I picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue

Looks like it's gonna be a long week of bitching, 'cuz I keep running into things that piss me off.

...like people who never answer their phones, instead allowing a machine do the answering for them. Would you just pick up the goddamned phone? I don't really want to talk to you either, but we have business to communicate and it would be nice if we could just get it over with. And who, exactly, do you think you are that you must screen all your calls? Donald Fucking Trump?

It's gonna be a shrill, torturous, bombastic bitch-a-thon... No peace, sparse joy, and rare fits of bitter laughter.

Fine. If that's the way it's gotta be, then I guess I just roll with it and dish this crap out to everyone I meet...

This brain is a telescope to the future.

Video games. I'm saying it again -- video games are the next dominant art form.

Even the New York Times said so.

Even universities are coming around to the idea.

Those people who mock and doubt my words -- they only have themselves to blame on day I come to deliver this message: You were told, by me, that this would be so.

Hugo gets a job

Now what the hell do you think about that?

Rock & Roll ain't cheap these days

Seems Fender (or maybe just The Man) has recently hiked list prices on their guitars by about $200 -- particularly the American Standard series Telecasters and Stratocasters. They run almost $1,000 at places like Guitar Center and Musician's Friend -- two notorious low-ballers in the retail musical instrument market. I paid a pubic-hair more than $700 for mine a few years ago.

It sounds like a good plan because musicians are known for having tons of disposable cash...

...that should come off like sarcasm because that's the way it was intended.

Anyway, hard-working rookie musicians can still rock out; they just have to downgrade a little bit to something like the Fender "Li'l Hendrix" series, which comes with four guitar picks, a guitar strap imprinted with musical notation of few measures from Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", and a flamboyant plastic-fabric cape "like the rockstars wear."

One hundred prevarications per minute: White House press room transcripts

Stumbled into this website the other day, read these, and then passed out with disbelief and shame.

I almost wish these jerks would just get it over with and order us all to report to the lead mines for duty. When did endless lying, obfuscation and prevarication become standard of communication in this open society of ours? Do these people really think word games like this actually help this country?

Tell me it's not true that every foul cliche in the English language fits our great American leaders: Lying, thieving, killing, conspiring, law-breaking, self-serving motherfuckers... Every last one.

Fuck them!

Let's revolt. Send these cold, embittered men and women to some grey desolate, deserted North Dakota crossroad farm town so they can spend their dying days in banishment arguing about whose method was most effective at crushing the American spirit.

Goddamned motherfuckers!

American torture

You just can't declare someone an eternal enemy and expect the sentiment to withstand the test of time. I certainly can't, even though I try. For example, I'm a card-carrying disbeliever, especially of christians and most if not all organized religion.

But, when it comes to torture -- specifically the cruel, inhumane, degrading, U.S.-sanctioned kind for which our vice president apparently yearns -- some christians come off looking pretty good. Some, like these military catholics, think that even if torture were a necessary and effective tool for combating terrorists, nazis, fascist space aliens, abortion-loving homosexuals or drug-crazed, pistol-packing Canadians, it's still absolutely, morally wrong.

That's according to James H. Toner, Department of Leadership and Ethics, Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala.

There's even a bible quote in there (not that I would've ever recogonized it without the biblical reference system of letters, colons and numbers in parentheses.)

Now, Mr. Toner may not be head of the department or anything -- hell, he might just be the Air War College janitor for all I know, but he seems like a bright enough guy. If he thinks torture is wrong, I think I'll just have to support him on that one.

Way to go, military Catholics! Pray for me if you like, and next time you repent before god, maybe you could toss in a couple of my sins, too. It would lighten up my load considerably.

By the way, what kind of person do you have to be to defend the position that certain branches of the American government should be exempt from the rules that govern torture?

Does Cheney even refer to himself as a human anymore? Has he been the subject of some top-secret medical procedure that allows humans to live and work without their hearts? What in the hell does that man do when the sun goes down?

Anybody know?

Has anybody checked?

Democrats: 4-ever losers

Subhead: How the Democrats will never win because they're slow and they can't think beyond what they want to eat for dinner.

Sub-subhead: You fuckers lost another opportunity to derail the ultra-conservative cabal that has been driving this country to its knees for the last five years.

So, you thought keeping quiet as ultra-religious conservatives bitch-slapped President Bush into submission after he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court was good idea? Well, now we have an even more egregious nominee, and we also have Republican unity that all but ensures he'll make it to the big dance. The Republican centrists who were the only reason Democrats can still even consider the word "fillibuster" are being coaxed back into the right-wing fold.

Goodbye swing vote, hello Scalito and the New World Spanish Inquisition.

I'm sure there is a blood-thirsty, pitbull of a Democrat out there somewhere who's thinking the same thing I am: Why didn't the Democrats jump on the opportunity to support Bush and his half-baked nomination of Miers.

What? Are you fucking mad?

No, I'm not. Listen: We knew Miers was probably a freak, but we also knew -- or at least suspected -- she was a woman. So, had she been approved by the Senate, Roe v. Wade might not have been such a problem as it likely will be with this new guy, Samuel Alito. That's observation number one.

We didn't know what she thought about things like affirmative action, sex discrimination and the display of nativity scenes in public buildings, but we certainly know what Alito thinks about them; and his thoughts ain't exactly progressive are they? So we traded a big Harriet question mark for a known, card-carrying, right-wing freak. That's observation number two.

But here's where it gets tricky (or to be accurate, would have gotten tricky had a few Democrats been thinking outside the box instead of constantly reacting in opposition to every fucking stupid, pointless utterance that comes from our White House idiot box or the Republican party):

Say the Democrats actually had the temerity to back Miers, what might have happened? Yes, Miers possibly gets appointed to the Surpreme Court and we roll the dice with her; but at the same time, ultra-christian right-wing Republicans just might have found themselves isolated from the majority, from the Republican center AND from the office of the President. It could have derailed the right-wing agenda for fucking years! Could've been a bloodless coup. Could've, but won't.

Why is that important that Democrats adopt the spirit of a killer? We want this to stop. Because we want sanity to return to our country. Because we are fucking sick and tired of this crap.

The only way its gonna happen is if Democrats pull their heads out of their asses, revise their platform so that it can withstand the mindless polarity that pervades politics these days, produce a few leaders who can actually motivate people, and start acting like fucking murderous WINNERS!