns.
It's weird how that "Spiderman's Bible Stories" thing has suddenly become something everyone links to. I linked to that, what, 3 years ago? And now, it miraculously (ha ha) is the site du jour.
Here's the next two comic parodies that'll be be everywhere: Batman's boner and Superman's Origins. Hey, maybe a certain Super Green Beret will become popular again someday!
3/6
Since I have nothing else to do, let's review food! I'm certainly equipped for this, given my general hatred of food. I also have another motive: Byron loves the people food, and begs for it every time he sees it. I put some chicken today in his food bowl, and he sniffed at it and walked away. "Hey," I said, "that may be your snack, but it's my dinner! If you won't eat it, I will!" And I forked it up from his bowl. And after 2 chews, I thought "This chicken really tastes how Friskies Tuna and Egg smells..." Yes! How many food critics admit that they've eaten even a trace of cat food! Not many who kept their jobs afterward, I'll bet!
Guillaime le Splut's Food Reviewy Thing, or However That's Spelled a la Francaise
I wandered into the snack food aisle of Stop'n'Shop, thinking about buying some evil salty snacks (as opposed to the good salty snack, the celery I've been buying and salting, which always is nice and stiff at first, but goes all limp before I'm done with it, and ladies, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about). I was thinking pretzel sticks, but the first thing I saw was the Orange Peanut Butter Cracker section. Wow, I haven't had one of those in years! I checked the prices for a bargain, but instead found The Captain's Choice Variety Pack. This had 2 packs each of 4 flavors, and not a single one was colored Day-Glo orange. Intrigued! Not just by the flavors, but by the fact that an actual captain had picked these flavors!
The glamor of the seafaring life! Surely the Captain had been in many a port, sampling its fine cuisine of snack crackers, and found these the best in all the world. In one smoky bar, he said to the waitress, "Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be! Have ye any orange snack crackers?" Brandy twirled her braided chain, made of finest silver from the north of Spain, the one that really came, in a bag with the Wal-Mart name. "No," the lass said glumly, wondering how different her life would've been if her parents hadn't named her after what they'd been drinking the night she was conceived, but instead had been named Floressent. Maybe she'd be working in a lighting fixture store.
"Nay, say you? ARRR!" said the Captain, not because he was a pirate but because he'd just sat down on his last package of snack crackers. "Then tis off to the sea with me, to scour the oceans for the finest of snack crackers! Ones that remind me of the broiling, sea-sprayed waves! The briny deeps! The bilgey bilgewater! Me own urine! Ones that remind this old salt of something...salty!"
And so the Captain set out on his quest of the Seven Seas, in his briny, bilgey search for the greatest of snack crackers in Neptune's realm, and Davey Jones' salt licker! But he stopped after 4 ports and only one sea, as his arteries hardened until they became bulletproof. Then, mistaking a barnacle for an oyster cracker, he choked and died. At his funeral, his shipmates called him "Our dearest chum," and used his body as shark bait.
I chose this first as it sounded the most appetizing. Who doesn't like a nice grilled cheese now and again? Who doesn't hope that it'll have the likeness of the Virgin Mary toasted onto it, and then sell it for $27,000 on eBay?
TASTE Not bad, really. Not very grilled cheesey or Virgin Maryey, but pretty good. No real chemical aftertaste.
SALTINESS Very light. Which is odd, as the nutrition facts list it as the saltiest (15% of your daily sodium. The "facts" also say that the 6-snack cracker pack has 2 servings. Yes, we all eat 3 of these crackers, then seal the other 3 in Tupperware for next week)
RATING Yummy!
TASTE Ohhhkay. My first thought was, "I'll bet this tastes really smoky." One bite said "Like sucking on a crosstown bus's tailpipe!" This is like eating an ashtray. Like sucking on a charcoal briquette. Like I wanna get the aftertaste out of my mouth by eating some more Friskies!
SALTINESS Swimming in the Dead Sea with your mouth open.
RATING Santa should give these to the bad boys and girls. Coal tastes better.
Since there was only one cracker that could be any worse than the last, I went with this next. It was either this, or the Friskies. Note anything about the package? Yes, the first 2 had "REAL CHEESE" and "REAL WISCONSIN CHEDDAR, and boy were they glad to get rid of it after they found it in that burnt-down cedar-chip factory." This has...no trans fat! No real chives, no real cream cheese, no real hope of survival. Well...sometimes the only way out is through, so...*crunch*
TASTE (glumly crunching) Not so bad so far. Eww, I guess that's the chives. It's not awful. It's like a fender-bender--sure, your car didn't get wrecked and you ended up in a wheelchair, but it's not like it's something you'd seek out to do again.
SALTINESS Not as bad as the smokehouse stuff, but I'm currently at about 150% of my sodium RDA, and my head's starting to vibrate.
RATING No, seriously, I don't eat that much salt, and my head's fucking vibrating.
No, really, MY HEAD IS FUCKING VIBRATING. I need a break.
Okay. Watched some old Gumbys. Old Gumbys are weird. Head is vibrating less. Is there such a thing as a "salt rush"?
Peanut Butter and Honey! Not REAL PB & H, as it would say so on the label, but it can't be that bad.
TASTE Pretty good! The sweetness of peanut butter, the sweetness of honey, the brackish taste of--salt?! Come on! Can't the Captain lay off the salt for one damn snack cracker?!
SALTINESS Salty with a hint of sweetness. Like going down on Lot's wife.
RATING I think I'd like these better if the Captain turned out to be Captain America, and every snack cracker tasted like the Red Skull getting beaten up. Imagine the ad line: "The Captain's Choice: They're NaziSnackCrackerSmackInTheBackand WHACK!InTheNeckerrific!"
CONCLUSION I'm going back to celery.
Byron decided that the snack cracker project needed his input, and began knocking everything over.
So I put the remaining crackers in Tupperware. To eat next week.
3/7
I've felt like crap all day. And I'm pretty sure it was from eating those damn crackers yesterday.
The Commonly Confused Words Test. My results: "You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 66% Expert!" Which I guess is good.
Hey, wait..."You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 66% Expert! You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct."
Since when does 75% equal 100%?
3/8
Weird winter. We've had much milder temps than normal, but also 2 extra feet of snow. The weather only became really cold when it became March.
We had a really bad snowstorm today. It started early and heavy, leaving that hateful, heavy, wet snow that's impossible to drive in, and then added gale-force winds. I was hoping that we'd close early, then started hoping we wouldn't, as exhausted customers who were sent home early--at the same time as everyone else was sent home early--said it took them 2 hours for a drive that would normally take 15 minutes. The radio traffic report said that every highway had a top speed of 5MPH, and "too many accidents to count," although the tractor-trailer jackknives and rollovers were at about a dozen. Including one at the exit ramp just before mine. So, yeah, let me stay at work. Maybe the roads will be plowed and the dead trucks gone by then. And they were! It took me almost twice as long to get home, but 35 minutes to cross 20 miles is better than the horror stories I heard all afternoon.
So who would actually choose to go out in the worst weather of an already bad year? How about a guy who wanted me to check 20 of his losing Lottery tickets, many of which he'd had for six months? Yeah, that's worth risking a wreck. No way those tickets could wait for 6 months and a day to be checked.
But, hey, he won $8!!
3/9
The next movie I want to see. I think that in about 6 months, the "In a WORLD...Where (noun/s) RULE...One MAN..." trailer guy's 25 year career will be over.
3/15
Well, no, actually I not only liked not posting for a week, I didn't even notice that I hadn't.
Saturday a couple--elderly father and adult daughter--came in to work to play some lottery numbers. Some people believe in "lucky numbers," such as their birthdays, and always play them. Some decide any number is lucky, like the change they just got from their purchase or a number on a license plate in the parking lot. There are, of course, no lucky numbers, just random chance. But that day they played the "lucky numbers" that they'd just got off the news: The birthdate, height and weight of that rapist in Atlanta who shot up a courtroom and killed 4 people. Yeah--that's lucky. Why don't you join all those people who've played "911" for the last few years?
