politics again

ok, apologies in advance for the rant.

 

regarding the domestic spying:  the secret court that has been in place to give you permission to do wiretaps is, on the whole, a rubber stamp to tap whatever wire you want, justice dept.  they have turned down all of one in the twenty seven year since it was first created.  statistically speaking, that is nothing.  did w and company know that htey would be turned down, or did they just need to demonstrate that they could thumb their noses at the law?  i'm freshly pissed about this because now they're trying to come down on whoever leaked the information about the secret illegal activities.  nixon went down for a similar offense.  the republikkkans would have broken bill clinton's face with a fireplace poker for something even half as heinous.  the sheer gall of this administration is frightening to me more than anything else.

fuck bush, and happy new year.  here's to you, nonexistant readers, and here's to putting bars on the white house to contain the criminals therein.

second attempt post-x-mas post

ok, so after yesterday's perfectly annoying post disappearance, here is today's feelings on my christmas holiday.

 

haven is spoiled utterly rotten, but is still cute as all hell

for the second year in a row, baseball tickets are part of the presents between me and siouxs! 

siouxs! and i bought ourselves a new computer last night.  it was expensive, and currently isn't working well.  we're pretty pissed.

i felt bootsy kick several times over the past weekend.  the whole thing is still kind of surreal to me, but amazing too.

i stopped and got some forties on the way back to make up for the lunatic anti 40oz laws here in st. louis.  i also picked up 4 22oz guinness extra stout (one of my favorites), which i drank last night.  i've been less than stellar today.

 

fuck bush

 

 

 

 

 

stupid launchcast

the goddamned launchcast crashed my internet, so the thoughtful post i had composed disappeared into the ether.  i will not be typing it all out again.  suffice to say that i hate the holidays.

dramarama-orama

friday night was "family game night" with the inlaws.  it was a pretty good time.  saturday, siouxs! went to some u-city dance concert.  i stayed home and polished off my fifth of bourbon (note to self: buy more bourbon).  spiderman was played, skip came over, siouxs! came home, a good time was had by all.  sunday morning, no hangover, but that empty-stomach feeling that sometimes comes with a long liquor drunk.  the inlaws "family christmas cookie exchange."  drove into the city.   drove to the farthest place that can be possibly considered in the "st. louis area."  a good time was had, by both cynic and listeners alike.  lunch wa good, everything was good, then, drama.  who needs the fucking drama?  i'll tell you who it isn't.  me.

 

conspiracy theory for you.  all of this talk about calling it a holiday tree instead of a christmas tree is a neo-con whisper campaign.  it smacks of karl rove.  what a great way to recharge the semi-christian masses, who don't go tu church, but do feel threatened when some atheist is accused of trying to do away with christmas.  how can the republikkkans lose this one?  once the accusation is in place, there's no taking it back, and the damage is done to atheists, church-and-state-seperatists, and non-christians alike.  (i'm sure paul wolfowitz won't mind)

 

fuck bush.

not stalgia

i was thinking about the snoopy sno-cone machine this morning.  i loved my snoopy sno-cone machine, but i have been thinking all day about it's many shortcomings.

 

"you put an ice cube in, and get a sno-cone out" which i remember distinctly from the jingle is nothing if not an oversimplification.  "you put an ice cube in, you put all of your seven-year-old weight into pushing down on the snoopy shaped plunger (but not the little rubber nipple like hat) while trying to simultaneously turn the impossibly flimsy crank which won''t move as long as you're putting all of your seven-year-old weight into the plunger, you eventually get a little shaved ice floating in the meltwater from your efforts of the first five minutes that in no way resembles a sno-cone" would have required a different jingle, i guess.

 

what was up with that little rubber nipple hat?  have you ever seen snoopy wear a hat in any other situation?  an aviator helmet, sure, but never a hat.  when it's cold, he always had a scarf, but no hat.  secondly, what was the big idea putting it right on top of the plunger?  how could you not squirt out your sno-cone flavoring all over the place?  with all of your seven-year-old weight going into the plunger? the thing only held two teaspoons or so of liquid anyway, which has never in my life been enough for even one sno-cone.

 

lastly, would it have killed them to put some kind of sturdier base on the things?  the whole rig was only about two inches deep, which falls over mighty easily when a fair amount of pressure is applied (as it would be to the plunger when all of your seven-year-old etc etc).  i remember conking my head on the counter on several occasions because the sno-cone machine collapsed under me.

 

it's rants like this that are the reason i'll never really amount to anything "important"

 

fuck bush

turkish hangover

i hope everyone had a pleasant turkish day.  ours was pretty good, and the four day weekend was most welcome in this the busy season for social drunks and therefore we in the vino slangin' business.  a few high and low points:

 

-turkish day was held at the home of siouxs!'s oldest brother and his not so popular wife.  they moved out to eureka, home of six flags over jesus christ.  the neighborhood is sterile and sickening, but is on one of the few large hills to be found in the greater st. louis area, so at least you can see the sameness for miles and miles.  the turkey was good, the high-life was better.

-walk the line... i recommend it.  there were a few times i couldn't stay in the moment, but on the whole, it was quite good.

-i seem to be a tony hawk's xxxxxxxx whichever ps2 game savant.  i'm not that good at other video games, but by god can i play that series

-friday was "buy nothing day," so that's what we did.  no after thanksgiving sales, no eating out, no filling up the tank.  it was a good day.

-saturday was siouxs!'s ten year high school reunion.  i went to dinner with them.  the dinner was good, siouxs!'s friend kate was a nightmare.  she couldn't stop talking about how much money she'd donated to the school or the reunion committee, how much she loved living on the east coast and the culture boost that implied, and how hot all the boys found her.  had i not been under promise to not be deliberately mean to her, i would have had a much better story to tell here.

-i was supposed to have a forty drinking evening with the wife's sister's boyfriend, but it never materialized.

 

there was a bit more, but i'll get into it in a later post.

those bastards

we all knew it was happening, now some guy's written a book about it.  check it out

 

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/war_on_science.shtml

 

please, can we at least advance to being like the third most backwards nation?  must we be number one, dubya, huh?

monday morning cool

the ultrasound went well.  everything is normal with bootsy.  "he" is big; thirteen ounces at the moment when the average fetus is 10-12, and is about the size of my hand.  the nurse kept trying to get a good shot of "his" face, but bootsy kept "his" arms up in front the whole time.  perhaps we have a boxer in the making, though we'd prefer a baseball player.

the nurse kept shaking the ultrasound thingy around on siouxs! belly in an effort to make bootsy move "his" arms, but to no avail.  the shaking bugged me a little.  i guess she would know better than i, but why would that work in the first place?  "he" was squirming around a lot, but didn't move those little arms enough to get the good face picture.  in the next day or two, i'm going to upload an ultrasound photo, which i may or may not post (they don't mean that much unless you saw them in motion.

thanks for the good juju, sr. leab.  thanks also to emily, my friendly blog comment spammer, who feels certain that she has something of interest for me.  no thanks to statcounter, who has shown me a big zero for way too many days (not all af which can possibly be for true).

and a big fucking wad of meanfuckery to our dear friends and protectors the republikkkan party, for reminding us all that rich boys who got draft deferments know a lot more about patriotism and righteous causes for war than those who actually served their country in uniform.

