Debbie Does Market Research

An oft-stated lefty premise is that the United States is a "puritanical" nation with a repressive attitude towards sexual expression. The quickie rejoinder to this argument is simple: "Look at the sex-drenched media we are surrounded by! You can't turn on your teevee without seeing some buxom young nympette cavorting about in a wanton Dance of Lust! We're a sex crazed society!"

Watching the documentary Inside Deep Throat, about the most popular adult film of all time, you get a sense of what the difference is between the culture we currently have, and an actually sexually liberated one might look like. When Deep Throat opened in 1972, it played in actual movie theaters across the country, and ordinary Americans lined up, in the daytime, to see it. Middle aged suburban couples, professionals, pillars of the community, showed up at public auditoriums, sitting next to each other to watch a woman take a man's cock tonsil deep into her mouth. Now, I know that porn has become a multi-billion dollar a year business; more money is spent on porn than first-run movies these days, but that doesn't mean that we live in a sexually uninhibited society. The porn that people consume by the metric ton nowadays is viewed behind locked home and hotel room doors. It's completely private, and not talked about. Sure, mainstream publications and news programs will do stories about the porn industry, but those articles and segments might feature a bunch of quotes from porn producers, actors, and a few egghead sociologists, but, most likely, not a single quote from an actual porn consumer. An entire industry churning out product for two or three affluent perverts. There is absolutely no way that something like the Deep Throat phenomenon could ever happen again. Porn is everywhere, but it's nowhere at the same time. This situation allows for denial on a society-wide scale: if the millions of people who watch porn are watching it in their basements, then hiding their DVDs in their crusty sock drawer, and never discuss it with anyone else, then it's easy for those who would persecute pornography and project a national moral character to campaign against this thing that no one will admit to consumming. In a society where people stand together in the daylight, waiting in line to watch porn with their neighbors, it becomes harder for our moral policemen to try and perpetrate the fraud that we are a "moral" society. Just like those hypocritical, kinky Victorians, we maintain a mask of sexual decorum in our public pursuits, then whip out the ether rag and cum-stained corset when the blinds are drawn. So, instead of being sexually uninhibited, we're just schizophrenic, which is just another word for repressed. And this doesn't even begin to address the question of how much the solitary consumption of pornography warps our perceptions, expectations, and relationship to actual sex.

Besides the popularity of porn, the other oft-noted component of our culture that supposedly indicates America's status as a libertine nation is the ubiquity of sex in American media. But consider all that so-called "sex": it isn't sex at all. It's titillation: suggestions of sexuality meant to arouse the senses, to get your attention, but devoid of any real sexual content. More depressingly, all that sexual imagery is not used to promote thinking about sex, but rather to promote thinking about consumption. "Sex Sells" advertising philosophy is designed to create sexual thoughts, but instead of connecting that aroused state to its logical, sexual conclusion, it seeks to connect that sense of arousal to a highly illogical conclusion: products. Sexy ads don't want you to have sex (that's usually free, and there aren't that many necessary acutrements...at least not ones that advertise on television), they want you to associate the tingly frission of sexual excitement with the product their hawking. Even television and film depictions of sex are largely meant to tease, to suggest, but to turn away from the act itself. A society with media devoted so fervently to utilizing sexualized bodies in the interest of attention-grabbing, but which can't bring itself to contemplate the actual act, is not sexually liberated: if we weren't repressed, the juvenile titillation wouldn't be effective.

"Black Friday"

Today, on local and national newscasts across the country, the lead story was probably "Black Friday", the biggest retail day of the year. The day when countless stores finally go into the "black." (Hence "Black" Friday! Don't you just love book-keeping related humor?) Every goddamn year, we're told that the Friday after Thanksgiving is going to be a shopping pandamonium, and, sure enough, like clock-work, every Friday after Thanksgiving roles around...and we pack ourselves like sardines into our vehicles, fight to the death for mall parking spaces, and are herded through retailer after retailer, a trail of coupons in our wake. Then, that night, there are a hundred thousand television news stories about all the people at the mall. And we watch it, hoping, maybe, that we'll be in one of the shots, lugging a bag of cargo pants behind the reporter.