911 came up as the winning daily number in both New York and New Jersey once--on 9/11/2002. Hey, maybe you should play 1583, or whatever today's count of American dead in Iraq is! The Aztecs thought that they got luck from human sacrifice, why should you be any more advanced?
New neighbors downstairs, for the first time in a year. The old owners finally sold their condo (and by "finally," I mean "after 12 years of trying." They rented it out most of that time). I don't know if the people who bought it sold it (they never moved in), or gave up and started renting it themselves.
They violate my One Rule: Be Quiet in the Bedroom. I mean, do your sex and all, but don't have loud conversations down there. The first time they did, in (what to me is) the early morning (okay, 9AM), I stomped on the floor. Then the male (I assume there's a female; her voice I never hear, while his "normal conversational tone" is BOOMING) kept BOOMING, so I stomped a few more times. There're 2 other rooms you can talk in. Very little gets me mad, but losing sleep gets me enraged after a short while. I graduated to taking a hammer to the floor. For almost AN HOUR. I don't know if these tardos got the message then, or decided to watch TV in the living room.
Last night, he--as he always does--slammed every door as hard as he could, including the closets. Our closet doors are metal, and are loud when you try to shut them quietly. Then he engaged in one of his sea lion-like bellowings in the bedroom. At 230AM! I stomped again, to no avail. Finally, after a fucking HOUR, I shrieked "SHUT THE FUCK UP! IT'S GODDAMN 330 IN THE MORNING!" And apparently, those were the magic words. Bibbity bobbity boo, STFU. Of course, my blood pressure was now too high to sleep, so I ended up taking a Benadryl to knock me out. Around 430.
...And Mr Byron decided that a hour before the alarm was to go off was RAMPAGE TIME!! and he chased Killsy all over the house and all over me in the bed. He gets his supervised outside time, and has learned that we don't go out at night, only the day. He has yet to learn that we do it on days off, and he stood by the door screaming his Byron Siren for me to get up and go out with him, with me in my PJs like Michael Jackson in a courtroom. NO. Then he gave up and...jumped in the bed and went to sleep. Glad ONE of us can do that, pal!
I got home tonight, wondering what merriment the new neighbors had in store for me. All their lights were on, but the parking area and their garage were empty. "Their lights are on, but no one's home," I thought, before quel apropos came to mind.
Did Hitler test a nuke? Just a little one, of course. One that would've been used to stop the Allies from advancing into the Reich, and killing more Germans than it would've saved, and letting the Berlin win that valuable "Here's the first A-bomb!" prize from Hiroshima. Fails the smell test for me--America almost didn't start the Manhattan Project because we knew it'd cost a billion (in 1940's dollars!), and certainly never would've started it, if we knew that the billion would become many billions. It wasn't "Oppenheimer built it in an Alamagordo garage," but instead built in 3 giant, self-contained, supersecure, newly-created cities, each with a population of ten thousand. Oh, and there's one little fluke that's one of those things that makes me think that God exists: the majority of atomic theorists all lived in Germany, or territory soon to be conquered by the Nazis, but they were almost all Jews. With the intelligence and funds to escape to America.
What pushes this over the edge for me is this, at the end: "Karlsch himself acknowledged that he lacked absolute proof for his claims, and said he hoped his book would provoke further research." Umm...No, that's why you do research for your fucking book. Woo, I have an octogenarian who saw Bigfoot wearing an SS uniform! Nazi Yeti, Nazi Yeti!
I think this book should be cataloged alongside another:
There's been this weird buzz over the fringes of the net about some Burger King that's SO WEIRD that there's an INTERNET BUZZ! I don't watch TV beyond Ebert, so I wondered about it. After days of off-an-on looking (well--mainly off) here's a Quicktime movie I can actually see. And it ain't the Daliesque freakshow it's been made out to be. It's only odd to people who watch a lot of commercials. I find most interesting that you can use subliminal sexual imagery to sell any fucking thing. Or in this case, not very subliminal at all. Hooty girl grabbing a sammitch while they sing "The breasts grow on trees," wow, sub-tle. And "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders shave you," okay, sure. Funny how the "All the lotto tickets pay" line doesn't show some old man winning after playing a murderer's birthdate. Think the hot chicks licking ranch dressing off their fingers would've worked with Russian dressing, which would've looked like blood?
If you look very carefully in the background, you can see doing cartwheels a NAZI YETI!
In serious news, Byron is sick. Those with cats asked to read the Comments.
3/16
MC 2 Many Toes is fine, thank you. He made up for yesterday's torpor by chasing his laser dot insane-plus tonight. And yes, he wanted some of that same chicken that prly made him sick in the first place. After he used me as a scratching post, I decided to see if cats have the same reaction to food poisoning that humans do: Get presented with the same food, and your brain and body go "EWWW!" and you pass. And he did. And then kept begging for more, so I gave him a few tiny strips from near the bone, which he ate.
Tomorrow will tell if I regret that decision.
Hey, I got me wunna them full-spectrum sun lamps! Although not from that link. That's one I found yesterday while looking for a phone number to call and find out why I didn't have it yet. I was billed 10 days ago, so where was it?
I ordered it as I've heard that they make you feel better in the short, sunless days of New England winter. Back in December, 2 weeks before it was winter. And they delivered it 4 days before spring. But, as I work second shift all year, I see the sun after work for only about 6 weeks.
The box fascinated Killsy, up until the point I opened it and she got a tiny smack from one edge. She ran into another room and eyed her new rival with her usual mix of "Don't you try THAT again, stupid box!" and "Oh, Mommy, make it go away!" So Byron took over assembly supervision.
The idea was that it would bathe me in its sunshiney goodness, while illuminating the Cat Play Area of the room. This means that it kinda shines in my right eye. I've moved it twice, and it still feels like my right eye is...well, I've been thinking about it for hours, and it feels like my eye is hatching.
Like it's swelling up or something. Maybe I'm getting too much vitamin D on my right side. Maybe it really is an egg! Maybe I'm hatching an HORRIFIC ALIEN OVERLARD, which is like an Overlord except made of lard (a soft white semisolid fat obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of the hog, and thus not very interested in anything but watching ESPN). Maybe it's going to explodificate from my head, kill thousands with its deadly lardiness, then get a job in the Bush cabinet! (Something evil alien slabs of worthless fat do on a regular basis) I hope so! Then I'd be famous and on all the talk shows and Bush would say "The eyeball-eating blob loves FREEDOM, and also wants to gut Social Security!" except he'd say it in 2 seperate sentences, as he pauses after the end of every line on the teleprompter.
It'd suck if my eyeball just hatched a chicken. Then I'd just be "Chicken-Eye Bill!" on the geek circuit. And with one less eye, I'd never see a 3-D movie again.
Although I suppose I could eat chicken for free that night.
Addenda: Don't know yet what the sun lamp is doing for me, but the cats snooze very happily directly in its beams.
3/17
Well, I had to go and think it. Reflecting on Byron's tummy troubles while at work yesterday, I thought about my own. If you've ever wondered why I never mention Young's Syndrome anymore, it's because it stopped as mysteriously as it started. It went from a 2 to 3 times a week event to a once every 2 or 3 months one. In fact, if you exclude my leaving work a few times when the puking just wouldn't stop, I haven't missed any work in 3 years!
I awoke with a headache, popped 2 ibuprofen and went back to bed. 2 hours later when the alarm went off, I still had the headache. I went to work and started kicking ass on the end of month buy-ins. And the headache got worse, despite taking a precious Vicuprofen. And I started getting really nauseous. And my mouth tasted like soap. Not sure why that was there. Possibly payback for the fact I swear like a sailor with Tourette's. And I kept feeling worse and worse, prly not helped by the fact that I was kicking ass on 65-case orders that had to brought to the upstairs storeroom. When the day's deliveries were done, I gave up and made arrangements to leave (I hate making my problems someone else's--if Yolanda couldn't cover, Gina offered to stay late, which I refused to let her do until she agreed to leave earlier Saturday). My last words were "Let it be anything but the fucking flu!" The last time I had the flu was when I was 14, and I was out of school for ten days. I'd rather be home than at work, but I'd rather be at work feeling fine than at home feeling like death.