friday morning nerves

for any number of reasons, i'm a little nervy today.  i'm at a sticking point at work, so there's not much i can do without getting into a huge project i won't have time to finish today.  they've been talking about hiring someone at work via an internet wine jobs posting, but haven't talked too much to me about it, which makes me wary of my own status.  third, and most nervewracking, today siouxs! has an ultrasound, so we can see that the baby is progressing nicely.  i have missed the first two this go round.  the last ultrasound i was present for (last year), we basically found out that we'd lost the baby, though it took a few more days for it all to seem final.  i know that there's no connection between the two, but there's also the fact that today is one year from the date last year when it was certain.  circumstances are wildly different this time, but i'm scared still.  i have to be the strong one for siouxs!, but times like this, it's pretty fucking hard to do.

pray (if you do that) or think about us.  it will be greatly appreciated.

monday morning bourbonsweating

last night, i made siouxs! and me a steak dinner, complete with baked potato, broccoli and bread (i skipped the red wine/bordelais sauce, because of the fetus, who for the sake of brevity and class will from now until the birth be known as bootsy).  afterwards, i was so full that a beer would make me burst, so instead, i had a double bourbon on the rocks.  that one was so good that i had another.  during the second double, skip came over and had a rum and coke, so i switched to that.  i had perhaps three of them.  then i switched again, this time to beer (as by now, i was not so full).  then i found myself on a magical journey to blackout island.  today, i woke up woozy, but no headache.  the only symptom so far has been the booze sweat, which i can feel more than smell.  i've heard not to switch liquors midstream, but it seems to have worked out ok for me (this time at least).

dubya is still smarting from his ass being burned many times over, so i feel no need to rail against him today.  i will however mention that he called critics of the iraq war "deeply irresponsible," which is a gut wrenching laugh if i've ever heard one.

fuckin' sons of bitches, when will they learn?

i forgot to mention in my last post that i spoke to my (step)brother on tuesday. he is doing well at camp pendleton, and i expect will make a really great marine. though i don't agree with how his government will use him, he will be quite good at whatever they put him to. i just hope he is capable of retaining his inherent kindness after he returns from "the sandbox" (his name, not mine), where it seems likely he will go, even with his amphibious vehicle training.
pentagon sons of bitches.
fuck bush.

post

it would seem that the republikkkans are melting down.  with scandal after scandal, dollars for influence, and entrenched power being recognized to be something other than divinity, i get the feeling that we're about to see a paradigm shift.  i for one would love to see a less evil republikkkan party, with sane fiscal conservatives like john mccain in positions of leadership.  i still won't be voting for any of the bastards, but at least i won't have to hate the people who vote for them so much.  wouldn't it be sweet if the religious bastards got so pissed off they formed their own party, thus forever splitting the "conservative" vote?  perhaps this is a bit of a pipe dream, and wanting the religious right to organize more than they already are is like wanting your enemies to do marching drills so they form a more consolidated area at which to shoot. 

i don't know if i mentioned last post, but i had to go to kc for the last couple of days.  our driver/warehouse guy out there gave us one day notice on thursday (though from the state of the warehouse when i got there, he seems to have checked out well before that), so i had to drive there monday morning and back tuesday night.  in between those two four hour drives, i got to make deliveries and unload a container-load of wine.  i'm not trying to bitch to all three of my regular readers, i'm just saying that i had a hard start to my week.  tomorrow is the dreaded sales meeting (my favorite useless bitchfest of the week), so at least the weekend looms large on the horizon.  and to anyone that knows him, kingston says hi.

post

ok, i'll speak to the alito nomination in another post.  right now, i'm more concerned with tax reform.  watch the bastards.  there seems to be a shift toward "taxing consumption" as opposed to taxing wealth.  while i have no doubt that the individual upper-class citizen would pay more in dollars were there a national sales tax, the percentage of their income would be virtually nothing in comparison to those in lower tax brackets (at least the proposals don't get rid of tax brackets).  this is a sneaky way of txing the poor and the middle class harder than before, since the poor and middle class are likely to have to spend a large percentage or even all of their income toward "consumption."  this means the wealthy, who have money that is sitting in a mutual fund somewhere not contributing to "consumption" (or trickling down, for those assholes who still think reaganomics might fucking work) are not being taxed.  one of the biggest problems with wealth in this country is that not enough of it makes it into the economic mill, and if these plans are put into place, it won't even be taxed to speak of. 

perhaps i need to take some economics classes.  i have only the most basic understanding of these things, but thank god for my mom the accountant.  oh yeah, simplifying the tax codes could also put as many as half of tax preparers out of work.

fuck bush

post

the primary program that we use at work is housed on our server, which has been down since roughly ten this morning (it's now four).  i have officially done everything i can do around here without the use of said program or other server based files, so i have been thouroughly bored for god knows how many hours.  however, here i am (and maybe coming in tomorrow for a few hours...) so i'll post a little post for both my readers and the accidental finns who find my site.

 

libby down!  if we can get rove and (god willing) cheney, we will have effectively cut the head off the administration.  for those who believe, pray.  for those who don't, hope.  for those who don't hope, drink or smoke or something.

 

fuck bush

post

i don't know what to think about the retracted miers nomination.  i'm worried that w's gonna break out some serious wack-job to appease the christian wrong-wing sons of bitches.  does no one understand that a supreme court nomination shouldn't go to anyone who might rule direct from the days talking points?  as if there aren't already enough ways to wave ones ass at justice, now we may just be lucky enough to have reverend justice evan jellical determining that masturbation is unconstitutional, while cheating an electorate is not.

on another note, i was glad to see alissa (and jamie, though i don't know you as well.  from all two or three encounters, you get the seal of approval) this past week.  i also saw two friends who actually live here in the stl, but whom i don't see much thanks to their law schooling.

i'm looking into finishing off my last few hours of wash u.  for those that didn't know, i ended my four years at wash u eleven hours shy of my b.a.  at the time, i was convinced that i was actually owed those hours anyway, so i would have no troubles getting my diploma in the next few months.  well, here it is, five plus years later, and i'm still degreeless.  i'm talking to some people, including my old advisor, with whom i had something of an adversarial relationship.  so, hat in hand, i go back to wash u to see if i can manage to keep my head in for a few classes a semester.  wish me luck.

fuck bush.

post

it was a weekend of spend, spend, spend, little capitalists.  siouxs! and i did our parts for the economy all weekend long, and we'll not say that it's all done yet.  we still need a fix for the computer at home, but at least there's a new playstation to be utilized.  we also have a new swiss army knife (ok, i got a leatherman; more on that in a moment), new leashes and collars for the dogs, some tools, a bunch of books, and a flogging molly cd.

back to the leatherman... i don't think they could have chosen a worse name for such a product.  for those unfamiliar with the leatherman, it is basically like a swiss army knife with genuinely useful tools like pliers and screwdrivers on it.  for those unfamiliar with leathermen, they are homosexual men into wearing black leather as their sole form of clothing, popularized by one of the village people.  i'm not saying that no leathermen have a leatherman, but perhaps they're not the target market.  i'm just saying.

i'm going to continue not saying much about the bush administration.  they seem to be shooting themselves in the feet as it is, and i don't want to jinx it or anything.