So why the hell do we still go shopping when we know it's going to be crazy and crowded and there are thirty more days after Friday when we could shop in a more relaxed environment? There are reasons, and some of them are the same reasons people started stampeding to the mall the day after Thanksgiving in the first place: one-day special discounts, and the fact that you've got a house full of family members you're deeply sick of being around and fifteen pounds of congealing leftovers; suitable motivation to get the hell out of the house any way possible. Still, those are only some of the reasons. I think a big part of why we are compelled to follow the "Black Friday" ritual is because it has become just that, a ritual.

Historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term "pseudo-event" in his 1961 book "The Image."* A "pseudo-event" is, according to Boorstin, a public spectacle that exists soley for the purpose of being observed. Things like press conferences, campaign stops, and other political events that are staged by those who want people to attend, and to see and read about them on television and in print, and would not happen otherwise. These events have no content, no meaning, outside of being observed. Since Boorstin wrote his book, the number of pseudo-events has expanded to include almost everything we consider to be "news": a political campaign, not just speeches and photo ops, but party conventions, as well, which used to be fraught with tension, but have been slowly bled of meaning over the years, is one long pseudo-event. Even media coverage of actually spontaneous news, such as wars or natural disasters, devolves into a series of pseudo-events almost instantly. The first few hours of September 11th media coverage, for example, contained actual news. From that point on, the attack, for all practical purposes, became a pseudo-event: day after day of interviews with people who had nothing new to impart to our understanding of what happened, just pathos and drama to entertain the audience. There is no purpose to this coverage outside of its value to the viewer as spectacle. Same goes for the Iraq war, Katrina, etc, etc. By this point, almost all news is pseudo-news.

Part of this phenomenon has been the creation of "Black Friday" as an actual news story: "this just in: women be shoppin'!" Under no serious definition could this possibly qualify as news, in the abscense of the media's desire to cover it as such. And, I think, there is a significant, subconscious desire on the part of many Americans to take part in a "historic" moment. This act of utter mundanity (is there ANYTHING more mundane than shopping?) having being transformed into a collective national experience by the prescence of the television camera's unblinking eye. At least, I think that might be the case: there's no way I know of to prove it.


*Speaking of "pseudo," here's how you can tell that I am a pseudo-intellectual: I knew what "pseudo-event" meant before I wrote this post, but I had to google it to remember who originated the term.

The Ice Harvest

Today, instead of passing out in front of a Cowboys game in a tryptophene haze, I went and saw "The Ice Harvest." I liked it a lot. It contains some depressingly realistic strip club footage and a penetrating sense of confused desperation, all wrapped up in a mundane, suburan Wichita setting. Plus, Oliver Platt in one of the funniest drunk asshole performances of all time. Capsule review: About Schmidt + Double Indemnity.

Definitely an excellent alternative to Thanksgiving bullpucky. Oh fuck, I acknowledged it again!


Still to see in the next two weeks:

The Squid and the Whale and Syriana.

"When God gives you AIDS, make Lemon-AIDs!"

