A Present Nobody Deserves

I was over at Julian Cope's Head Heritage site just now (I like to see what the truly weird people are up to now and then) and saw this bit. If you don't want to read it yourself, it's about Google-bombing a company called EON that wants to build a new coal plant in the UK. Which is moronic. They and we and you and me and everybody else in the world needs more coal plants now like we need a return of George W. Bush to the White House.

I hates the coal, hates it. So I'm doing what Cope & Co. suggest - making a link to EON that actually goes to the No New Coal site instead. It's prankish, it's snarky, it's geeky but I think it's a valid form of online protest rather than just maliciousness in this case. Feel free to join in, kids.

Behind Yoo

John Yoo.

Okay, I can't blame you if you can't read past the byline alone. But it's quite fun, really, to see one of the engineers who laid the legal foundation for torture in the name of America trying to cover his sorry ass. Yoo can't even come up with an original argument while he's doing it, nothin' but the same old, same old: "Lookout - we're giving in to the terrorists! Oh, and we're weakening our ability to fight our enemies! You'll be sorry, yeah, you will be. And be afraid, be very afraid!"

At it's sick heart this piece is an extraordinary defense of the bully and the bully's tactics. I think Yoo must've got a lot of shit on the playground as a kid and couldn't wait to grow up and be a bully instead of the bullied. Well, he got his wish for a while working along with his heroes, the Big Bullies, Bush and Cheney. (You know that Bush thought nothing of using a homemade branding iron on college pledges, right?) Now the Big Bullies have left him all alone on the playground when he needs them most. So he's whining. And crying. And snot is running down his nose. And maybe he's even regretting some of the things he did, like setting up American citizens to be tried as war criminals for breaking sacred treaties and international law. Though I doubt it. He's really just scared.

I shouldn't, but I am taking immense pleasure in the discomfort and desperate fear of John Yoo. It is a balm to my heart and - if I have one - soul. It is absolute vindication to me that President Obama is doing the right thing in closing Gitmo, when such a bad, bad, bad person tells him that he isn't. I really like the bit about it being a rash decision, as though the President woke up on his first day in office and said to himself, "Barry I think we're gonna close Gitmo today. What a grand idea. Why didn't we think of it before. Folks'll love us for it. Then we'll look into that dog thing for the girls." Very rich, very droll, Mr. Yoo.

But what's that! Oh, no - lookout, Mr. Yoo! - Eric Holder's right behind you!

PS I forgot to mention earlier, but Mr. Yoo's blathering is really worth reading for one thing: He incriminates Bush for torture!

The First Golden Cretin Award

George Will is a moron. A peabrain. A walking, talking zombie media whore of the right.

Because of this and the following, George Will is receiving the first ever 'New Disease Golden Cretin Award*:



Hey, Georgie-boy! McDonald's earnings are up because people are frustrated and scared and nervous and seriously needing the heavy calming effect of greasy fast comfort food. When that temporary surge of fats and sugars hits the system, folks are momentarily soothed and relieved. And it only cost them what a day's worth of food for a whole family might cost at the local Aldi's (or Super Saver or whatever aimed-at-the-poor supermarket chain you have in your area). I bet Mr. Will has never eaten at McDonald's or shopped for his own supper even. I hear he has winged monkeys that serve him.

I should make this a double Golden Cretin and give one to McDonald's, too, but they can't really help themselves, can they. And their breakfast sandwiches are sooooo delicious!

* Inspired by the Golden Fleece award given by the late Sen. William Proxmire (a Dem from Wisconsin), sometimes a self-serving dick himself, but one of my childhood heroes because I liked the pun inherent in the name of the award. It tickled my boyhood fancy!

The Dark Knight Speaks

In case we may have forgotten over the last two Presidential terms:

"Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."

- President Barack Obama, January 21, 2009

These are words to bring joy to every patriotic heart. And fear to those who have spent too many years subverting the rule of law in this nation. You know who you are.

UPDATE: Here's a perfect example of the kind of haphazard, mindless abuse of authority - through ineptitude if nothing else - that I think we'll hear more and more about as the primal fallacies of the Bush Administration are dug into in the coming years. It appears there's a stumbling block to Obama's excellent plan to review the case files of Gitmo prisoners and shut down this stain on the American soul: most of them don't have case files! The lack of communication, total need for secrecy and general stupidity of Bush and Co. means that the information on most Gitmo prisoners is scattered about like confetti through a myriad of government agencies. Left hand and right hand don't even not know what the other is doing, they may not even be on the same bodies!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Yes, Ren. Yes, Stimpy. Our flag is still there. Be proud, boys, be proud.