I knew 2 things: Byron would get that it was sunny out, and demand to go out. Which he did. Twice, although he just looked out the door the first time. The other was that I was going to puke at some point, so there wasn't much sense in going to bed before I did. The puking came right before Byron really, really demanded to go out, no Mommy this time for real, I promise! That lasted about 5 minutes. Then I carried him in and went to bed.
Three hours later I got up, never having fallen asleep. But I felt much better. i.e., not like death, just like shit. So I guess it isn't the flu, just some stomach bug. Like Byron had.
So, did I get it from eating that Italian chicken yesterday like he did? Or is it the Sunshine Lamp? I thought that thing was supposed to make me feel better, not worse! And why am I missing an eye? And where'd this damn chicken come from?!
Fark tag would be: John Deere builds AT-AT. Hoth surrenders.
I meant to link to this 2 days ago, and forgot: HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? "I'll tell you one thing. I'm never going to have sex with my wife. I don't want to be all grossed out." --Theodore, age 8.
13 things that make no scientific sense. (If you're not into science, you'll find them to be 13 things that make uninteresting reading)
3/18
I guess I had the extended mix 30 hour 24 hour bug, as it wasn't until 3PM that I stopped feeling like shit. Not that the rest of the household had that great a day either; Byron puked again. I know it was him, as Killsy usually pukes on the tile, linoleum, or even right in the tub. A big hork on the bathroom rug had Byron written all over it. Or, more accurately, all over my foot, as he strategically placed it where I plotz into it with my glasses off.
I found that more amusing than anything, until I cleaned out the litter box just now. He's got diarrhea again. He's super active, clear-eyed and wet-nosed, with no other symptoms. Unless someone can tell me if this isn't unusual for a healthy kitty, he's going to the vet Monday.
You'll have to wait for my eview when I go see it in July, but my Mom alerted me to a highly-positive review of Spamalot in the local paper.
Like I'm not going to link to cutelittlekittens.com! Not as entertaining as Cat of the Day, as there are no stories, just pics. But it's instant kitty gratification, and eventually, you'll find one that looks just like your best little friend. There sure were a lot of Kill Kills.
A new theory about the Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. It's the most Occam's-Razor-esque one I've seen (i.e., the one that involves the least preposturous reasoning. Unlike the one that said "Obviously, he was abducted by aliens!" Yeah, and that's why I lost my keys. Fucking aliens!!)
“Like, oh my God, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can’t I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks.”–Britney Spears
Yeah, Britney. Life sucks, and then you die rock stupid.
3/19
I thought of this last week and never found an excuse to use it. So here it is. This struck me as such an obvious joke, that it surprised me that I'd never seen it done before. On the other hand, it may seem obvious to me because of that time as a kid when I tried to catch a Jart with my forehead.
At the time, I believe I said "OMG WTF!"
3/20
This post makes every point I could make about the Republican vultures pouncing on the right-to-die case in Florida for their own politcal agenda. The woman's brain is half-liquid and she's a vegetable, but GOD wants us to save her, apparently to help distract people from Tom DeLay's utter corruption. Of course, if no one could pay for her care, they'd look the other way. It's not about preserving life, it's about preserving hospitals' revenue stream. If that sounds unduly harsh, read the post. The Rethuglicans aren't protesting the 2 people with functioning brains being taken off of life support in Texas because they can no longer pay for it. And what heartless creep would actually pass a law making that legal?
The former Governor of Texas. The current oh-so-Christian President.
3/22
What's going on here? Byron gets the poops last week, now Killsy has them! And diarrhea looks quite bad on an all-white cat. Is there such a thing as a cat bug? (And don't worry--like Byron, the pooping is the main problem [and she hasn't vomited, unlike him], and she acts otherwise normal. If it keeps up, though--off to the vet, no matter how poorly that idea sits with her)
I saw Miyazaki's Nausicca over the weekend. Twice, in fact, before I returned it to Netflix. (Speaking of Netflix--how come they've just started a $14.99 a month plan, apparently the same as my current $17.99 plan, but whenever I click on that, it claims a 404? Yet when it's any other offer, it clicks right through? Maybe because they know that I'll just cancel and then sign up at the cheaper rate. Which is stupid, as that's what I'll do)
REALLY liked it. Even it the plot is loosely "Mononoke with airplanes." But very very good.
Really distracting bit: the awfully-named Nausicaa (does she have a brother named Diaarrheaa and a sister named Claamydiaa?) lives in a world full of toxic plant spores, so she wears an oxygen mask with a miniskirt and no panties. The regularly recurring ass shots are as "sexy" as a 2-year-old with no diapers. Early on, she's buried in the spores, right over her crotchless nonpanties. And all I could think was, "Toxic mold? Aren't you just looking for a mutant yeast infection?"
3/24
Nothing tonight but worries.
"If Killsy still has problems with her pooper tomorrow, she goes to the vet on Monday!" I said last night. I got up this morning and found that she still had diarrhea, and was listless, with a dry, warm nose and no desire to eat her beloved morning wet food breakfast. So I made an appointment for tomorrow, and spent all day at work worrying about her. When she's brain dead and on a feeding tube, then it's her time. For now, for the next 15 years minimum, she's very needed by two of us. (And her fan base on the internet)
Fortunately, tonight she was active, ate her wet food, and drank her water. And she had a big shit-smear on her back. No idea how she managed that, but I picked it off by hand (what else are mothers for?).
I'm sure tomorrow will be some medicine she won't let me give her ("Hold back of neck, force steel-trap jaws open, squirt in Immodium-Cat, fend off razor-fist paw-swipes--wait, where're my third and fourth hands?!"). But hopefully this will be the end of the Cat Bug.
This is the only way I want to watch professional sports.
3/25
The Einstein Cat.
I've used that phrase enough times for you to know which cat I mean. Kill Kill has astonished me with her "cause and effect" reasoning ever since she was a tiny kitten. For instance, she has a new Favorite Box, one which held a pair of computer speakers. It's exactly just too small for both her and one extremity. So she quickly clawed a hole in one corner, and curls up in it with her body inside, and her tail or a leg sticking out. At first, I thought, "Oh, she's just using it as a scratching post." But as soon as the hole was big enough, she stopped scratching it.
She was curled up in that box this morning, when she was scooped up to go to the vet. She always squirms and screams; she knows she's going to the vet if I pick her up. Then, she flails her claws about, twisting like a furry white cyclone as I try to force her into the cat carrier. Always!
Today she just sagged into my arms as I carried her like a baby, and made no attempt to stop her insertion into the carrier. Like she knew it had to be done. I'm sure she knows she's sick, but...she really couldn't connect "carrier" with "vet" with "getting better," now could she?
Could she?
She was still docile on the short trip there. She was quiet while we waited for the previous patient, a big smelly dog, to be processed. The dog was owned (you own dogs; cats own you) by a mother with 2 obese, sugar-hyper kids. When they were done, the receptionist turned to me and cooed, "Oh, this must be Kill Kill!" The family found this name hilarious. As they were as untutored in the realm of common civility as they were in the world of obscure Russ Meyer jokes, they all barked "KILL KILL!" Yes, thank you, what she really needs to calm down is a trio of retarded strangers shrieking her name a foot from her face. She lost her composure and began a deep, heartfelt growling. Unladylike for the Queen of the Cosmos, but I was growling inwardly myself. "Wow, your dog stinks so much! Oh, wait, that's not the do--Jeez, SORRY, KIDS! Here, have a Chuck E. Cheese liposuction token!"
Byron's martial arts technique at the vet is Tasmanian Devil Kung-Fu. Killsy's is Inert-Mass Brick Style. After disassembling her carrier to get her slab-like cinderblock of a body out of it, the vet examined Killer. "Oh, sorry, I mean Kill Kill!" she said every time she misnamed her. The likely scenario: Byron et something icky during one of his outside travels (and I did see him chew twice on something the day before this began), got worms, gave it to Killsy via the shared litter box. Why Byron got rid of it so quickly I forgot to ask (because he vomited a lot maybe?). The Divine Miss K got a mouthful of worm meds, a thumbs-up diagnosis and a big bag of Eukanauba "low residue" cat food. I got a syringe of dewormer to force down Byron's throat and a bill for $98, a pittance when the health of one's children is at stake. At home, Killsy got some wet food to get that medicine taste out of her mouth, Byron got baffled by our departure, and I got late to work by 8 minutes. When I got home, I made a valiant attempt at force-feeding Byron his meds, but I needed an extra hand. He must remember his kittenhood--he had diarrhea medicine prescribed to him when I first got him, and boy did he hate taking it.