I saw Sarah Silverman's comedy concerte/musical film "Jesus is Magic" yesterday. It was pretty darn hilarious: much fun was had with religions, Mexicans, Asians, cripples, midgets, the elderly, porn stars, AIDS-sufferers, Jews and, of course, black folks. I laughed pretty much through the entire thing with no guilt or self-consciousness. Part of the reason for that was due to the fact that my fellow film goers were, to a one, youngish-to-middle-aged urbane white hipsters. Emphasis on WHITE. The whiteness of the audience, which I noticed before the movie started, was made even more obvious when the movie was over and we made our way to the exits. The theater we were in, a Landmark in downtown DC, was staffed, to a one, with young black people. I just imagined a few of the ushers standing in the back of the theater during the movie, watching all of us "liberal" honkies cackling at jokes laced with racial slurs. Now, I don't think that Silverman is racists, that her jokes are racist, or that I'm racist for thinking that they're funny. I endorse the explaination that Silverman's humor subverts stereotypes and cultural beliefs by taking them to their most absurd conclusion. However, I do think that the kind of taboo-breaking, stereotype defying humor that is Silverman's stock in trade can only really be enjoyed by white people. After all, the jokes are aimed at THEIR positions of privilidge, cluelessness and prejudice. What the hell kind of fun are black people, or Mexicans, or midgets going to get out of jokes about how they smell bad or are members of an inferior race? I just can't see it. I'm not saying that minorities can't understand the humor, but that they probably wouldn't get the same giddy, transgressive thrill that makes "liberal" white guys like me crack up. None of this means that I disapprove of the movie, or Silverman's act, or racial jokes in general. The experience of seeing "Jesus is Magic" brought me to one realization: it should carry a rating, in addition to it's well-earned "R": FWPO, For White People Only.

I will not acknowledge Thanksgiving.

For the first time in my life, I am alone on Thanksgiving. No family, no turkey, no awkward conversation with alcoholic relatives who don't know they're alcoholics, no football or post-meal coma. Good I say! Good! It's a stupid goddamn holiday that commemorates a mythical event (just like Christmas and Easter) for the purpose of nationalistic aggrandizement (like Independance Day). Thanksgiving was made a national holiday by Lincoln in the depth of the Civil War as a way to remind Americans of their shared national orgins. It's just as dumb as every other holiday (except Halloween, natch), but, like most of these really dumb holidays, I usually end up getting dragooned into observing them by my family. For the first time, I am able to freely and completely ignore this holiday, and I intend to do so. It'll be great: I remember the first Easter Sunday I spent away from home as a freshman in college. I ate a few Taco Bell Chalupas, watched "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and finished reading "American Pscyho." In fact, I could go for some T-Bell...I might have to make that a holiday non-observance tradition.

Wait...by writing all of this stuff about Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving...I really am acknowledging the holiday. In fact, I'm acknowledging the hell out of it! Shit...how do you deleate these things?

The Environment.

I don't really like it personally, but I think it's a good thing, generally.

Too bad it'll be gone soon.

"4th Circuit Superior Court Judge Arnold Beinbacher has bewitched my milking cow!

According to the Sacramento Bee:

"The Southern California-based sponsors of the Judicial Accountability Initiative Law (JAIL) have taken aim at what they call “black-collar crime” across the country. They already have their sights set on the 2006 ballot in Nevada, and they report related efforts in Idaho and New Mexico.

They hope to start the ball rolling on a path that will lead to California.
The South Dakota initiative would create a special grand jury to hear complaints against judges based on an open-ended list of possible grievances. The list specifically includes not only crimes such as graft but certain flaws in reasoning, such as ignoring evidence and “sophistry.”

The grand jury would have power to set aside judges’ immunity from civil suits by the people they rule against. It also could levy fines or hand down indictments, subjecting judges to criminal proceedings before special trial juries with the power to sentence as well as convict. After three missteps, a judge would be disqualified from holding office.

The initiative author is Ron Branson, a Baptist minister, a former minor Republican party official in Los Angeles County and a frequent unsuccessful litigator in the state and federal courts."

I wonder if they'll allow spectral evidence at the proceedings.

Once Again, A Booze-Addled Half-wit Shows Us the Way.

Ye Olde Internets are ablaze with yet another question that can be easily settled...by me. Seems people are fussing over the question: did the Bush administration LIE about Iraqi WMD? Most people will grant you that they gave out bad intelligence, but some argue that they didn't konw it was bad! The international community thought the intel was good! The Senate Democrats had the same intel! It was an honest mistake.

No. They lied.

And I can prove it...with lazers.