however, i will say

fuck bush.

post

good god am i bored at work today.  i have done virtually nothing taxing of my brain, ond only a very little taxing of anything else.  this is the sort of time squandering that i so desperately need a few minutes of a day, but when stretched into several hours, it becomes a awfully depressing enterprise.

tom delay seems terribly confident in his chances of being acquited, and perhaps with good reasin.  i mean, we are currently living under the most corrupt/corruptable administration of the last fifty years (including nixon!), so who's to say that the new judge put into place by republicking cronys won't just throw the case out?  scooter and rove seem to be a little stickier, but will probably end up cheating justice as well.  clinton lied about sex, and nearly got impeached.  dubya and the boys (yes, condi, that means you too) have lied about everything from the economy to the war, and appointee credentials to national security, and yet will probably be remembered fondly by "the history books."

i'm scared of the economy, people.  it isn't going to get better the way we're going, let me assure you.

fuck bush

post

well, the baseball is over.  i suppose i can say go white sox still, but it's just too depressing.  by the time there is baseball again in st. louis, siouxs! and i will have other things on our mind (the baby is due at the beginning of april).  until then, there's always winter league ball, various offseason trades and developments, and such.  and since we're going into the busy season at work, i'll have less time to obsess over the baseball.

i hope i'm convincing you, because i sure as hell ain't buying it.

 

post

once again, i have worked on the weekend.  there was a time in my life that i would have preferred to forcibly remove puppy ears than work for even a moment on my weekend (as opposed to "the weekend, " meaning friday evening through sunday night).  now, they didn't even ask me to, i just came in saturday because i needed to catch up and sunday because there was a truck coming in.  ok, to be fair, i came in saturday in the hopes that the truck would come in, and then stayed because i was up, and the dogs were walked, and what else was i going to do?  then i came in on sunday to show my trucking company i mean business when i say i need that product yesterday.  the whole thing was primarily so i wouldn't have to go pour wine with a businessy jerk at the st. louis wine festival.  in that, it was a success.  in watching every second of the cardinals astros came, it was a miserable failure.  the truck arrived at game time, so i didn't get back to the house until the fourth inning or so.  and then we fucking lost, at least somewhat due to bad umpiring.

since everyone seems to pretty much agree with my feelings on bush (approval rating in the mid thirties!), i think i'll give him a slight break. 

dry hump bush.

fuck with all violence and filth and a louisville slugger (nlcs game 4 home plate umpire) cuzzi.

went to game 2 of the nlcs last night... a bit disappointing to say the least, but fun nonetheless.
if i bust my ass this morning, i can get back to zero in the office. i'm roughly four hours of work behnd, not including the extra stuff being piled on me at all times. since i haven't totally finalized my desktop filing system, it's still a big fucking mess, but i'm trying here.
but who cares about that stuff.
the baby still consumes let's say thirty percent of my thoughts. in some ways, i can't wait, but in others, i'm a little bit worried. most of these worries are selfish, but i have no problem admitting to some selfishness (i don't think it's my defining personality characteristic or anything). i suppose most new parents with an adult level of maturity discover that they are capable of more selflessness than they thought they would be. i hope i can at least come close.

fuck bush

another one (mostly) down

i announced to the sales team today about the baby.  they seemed unable to care, though the sales rep i would be least able to handle were we not co-workers told me he thought i'd be good at raising them.  my mom was thrilled (presumably still is) and most of siouxs!'s family was too, but i think after the occurance last year, everyone is still a litte tentative.  to put minds at ease, everything is going well.  siouxs! rented a doppler thing to check the fetal heartbeat, for which i made fun of her, but nonetheless, you should have seen the grin on my face when i heard it for the first time (i have been forced to miss a few of her doctor appointments for work).

i'd like to hope that i won't be losing my edge as a comedian as most seem to after their children are born (think denis leary or chris rock).  my theory is that since they hit before the kids and then continued after, they were perceived as getting softer.  since i have never hit big (or small, for that matter), there will be no basis for comparison.  plus, i fully intend to corrupt this kid pretty early, so i won't have to watch my language around the house as much, adn that's got to help...

i'm going to be someone's dad.  (peals of maniacal laughter)

fuck bush.

well, the office is moved, the warehouse is moved, and within the month, i suppose things will be as back to normal as is possible. some pros and cons

pro: i have "my own" office
con: it's only "my own" when our new hire is in the warehouse
pro: i won't have to be in the warehouse so much, including my back's least favorite, loading the truck
con: i can't escape to the warehouse so much
pro: i can listen to music while i work now
con: i'm guessing it can't be "offensive"
pro: i'm five minutes away from home
con: i'm only five minutes away from work
pro: i have a nice sexy new computer
con: it still doesn't work on our network, so i have to use the dumpy old computer for virtually everything.

ok, this list is long enough for now. perhaps i will add more later. i am much more capable of posting during my workday now, so there may be more posts. or maybe not. we'll just have to see.

fuck bush.

this weekend is the big office move, so i apologize for the lack of posts.

however, i have one announcement that needs to be made.

as of april 4th (according to the cardboard wheel) gthedamned will officially be gthedaddy. mommy-to-be-siouxs! is doing well, and we're both fucking psyched to have the rugrat. more to come as events warrant.

first of all, a storm is a force of nature, and therefore can be neither cruel nor wasteful which both imply intent. secondly, i'm amazed that anyone still believes you, dubya, considering the amount of lip service you've paid to so many things, from helping in africa to finding the terrorists resposible fr september eleventh. lastly, tax breaks to the companies that help with the rebuilding effort is a great way to continue lining the pockets of your cronies while not actually changing an economically depressed area in any lasting way.
all in all, i'd say that the neatly thirty minute address to the nation, well tailored to dovetail with the regularly scheduled broadcast was a success, assuming that the goal was to pacify those with no connection to the gulf region other than having seen it on tv these past few weeks. bra-fucking-vo.
fuck bush

our computer, that lovely frankensteinian machine that sits atop our computer room has turned to a thousand dollar paperweight, at least for the time being. i think i can make the fucker work again, if only i can figure out how to make a boot disk so as to get past the disc read error at startup. i'm not exactly computer saavy, so i really wish i had someone in town who knew enough about computers to just come fix it for me. i can do minor repairs to a pretty high percentage of things around the house and office, but serious repairs to none.
it's a real bitch to be a rennaissance man in this age of specialists. i have just enough skills to always find work, but never get paid truly well for it.

the roberts confirmation hearings today should be an impeachment trial, and yet, look at this buffonistry. (yes, i think i made that word up.)

fuck john roberts and alberto gonzalez.

well, dubya's approval rating has dipped below 40%. i think they need to measure that a little more accurately than asking people on the phone if they approve or disapprove. if they factored in my negative approval rating, he'd be down in the twenties (let's just say i don't stop at -100%).

the move is ever more stressful at work. every time it seems like we've almost got everything ready, something new comes up. the latest is that the fire marshall determined that since we don't have sprinklers in our warehouse, we need a firewall rated for two hours of burn time. this amounts to slapping some drywall up, but it's still an annoying expense. not my expense, but every little annoyance has a trickle-down effect, so that we can all be closer through sharing.

has anyone seen or heard from the big red dog?

fuck bush.