Thank you to the American voter, to the American Constitution and to the people who've stuck around here with all their diverse comments over the last year - this has been Mr. Toad's Wild Political Ride. As a family, my wife and son and I went down to Springfield nearly two years ago to see Barack Obama announce his candidacy for the Presidency. It was even colder there and then than it will be in Washington today. Around one hundred thousand of us stuck it out for hours to hear him speak. Millions will be in DC today. Billions worldwide will be watching.

Be proud, folks, be proud. It's a heckuva day, kids. Enjoy.

So Long...

You might have seen some of yesterday's concert on the Mall that included Pete Seeger - didn't he look freakin' cool in a crazy knit cap and a flannel shirt! - singing an unexpurgated "This Land Is Your Land" with Springsteen. And that was pretty cool, even if it was with Springsteen.

As my final farewell to our 43rd President, whose name shall not be mentioned lest it cause the heavens to cry, I give you another Woody Guthrie song to enjoy. See ya tomorrow, kidz!

Lincoln Didn't Have a Middle Name

But our new President does. And it's a name that crackpots and crazies and Republicans - maybe it's redundant, including Republicans after the aforementioned - will never allow him to forget.

My middle name is Albert. It was my Mom's father's name. I love it for that reason. I also hate it because I was a fat kid when Fat Albert was at it's height of popularity. And I love it because of the cool acronym it makes of my initials. __ A __. Cooh, eh?

Obama obviously has had a lot of mixed feelings about his own names, first and middle of the years, and if the kind of loco-weed crap that leading American politicians like this moron sling around in public is any indication, I can sympathize.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama. I cannot wait to hear him say his full name, with pride and dignity. Why? Because everytime he says it, a Republican dies a little bit inside. And an angel gets shot in the face by Dick Cheney.

Damn. No more Cheney jokes soon.

Bush Regrets - We Rejoice

Imagine a world in which Bush had achieved one of his party's major goals - privatizing Social Security. Imagine the CEO's of major Wall Street investment firms, those noble pillars of bidness ethics and virtue, handling our future fallback mattress in the same esteemed way they've clusterfracked us into our current economic craphole.

No more Social Security. Nada. Zip. All gone up the butts and noses of Wall Street execs and Republican Party douche-bags.

That's the bright future that insano-pols like Tancredo still wish we could've had, if only...if only.

Ain't we lucky? One bullet dodged. One thousand to go.

Prisoners No More

Not of this earthly plane, at least.

We lost two of my favorite actors in one week: Patrick McGoohan and Ricardo Montalban.

Goodbye No. 6, goodbye various awesome guest villians on Columbo. I couldn't decide which Columbo villian I liked best, so I went with the CIA guy. Whichever, he was totally a Danger Man and will be missed.

Goodbye Khan, goodbye Mr. Roarke. Anyone else remember the pilot episode to Fantasy Island? Mr. Roarke was so definitely Satan in that episode. The nascent Religious Right threw a minor hissy fit and got ABC to change his character. Bastards.

Were you aware that Ricardo was a "community organizer"? Yeah, he got other Latino and Hispanic actors together in, I think, the early 70s, in an effort to gain them more respectful roles and improve the way their culture was presented on screen to the gringos. Way to go, Ricky! And if you ever, like me, suspected that Khan's movie chest was a fake, perhaps we should reconsider the young Ricardo's superb chestal area.

Adios, amigos.

Official Obama Inauguration Song

This is what we're gonna do. We're gonna stop fuckin' around. We're gonna tear this place down and build it back up again the way it should be for us and our children and our heirs for all time.

Watch all the Appliances-SFB vids!

Dickbusters

I think Obama needs a team of wacky, nerdy legal-types wearing jumpsuits and homemade proton-packs to come in and zap the ghosts of the Bush/Cheney Administration. They'll fry their flimsy "legal" excuses for torture and illegal detainment and kangaroo military courts with sizzling beams of logic, law and real American jurisprudence.