Let's start off with a fact, then an analogy. Fact: The Bush tools are yelling that congressional Democrats who voted to give Bush war authority re. Iraq received "the same intelligence" as the White House: that's bullshit. Think about it: intelligence agencies brief the president EVERY DAY. Some of that intel trickles down to congress, but the White House gets all the raw data. The WMD "evidence" that Bush let congress see was phrased in unambigious terms: Iraq has aluminum tubes that are used in uranium enrichment. Iraq has such and such amount of chemical and biological weaponry. Iraq is searching for uranium around the world. When the White House got that intelligence from the CIA and other agencies, it was riddled with caveats: Iraq has aluminum tubes....some of our analysts think they could be used to enrich uranium, but the majority think that they are rocketry tubes that couldn't possibly be used for that purpose. Iraq is trying to reconstitute it's nuclear program and is seeking uranium...or so says a defector provided to the CIA by Achmed Chaladi's Iraqi National Congress, whose honesty has been questioned by intelligence agencies around the world. And so on, and so on. The White House sanded off all of the untidy questions and dissentions and credibility issues, then presented Congress with polished jewels of pure, unadulterated, compressed bullshit.

Is that lying?

You tell me.

Here's the analogy: a man is selling a used car. He has had the car inspected by a mechanic before putting it on the market. The mechanic tells him that the axles on the car have about a 50-50 chance of snapping in half sometime in the near future: it wasn't critical, but there was suspicious metal fatigue that suggested collapse. Some dope comes to this guy's house, test drives the car, and, as he's getting ready to purchase it, asks "so, is there anything wrong with this vehicle that I should no about?" The man answers: "Nope. Just got 'er checked up with a mechanic, said everything's fine." Now, you could well argue that the purchaser would be a goddamn moron for taking this asshole's word for it and not checking himself, and you'd be right (are you reading this, Kerry, you loser?) But you could not argue that the seller was a lying piece of shit.

There we go.

On to the next electrical robot conflict...

I've been drinkin' Hater-ade since before you were born, son!

You know that movie, or band, or television show or book that you nurse a fanatical love for? The one that is hopelessly obscure, the one whose mention brings nothing but puzzled expressions to the faces of friends and acquainatences when you mention it? You know how the utter lack of respect this movie/band/t.v. show/book gets similtaneously enrages and satisfies you? How the fact that this brilliant piece of/producer of art is underappreciated validates your place as a person of uniquely well-honed taste? How, if said move/band/t.v. show/book starts to gain mainstream notice, you're saddened because it means you've lost your specialness, and the singular brilliance of said art work that was previously noticable only to you is now appreciated by legions of mouth-breathing choad-smokes?

That's pretty much how I feel about the currently dismal approval ratings of President Douche-Nozzle von Cokemeister. I've been hating this dipshit for FIVE YEARS! Fuck, I was hating him BEFORE he was elected! I hated him before 9-11, and no, I wasn't one of those weak-bladdered simps who rallied brainlessly to his banner of idiocy after the attacks. Not even for a minute. My refrain has been unwavering: fuck that guy. Now, five years later (and a year after it would have done any fucking good) people are beginning to realize that this fuckstick doesn't know what he's doing, and even if he did, what he would do if he knew what he was doing is as fucked up as shoving puppies up your ass. Also, that the current Vice President of the United States is a portrait of cartoonish super-villainy. This national satori moment is vexing on two levels. For one, it lessens my personal satisfaction with being in the righteous minority, and it demands an answer to one gigantic question: WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS SO FUCKING LONG?!?!?!?!

George W. Bush is as venal and stupid today as he was when he was snorting coke off a hooker's ass in Houston twenty years ago. Dick Cheney is as evil was he was zapping his children with cattle prods in order to achieve erections ten years ago. The WMD arguements for invading Iraq were bullshit before the war, and, more importantly, informed individuals could TELL that they were bullshit before the war. The lies were blatant: unmanned Iraqi airplanes spraying anthrax on American cities? Yellowcake uranium from Niger? Thalidomide babies could tell that this was a load of fiction. But it took three years for that simple fact to dawn on people. What does it say about this country that a single terrorist attack can derail its citizens critical capacities for four years.