Punchline: There was no diarrhea in the box all day, so maybe Kill Kill got over it before she went to the vet.
3/28
Sorry; just haven't had the time to update.
I just got back from seeing Steamboy, the new movie by--umm, the Akira guy. And by "new," I mean "new except he started it 10 years ago." I had my expectations tuned down, as I'd read 3 reviews from people I trust, and they each said the same thing: Looks great, weak plot. Unfortunately, they were right. There's little characterization. There are no characters you care about (even the title hero is a cypher). The villian was--I don't know who he was, as the bad guy kept switching back and forth, and at the end, I guess the answer is both. Or neither. Or something.
It wasn't bad by any means, but it was a lot like the recent Star Wars movies. All spectacle, no heart. And when the "climatic battle" is half the movie...I grew tired of 45 minutes of Shit Blowing Up. Plus, why does every sci-fi-ish movie set in the Victorian Age have the same damn plot? There's a bunch of evil industrialists creating modern weapons to sell to the highest bidder and/or start World War One? League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Wild Wild West had that plot. At least this movie left out the WWI angle (it's stupid to cheer when the heroes stop the war from starting in 1890--cause it's just gonna happen in 1914 anyway!) And we're supposed to gasp along in amazement with the characters when they see something that's a wild new technology to them, but it's something our grandparents would have yawned at. Look, a submarine! Look, a tank! Look, a fucking elevator!
If you want to see it, and you can see it in a theater, it might be worth it. It was worth it to me (I had a free ticket). It will not be worth seeing on DVD, unless you have a kick-ass home theater. The animation's great, but it's way too dark and colorless. It'll all blend together on a small screen, and that'll just bring out the general lack of a story.
Afterwards, Kevin, Eric and me decided to go to an area brew pub, City Steam (because it's the only area brew pub, not because we had a Steam Theme going on). "I don't know how to get there from here," Kevin said, "so we'll follow you." "Okay! But you may be following me for a while..." They went into his car, and I remembered that there was a map of area restaurants available inside. They were in his car, so I didn't tell them. I looked back, and they'd started to back up, but then stopped. Obviously, if they were following me, they'd have to wait for me to leave. It took a while for me to find the map, and it had no directions to where we were going. I looked up and saw that they'd found a new definition of "Follow Me," meaning "Leave First." They were gone.
Wait, I know where I get back on the highway after I leave City Steam, obviously, to get there, I'd just take the exit before that. And...I guess they decided that too. So I drove off, arrived on a cold street with the wind blowing rain in my face, and they weren't there. Umm...they didn't follow somebody ELSE'S car, did they? I waited 10 minutes before they arrived. And yes, they'd followed someone else. Kevin thought "When did Bill buy a brand new Sentra?" when Bill only buys a car when his previous one is destroyed. He eventually got tipped off by the bumper sticker: "My child is an honor student at..." That wouldn't be my car, unless that sentence ended "...at pooping in a box."
Damn! I thought that I'd sprayed for those!
The Easter Bunny isn't real! Who'd have guessed?
3/29
I had this game as a kid, The Last Straw. You had a plastic camel, and you filled baskets on its back with plastic straws until the game's loser got it so heavy, it "broke the camel's back." (PETA reps are currently developing time travel technology to go back to the 60s and protest it)
Now, imagine that the camel is a shelf made of particle board, and the straws are bottles of wine, and you add a bottle at a time until you add the very last one from the case, and the pressed-sawdust corner snaps off the shelf, and a hundred bottles slide to one corner and another dozen clatter to the floor. Oh no, you've lost!
But suppose that one of the bottles is cheap champagne, and it explodes when it hits the floor. Not just explodes, disintegrates, sending razor-sharp glass shrapnel flying as far as 10 feet in every direction.
I lost the game, but I'm still intact. So I WIN!
Umm, sorry thanks no, not interested in playing again.
Remember Jerry Falwell, the creator of the Moral Majority and hirer of prostitutes? Wouldn't it be AWESOME if he became brain-damaged and was put on a feeding tube? Because it WOULD, is just all.
Via the Duck, a spellcheck-free tribute to the art of Rob Liefeld. Great big muscles, gigantastically huge hooters, widdle dainty feets (when and if shown).
Okay, everybody reads the Onion, but the AV Club is frequently the only thing worth reading of late: Bad scenes in great movies/Great scenes in bad movies is one of the ones worth the time.
3/30
For no paricular reason that I recall, when I was driving home tonight I though about a tenet of Creationism. Why is their "explanation" for the fact that the more sophisticated and modern versions of fossils are found in the higher geological strata, and the less sophisticated, more primitive versions of the same creature's fossils are lower in the ground? WELL, puff the Creationists, OBVIOUSLY, when the Great Flood came, the more primitive ones weren't smart enough to go to higher ground, and drowned. And the medium-smarter ones only ran halfway up the hill before drowning.
And it's called Intelligent Design? What genius designs animals that are too stupid to figure out "the higher you go, the less you'll drown"? And there are ones smart enough to climb, but then stop halfway, thinking "Hey, the water's coming up my nose, but I'm safe"? No, that's "Retardo Design." It does, however, explain why people voted for Bush. They were too stupid to think past "Married homo fags bad, dead American troops in Iraq GOOD!"
Scientific American apologizes for over a century of badthink: "[W]e shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details."
PRAISE GOURD that they've been born again! Now, they can join that mighty Legion of Truth, the Americans who think that the Flintstones was a documentary!
Note: Fred and Wilma, having been born before the Reign of Christ, were Virtuous Heathens, and thus will languish in the First Circle of Hell for all Eternity. Sucks, I know, but the rules are the rules. Pebbles will burn forever in hell, given her lezbo connection to Fruity Pebbles.
Dino, like all pets, is in Heaven. Hey, rules are rules!
4/3
Last night, Byron stalked Kill Kill as she nibbled her kibble. He made a great leap, and she started to run. Then she stopped, as Byron slowed. Seems he'd misjudged his attack arc.
He was dragging a grocery bag around.
He figured out half of the solution very quickly--keep your head low--but it took another 5 minutes for him to get part 2, "and back up, don't go forward."
A half hour later, Killsy sniffed at the bag. And before I could say, "Don't get your head stuck in it!" she got her head stuck in it, just like him. Unlike him, she got out of it in mere seconds, less time that it took the camera to power on. Dagnabbit!
Fun Facts About Canada! No, not that one, a different one. I feel that it does the world a disservice by not including even a single warning about the dangers of roving packs of poutine.
Bumper sticker seen on the way to work recently: "I'd rather Be Visiting A Graveyard!" After passing him, about 30 seconds later, I passed a truck from Yorktowne Caskets. Maybe that first car was following him.
4/5
For the last several weeks, the beautiful weather starts on Tuesday, and by Saturday it's gone. Until the next Tuesday. I would have no problem with this, if my days off weren't Sunday and Monday. I would still have no qualms, if those weren't Byron's days outside. And I get to shudder and shiver for the hour-plus he spends being the Cat Magellan.
Killsy is quite happy with "outside" being the condo's common hallway. Byron's outside is the OutSide, the real one. He first started these adventures never moving much past where he was in continual physical contact with me. Over the weeks, he's become more fearless (as if he could ever get more fearless). He runs away at top speed, but fortunately along the safe 2nd story deck. He'll stare into the open windows, if he sees someone inside (how rude!). He's tried to head toward the busy, deadly road at the foot of the hill, but I've stopped him a hundred yards away each time. Yesterday (which, like all my recent days off, was cold with at least 2 or 3 of the following: windy, grey, rainy), he went down a slope into the condo complex next door. "That fence should stop him!" I thought, until I followed it by eye and found that it had collapsed in many spots. And I couldn't see him! I repelled down the slope, grabbing trees as supports, dodging abandoned bottles of Mountain Dew and vodka, getting my good coat caught on a pricker bush, worrying about my little lost boy, and went through the gap. And there he was, all alone as he shouldn't be. He looked up with a "Oh! Hi, Mom! Where were you?" look, and went back to exploring.