The soon-to-be spirits of the current Presidency are wailing and gnashing their teeth almost constantly, scared to their skivvies of being prosecuted for war crimes, especially since both Bush and Cheney have now publicly admitted their own roles in and approval of torture. The orders came from the top down, as we've always suspected. Torturing our enemies (and saying to our enemies that it's okay for them to torture our soldiers, quid pro quo) was not the act of one or two rogue intelligence agents or a handful of off-the-leash military jailers.

In case ya missed it, in bold, here it is:

The order to torture came directly from the President and Vice President of the United States of America.

Meet America's Future Most Wanted, kids (obviously from the far future, as we can see from the choice of fonts - must've fallen through a wormhole):
Evidently, that "man-sized safe" in Cheney's office was really the prototype Time Machine. Dick really is/was an evil genuis - waddaya know! Who'd a thunk it?

UPDATE: In case you want some more serious words for brains...this is the BEST piece I've read on Bush and his legacy to America. It gave me shivers. It made me cry with anger. And this is pretty darn good, too, although a different take on Bush than much of what I've read but it rings very true. (Thanks to -valis for bringing the former to my attention).

Anyone else think they were watching a never-really-dealt-with-his-problem supposedly ex-alcoholic rambling on yesterday during Bush's final press conference? He was five minutes away from drowning it all with a quart of Jack, I think. Governor Blago has been praised for his brass ones recently, but Bush's are solid gold. That took either guts or total self-unawareness yesterday. Which one do you think?

The Old Disease

I'm contemplating taking down my old blog, Time Is a Disease... so if you want anything from it, better head over now. It was a lot of fun to do and forced me to be "creative" - everything you read was written in one go, start to finish, usually in about the length of time it takes to read. I'd proof it once and put it up. Most of it sucks. Hole in the Universe strength sucking power. But it was fun.

What wasn't fun was trying to keep up with the re-issue frenzy. I intended to only post long out-of-print albums, most of them at least ten years old. But every time I checked, an album that hadn't been in-print for two decades had just been re-released - with bonus gawddamn tracks! I had many dozens of albums that got pushed aside because of this and I ran out of stuff to post months sooner than I expected. That and sheer exhaustion with the limitations of my format made me stop.

I'm not exhausted here yet. I purposefully gave myself free reign to be as stoopid as I can be here. Which means I'll never hit the bottom of the well.

When In Doubt, He Whips It Out

Ted Nugent. Former great guitarist.



Current total asshole. "Peace can sometimes only be achieved through superior firepower." Right, Ted. Worked real good in Iraq, didn't it. Oh, and Vietnam too. That was a real winner! Works so good that American soldiers are still dying in Iraq because of this kind of straight-ahead, clear-thinking, common-sense philosophy.

Blog on over to Bleedin' Out for a tribute to a real American hero and a much better guitarist than Nugent ever used to be. It'll clear the bad taste from your mouth.

UPDATE: Here's another proud graduate of the Ted Nugent Kill' Em All Diplomacy and Deer Huntin' Academy.

Go "There," Young Man (or Woman)!

I was reading some fun prehistoric archaeology stories this morning as is my wont, when I found links to two really incredibly cool, time-wasting (in a great way) blogs.

BLDGBLOG - Ostensibly a blog about architecture. But it's really about living an exciting life of the mind on this really cool planet we accidentally inhabit. Just go, go, go! (I'm working through the interview with Patrick McGrath right now).

From the above I followed an external to find this picture, among many others:


I'm in a tizzy over this picture. Don't know why, but I absolutely love this man and whatever he is doing. I wish my beard looked like his.

InfraNet Lab - A futurist's wet-dream of a blog. Indulge thyself, child, indulge. Never has infrastructure been soooooo sexy. (Forget that you're supposed be working for a couple of hours. In the end, it won't matter and your brain will like you more for it.)

I found this FAKE train wreck pic there:


That's all, folks! But that should keep you busy all weekend.

New Year, New Look, New Sound

Look what I did! Look at me! I changed a background color! I put in a new picture! Yeah, me! Yeah!!!

Seriously, I was bored with the old look. This is it for a while. I think.

And the old sound is kinda boring me too. I've been inspired by Quality Boots to go in a new direction...maybe.

I can post tunes in one of two formats, but I'm too damn lazy to do both. Either MP3s, ripped at 320 for really good sound. Or FLAC-encoded WAV files for CD quality sound.