So, a word of warning for all you jag-offs who want to brag about your newfound comtempt for the president: I will treat you with the same disdain a record store clerk shows to someone asking for Good News for People Who Love Bad News, but has never heard of The Lonesome Crowded West.

The Crazies: Fuck the Troops.

Earlier, I demanded that Hollywood do a remake of John Carpenter's anti-capitalist/pro-alien killing movie "They Live" on the logic that, if they're going to remake Carpenter movies, they might as well remake one that has an idea or two going for it.

Recently, I watched one of George Romero's first films, 1973's "The Crazies." It's a explicit Vietnam allegory about a U.S. government biological weapon spill in a small Pennsylvania town and the Army unit sent in to contain the disease, which makes everyone exposed to it go insane. The movie contains some really bracing scenes that are blantantly, and deliciously, anti-troop. U.S. soliders kick down people's doors, shoot civilians, and steal shit out of abandoned houses and rifle the wallets of dead folks. In 1973, this shit must've been like a shot to the nuts for most of your patriotic Americans, and that was during Vietnam, when there was a generally ambigious feeling about what U.S. soldiers were really up to over there. Imagine how that kind of imagery would effect an audience TODAY, when we're in the middle of re-doing Vietnam in the desert, but the ambigious feelings about the moral culpability of American troops has been replaced by a mindless, knee-jerk endorsement of every person wearing combat fatigues that reaches across the political spectrum.

A remake of "The Crazies" is currently in the works, hot on the success of the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, another Romero film chock-a-block with social commentary that was watered-down for a big-budget studio. Now, although I revere George Romero, and think that "The Crazies" is pretty awesome, it was shot with a budget that seems to have consisted of a half-full bag of returnable soda cans. Romero did a valiant job working with the resources at hand (there's some striking compositions, including a stark, unsettling and highly memorable opening sequence), but the wires are definitely showing. Decent production values could turn this great idea into a truly excellent film. However, the big budget pretty much guarantees that the cool, subversive, troop hatin' stuff is going to be the first thing tossed in the waste basket. That's a goddamn shame, but I do wonder how the hell they're going to suck the social criticism out of a movie about a U.S. city being driven mad by government criminality and incompetence, then corralled by clueless and casually violent American soldiers. "Dawn of the Dead" was easy, just stick to the original plot skeleton: people hiding from zombies in a mall. Most of the satire in that one was produced by clever shot selection. But even the most elemental plot points of "The Crazies" are subversive as hell, especially with Iraq going on as it's being made. The Hollywood hackmeisters have their work cut out for them. Maybe the biological weapon will be released by terrorists instead of a plane crash, and at the end, some Army private discovers the cure in his bible. Ah, I can smell the suck from here.

America, Fuck No!

There's been a recent spat of stories in the media that suggest that the United States government has been less-than-respectful towards the human rights of individuals of the Muslim persuasion. You've got your Abu Ghraib story, still a doozy after all this time, reports of literally dozens of detainees being tortured to death in Afghanistan and Iraq, extraordinary rendition of detainees to torture-happy countries, the revelation that the CIA is running a bunch of "black sites" for off-the-books imprisonment (some located in the former Soviet Union!), the white phosporous story (following on the heels of the long-forgotten cluster bomb and depleated uranium stories), and, as a delicious cherry of evil on the sundae of monstrousness, you've got Bush threatening to veto a defense bill (which would be the first veto of his administration) if it contained a prohibition banning torture and inhumane treatment of terror-related prisoners. None of these things are particularly surprising, considering how eager so many of us were after September 11th to shed as much foreign blood as was deemed necessary to maintain an illusion of security. For a good four years, this machinery of torture and mass death has been humming along smoothly with nary a whimper from the public at large. Now, the public at large, sheep-like as it is, has started to turn on Bush and his policies, so suddenly these human rights violations are a matter of national distress. As the debate about human rights heats up, a refrain has been struck up by left-ish commentators, and is carrying into the mainstream: THIS IS NOT WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR!

