Yay!

One of my mostest favoritest blogs, A Mockingbird's Medley, run my one of my favorite bloggers, the lovely and talented Mimus Pauly (also a member of the Skippy International team), was a year old yesterday. Sorry I missed it then, but I have an excuse. If you haven't been over there, go now. Congratulations, my fine feathered friend.

Heh, Gord, he called us 'rock-ribbed'.

Update: 19:45:

Another birthday announcement from another of my favorites. Rook's Rant is 2 years old. Congrats to Guy Andrew Hall, the GirlFriend, and the Fuskers.

Instructions

Since we've been on the subject lately. Via the Old White Lady, A Beginner's Guide to Sodomy.

Inside the 'Blogger's Studio' Part 2

These are my answers. I'll add the Mrs.' later on. Update: The Mrs.' answers are in italic.

01. What is your favorite word?

Payday.

Fuck and most things said by a great voice.

02. What is your least favorite word?

Nuk-u-ler.

Cunt; nuk-u-ler comes a close second.

03. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

My wife is my muse, and she also turns me on like you wouldn't believe.

Romance, intelligence and creativity.

04. What turns you off?

Dishonesty and deceit.

Stupidity.

05. What is your favorite curse word?

Motherfucker.

Fuck.

06. What sound or noise do you love?

That noise women make when you've found the right spot.

The sound of an ocean liner's air horns at it pulls into/out of port. Preferably, I am on the ship.

07. What sound or noise do you hate?

Police sirens . . . behind me.

Loud noises, nails on the blackboard

08. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Supermodel gynecologist.

Chef/Restaurant owner.

09. What profession would you not like to do?

The guy who cleans up after the elephants in the circus.

Manual labor.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"Hey, Pete, how'd this asshole get in here?"

"I wasn't certain you would be coming up here!"

Freedom stumbles marches on

Thanks to Riggsveda @ Corrente

The end of the world as we know it

BBC:

US sports tycoon Malcolm Glazer has won control of Manchester United in a £790m ($1.47bn) takeover bid.

The American has secured the 28.7% stake owned by Irish racing tycoons JP McManus and John Magnier, and now has more than 70% of the Premiership club.

[. . .]

At least the Brits think so.

I like this

I'm gonna have fun on Monday. This is going around Mrs. F's place:

Slap Your Co-Worker Day is Coming!!

Monday is the official Slap Your Irritating Co-workers Holiday: Do you have a co-worker who talks nonstop about nothing, working your last nerve with tedious and boring details that you don't give a damn about? Do you have a co-worker who ALWAYS screws up stuff creating MORE work for you? Do you have a co-worker who kisses so much booty, you can look in their mouth and see what your boss had for lunch? Do you have a co-worker who is SOOO obnoxious, when he/she enters a room, everyone else clears it? Well, on behalf of Ike Turner, I am so very very glad to officially announce Monday as SLAP YOUR IRRITATING CO-WORKER DAY!

There are the rules you must follow:

* You can only slap one person per hour - no more.
* You can slap the same person again if they irritate you again in the same day.
* You are allowed to hold someone down as other co-workers take their turns slapping the irritant.
* No weapons are allowed...other than going upside somebody's head with a stapler or a hole-puncher.
* CURSING IS MANDATORY! After you have slapped the recipient, your "assault" must be followed with something like "cause I'm sick of your stupid-a$$ always F'n up stuff!"
* If questioned by a supervisor [or police, if the supervisor is the irritant], you are allowed to LIE, LIE, LIE! Now, study the rules, break out your list of folks that you want to slap the living day lights out of and get to slapping.....and have a great day!

More 'moral values'

I wrote about these assholes last week, but the Rude One's take is excellent.

[. . .]

And it's fuckin' everywhere, the fuckin'. It's gay fuckin', group fuckin', straight anal fuckin', just so much fuckin', where the repressed libidos of ranting right wingers runs rampant. Somewhere in heaven, Michel Foucault is laughing his sore ass off.

There's Jim West, wayward gay-bashing mayor of Spokane, who not only fucked men he met at Gay.com, offering jobs and gifts to young men he wanted to bugger, but he is being investigated for having fucked young boys back in the 1970s. West made his name by blocking and getting into a huff about gay rights legislation.

There's the appointee to the Bush administration's FDA advisor committee on reproductive health drugs, W. David Hager, who as an OB/GYN for Jesus refused to prescribe contraceptives for unmarried women and has written that women who suffer from PMS should pray for help. Apparently one reason Hager never worred about contraception is because he loves the ass fucking. He loves the ass fucking so goddamn much that he raped his (now ex-)wife's ass repeatedly for years. Said the former Mrs., Linda Davis, "I would be asleep and since [the ass fucking] was painful and threatening, I woke up. Sometimes I acquiesced once he had started, just to make it go faster, and sometimes I tried to push him off.... I would [confront] David later, and he would say, 'You asked me to do that,' and I would say, 'No, I never asked for it.'" Hager believes he was called by God to stop abortion and emergency contraception. But apparently God was too busy to slip into his calls to Hager, "Hey, Davey, by the way, stop raping your wife's asshole. It's fucked-up and, frankly, it's kinda gay."