two days in a row of warehouse work... good god i'm beat. to think, i used to do this every day, and even made it through a holiday season at faster than this pace...

i do so certainly hope that everyone is having a pleasant and work free labor day. to those who have to work, my condolences. i personally have accomplished making dinner (it is only right now one o'clock, but chili needs at least a few hours) and grocery shopping. siouxs! is spending one last day at the pool with her sister. labor day is the last chance for laziness of the season for me, as the next month is the busy preparation to the busiest time of the year. due to our overly capitalist society, it is also the busy time of year for virtually everyone else nationwide. we even manage to export our holiday rush to other countries who have adopted our harried way of life. even formerly relaxed europe is starting to do things our way, if only for the sake of competition with us and the other third world countries using wage-slave labor to create things (and non-things).

dubya must be stopped. he's using a tragedy he couldn't care less about (*except inasmuch as the other republikkkans might disown him quick) to take attentions away from the evil things the government is working on for us right now. john roberts has been resubmitted for the supreme court as the chief justice to replace rehnquist, so now he's going to find some preacher's wife abortion-picketing mother of a combat veteran to fill o'connor's spot. the war is still going on unchecked and more violently than it was even six month ago. karl rove still has a job.
don't believe the bastards... watch your television (i hate to advocate it, but turn the sound off).
if our nation were in shock from "earthquake katrina" that ripped through orange county with a vengeance, causing billions of dollars worth of damages to upwards of three houses, dubya and co. would have been there seconds after to survey the chaos, like the pool being out of water and the china cabinet being scratched.

so i'm sitting at home at eight thirty in the morning, not faking sick, not really sick, not on a holiday or a scheduled day off, but rather to wait for a pair of appointments i have at our new building at nine and nine-thirty. i find it odd to be on the receiving end of an appointment. appointments were always something i made (or rather, that someone else made for me) in order to see a professional. i would hardly consider myself a professional at my business (i certainly don't dress like one), and the only thing i'm willing to call myself a pro at is comedy, which i haven't done professionally for over a year.
man, we gotta get a show together...
(poor) fuck(ing) bush (had to stop his month-long vacation two days early and come back to show some measure of leadership, the poor widdle baby)

the insanity is all around...
first and foremost, here's hoping that my surrogate family in la place, louisiana, is safe. ti, if you see this, let me know, otherwise, i'll be in touch soon.
second, congratulations to tomatohead and j-me on their who-knows-how-distant nuptuals. i know it's craziness that i was the first of my closest friends to get married, but if i were to guess at the second, it wouldn't be jah. don't know why, he just always seemed like the "living in sin" type than the "make an honest woman out of her" type. (not that i buy into either of those terms, but they sure are convenient right now.)
third, my neighbors up the street have installed a eight foot long stream in their back yard. now, it isn't as though an eight foot stream can ever look natural no matter what, but this is the same couple who have a dozen or so lawn ornaments scattered about, mostly tasteful, but not all. yesterday, when we passed by on our dog walk, they had a concrete pelican sitting by the stream. i find this fucking hilarious. every time i pass this little man-made natural wonder, i will picture a pelican diving into a stream and busting his beak (what can i say, i'm twisted like that).
fourth, and finally, james, the big red dog called my house last night at two am. i haven't heard from him in several years, and now the asshole drunkdials me during the work week. i'm glad to hear from him, but i got back to sleep a lot easier than siouxs! did, so she's not exactly thrilled about the whole thing. on the off chance that you read this, james, please don't call after midnight unless it's a freaking emergency. that said, i hope to talk to you soon.
ass.
fuck bush.

drinkin 

logo by Howlermonkey 

the wine business is far too stressful. i never thoguht that having someone else do my job would add to my daily hassles, but when it is taken away before i even have a chance to get to it, and then i am fed a guilt trip for not doing it sooner, i become slightly pissed off. perhaps i need to get into the beer biz, but even that seems overly businessy and frequently corporate.
what i really want to do is make people laugh for a living. in what capacity, i cannot say. i still get a charge from performing, and "yeah, i guess it's obvious, i also like to write. all you had to do was give humpty a chance..." and now it doesn't matter because i still can't dance. all tangents aside, how would i go about getting into the comedy or comedy writing business? do i send portfolio stuff, or a tape, or what, and to whom?
if anyone knows anything, i doubt i'll hear anything (thanks to ml for at least reading the blog and occasionally writing back), but just for the hell of it, here's the gthedamned call for ideas. to whom do i pitch? how do i put together a comedy resume? what should i try to do? what the hell else do i need to know?
a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar, fuck bush.

i guess pat robertson heard all of the wild and outlandish things that other arch-conservatives were spouting, like "ending the war in iraq would weaken america" or "karl rove is not a criminal." upon hearing such things, he must have thought the door was wide open. he found out quickly that such unchristian statements as "we oughtta assasinate so and so" are not to be touched with a ten foot pole, particularly in times when any number of political assasinations are in the works. here is my list of likely possibilities.
1) tony blair - he had to bend a little too left to get in last election. he has lost sight of the goal. take him out.
2) castro - that guy has been a thorn in our sides for too long. keeping him around as "the guy who confounded kennedy" is no longer amusing.
3) jacques chirac - his war record really wasn't all that distinguished. also, doesn't he look french?
4) gerhard schroeder - as long as were cleaning house in "old europe"
5) ted kennedy - how did this guy slip under the radar for so many years? i thought we killed all the kennedys. what do you mean, he's a vocal member of the opposition referenced any number of times in the last election to make john kerry seem more liberal by association? are you sure we missed a kennedy?
6) roh moo-hyun (s. korean president) - just to show kim jong il we aren't fucking around
7) vincente fox - shouldn't his name be vincente zorro? i don't trust him.

the army has announced that it wants to prepare for four more years in iraq at the present troop levels. there is a pro-bush pro-war rally going on in crawford in an attempt to combat/provoke the anti-war protests there. dubya is going on a five day push to explain to the nation why we need to continue the war in iraq.
escape is not an option. i feel something enormous coming on. i will be here in middle america for the showdown. we're split in this country roughly 50/50, but when it came down to it, who do you think could muster more shock troops, the red or the blue? i think we all know who has more people willing to make it a shootout.
i'm afraid of where our country is headed. i was never afraid of terrorism until bush the junior painted the target on all of our heads. now i just hope that i am not automatically grouped with them for being an american. sometimes i'm simultaneously proud and ashamed of my nation.
stop the madness, dubya, please.

this past weekend, i was lucky enough to fulfill the roles of both chef and jetski mechanic at the annual sister-in-law's-parents-in-laws' lake house spectacular. highlights included three child injuries, lots of drinking, fair amounts of underage drinking, more terrible jokes than any one person should have to bear, and fucking up an in-law-in-law's jetski by running it for an hour with the oil light on. but hey, what're you going to do?

since my actual birthday was spent sitting in traffic, i hope to have my birthday dinner tonight. we'll see if there are any takers.

i haven't been vigiling. though fiery political rhetoric may spew forth from this blog on a regular basis, i'm just not a vigil type guy. perhaps if my people held molotov vigils, then i could get into it. though i'm personally a pacifist, that doesn't mean i don't see the logic in kicking the occasional ass. it also doesn't mean that i prefer peaceful protest. i like loud protest that makes everyone look and actually have to think about what i'm protesting. i'm glad there are those like cindy sheehan out there for the other kind.

as acting technically saavy dude in my less than high tech workplace, i should probably get back to evaluating these phone system proposals, so until next time, junior revolutionaries, fuck bushrovecheneyhalliburtonrumsfeldboltongeneralelectric-ricewolfowitzlimbaughscaliabushandroveagainjustforgoodmeasure.