The motivation for this outrage is the underlying belief that the United States is a nation of ideals, chief among them being the idea of equal human rights for all. When I hear people talking about this mythical America, I can't help thinking: have these people actually BEEN to the United States? Cracked a book about the nation's history? Read the country's fucking newspapers at any point in their lives?

Even if you ignore the more controversial, commie-type criticisms of America's national ideals (you know, the wealth concentration/exploitation of workers at home and abroad/relentless, potentially catastrophic environmental degradation in the name of production and profit, etc, etc.), just sticking to cut-and-dried murderousness, there hasn't been a decade in the nation's history that has not featured massive, state-sanctioned, unjustified blood-letting. Everybody knows about the whole slavery/indian genocide thing, but it's usually considered by American mythologizers as some sort of hundred year long abberation. But it didn't stop there. Just as the end of slavery signalled the ramping up of Native ethnic cleansing, while the gunshots of Wounded Knee were still echoing through the plains, the Spanish American war brought with it a forty-year occupation of the Phillippines that featured the deaths of over 100,000 Filipinos and sundry massacres by American Troops. The Philippines were still being scoured with bayonets when the U.S. invaded Haiti, beginning a ten year occupation that killed tens of thousands. During World War One, thousands of Americans were imprisoned for opposing the draft. A few more Central American and Carribbean countries got saddled with trigger-happy American occupation forces during the inter-war years. Now, the U.S. gets a lot of credit for helping defeat the Nazis (although the rape-happy Red Army probably deserves that particular fruit basket the most), but we did it while imprisoning tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans due to racial hysteria. As soon as the Big One ended, we were back to killing people in foreign countries, including engineering the overthrow of the elected governments of Iran and Guatamala, acts that lead directly to political repression and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Barely enough time to catch a breath before the U.S. jumped into Vietnam with both feet: we know how that turned out; maybe three million Vietnamese killed by American troops and bombs, Cambodia illegally bombed and lethally destabilized (hello, Khmer Rouge!), over the course of a decade. Somehow, Nixon and Kissinger found time during this busy period to sanction a coup in Chile (Allende, torture chambers, Caravan of Death, etc.). The Eighties brought us proxy wars in Central America in which perhaps as many as half a million peasants were killed by American military hardware. In our own conscious lifetimes, we bombed the fuck out of Iraq twice, fitting a decade of near-genocidal economic sanctions in between, tortured the fuck out of a bunch of people and discarded the concept of habeaus corpus. Even this abbreviated list, overlooking hundreds of incidents as it does, leaves only a handful of years in which the U.S. government was not actively involved in the extreme abnegation of human rights across the globe. So, tell me again, WHAT THE FUCK DOES AMERICA STAND FOR?

We can't be so fatuous to believe that what America tells itselfs about itself means more than what the ostensibly democratic government of that nation actually does in the world. So it follows that America's ideals mean exactly squat.

Having said all that, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I do not hate America. Not because of some goofy infatuation with our hypothetical political ideals. Not because I want to cover my ass against accusations of disloyalty (like all that "I oppose the war, but I support the troops!" lameness). I don't have America because America is a meaningless term. Hating America is like hating goblins or evil spirits. America does not exist. It is a term of art used by those who wish to advance a particular agenda. The trick is easy and well-worn: simply identify "America" with something you like (be it George Bush, free speech, the war on Iraq or a belief that you shouldn't electrocute folks' genitals), and accuse those who don't like said thing to be against America. It's a dynamite rhetorical move because it's impossible to argue against: the implicit assumption regarding what America means has already framed the debate on your terms. So, no, I don't hate America. I hate the government of the United States, pretty much all of its economic, cultural and religious institutions and a good majority of its citizens, but I don't hate America.

Melted Baby-Flesh: Smells like Freedom

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece

What the hell can you say about something like this? What do you need to say? The only thing that comes to mind is a quote from everyone's favorite slave banger, Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."