[. . .]

Don't talk to me about moral values anymore. The people yelling loudest are some of the most fucked up individuals I've ever seen. I got nothing against kinky sex, with consenting adults, but even my 'liberal' mores draw the line at forcible rape and bestiality. These assholes should be in jail, not be given a pulpit to promote their insanity.

Fading stars

See, when you're a crazy man like me, people don't take you seriously. Take this thought I advanced months ago (right before Christmas). I said we are beginning to see the end of the American Century (here and here), hastened by the ineptitude of the Bush Administration.

We're gonna be left behind soon enough. Our inept leadership had put the American Century soundly to bed. It's downhill from here.

You get a calm, level headed guy like Atrios (in the guise of Avedon Carol) saying the same things and people listen. Story of my life. It's tough being an evil genius.

I have previously been known to discuss the fading star of the USA, and the rise of China (greatly facilitated by the Bush Family Empire). I have also talked about how, in India, they don't really think much about us anymore (but I'm too lazy to look it up). Now Jim Henley detects more signs of this in the de-escalation between China and Taiwan.

Snotty's smackdown

Q: Doesn't the President want to be involved in what could be a decision to shoot down a plane over Washington?

McCLELLAN: Well, it may not have been a threat, Mr Smarty-Pants! So there!

Q: There seems to be so many disconnects here. You've got a plane that was assessed as not being a threat, you've got 35,000 people evacuated, you've got a person who you claim is a hands-on commander in chief who is left to go ride his bicycle through the rural wildlands of Maryland while his wife is in some secure location somewhere, it's just not adding up.

Go read Maru.

Light blogging today. Got a wake this evening and I had to work late. Now I gotta go make myself pretty (a tall order). Maybe I'll post after I get home if I'm not too depressed from watching a bunch of Italian ladies crying.

Inside the 'Blogger's Studio'

[Posted by Mrs. Fixer]

I've been enjoying reading the questionnaires and quizzes over the past weeks. I've always been intrigued by the answers I've been reading in the posts. This one is stolen from Inside the Actor's Studio, stolen from Bernard Pivot by James Lipton. I'd be interested in how bloggers answer these.

01. What is your favorite word?

02. What is your least favorite word?

03. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

04. What turns you off?

05. What is your favorite curse word?

06. What sound or noise do you love?

07. What sound or noise do you hate?

08. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

09. What profession would you not like to do?

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

[The Mrs. and I will post our answers later. - F-man]

Hasta la vista, baby! I'll be back

I am going on hiatus from The Brain for about ten days. Mrs. G and are are going on a business/pleasure trip to the Central Coast of California, one of the loveliest parts of the state.

I may comment some later, but I have things to do in preparation for our trip, such as service the pickup (if you're keepin' a diary, I use Valvoline Max Life 10w-30, Fram DG16 oil filter w/Teflon) and collect Mrs. G's travellin' necessities all in a pile. Sometimes the union on the kitchen sink gets stuck and it takes extra time. I'm glad we have the truck. When we travelled on my old Triumph, I had enough room for a quart of oil for myself. Luckily, I'm a good, safe rider and didn't need a fresh pair of shorts. I also have to complete one major project.

If you think these things don't take much time, keep in mind that things always take more time than you think they will. For instance, before I could take the trash out this morning, normally a one-minute job even in the pre-coffee fog of morning, I had to make an unscheduled foray out into the woods to collect said trash from where the damn bear took it. It must be Spring, and she musta been awfully hungry.

Anyway, while I'm gone I'll try to post once or twice from my sister-in-law's house.

I will miss you all. I'm already starting to have withdrawal pains. Take good care of yourselves, and I'll see y'all real soon, Brainsketeers.

Clairvoyance

Ike had it. Another good one from my brother-in-law:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.

Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954


(Note to all who believe that this quote is way too perfect to be for real: should you wish to find the source, go to the Eisenhower Presidential Papers, Document #1147; November 8, 1954. The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part VI: Crises Abroad, Party Problems at Home; September 1954 to December 1954 Chapter 13: "A new phase of political experience" )

Principles

[. . .]

Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, who had earlier stunned Republican peers by saying he wanted to review allegations against Bolton, portrayed the nominee as “arrogant” and “bullying.” The senator said that while he would vote against the nomination in committee, he supported sending it to the full Senate for a vote.

“John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,” Voinovich said, adding that Bolton would be fired if he was in private business.

[. . .]

Nice to see a Repub with a couple. Good on ya, George.