I understand scissors cut paper… that is pretty much standard, and certainly the primary use of scissors. To a lesser extent, I even get paper covers rock; it’s a little unorthodox (and hardly a victory for paper, if you think about it), but nonetheless, not out of the question. The easiest leg of this little triumvirate to pull out, however, is this; what troglodyte breaks scissors with a rock (or [showing a minimal amount more intellect] tries to cut a rock with scissors)?

will someone please shoot karl rove? i know i keep harping on this, but it seems everyone else has forgotten about how mixed up he is in a little thing called treason. at the very least, he has broken the law this time, and i would be inclined to go that next step that calls him a traitor to his country. every time i scream and rant and rail against the current administration, i am doing my duty to my country. i am keeping it strong through opposition. a country that is based on a single ideology is inherently flawed, because every ideology (even my own, however precious i may hold it) has blind spots you could walk an elephant through. it's just the nature of the beast (the ideology beast, not elephants). mr. rove, on the other hand, has no problem with simply silencing all opposition in the never ending quest for more power. he wouldn't be bothered in the least if people like me were imprisoned or even killed, as long as we were no longer in his way.
i too am capable of thinking of people as "the masses" rather than individual people with loved ones and such. most people are; it's one of the ways we are able to live with the attrocities going on in the world that aren't taking place in our own neighborhoods. however, i have never felt that my own ends (or worse yet, my own convenience) were worth the lives of anyone, even those people i don't know that i don't know.
if we took out rove, the rest of the world might have a fighting chance. that's all i'm saying.
for a change of pace, fuck karl rove. with a sledgehammer.

the republikkkans are doing so many horrible things at once, it's all i can do to stay angry. it's a right confusing series of events. two recess appointments (the second one was just to make it look like this sort of thing happens all the time), karl rove still has a job, the radical right is way too happy about the latest judicial aaa call-up, several other things i can't even remember for the time being, and to top it all off, dubya has the balls to dedicate the continuation of an unwinnable to war to the memories of those (u.s. corpses only) who have recently died in it!
siouxs! and i have been catsitting (watch the master of the segue work, bitches) for her sister. in my humble opinion, the primary reason to have a cat in the first place is so that you don't have to worry about it when you go out of town. sure, they're good for your blood pressure, but as long as you scold it for doing things it isn't supposed to occasionally, and possibly throw it across the room from time to time, te best thing abou cats is that they take care of their own business (i don't think most cats would say "bidnes" if they could talk. just a feeling i get. stuck up little furballs.). anyway, siouxs! has to spend the night in elsah, illinois. i stayed there with her last night, but we have (less than wonderfully trained) dogs, which is kind of like having toddlers who become criminally insane when you aren't at home. so, on the fourth day sans-nicotin, i am writing a blog entry in the evening for lack of the company of my loving wife. i realize it's pathetic that i do miss her (it's only one night), but if nothing else, i'm coming up with a joke a minute that only she would laugh at, and i like to make her laugh.
the baseball... ah yes, the baseball. i don't know how, but the cardinals have been doing rather well lately considering that they have only two regular position players who started the year as such. i realize that i am clinging to an antiquated sport, a reminiscence of pastoral days amusement, a game that is woefully molasses-like while played in what is usually the hot summer sun (when no one is looking, baseball concession stand workers from st louis and all points south press their skin against the hot dog rolling machine to cool off). nonetheless, though i played baseball, soccer, playground ultimate frisbee, and ran track and cross country, the only thing i can really watch of those sports is baseball, and i stuck with that the shortest amount of time. well, perhaps if they had playground ultimate frisbee on network television, i might be able to watch that.
this is now officially my longest post in a long freaking time.

we've received two container-loads of wine in as many days (yesterday and monday). when i woke up this morning, my back let me know that it wasn't looking forward to a day in the warehouse. sitting at my desk isn't much better, but at least i don't have to pick things up off the floor all day at my desk. today could prove to be rough.
i still haven't forgotten karl rove. can someone take that son of a bitch out back and shoot him, please?
the ultra-right seems far too happy about the john roberts nomination. the senate seems far too ready to confirm him. if the far right were truthful in its statements, it would have to state "we don't want any activist judges legislating from the bench to lean left in their decisions." i'm worried about the state of our "democracy."
does anyone remember that we're still at fucking war? despite all of the bush administration's attempts to make us forget, i remember. the pentagon wants to raise the maximum enlistment age to allow men and women up to 42 years of age to join up. i suppose they're trying to capture that valuable "jealous that i couldn't go to vietnam" demographic that all the advertisers are courting. i hope they do pass that law, if only for the greater chance that some of these armchair super-patriots join up and leave us in peace for a while.
my (step)brother is still in marine boot camp. i'm worried about him.
kind of a depressing post, i know, so i'll end with a slightly different turn.
no superheroes wear flip-flops.

i knew that son of a bitch was going to pull something like this.
"surprise! here's your anti-abortion, anti-civil rights, and anti-common person supreme court nominee! you'd better not try to fillibuster, because we can take that too! in fact, maybe you should just stop worrying about the government altogether. other than when used in fiery rhetoric, it isn't like democracy works anyway, right?"
corproate lawyers have a tendency to know which side their bread is buttered on (it's part of the special training corporate lawyers receive. part of the process also includes the removal of their soul. then they have to murder a child with their bare hands.). what we need on the supreme court is someone who has thought out (or is willing to) each possible question that may come up during their tenure as a justice, not another idealogue who'll just rule the way he is told by the rnc.
predicted first case of the new supreme court: overturning the law (signed by ronald reagan) that says it is illegal to expose an undercover cia operative. i think that just might be unconstitutional, don't you? isn't karl rove (and that fucker of cheney's) a hero?
fuck bush. with few exceptions (mostly family), if you like bush, i don't like you.

as i sit here in the office, if i turn my head thirty degrees to the right (literally, not politically), i am confronted with possibly our (meaning my warehouse foreman and myself) most benign prank ever. whenever my immediate boss, liz, goes out of town, we have fun with her desk. we have traded drawers, rearranged the desktop, and in what is still our finest moment, put the whole thing on 2 inch blocks, which she did not notice for three hours (and only then because the box we used to hide one of the blocks seemed out of place). today, we merely wrapped the desk, computer and all, in christmas paper easily visible from the parking lot. believe me, this is much nicer than blowing up a picture of her drunk at the christmas party and putting them up in a frame that always hangs in the office. the probable reason for this much tamer prank is that she is taking ron, siouxs! and me to the baseball game tonight. i am a much nicer person when baseball is involved, especially when people are rooting for the cardinals with me.
had brunch with my peruvian neighbor, ney, yesterday. i can't believe i had brunch, and i can believe even less that he suggested it. i am not much a fan of brunch, having had to cook it for people at one time. while i had to be to work at 5:30am to get ready for brunch, the brunchers strolled in any time before 2pm, still looking for french toast. french toast is a pre-11am food. anyone who still desires french toast at 2 needs to seriously question some of their life decisions. the really frightening part is that the night shift told me of people still asking for french toast as late as 5pm. i guess they all had their insulin shots scheduled for 5:30.
by the way, don't worry that my fiery political spirit has not yet mentioned the whole karl rove/cia leak thing yet. i firmly believed years ago that karl rove needed to be put to death for everything he has done before this, and have not change my opinion, just what i'm yelling. that cheney aide, too, needs to have his priveleges taken away.
if alberto gonzales gets the supreme court nod, i may have to hijack a boat and sail south.
fuck bush (and his brain).