Oh wait, there is no god. Cool! Melted babies for everyone!

Delicious Link Sausage.

I finally gots me a handle on the linking technology on this here website. As such, I now possess the magical ability to create one-click access to other sites of my choosing. While this may well be the finest site on the whole Interweb, here are some recommendations for those who grow curious as to what other (albeit clearly lesser) delights exist in the cyber garden.

dailykos.com: liberal political analysis for those, like me, who are viciously addicted to polls and election results. There's some good stuff on there today, what with there being two off-year gubunatorial elections, not to mention state-wide ballot initiatives in Maine, Ohio and California! Christ, the nerdery!

aspecialthing.com: one stop shop for discussing alternative comedians and their projects. Sorry, not much coverage of Larry the Cable Guy or Dane Cook, but Patton Oswalt and the other comedians of comedy are all well represented.

imdb.com: that guy, in that one movie, with the head...what was his name again?

xenu.com: everything you always suspected about Scientology, but assumed was too crazy to be true.

chick.com: Behold Jack Chick, the greatest Christian artist since Michaelangelo

wikipedia.com: are you puzzled by my dense, brilliant Pynchon-esque web of historical and litery allusions (like Pynchon-esque)? Just look 'em up on wikipedia, the people's web encyclopedia; it makes Diderot look like Parson Weems! (Note to self: I suck)

diy-punk.org/anarchy/: a comprehensive, (relatively) easy-to-read guide to my personal favorite political philosophy, anarchism, AKA libertarian socialism. Let's get working on this, people!

fatchicksinpartyhats.com: beggars description. Sufficit to say: Wizard Fatty never forgets the butter. Truer words were never spoken.

mcsweeneys.net: David Eggers-approved arch pop culture-based comedy for the twentysomething dorks who keep the Internets thrumming with activity.

Happy surfing...dudes!

Christ, do I suck.

I'm so full of shit I've started weeping tears made of corn nibblets.

So the entire country of France is descending into anarchy, for those of you who haven't been keeping up on the news. Apparently, disenfranchised African and Arab immigrants from the depressed suburbs of Paris (yes, in France, they keep the dark folks in the suburbs and the inner city is reserved for Whitey...it's BIZZARRO WORLD...with a dizzying cheese selection) have been burning down buildings, torching cars, shooting at police, and setting fire to bus passengers for ten days now and the riots have spread to areas of significant immigrant population across the country. Ten cops just got shot today, in fact.

Now, what does this have to do with my being full of horse-pucky? Regular readers of ye olde bogge (all two of you...hi, John!), know that I like to talk a good game (or is it "type a good game?") about how the end of the world would be sweet. But I know, down to the bottom of my tiny black heart, that if I were in Paris this week, I would have spent the entire time hiding in my apartment with the door bolted, peeing in the sink and eating my dandruff for nourishment.

Ah, I suck.

Now that's more like it.

Somehow, I think this here blog format might be a bit more appropriate for my overall weltanschauung.

(look it up...then mock me for misspelling it)

This might just be the coolest thing ever:

From the A.P.

'Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.

Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast and opened fire while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp. The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course.

"These are very well-organized pirates," said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program. "Somalia's coastline is the most dangerous place in the region in terms of maritime security."

The attackers never got close enough to board the Spirit, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, cruise line president Deborah Natansohn said. . . ."Our suspicion at this time is that the motive was theft," Good said, adding that the crew had been trained for "various scenarios, including people trying to get on the ship that you don't want on the ship."'

No word yet on the fate of the Belafonte.