I was momentarily jealous of the fact that THEIR condos had sliding glass doors that led to a deck in their backyards. They all, every one of them, had a grill back there, and 1 or 2 resin stack chairs. My jealousy left when I noticed that they all had curtains drawn over those glass doors. Their tiny, cramped, room-for-a-resin-stack-chair-and-a-grill decks overlooked a "backyard" 5 feet wide. And it was where they threw their shit. Broken flower pots, wooden frames of inexplicable use, strange metal spikes of rust, PVC drainpipes leading from the gutter to a rotted wooden triangle that was propped 3 feet above the ground on an upturned empty plastic tub of industrial cleaner, and even a depressing, decomposing toddler-sized wooden rocking horse, moldy from years in the wet, with one leather ear sadly clinging to it's mildewed head.
One optimistic resident had planted tulips in the backyard, and they pushed through the soil, oblivious to their miserable, abandoned neighbors. Byron sniffed at a potted evergreen, their other tiny child, carefully tied to a tiny support. I picked him up before he tried to eat it, and carried him back to our condo's less trash-strewn territory.
Many other minor adventures followed. The boy is fearless, and getting more fearless every time we go out. Guess I'd better buy that cat harness.
He understands that we only go out on my days off, and he understands that those are when I'm home but it's still light outside. So why has he recently started using the Byron Siren at the front window, demanding that we go out in the dark? Dude, I can't see you in the daylight sometimes, no way I'm chasing you at night! Today I got it: It's because we've just reached that time of year where the screen windows are open when I'm not home. Since I started taking him out, the screen windows are only open only when I'm home. Daylight savings means that it's only dark out for an hour before I get home, so it won't get too cold before I get home to close them. He shrieked and shrieked, then I closed the glass storm windows. And he stopped immediately. I think he's got a bit of Killsy's Einstein-iness in him.
Another smart, if far less cute animal: RATS. "Gary had a rat infestation in his building. ‘We killed a lot of them,’ he told me excitedly. ‘Mostly mothers and babies!’ I can think of no other mammal about which such a statement could be made with the same guilt-free pleasure." It's fascinating and disgusting at the same time. Wherever there are humans, there are rats. Maybe it's because we aren't all that different in our views of our environment: we're here, let's destroy and dominate it.
4/6
My new downstairs neighbors are still noisy, but at least they're nice (well--he is; she seems to be into histrionics at his expense). He even was neighbourly enough to make sure that I knew that my kids were in the common hallway alone. I thanked him, although if I was in his position, I wouldn't've thought that they'd opened the door, placed an 8-track tape of "Bubbling Brown Sugar" as a doorstop, and put a nice bowl of turkey gravy as refreshment outside the door by themselves. (Note: the guy is BIG, real big, and for the first time ever, Byron ran away from a human, rather than try to scare the human away. And he warily hid under a favorite place, until falling asleep)
When I first got home, on an early spring day that's more like early summer, he was outside his garage using his grill. "What are the rules about using these?" he asked. "I was going to use it up there, but I thought I'd better ask somebody."
"Up there" being the 2nd floor deck. Which is made of wood, with a wood overhang. For a grill spitting sparks everywhere. Everyone I've seen grills down here, I said. (On the ever-so-slightly-less flammable asphalt). Because, you know, the deck is made of wood. "OH!" he said. "I didn't think of that!"
What's he do for a living?
He's a fireman.
I said they were nice, not geniuses.
So I have a cold. It looks to be one of those "I'm not that sick, and I'll wake up tomorrow feeling fine!" colds, where you wake up the next day and you still have it and you feel worse and it doesn't go away for 10 days.
This morning, my lungs were so congested that I couldn't talk. Whisper, yes; talk, no. After I walked around a bit, I was able to creak out a syllable or two before coughing; that made Killsy run and hide. I figured that I'd spend the day at work miming "Half-pint of Bukoff, $1.86" while in an invisible box. But by the time I got to work (and after many major lung-hackings), I'd made it to the point that I could speak. In a voice that's usually reserved for saying "Luke--I am your father!" (and it was accompanied by the same kind of breathing). Later on, it became a croaking version of my own voice. It was so froggy, you'd think that I was about to plunk my magic twanger! (If you got that, you've known me online for a realllly looong tiiime)
It's not that bad when I'm awake, as it's all about collecting shit in my chest when I'm asleep. It really fucked up my sleep Monday night. I didn't sleep until after 4AM. And that wasn't really "sleep," it was "sleep for 10 minutes, wake up for 10, repeat until after 8AM." I did get some real sleep after that, but less than 3 hours worth. Last night was much better. But I still got maybe 7-minus hours sleep instead of my usual 9-plus. I'm using the old dictum for beating colds, "Drink a lot of fluids." Which is good advice, because one time I decided to "drink a lot of solids," and nearly choked to death chugging a big glass of gravel.
Usually, I have a small salad for lunch. I'm not hungry when I eat it, but if I don't, I'll be hungry 2 hours later. But hungry doesn't bother me. I don't need to eat a lot; that's the way my metabolism works. But today, as soon as I got up, I was staaarving! When lunch came, I ate the salad, but it was like I didn't. I remained really hungry, not unlike a species of hippo known to exist solely on marbles.
Then I opened up my weekly copy of Science News, and read this article. It was about the chemicals in your body that regulate hunger. There's one that says "I'm hungry!" and another that says, "Okay, stop, we're full." It seems that these can get confused at times. For instance, if you eat fat and drink fructose (the main ingredients in, say, a Big Mac and a 32-oz Coke, respectively), it leaves the "I'm hungry!" switch on and the "Stop! Stop! STOP ALREADY!" switch off. So, you keep getting fatter, while your body thinks it's straaarving.
But here's the part that caught my immediate attention:
"Endocrinologist Eve Van Cauter strongly suspects that there is. She points to seven studies that have linked body weight to how long people sleep...her research team reported that prebreakfast concentrations of the satiety hormone leptin were roughly 20 percent lower in 11 healthy men who had slept only 4 hours a night for nearly a week than when they had slept 9 hours nightly.
"In the December 2004 Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers reported similar leptin differences in 12 healthy men after just 2 nights of each sleep regimen. Moreover, daytime concentrations of [hunger causing] ghrelin climbed 28 percent during the sleep-deprived cycle."
"Congratulation!!! You have just spent
24 Sec.and 6/10 Sec. of your life finding Hitler."
(Hint: He's the one with the scowl and dopey moustache!)
Note: Kill Kill, approaching her 6th birthday, who has gone from blue eyes well beyond her kittenage, to green eyes, to gold eyes, to yellow eyes, to gold eyes, to green eyes, is now getting gold eyes again.
Next, I expect plaid.
4/7
Ellie, re that last link, said: "Now to flush images of "Yoga Hitler" and "Nazi Spice" out of my head. Going to bed after seeing Hitler images--even Photoshopped ones--could have dire consequences."
Which I find funny, in that I actually did have a "Find Hitler" dream last night. He was reincarnated, and we were in art school. He'd shaved the moustache and combed the greasy hair back, but he was the least popular person in the class. Because he was an asshole, and also because--well, he was Hitler. You would've thought that alone would've made him unpopular. But what really made him a target of derision was that he wore his underwear backwards.
And upside down.
And on his head.
As a shirt. Head poking out of one leg, arm out of another. Stupid Hitler!
Look--my unconscious brain comes up with this shit, that doesn't mean I can explain it. Unless, for some deeply sublimated reason, I just think Hitler was a loony.
4/10
I checked my hits for this page, and I got the most ever in the shortest time. 20 in 15 minutes. Every one of them was from a different city in Wisconsin. And they all came from Google, all looking for that "Last Straw" camel game I mentioned recently. Every search had the same words--camel, game, wheels, back--but every search string was different from the others. And, after that 15 minutes, it ended.