i miss the mountains. st. louis has a lot of really great points, and i like discovering new things about it, but i'm starting to miss the elevation of home again. it's so flat here (not like oklahoma flat, but pretty fucking flat) compared to my home. i miss the horizon being well above eye level in all directions.

on our home trip, siouxs! and i went swimming at the townsend "wye." *i can't footnote, but at least i can asterix* this is effectively "the ol' swimmin' hole" up in the mountains. at a place where the main road splits, leading to cades cove on the right and gatlinburg on the left, the creek finds a deeper place to flow for a few minutes, and hill people come out to play. there were perhaps 150 people there, but i still preferred it to a public pool. there were kids cliff jumping and flirting, little ones splashing about, and their parents sitting around getting sandy. i loved it. i hope that siouxs! understands just how much fun that has been over my childhood years, and i hope she had a good time. if you're ever in townsend tennessee, just ask about the wye at any gas station, and go have some hootin' and hollerin' fun. warning: the water is moving, and it comes out of the mountains. this means it is freaking cold. goosebumps and nipples go up, male genitalia goes down. that said, have fun.

*(they call it the wye instead of the y so as to not make people think one is talking about the ymca, i suppose. the only ymca i know of in east tennessee is in knoxville just south of downtown proper, and is a truly scary place. my daycare center used to take us to the pool there once a week. after a few years, the slightly churchy daycare people decided they'd had enough of knoxville's handful of homeless people ogling the freshmeat elementary schoolers, so we started going to another pool, much further away, where the creepiest people were the pimply concession stand teenagers, all of whom had verifiable addresses.)

and no, i didn't forget. fuck bush.

back from a trip to the homeland. some highlights
(one of) my grandmother(s) is relatively fond of the idea of hillary clinton for president, but not the idea of white and black people having sex.
my mom is seeming rather tired these days. having a three year old when you're almost fifty is no doubt difficult.
got two letters in one week back from my stepbrother the boot camper. i take that to mean it isn't quite the groovy time he thought it was going to be. i hold out hope yet.
barely saw my aunt or cousins. strangely ok with that.
couldn't drag my friends out for a drink. just goes to show something, but damned if i can tell you what.
making the 500 mile drive at three thirty in the morning isn't much better than doing it at night, at least as far as the arrival day is concerned.
new knoxville india pale ale: still fantastic
new knoxville traditional pale ale: way too fizzy. it took twenty minutes to pour one. fairly good after it died down, but seriously, it doesn't take that long to pour a guiness, and this isn't even a marketing ploy.
more later, perhaps...
fuck bush

perhaps it's lack of sleep (i only have about 6 hours out of the past 55) but i am overcome with a sense of dread. my workday has featured not one but two major (though brief) stressful upswells. at the end of the week, siouxs! and i are going to knox vegas for a week. all i know is that i have to get out of here as soon as freaking possible. our car is being worked on today, and i think i'm a little freaked out about that.
being of less than wholly sound mind (though still more so than plenty) can be downright scary sometimes. i wish these fucking brain chems would balance, because i'm not taking any meds.
fuck bush and his pharmacydical buddies.

sometimes i actually start to worry about making myself stupid. i drink. quite a bit. from time to time, i toke the reefer. apart from running between ten and twenty miles per week, it isn't as though i live the most healthy of lifestyles. i don't get enough omega three fatty acids in my diet, because i don't really like eating fish if i'm not near the ocean (no, st. louis is not close enough). i'm burning the brain cells without replacing or rejuvenating them. i think i have a ways to go before i'm that crafty old guy who's smart enough to run after he steals some booze, but not to talk his way out of trouble when he gets caught. those of you who haven't met that guy should keep an eye out for him. he's pretty funny in a "aches-at-my-soul-to-see-humanity-so-far-gone" sort of way.
today marks two weeks since i last had a cigarette. weekends are still rough, but siouxs! and i have made it through two so far. be proud of us. it's fucking hard.
fuck bush and all his tobacco-pushing cronies.

headed into another eventful weekend, i could use a rest
last weekend was fairly quiet, but not quite the best
too much to do, too many people to acknowledge
sometimes i wish for a forest park acid trip like saturdays in college
mind refurnishing, spirit refinishing, laughing at the amazing
strange nighttime occurances despite the fact that the sun is blazing
good friends, good times, good afternoons on good drugs
can't fall asleep for the mental twitching, but good rest on bathroom rugs.

it has been suggested recently by an old and somewhat mysterious friend that i should go to canada. i have spent years voicing a vehement anti-canadian sentiment, but in all reality, it has been in jest. i've never met a canadian i didn't like (i've only met like four). i think the reasoning was that they're much cooler about the marijuana up there, so i would enjoy it more. while it is true that i do occasionally enjoy a toke or two, it is no longer such an all-encompassing aspect of my life. i couldn't tell you how long it has been since i smoked the herb (ok, it's not like it's been years or anything), but i have always been a drunkard disguised as a pothead. so mr. leab, if i do go to cananananada, it will only be for a visit.
good god, though, this country is fucked up. last week, i got an e-mail from a certain liberal political action committee who shall remain nameless (hint: it rhymes with smoov-ron) that informed me of a british document from the highest levels of british government detailing american manipulation of intelligence data as a case to go to war. the problem is that we the liberals and even the open minded centrists out here already knew or at least believed that to be the case, and you can't convince the bushies of anything not told to them by our evangelical christian god on high's voice on earth himself, george w. cockmongering bush.
when i do get the fuck out of this country, it won't be north. i'll see you in the carribean, beet red and happy.
fuck-diddly-uck bush (and busch, for that matter).

today the feds determined that sick people can't utilize the one thing (the one natural thing, i might add, more on that later) that can make them feel better. i'm speaking of our dear friend mary jane, commonly known as weed, because it would grow like one across this great nation had some anti mexican sentiment not turned it into the devil. speaking as a person who has watched more than a few people die slowly, i have waited and begged a nonexistant higher power to change the minds of our elected officials, or more importantly, their small-minded constituents, to change the law and ease the pain. i won't go into the long list of reasons pot should be legal and my own favorite vice, the hooch, should not, but suffice to say, i am most dissapointed in this display of filthy oligarchic/aristocratic foolishness.
here's the theory, folks. some pharmaceutical company greed-eater determined that there were too many people who were not forced to fill their already weakened bodies with manufactured poisons (in ten whole states, no less!), so obviously let's start crutch kicking. think about revenues! pain meds, anti depression meds, and anti anxiety meds all increase sales by as much as one tenth of one percent, and if those sons of bitches have figured out a way to make chemo patients hungry, they'll probably roll that out now too.
again, i don't really believe in god, but think about it this way. the repulikkkans have figured out a way to make some more money and jail some more peace-loving people (hippies, yes, but i'll forgive them) by circumventing and outlawing god.
fuck bush with a spliff the size of a redwood. i gotta get the fuck out of this country, man.