Seriously, I would give my a chest of doubloons to have seen the slack, pasty faces of the cruise-goers as rocket propelled grenades fired by swarthy boat people wooshed over their heads. Science has proven that, while Americans are essentially two-legged cattle, cruise-going Americans are the most bovine of all. The only way to graze your way through five all-you-can-eat buffets in a fourteen hour period is to have four stomachs. Just thinking about a herd of them looking over the guardrail, chewing at mouthfuls of cud, staring at a boatload of slavering water bandits brandishing automatic weapons, some of them no doubt recording it on their camcorders and cell phones, is too delicious for words. The entire point of the cruise ship experience is to expose lard-assed First Worlders to the exotic sights and sounds of the Third World. The only problem is that a combined metric ton of fanny-bepacked suburbanite waddling through the village square pretty much invites the one thing that these adventurers certainly aren't seeking: actual contact with the inhabitants of said Third World, outside of a souvenir shop/scuba guide capacity. Cruise travel keeps the dirty natives at bay, managing every aspect of the excursion to maintain a cordon sanitaire around the precious, dough-filled wayfarers. When that pirate boat (not quite a ship) made it's steady but futile way towards the towering mass of first world machinery, it was the closest that a lot of these blubberpots are ever going to come to the raw desperation of the majority of the earth. These pirates, had they gotten on board, would have torn through their pampered lives like tissue paper. Entrails strung across the lido deck and hollowed-out skulls filled with Mai Tai. Instead, sadly, they'll just go home with a great story for the neighbors: much better than those folks a few years ago who contracted a virus on a cruise ship and spent two weeks shitting out their intesines.

The All-Muppet Cabinet:

No way would these folks be carrying a 35% approval rating.



Inspired by my most recent cyber-flailing, I have decided to propose the Cabinet of an all-Muppet administration.

Some of the positions have already been filled: NSA director Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Press Secretary Beaker, indicted-vice-presidential-chief-of-staff Scooter (no change there).

Time to create a government that would certainly be more compotent, less corrupt, and less prone to waging imperial wars than our current one.

Secretary of State: Sam the Eagle

Secretary of Defense: Animal (more cogent, less bellicose than Rumsfeld)

Attorney General: Gonzo (that is EXTREMELY funny if you're a huge political nerd)

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: what the hell was the name of that piano playing Muppet, you know, the one who was obviously black, but was also a dog...Rowlf!

Secretary of Agriculture: Swedish Chef

Surgeon General: Dr. Teeth

Secretary of Education: Camilla the chicken

Secretary of Energy: the Flying Zucchini Brothers

Vice President: Fozzie

The rest of the cabinet would be filled out with fraggles, doozers, and Statler and Waldorf.

and, of course,

President Kermit and First Lady Piggy.

Who could argue that they'd do a better job than Bush and Company?

Okay, My Brain is Melting...

No word yet on potential indictments of Press Secretary Beaker or National Security Advisor, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.


So, the Fitzgerald indictment hammer comes down on everyone's favorite Muppet-named Bush administration war criminal. Hot Karl escaped the scythe, but barely, and the possibility of further indictments hangs in the air.

Certain anti-American traitors such as myself rejoiced at this news, but secretly knew that the propaganda whores in the White House were sure to find a way to minimize the issue and distract the news media from further investigation.

And, sure enough, on Monday, just as the Libby indictment was settling in as the news story of the moment, Bush announces his Supreme Court pick, a creepy, misogynistic douchebag who thinks that the uterus is essentially a male appendage.

It looked, for a moment, like the Mayberry Machiavelli's had pulled off another PR coup, keeping the ADD-having media dumbasses jumping from one story to the next. And, I sighed, and muttered, "not again!" Surely, the bumbling, spineless Democrats, who have shown little to no ability to frame issues or dictate the terms of debate, would not be able to mount an effective counter-offensive.

Then, this afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid demands a closed Senate session on the subjects of the Plame leak AND, as a delicious bonus, the faulty pre-war "intelligence" that Bush and company spoon fed congress and the media. Bill Frist could do nothing but sputter and whine like a retarded socialite getting bitch-slapped by Mr. T. Meanwhile, the hot story of the moment for the Ritalin-addicts in the media once again becomes the Plame leak with a side-dish of war lies.

The dumbfoundment is so total, that I'm going to call up my Mom and make sure she still acknowledges me as her progeny.