I dunno. Internet scavenger hunt? Popular cheesehead chatroom that started talking about old Schaper games? Like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the World May Never Know.
I'd been waiting all week for today. FINALLY, a day off with warm weather and sunny skies! Mr Byron's Wild Ride would actually occur on beautiful day. For once, we could stay outside for more than an hour without my extremities turning blue. We went out, he wandered and poked, and then he stared at something. Or nothing. He does this, and when he does, it usually means that he'll make an odd noise, then turn and run. I think that he might be remembering his time as little kitten, alone and lost from his family. He always runs to the 2nd floor deck and right up to our door, as if he's seeking the sanctuary of home.
But today the downstairs neighbors were there in resin stack chairs, and he was put off by this. When someone walked out of the common hallway's door, he ran in and went home. "We'll just go out the back way!" I said, but he plopped himself down and looked sad. After a bit, I picked him up and took him out. He didn't explore as usual. He mainly sat down on the stairs and chilled. The downstair's neighbors' cats--one black, one tuxedo--looked at us from the window. Byron never noticed them, but they noticed him. They were probably thinking "How come HE gets to go out, and we can't?"
After a HUGE dog (about 80 pounds over the condo's 20-lb dog size limit) tried to "be friends," an orange tabby glared at Byron from across the courtyard. Byron looked at it, but didn't seem all that interested.
And then Elvis came by, riding on a Bigfoot! No, it TOTALLY happened, I'm not just making stuff up because I realized that this post is meaningless.
Maybe Byron likes it when it's cold and rainy out. This was the only time he's come in voluntarily twice; usually I have to cart him away while he loudly whines. And he went home just in time, as I was going to the movies. I was probably the only person who read the local free alt-paper last week, turned the page to an arts announcement, saw the accompanying picture and cried "FOOTLIGHT PARADE!" I love that movie! And here was my once-in-a-lifetime chance to see it in a theater!
Okay, at the Windsor Historical Society, on a classroom-sized screen with a clattering old 16mm projector, while squirming on a folding metal chair. And it faced due west, so the sunny day made it light enough inside that I could've read a book. But my $5 admission included free cheese-flavored popcorn and lemonade!
Except for 2 loudmouths who talked a lot (directly behind me, o' course), it was fun. I could've done without the boring documentary "about" musicals, as it was just random clips and not a history. And the sound wasn't that great , just like in your school days. Well, my school days. I remember in high school, when we were shown this amazing new purchase the school had made--it was a "VCR."
Footlight Parade is my favorite musical. Smart characters with smart dialogue, read at a machine gun pace. Strong female leads, and more plot than any other dozen musicals from the time (1933). And those deranged Busby Berkeley musical numbers! The film makes the odd decision to put all of them at the end, but that's how the plot works. Of course, at this point the story becomes ridiculous. It's about how James Cagney produces "prologues," live performances before silent pictures. When the talkies arrive, he has to compete by making the prologues more lavish. Lavish to the point where it'd require rebuilding an entire theater to stage them, unless you know of any cinemas with TWO football field sized swimming pools in them. But they're so spectacular, you just smile and love it.
I got into the old 30s musicals when they were shown on TV when I was 14. I wondered why some were so good, like this one, but many just bored me. Then I found out about the Hays Code. This movie was among the last to be made before it was established. The dialogue has stuff we wouldn't think twice about today, but "offended" some bluenoses back in the day. Says Joan Blondell of her adversary, the golddigging slut Miss Rich, "Yes, I've met Miss Bi--Rich!" When she throws the freeloader out of her apartment, Miss Rich says "It's 3AM! Where will I sleep?!" and Joan says, "As long as there are sidewalks, you'll have a job!" Tame to us, but this was 72 years ago. Most of the people who saw this movie in a theater, even as kids, are DEAD. So the Hays Code came along to clean things up, and make movies more boring for 35 years.
Funny how the Hays Code was accepted the same year that Prohibition ended. Almost like the moralist "We know what's best for you!" brigade lost one battle to control people's personal choices, so they found another.
In the final number, a crowd turns some placards towards the camera, and it makes the American flag. Then, they turn some more, and they make a portrait of one of our greatest presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One of the talkative old biddies behind me said "It's a good thing that the ACLU wasn't around back then! They wouldn't have let them show the FLAG!" YEAH, me, a card-carying member of the ACLU, has heard about their insidious plot to not show the flag in movies. Hey, biddie, the ACLU was founded in 1920, so that blows your theory. Also, what thingie did that FDR dude do? Social Something Security Something? The one that dickweed in the White House is trying to strip away from Miss Bi--err, Riches like you AARPers?
She'd also loudly pointed out (maybe her hearing aid wasn't working) about how there was no violence in the movie, unlike these awful movies of today. Umm, it's a MUSICAL, maybe that's why. No, wait, I remember the torrents of gore that Maria von Trapp waded through in The Sound of Music.
A firsthand review of the new Hitchhiker's Guide movie: It sucks, sucks, sucks. (Site ate all its bandwidth as I was going through the longer review, so it may not be up. But I read enough to put this one on my "skip" list)
"We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with."
4/11
As usual, I'm inspiration-free. So here's a list of my favorite movies by genre, after seeing one of them yesterday. Feel free to add your own list in the Comments.
Musical: Footlight Parade
Comedy: Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Comedy, Satiric: The President's Analyst
Comedy, TV-movie: Evil Roy Slade
Comedy, MST3K: Catalina Caper
Comedy, Unintentional: Voyage Into Space, starring Johnny Sokko and his giant robot, Giant Robot
Comedy, Surreal: Plan 9 From Outer Space
Action, Sci-fi: The Road Warrior
Action, War: Kelly's Heroes
Action, Spy-fi: Goldfinger
Action, Utterly Demented: Fantasy Mission Force
Epic: The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Classic Drama: Citizen Kane
Classic Comedy: Duck Soup (Never Give a Sucker an Even Break might win, if not for having even more tedious and needless musical numbers)
Animated: The Iron Giant
Anime: Laputa: Castle in the Sky (with apologies to Princess Mononoke)
Kurosawa: Seven Samurai
Guilty Pleasure: Casino Royale
Strange Movie, Unsettling: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
Strange Movie, Dreamlike: Karel Zeman's 1961 Baron Munchausen
Documentary: The Atomic Cafe
Unclassifiable: Koyaanitsqatsi
Best Movie I Ever Saw, But Would Never Watch Again: Memento (because I know how it ends. Err, begins)
And the three movies I'd choose, if I could only choose three:
Road Warrior, Voyage Into Space, Iron Giant.
If you're so inclined, post in the Comments. Feel free to add your own genres (I didn't list "Horror" or "Romantic Comedy" or "Anything Starring Adam Sandler," as there is no movie in those genres I'd actually waste my time watching--but that's just me).
4/14
John Scalzi decides to give away ecopies of his new book, Old Man's War, to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A nice and noble gesture, and one far better than slapping a magentic "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" ribbon on your SUV, when you really mean "I THINK IT'S OKAY THAT THEY'RE DYING, AS FAR AS I'VE EVER THOUGHT ABOUT ANYTHING. HEY, GOTTA GO WATCH MY TIVO NOW!"
He has given the book away online before. I linked to it back in the day. Interestingly, people have declared the book both pro-war and anti-war. My personal take at the time that it was neither--or, to be more accurate, like my take on war: Sometimes it's necessary, but not when it's started for no real reason. It'll be interesting to see how the reviews of it from the battlefield turn out.
Which is a long way of saying that I took this next link from him: Which is the way the world ends, in a bang or a whimper or a goddamn humungous volcano?
A LiveJournaller finds Area 51 on Google satellite maps. I'm sure that there's crazy technological shit going down there, but as my friend Kevin has said, "That's where Stealth technology came from. And that's from the 1970s! What technology are they using now? There may be UFOs there, but who's to say we aren't the ones building them?" And he's hella less skeptical than I am.