i think i am genetically predisposed not to like paperwork, at least in regards to alcohol (like my business). i come from a long line of moonshiners and bootleggers, so anything more than "give me the money i give you the hooch" seems overly complicated to me. i'm not looking to get out of the wine business anytime soon, but it does seem to be an awful lot of paperwork just to get people drunk. perhaps i need to break out the home brewing kit again, so i can feel like i'm in touch with my roots. maybe the land lady will let me build a still in the backyard. even if she would, i doubt the cop in the adjacent yard would be too keen on that. uptight flatlanders, i'm telling you. a booze hound like me can't win for losing.

welcome, chocolate goddess and vanilla adjuster. this should prove to be a fun weekend.

i don't think she's read the ol' blog in quite some time, but i want to wish my beautiful wife suzi a happy birthday. if anyone else would like to as well, send me an e-mail and i will forward it to her.

i don't think i have a free weekend in the entirety of june. i could really use some dedicated nap time, but somehow i think it may be a lost cause.

how many republikkkans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

republikkkans don't screw. the stork brings them light (among other things), or so they say...

fuck bush

siouxs! and i took a secretive trip home this weekend so we would have a last chance to see my (step)brother before he ships out to paris island for marine boot camp. we instructed my mom to tell no one but my aunt and uncle so that we could come in without having to make the usual rounds to see every family member in the east tennessee area. in that, it was fairly a success. we went skeet shooting for the first time (1st for me and siouxs!; michael was thoroughly experienced and quite a good shot... imagine that). we saw haven thomas judd, cutest child in the western hemisphere (there's a kid in china named tan ling who caused several people to lock their own children in the basements for the rest of their lives because they could ever measure up).

we also saw haven's birth mom. i still don't know how i feel about that encounter. she's left her husband and is trying to finalize the divorce, which is good. she seems a little more mature, and that is good. she has a good job with no opportunity to steal a deposit, and that is good. however, she might as well not have been able to see haven, and i don't know how i feel about that. on one hand, i don't want her thinking that she could ever have him back. i don't really think she is the most fit mother in the world. i just don't know what to feel right now. i love my cousin, but i can't always like her.

i don't know what else to say about all of this, so i'll just say i'm glad to be back in the stl.

jesus christ, holy shit
i'm having an anti christian fit
the buddhists don't bug me
the muslims are great
(but i live in a fucking red state)

the "moral majority"
a radical minority
seems thoroughly ready
to declare me a traitor
(but i'm just a church-hater)

senator frist
is making me pissed
the bible says "love thy neighbor"
not "thou shalt condemn"
(but try telling that to them).

ok, so now it seems that our military has been abusing prisoners in afghanistan as well. does anyone really think that military grunts, even the notably more vicious mp's, all came up with the idea to psychologically humiliate muslim prisoners on their own? might not this be a directive handed down from, say, rumsfeld? i won't assume that it goes any higher than that, though i also won't assume that dubya would have said "stop" had he known all along...
laura bush is being heckled in her tour of the middle east. obviously, laura bush has some big brass balls for even going to the middle east right now, but to think that she thinks she's campaigning for peace is utterly unbelievable. that she is able to sleep at night knowing what the man she loves is capable of is perhaps harder still to understand.
went to see revenge of the sith on saturday. i loved it, but that isn't the purpose of mentioning it. the real purpose is to rain my foment on yet another group of people who bother the hell out of me. i have nothing in particular against most fat people (especially with my ever expanding waistline), but i am getting rather tired of seeing the enormously obese riding around on little scooters as though they were genuinely handicapped. (there was a gentleman of more than mple girth on just such a device at the movie eating a large popcorn by his self. the seat to his chariot must have been three feet wide, and yet still was not large enough to contain his posterior.) get off your ass and your handicap may be curable. every time i hear that lame excuse of "glandular problems" i want to vomit. why do you think people who weigh over 300 lbs have glandular problems? might it have anything to do with diets that consist of nothing but refined flours and various forms of sugar? i know i am not the healthiest eater in the world, but at least the majority of the ingredients in my food came out of the ground like that (or off the hoof). put the twinkies back on the shelf and walk to the mailbox every day. then we'll talk.
fuck bush, and that fat bastard cheney (i wonder why he has a heart transplant every six months...)

while at my favorite bar last night (the way out club), listening to my favorite local band (the seven shot screamers), a member of a rival sketch troupe was sitting on stool down from me. that he recognized me as "bastards karamazov" i took as a compliment. when he told me that the zim-zam cock show was still ongoing, i was a little jealous, since i had thought all of the sketch troupes in town to be at least temporarily out of commission. i felt better when he told me that most of their material was less than stellar lately. i was incensed when he mentioned that there might be room in their group for me as a writer. not that jah or skip ever really read the blog, but for their sake, and any possible fans out there, i will never be a zim-zam. i will never be in a cock show. i will never give or sell them material, and will only attend their shows as a lesson in what no to do. i won't even look online to see if they have a website, much less link to them. in whatever form, baskar forever, do or die.

i could use an actor, but never a zim-zam.

rumsfeld says that he's going to save 5 billion a year by closing military bases around the country. congress just passed an "emergency" spending bill (not officially part of the budget) to finance the wars on iraq and afghanistan. talk about supporting our troops. let me just clarify... though i think the commander in chief and his warmongering cronies are a bunch of spineless thugs willing to put others' lives on the line in order to further their own selfish ends, i have nothing against individual soldiers. i don't hold being in the military against anyone. i'm not going to fight a war (now, a revolution... hmm), so i respect that they're willing to do so. i must say that uprooting families and putting people out of work (civillians too) is hardly to be considered "supporting our armed forces" as those assholes are so fond of declaring.
what really pisses me off is that republikkkans can deficit spend till the cows come home, but let them cut five bucks out of the budget at the expense ofthe citizens, let them cut taxes to increase the growth of our deficit, let them firebomb a pork project sponsored by some demokkkrat, and suddenly, they're financial wizards leading this country in the right fiscal direction.

i threw up at work today, presumably from hangover stomach. that hasn't happened in a long time, and i'm not proud of it. i'm blaming my first boilermaker (a fine drink for the stouthearted, but a wee bit scary...) and the other ten or so beers. actually, i blame the chicken, cheese and bacon biscuit i bought at quiktrip this morning. after that, my day was swell. i didn't eat anything for the rest of the workday, so needless to say, unloading a container of spanish wine was fun.

sorry i haven't written recently, oh my (6) readers, but i wrote some jokes, some sketches, and some other shit in the interim.

fuck bush.

minneapolis? dana? is that you? you in mn... give me a shout.