Bumpkins Invade D.C.

I'm so sure you've heard about the little puddle-jumper that invaded D.C. that I'm not even going to bother linking to it, but I have some thoughts on the incident. Duh.

Bush was in more danger from his fuckin' bicycle, which he was off ridin' in the park instead of being at work (that's "at work" as opposed to "working", which he has shown no inclination of doing as yet), than from the air assault. He's the only guy I've heard of that somehow managed to fall off a Segway, fer Christ's sake! Years of drinkin' and druggin' can wreak havoc on yer balance, so I'm told.

I think the upshot of this deal is that the Feds overreacted as usual, inconveniencing maybe 35,000 people and spending millions of our dollars, unnecessarily no doubt. Those are what they do best and, hey, ya gotta go with whatcha know.

The poor slobs who caused this mess are in deep guacamole. They were on their way from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. I looked at a map. The straight shot goes right over D.C. The FAA has put out the word in no uncertain terms NOT to fly there, but somehow these rocket scientists missed it. If the authorities are makin' the Runaway Bride pay for the public outlay in her case, and they apply that criterion to these clowns, they'll be eatin' rice 'n beans forever. If they're lucky, that is.

I have a certain amount of empathy for these guys, tho'. I got to thinking the same thing could happen to me 'n Fixer. Or to any of us. Picture this: you're on a road trip. You decide to enjoy it, so you turn off the C.B., crank up the tunes, pop a cold one, light a fatty, and put the hammer down while dancin' with your left foot and generally jokin' around. At the same time as a chemical plant explodes ten miles away. If you somehow miss the ensuing sea of red lights and sirens...well, you get my drift.

My advice to the gummint? Them F-16's are too fast for this kinda work. Dust off some P-47 Thunderbolts or F4U5A Corsairs. They're plenty fast enough to catch a Cessna and a lot cheaper to run. Them big round motors sound good, too.

"The Note" on media and the news

It's a media kind of day. Following up on my previous post, go see "The Note" at ABC News.

Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible. (CNBC gets to talk about the booming April retail sales numbers, and the NRA's television network will replay the Secretary of State on Larry King over and over.

We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering.

And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans.

Democrats are so thoroughly spooked by John Kerry's loss —- and Republicans so inspired by their stay-the-course Commander in Chief —- that what is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage. No conflict at home = no coverage.

What follows is an extensive report on stuff & things. If they'd put "The Note" on the air it would improve television news coverage immensely. Fat chance.

A comment on the above from Sirotablog:

Let me reiterate how unbelievable this actually is: A MAJOR AMERICAN MEDIA OUTLET HAS NOW DECLARED THAT THEY SIMPLY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN LETTING THE CARNAGE IN IRAQ "BREAK THROUGH" IN THEIR NEWS COVERAGE - AS IF IT IS SIMPLY NOT NEWSWORTHY. You can just imagine the pathetic newsroom attitude: we don't cover cats getting stuck in trees, we don't birthday parties at the local McDonalds, and we don't cover America's multi-billion dollar war in the Mideast.

Sorry America, the insulated, out-of-touch, Washington media is simply uninterested in providing any real coverage about the war. Because remember, the media has to be "very deferential" because "no one want[s] to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

Truly nauseating.

Disgusting and criminal, too.

All the news they think is fit for you to know...

William Rivers Pitt on the media and what they want you to hear v. what's actually happening. Via Truthout.

So picture this moment. There I was, trying to drive down one of the worst roads in Cambridge with a cell phone the size of a gallon of milk stuck to my ear, and I have this MSNBC producer telling me that if I go on the show, I have to dump all over the inspectors who at that time had been in-country about a week. Coincidentally, that was exactly the same line of rhetoric being pushed by the White House at exactly that time. I'm sure the look on my face was priceless, and I'm lucky me, the car and the giant cell phone didn't wind up in the Charles River.

I asked her if she knew who she was talking to. She didn't understand. My book, I told her, says there are no weapons of mass destruction and therefore no reason to go to war there. I'm the last person on the planet, therefore, who is going to haul water for the idea that there are weapons in Iraq. Furthermore, I said, I don't know where you get off trying to gin up resentment against the inspectors. They just got there, and if they can finish their work without getting derailed by nonsense like this, it'll hopefully keep a lot of people from getting killed. The MSNBC producer laughed quietly - that's the part I will never forget, how she laughed - and hung up.

If this MSNBC producer is an appropriate example - and I think she is, because she was asking me to basically be yet another Bush administration mouthpiece - the fictions they create do not merely soothe and placate the populace. They kill. They kill in large numbers, and a few people (who coincidentally own large chunks of the corporate news media) get paid handsomely for that killing.

Speaking of the pleasant fiction, have you heard about that leaked secret British intelligence memo? Have you seen it covered on the TV news? I haven't. I haven't even seen mention of it in the print realm. It must not be important.