Well, I stopped doing the "summer reruns" of old posts about a year ago, when I ran out of things I'd written that were actually good. But...well, here we go again. A couple of things that show that I can write short stories! Really really short stories, as I have a limited imagination. Write them until they just abruptly end. They're only okay, so read them or not, I don't care. I'm just filling space here.
Simmons
Super President
Make Fun Of Dick Cheney Day
4/18
Sense of duty posting?
I once declared that I needed a few weeks off from posting for refueling my brain. And that was a year ago. So--no, no sense of duty anymore. The page will always be here in some form, but the days of me writing long or even interesting posts are gone. Short and sporadic posts forever from now on, I imagine.
I found that out by searching for --thoughtviper "green bomb"-- on Google. (If you ever want to search something on this site, just type thoughtviper and add your search string) I wanted to see if it occurs every year at the same time, and it does. It's the time when the buds on the trees explode, and over the course of about 3 days, Connecticut ends 6 months of glum greyness for a brief glorious moment of green. And--umm, well, it does, so there really wasn't any point in me bringing it up.
And you wonder why I don't post anymore.
Finally, I had 2 days off with gorgeous weather! For months now, the good weather starts on Tuesday, and by Saturday, it ends. This is important, as Byron knows Day Off means Byron Goes Outside. The Surrogate Mommy would prefer it to be a day when he does not have to follow his son around in 4 layers of clothing. I had to do the laundry today (why do I have a week's more underwear than I have socks?), so I lured him towards the laundry room. When that didn't work, I carried him there. I had only enough money on my laundry card for a wash, so the Goal became getting Byron to walk to another laundry room where you could refinance your card, then get him to walk back to the laundry room where I was doing the actual laundry. In half an hour.
He did reasonably well in following me. It was one of those Family Circle Sunday cartoons where the kid wanders everywhere, but we were generally heading in the right direction. As in, if you walk east, eventually you'll reach Europe. We ended up near the pool, which has a dilapidated shack by it. I don't know what's in it, as I don't do pools and it was locked. I don't know what's supposed to be in it, I should say, as I could tell what it did contain: Thumb-sized bees and small hornets. They buzzed Byron repeatedly, but since he can't hear, he didn't notice them. Until enough bees flew near him that he began swatting them. Then MANY bees and hornets began appearing. And swoosh I surgically removed him and carried him a few yards away. I will grant him this: when I do that, he knows not to go back.
I hoped you enjoyed his brief flirt with jeopardy and excitement, because after that, he either just plopped down in the shade or crawled under a bush. Well, there was some drama when it became clear that there was no way he was following me to the laundry room, just as surely as there was no way I was leaving him alone for the 5 minutes it would take to move my clothes from the washer to the drier. So he was dumped, yelling, into the common hallway, then let out again. To do nothing much. We watched the huge black bumblebees, which are everywhere this year, and who also did nothing much. They'd fly aimlessly until they met another bee, then they'd attack each other in midair. What's that about? And where'd all these damn bugs come from all at once, anyway? It last snowed about 3 weeks ago, but they're everywhere all at once. (Joke seen in an old comic strip: Guy 1: "Where do bugs go in the winter?" Guy 2: "SEARCH ME!")
After 2 hours, he decided that Home had things like a litter box and food, and he went back quietly and voluntarily.
Then Elvis and Bigfoot came by again, leaving pie crust everywhere.
Relating to a certain crappy-looking movie, the BBC releases a "Hitchhiker's Guide" for your cell phone. I do not, nor ever plan to, have one of those. I get to overhear cell phone conversations all the time, and while I bet that 1% of them are calls to AAA when your car breaks down on the highway, the rest are the least important sounding calls that anyone could ever make. Although it IS entertaining when dimwits use that "I'm on a phone, so that means no one can hear me!" thing to scream at their girlfriend over what they're going to do or not do over the weekend. It's like people who pick their noses in their cars. There's an invisible wall that prevents anyone from noticing you. A wall made from your dead neurons.
And oh yeah, it sucks. It's like a stupid Wikipedia for dumb people who use cell phones. Oh, wait, that's what it's meant to be! Congratulations on a job well-shit!
For those of you who don't read Daliy Kos because it's too dry, I recommend Cheers and Jeers. It combines levity with outrage. (That's a link to today's entry. There is no permanent link) Full of interesting stuff and snarkiness. Did you know that the leading candidate to replace Pope John Paul II (BTW--he's DEAD! The media ignored that, so you might've missed) was a Hitler Youth, and also was part of a German anti-aircraft brigade? Sure, he was defending his country, but he also was shooting at us Good Guys. Oh, and, blah blah blah, protecting factory where concentration camp slave labor was used. He'd make a good pope. He knows all about morality.
He's also named "Ratzinger," which sounds like nutzing, NUTZING! someone would name a Nazi officer in a Hogan's Heroes episode. Here is a picture of him:
He's either doing his impression of Emperor Palpitane, or he's just realized "NUN'S BLOOD! ZAT is vhat vill re-energize our FUHRER'S BRAIN!"
Remember Columbia University's "Small World" project? I do. Barely. It started almost a year and a half ago. The goal was to test the "6 degrees" theory, that anyone can be connected to another person via a chain of short links. I participated, and the results are in.
And they show that--not by the internet, they can't. A mere 75% of the people who signed up didn't do anything, and only "384 of 24,163 chains reached their targets."
Apparently, most of the internet really is made up of people too busy downloading pr0n and "Buffy" episodes to have any free time that isn't spent opening their next bag of Cheetos.
There's a new study, if you want to participate. Since this one involves pirating music, I'll bet that the participitation is MUCH higher. Many a keyboard will be stained orange tonight!
"Eleven "Mad Max" fans were arrested after alarming motorists as they made their way to a movie marathon in a theatrical convoy in which they surrounded a tanker truck armed with fake machine guns.." Hey, I love that movie, but y'know, maybe it was the MACHINE GUNS. Which don't appear in the actual film. That's like celebrating King Kong by not telling anyone that you're strafing the Empire State Building with biplanes.
4/19
Friend Wakboth clears things up:
So, in conclusion: please, only malign Ratzinger for his actual faults, which are numerous and odious."
Meanwhile, here's excerpts from the most amusing thing I've read today: Big Picnic is...
I’m so indie, that whenever we’re wearing the same outfit, I’m wearing it with exactly one more layer of irony than you, such that you’re the butt of my joke.
I’m so fundamentalist, I airbrush my paintings of Jesus so that he has short hair.
Okay, Byron's now screaming at the door (we don't go out at NIGHT, little boy, how many tmes must we tell you?!), so here's this: " In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament."
4/20
Silly web toy: Punch in your url and it spits out an attempt at a rap song.
HTTP in tha House lyrics by: http://www.thoughtviper.com/newest.html have just spent too cold bent which he d had heroes p rad a href all at once joke f the shared that mighty legion of truth paired annals of internal because he realizes diurnal that too so i to that p nbsp sly life sucks well sometimes es br nbsp nbsp a href pee WWW DOT THOUGHTVIPER DOT COM IN THA HOUSE WWW DOT THOUGHTVIPER DOT COM IN THA HOUSE WWW DOT THOUGHTVIPER DOT COM IN THA HOUSE WWW DOT THOUGHTVIPER DOT COM
Continuing yesterday's "posts by pages you should read every day," here's Izzle Pfaff on "Dealbreakers," and The Poor Man on Tom DeLay, and Old Hickory on Pope Ratzinger I.
4/21
Unfortunately, it leaves out Connecticut's own Virgin Mary sighting of recent years, seen in the branches of a tree (LEAVES out, GEDDIT?), but here's a slideshow of recent "miraculous sightings," including the infamous $29,000 grilled cheese eBay sammich. (Although it does lie when it claims that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is in debate--it's in the same kind of "debate" that Evolution is. ie, none, except among the crazy.)
And in related news...MONKEY POPE!
I've no idea who this "Thomas Friedman" guy is, but this review of his newest book is great reading from paragraph one:
4/27
Look, it's not like I PLAN on taking a week off. I'm a quiet person in Real Life, and I always explain it as "I only talk when I have something to say. The world is full of people who only talk when they have nothing to say."