The advantage for you is that you get an exact EAC-ripped copy of my original boot. The disadvantage is that it means larger files, longer downloading time and no MP3s. But you can make your own MP3s from the WAV files once you've decoded them from FLAC.

I want to know what loyal 'Monkey friends think. So smash the buttons on the poll at the upper left, please. It's a shiny button, you know you want to smash it...do it...DO IT, MAN!

UPDATE: I see that I have to do some work on my new logo...hmmm...looked dandy before I changed the theme. I'll get around to it someday.

The Palin Family Sitcom - A Gift That Keeps On Giving

Better than a case of single-malt scotch from Santa, I present to you "Meet The Palins" - America's wackiest new sitcom family. Living halfway between an Alaskan trailer park and the White House, those crazy Palins will make you laugh and cry...and cry...and cry some more.

In last week's episode, Levi - teen husband of teen mommy Bristol - had gotten an into an apprenticeship position, without having his high school diploma. I thought this odd, being a teacher, a teacher of at-risk/drop-out students, because I know that in Illinois if you want to get into an apprenticeship program you have to have a high school diploma. It's a federal thing. I put it out of my head because I was more concerned with, well, everything, and I didn't want to waste a brain cell on the Palin family parade anymore.

But it turns out I should've kept thinking. In the latest episode of "Meet The Palins," Levi has had to leave the program because he doesn't have a diploma! Oh, no! What's gonna happen to his baby-momma and baby! How will they ever survive? (Not on the $300K they were paid for pictures of little Levi Jr, possibly!)

And did Levi's scary mother-in-law (every sitcom has one!) pull political strings and call in favors to get high school dropout Levi into that program in the first place? Say it ain't so!

Damn, but we gotta be glad this scheming, conniving, nasty family never got within a reasonable distance of the White House and its cement pond. They'd have stripped the place clean and sold the dishes from out of the back of their Hummer. Or snowmobile. Whatever.

A Late Christmas Present

The fear is amazing, it is palpable, it is oozing down the steps of the Capitol building in DC. And it's not just Republicans - there are also nasty Bush-enabling Dems in fear for their very hides, now that the very nasty un-Constitutional things they allowed Bush & Co. to engage in for the last eight years are gonna be found out!

And I love it. I'm just here today to point you at some great pieces out in the blogosphere. People seem inspired - I haven't read such good stuff in months. Especially take the time to read all of the great Glenn Greenwald piece. If you don't know GG, dive back into his archives and come back often. He's a smart one, that guy.

Obama must be Batman - he strikes fear into the hearts of villians everywhere!

He Used to Make Me Pizza Pies

Years ago, in a distant land called Cross Plains, Wisconsin, there was a pizza man. Not an ordinary pizza man, but one named Reg. And Reg made the best damn pizza I've ever eaten. When he wasn't delivering the rural route mail. This one's for Reg and the long-gone Papa Smithoni's!

Burn Your Books

Reading is dead. At least the old-fashioned silly-nut book kind - because we got a Kindle for Christmas!

And it is the coolest fun toy thing ever. I used to think that this was the coolest fun toy thing ever:


But I was wrong. The Kindle is coolest.

I can read books and magazines and newspapers and blogs and Wikipedia and check the weather and listen to music and read books on it.

That's cool. And it's wireless. Not that crappy wireless where ya gotta be ten feet from a router to have a connection, but "Whispernet" (oooh, that's cool!) wireless, anywhere in the country for free - even the middle of nowhere Illinois as we found out yesterday, miles from any village or Arctic research station.

Plus, the kind of crap I like to read is practically being given away and in many cases is being given away. I read old horror and ghost stories and fantasy and all kinds of crap by long-dead authors who have no copyright control (or motor functions) at all. So, I bought five volumes of HP Lovecraft, a "Complete" collection, for 80 cents a piece - delivered in seconds to the Kindle. And went to Project Gutenburg and got a dozen things by great dead guys like EF Benson, EA Poe, A Machen, A Blackburn, PG Wodehouse, ETC for free and then transferred them to the Kindle.

I'm a happy camping reader camper. How about you?

Worst Movie Ever?

This looks like such crap! Anyone remember this? Did anyone even go see it?

It must have completely bombed...