In my humble opinion, we need two exit strategies: one to get our forces out of Iraq, and another to get George W. Bush out of the White House and into a cellblock in The Hague. Save a bunk for Mr. Blair, too. Criminals belong in prison.

But this doesn't fit the fiction, it grates against the consensus, and it also by the way would cut significantly into media profits if they were no longer able to sell fear and war. CNN's viewership went up 500% after September 11. Have you any idea the advertising dollar-value a ratings boost like that brings along? They aren't dumb. Fear sells. Soul-scorching fear sells really well.

What we in the alternate media need to do, and what you media activists need to do, is advocate hard in your own communities for the providing of computers and internet access to poor and rural communities. In other words, we need to wire up the people who need this information, who get lied to by their televisions every day, who send their sons and daughters off to die so Halliburton and Exxon can line their pockets. I know this stuff, you know it, but too many others don't even have access to it. That has to change.

I have this dream. In my dream, I turn on my TV and CNN is on. Some talking head is there to do the top of the hour report. In my dream, the talking head says, "Today in Iraq, the 26,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, the 500 tons which is one million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas, the 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, the mobile biological weapons labs, the uranium from Niger and the robust nuclear weapons program that George W. Bush told us about in his January 2003 State of the Union address were, once again, not found anywhere. Now here's Flappy with the weather."

He goes into a lot more detail, of course. Please read.

un-Real ID

Lambert has more:

[. . .]

Besides setting up a national ID system, placing every American's identity at risk of theft, and laying the groundwork for a RFID-enabled system of internal passport controls, the RealID sets a precedent for the executive branch overiding any law without judicial review: [my emphasis]

[. . .]

Internal passport controls? What is this, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia? Am I gonna need papers to cross the George Washington Bridge into Jersey? I hope they realize I won't put up with that. You have been warned.

The stench of hypocrisy 7

W. David Hager is a physician. He's also on the advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and an outspoken evangelical wingnut. Now he has decided to take the credit for the failure of Plan B, which would have allowed over-the-counter sales of the so-called morning-after contraceptive pill. The story is unusual, because the FDA has a habit of following the recommendations of its advisory panel, yet it decided to go against the panel's advice in this particular case. Hager explains this as follows:

[. . .]

The wingnuts like Dr. Hager don't like Plan B because it might encourage unsafe sexual behavior. Thus, it comes as a teeny surprise that Dr. Hager himself has been accused of unsafe sexual behavior. His ex-wife, Linda Carruth Davis, has this to say about Dr. Hager:

[. . .]

Echidne goes in-depth on this asshole. Why is it that the folks who scream loudest against birth control, homosexuals, sodomy, and abortion are the ones who are the most fucked up when it comes to sex?

Road Kill

As a follow up to Fixer's post, go see this.

Gunmen Erupt in L.A.

As you may have heard, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has stepped on its dick again, big time. From the LATimes (whose site has a nice new look, by the way):

Compton officials today joined a chorus of protest over the weekend shooting of an unarmed motorist by 10 sheriff's deputies who fired 120 times, striking the suspect, an officer, and the homes of five residents.

Compton, for those of you unfamiliar with L.A. neighborhoods, is predominately Afro-American, and the original home of the Crips and Bloods. Not that the ethnicity of the area would have anything to do with this story, perish the thought, but I can't see this happening in Beverly Hills.

"The overriding objective of every police operation is to protect the public. However, 120 rounds sprayed along a narrow residential street is not in the interest of public safety," Hall said.

Keeps folks off the street and out of trouble, though.

The shooting came after Hayes had been driving around the neighborhood for several hours playing loud music.

Wow. 120 rounds? I never use more than eight to retaliate against motorized boom boxes. That's all my Garand holds. But then, I have to pay for ammo with my own money.

Ten deputies fired 120 rounds, for an average of twelve rounds each, and scored four hits on the poor bastard, as well as a lot of collateral damage to the 'hood. If I'da done that poorly, my Primary Marksmanship Instructor would've hung me by my 'nads, which is exactly what oughta happen to these fool deputies, and not all because of their aim.

I was always taught that you should never point a firearm at anything unless you intended to shoot it. What the hell were those idiots thinking? Don't they know guns can kill people? Do they just plain not care what happens to folks in Compton?

Cops have in their job description the power to kill. I think they either need to have the serious nature of that explained to them before they are let out in public, and not to use potential deadly force lightly, or be disarmed, shitcanned, and told to go forth and sin no more against the people who pay their salaries. Preferably the latter.

The damage is done in this instance, however, and thank God nobody was killed. I'm sure some heads will roll, but probably not those of the higher-ups who let those idiots out on the street with a badge and a gun.

Training? Discipline? Communication? Planning? Marksmanship? Brains and/or common sense? Leadership? LACoSD? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!