I could've talked about Things, but if I feeled bored about writing, I know the writing will be boring. Not that the following won't be.
On Byron's latest perambulations around the condo, we discovered some bits of interest. One, mothers get grey around crazy boys without fear, who run towards busy roads or into brambly undergrowth. Mothers also get good exercise chasing said miscreants. If he could hear, I'd be screaming "You'll put your eye out!" every 10 minutes.
He has a good record for understanding that when I pick him up and walk away from Danger before putting him down, that means Don't Go There. But Sunday, after my 8 thousandth time of explaining that "Cars are not our friends!" and walking him away from using someone's car as a scratching post, he immediately ran under the nearest car. And defiantly laid down, plunk in the middle where I couldn't reach him. He swatted and meowed at me when I tried to encourage him out. And what could I do, grab him by the tail and drag him out? No. So I got the snow brush from the car and bristled him out. He didn't like that either, but when he was out, I "Good boy!"ed him and petted him. Then saw a neighbor with a cell phone in hand, no doubt ready to call the Dept. of Animal Youth Services on me. But I think that next time, just the threat of the Doom-Brush should be sufficient.
Assuming that he's as smart as Killsy. And he isn't.
The boy who growls at people in "our" common hallway, the boy who stares down barking dogs straining at leashes 3 feet from his head, then continues to stare them down until I pick him up, the Cat without Fear, DareFeline...actually backed down. Twice. The first time was when a grey cat, bigger than him but smaller than Kill Kill, saw him from a screened window. He didn't mind me, but as soon as he saw Byron, he arched his back and poofed up his tail, and made the most terrifying noise that indoor cat could make. "eek. eek. eek." Yeah, it was hard not to laugh at this mousey display. Not that lil' deaf boy knew; the cat could've been making air raid siren noises or screaming invectives in Latin or singing John Ashcroft's greatest hits. But Byron ran, and for the rest of the day darted alarmed looks in the general direction of the grey cat.
The next day, he decided to revisit that apartment complex below us, the one with the backyards full of garbage. Well, not "garbage" in the sense of household trash. But if your screen door gets a rip, hey, that dumpster's a good minute's walk from here! Throw it in the 5-foot wide backyard outside your patio, and Mother Nature will remove it in 50,000 years! And I guess that it's standard policy--I'm sure it wasn't a tenant who decided to replace the gutters with PVC tubing, and then throw the gutters a whole foot away and leave them there for years.
And the odd thing is that all these patios have resin stack chairs and charcoal grills on them. People GO OUT THERE to relax and commune with their trash. And Byron, on a cold, windy, miserable day, decided that each and every porch needed 5 solid minutes of close inspection. Well beyond my personal point of sheer boredom, he used a scanning electron microscope on the fibers of a mat that said "Please Wipe Your Paws." Hmm, I wondered, maybe they have a ca--Oh, yes, they do, and there the cat is. Another grey one. Unlike the other one, who seemed to act like "There's...OTHER cats in the world? eek!" this one just glared with UTTER HATRED at B-Toes. "Whose porch is this, FUCKAH? YOUR porch, FUCKAH!?!? NOOO, MY porch FUUUCKAAAAAH!"
Byron retreated after awhile, but not as hastily as the last encounter. Possibly this was because Hater Cat was behind a sliding glass door, and the squeaky one was behind a screen. Maybe he gave off "Go away!" smell molecules. Dunno, as I'm not a cat.
And those were the most exciting days of the last week.
And now some stale old links that I've been saving in my web-writing thing!
Well, I guess that this is a story about Iraq, as it has Iraq/Story in the url. Oh yes, it was about the Green Zone, I think.
Should New York City secede from Bush's USA? I link to this because it's always been a fantasy of mine. Not NYC seceding--as the article details, it wouldn't be economically feasible. But NYC and the states of New York and New England? It could be done! 30 years ago in high school, I did the math (as best as I can do math), and we would've had a GNP in the world's top 20. I haven't checked what it would be today. But if California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii went, too, and became our trading partners...No doubt Puerto Rico would join Newer England in a secession...Those Red States that are living off our taxes would wither and die, and the rest of the world would realize that not all Americans are Bushidiots and support us...Surely, the Canadians would help in our defense...And what army would they send against us? They're in Iraq, and hating it!
We can do it!
4/28
Whew! What a day. Spring Weekend at the local college has begun. It was busy last year, but it was INSANELY busy today. With only 3 of us on.
One transaction was a bunch of beer 30-packs. It came to over $1100. Paid in twenties. In my 25 years of retail, this was the most cash I've ever handled in one sale.
"Don't drive by the university the next 3 days!" I said to my coworkers. "And if you do, pre-inflate your airbags!"
I've lived for almost 20 years minutes from a Denny's. I've never been there. One reason is the food--it looks like a McDonald's with silverware, still serving the same artery bombs. Another is just obstinance.
15 years later, I still never buy Chicken of the Sea tuna. They were the last company to stop serving dolphin-killing tuna, and stopped only because government regulations forced them. And they then put "DOLPHIN-SAFE!" labels on their cans, like they'd always been there.
I remember Denny's infamous "Black-Out" incident. It was an unspoken chain policy to refuse to serve blacks at the restaurants. They'd take forever to get their orders, then take longer to fill them. They hoped that the inferior race would leave in frustration. Code word for this: Black-Out. Y'know, if I hated an ethnic group that much (say...Fundie Republicans), I'd take their money, and then serve them promptly with the food I'd just spit in. My code word would be: Spit-Take!
They tried a Black- Out 15 years ago in DC. Yes, that group of black customers did eventually get frustrated. However, they were a group of black FBI agents, y'know, guys with a job of investigating discrimination. Maaaybe they weren't the best group to try that on. It's like raping the daughter of the guy who's going to perform open-heart surgery on you tomorrow. Like smearing shit on the face of the mechanic who's about to fix your brakes.
But should I boycott a company that did something wrong a decade ago? Sure, since the new policy seems to be Brown-Out, refusing to serve Muslim-looking people and calling them "bin Ladens."
But Denny's couldn't be institutionally rascist, right? Hey, guess what it was called before it was called Denny's! Give up?
It was called Little Black Sambo's.
No fucking shit. Right up until the late 1960s. Then they changed it to something more tolerant:
Sambo's.
Well...I guess that's an improvement. Like, say, you had a restaurant named "WE HATES NIGGERS!!" Then, in a fit of sensitivity, you changed it to "We Really Don't Care Much For The Darkies!" See? IMPROVEMENT!
A few years ago, they ran radio ads for their "Grand Slam Breakfasts." The voices were performed by an older black couple. They sounded old enough to remember Jim Crow and his seperate drinking fountains. I'd growl inwardly at that. Why not just call them "Grand Dragon Breakfasts"? Here's a slogan: "It's KKK-errific! Tastes So Good, You'll Take Off Your Hood!"
"Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism."
"It's clobberin' time! How else to explain yesterday's midday appearance, down in the Pentagon basement, of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (normal human strength, no known superpowers), wedged between Spider-Man and Captain America, trying his best to melt that icy glare of his into a boy-am-I-glad-you-guys-showed-up kind of smirk?"
Jesus Fuck. Remember that lie about "Clinton's million dollar hairdo on Air Force One"? The Wrong Wing screams about that to this day, but never mentions the insane farce that was the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op--It really DID cost a million dollars in a day. And if Bush "landed the plane" on that carrier, how did he do it when he hadn't flown a jet in 30 years? And how did he do it with no training? The hardest thing that any pilot can do is land a plane on a carrier, but of course our cocksucking media repeated this ridiculous fantasy as fact. And now, we literally HAVE ridiculous fantasy presented as fact. AND IT'S FOR THE TROOPS IN IRAQ! Yeah, they want this cowardly sack of shit pretending that COMIC BOOKS will help them, and not HUMVEE ARMOR or MEDICAL BENEFITS. Up in the sky! Is it birdshit? Is it plainly stupid? NO, it's SUPER-INCOMPETENTMAN!
And is it just me, or is Rummy totally checking out Spidey's dick?