we went to see the baseball game yesterday (cardinals/padres). though the series went three games to one, the one game we went to was 15-5 cards. in fact, siouxs! and i have only seen the cards lose once in numerous trips to busch stadium (cardinals management: season tickets may be sent to...).
i spent a lot of money this weekend trying to get my frankenstein's home computer to play city of heroes. it does, and now i find i'm not very good. don't you hate it when things happen like that?
oh yeah. bill frist, republikkkan senator from my own home state, seems to want to be president. for all of those who give every politician a chance until they know something about them, don't trust bill frist. he is a lying scumbag who has never once done anything for "the little guy" that makes up 4o% of tennessee's population. he's trying to play the role of the hardliner now, which i hope he keeps up, if only to take away those moderate wishy-washy votes that dubya was able to steal by seeming human (like a human with significantly diminished brain function, but a human nonetheless, as opposed to the humanoid lizards that the bushes, cheneys, frists, and delays, et al, really are. someday they will show their true form and rule mercilessly for hundreds of years, unless we spread their brains on our nations interstate system to dry.)
strange weekend.
strange morning.
strange blogger, i know.
fuck bush

i'm not exactly sure why i'm posting right now. i'm pretty down and don't feel like sharing with the world (all ten of you) why i'm down on a website i hope to be well trafficked. i hope everyone is well.
g

in case you were wondering, george w. bush is a liar. i agree that social security needs to be reworked, but in my opinion (which matters precious little in dc) we should divert at least a third of our defense spending to non-military aspects of our budget. that said, perhaps republikkkan voters remember w saying that he would not cut social security benefits when he was campaigning. now, he says that he will be doing so, but only for those taxpayers who can afford it. he reassured the old folks and the aging folks by saying anyone born before 1950 would see no difference in their benefits whatsoever.
i'm all for those who can afford it tightening their belts a little to help everyone who can't; hell, what kind of semi-anarchist/quasi-communist/moderately anti-capitalist would i be if i weren't. however, it is still the middle class who will end up paying for the bulk of this anyway. since every retiree currently receives the same amount of benefits (give or take a little) from social security, the middle class (who outnumber the rich) will end up giving up more than the rich, even though the rich can afford it more. this whole line of bullshit was tailor made to avoid raising the limit on what payroll levels can be taxed. (not that i really know a lot about tax law, but my mom is an accountant, so here's a rough idea as i understand it. payroll taxes must be paid by businesses up to a certain level of payroll, let's say up to $100,000 per employee taxable income. if an employee were paid more than $100,000, no payroll taxes would need to be paid on the amount over $100,000. trust me, this is primarily a tax sheltering mechanism for the well to do, not a small business owner protection.)
instead of making the wealthy take a little hurt, he's swinging at the little guy and the middle guy again. i don't much want to go to prison, so i'll continue trying to tell people about it instead of doing anything about the root problem, but if anyone were to make a few deletions from the rolls of the republikkkan party, i would not be too upset. i might throw you a party. hell, if i ever try to hold political office, i'll declare a holiday for you. someone, some nutjob with a gun (i'll temporarily lift my usually anti gun stance), please?
skullfuck bush.

apart from stlcardinals.com, several great websites done by people who read this blog, food and beverage websites, and a few flagrant tributes to utter geekdom, i realized i just don't know that many interesting websites. it may well be that i just don't surf with the empty head the advertisers want me to, or perhaps it is that i truly have managed to empty my head to the point that i can't even think of anything to search for (or even better, i'll end this sentence with a preposition, just like every other independant clause so far if i want to). anyone know a website i have to check out? let me know. i have a short list of politically motivated sites i occasionally see, but am at a loss for entertainment. i think i'm up to five once in a while readers now... where should i surf?
by the way, fuck bush

welcome, dr. von crankenhaus (or so i think)...
busy weekend... a few updates. go see kung hu hustle, as it is not only a good kung fu flick, but also hilarious. played laser tag for the first time in several years hefore the movie, and remembered how much fun sniping tiny kids can be... fast eddie's bonair is much more lively on a saturday night than sunday afternoon, but no one was eating. still couldn't find a table for an hour... fucking middle aged bastards (go back to your "w" stickered truck adn let me have a place to sit and eat my food). great cards game yesterday, almost saw a triple play in person, but as it turns out, it wasn't... barbecue went swimmingly, all food cooked to perfection. i'm still trying to wake a few brain cells up from their weekend's rest, so i apologize for the poor sentence structure.
start your week off right: fuck bush and all of his dirty, dirty republikkkan cronies!

welcome to the chaotic imaginings that are gthedamned, ms. wolfe... hopefully, you'll check in more than the one time this morning

well, it's been a long week, but if i can make it through today, i'll enjoy the fruits of my semi socialist forbears known as the weekend. i get to see a cards-astros game on sunday, and do next to nothing on saturday if i can manage, so that should prove to be the first real weekend i've had in roughly three weeks. good god, i can't wait.
congratulations to the chocolate goddess... her law and order performance outdid dennis farina's, and his name is in the opening credits. can't wait to see the aol spot.
until later, peoples, fuck bush.

obviously, they went with the mercedes... dignified, classy, conservative, but most of all "deutschland, deutschland, uber alles..."

at this moment, there is an ecumenical council working on a seemingly impossible task. they will discuss pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, and weigh the merits of various candidates carefully, for the choice they make will have wide ranging ramifications for the rest of the world. there are no cardinals on this council. the group to which i refer is made up of altar boys from the archdiocese of duluth, minnesota, who are charged with the sacred task of selecting a new popemobile.
italian cars were long the standard for the popemobile, but have since been scrapped as they require hordes of mechanic priests (not an easy thing to find) to keep them running. the duluth council have narrowed the field to bmw, mercedes, lexus, infiniti, and the chevrolet ssr convertable pickup truck, which by virtue of universal agreement (and possibly soon to be church decree), is fucking sweet.
the new popemobile will of course have to be retrofitted with many papal options, from shroud of turin print seats to the holy water cannons in rear (guaranteed to ward of tailgating demons and pagans of all stripes). the question remains: will the new pope want to drive the new pope-mobile, or should the plexiglass dome be reinstalled? (most agree that the dome would totally lame up the chevy ssr)
the altar boys have pledged to decide soon, meeting every day after school to debate the merits of their own favorite choices. so far, they have revved the diesel engine once, creating a puff of black smoke signifying that the decision has yet to be made. the whole world awaits the day when a small addition of water to the fuel of a regular unleaded car gives us white smoke, assuring a grateful populace that a new popemobile has been chosen, and there is once again order in the world.

i haven't posted in a week. we have a big trade show coming up, and things have been a little hectic. i will try to get back to regular posting for those of you who actually read this.
why can republikkkans make money disappear and get away with it? an independant who at sixteen once lied to his mother about "what he was doing in there" would come out of the republikkkan spin cycle as a kitten raping monster, but halliburton can overcharge the gov't nearly three hundred million dollars without reprisal? have you noticed how hard it is to get a scandal to stick lately if there's a republikkkan in the driver's seat? sure, they may well sacrifice tom delay, but his offence (at least the one they caught him for) isn't even as odious of some of the things that are getting swept under the carpet. there's speculation that a conservative leaning newspaper columnist, who was paid to promote the no child left behind act (lies, through and through) only made two of the eight ads he was contracted to do, but then kept the rest of the money. newspapers are for sale, like everything else, yet people read them as gospel truth. tv is pap for the mindless, but of course tv never lied to you.
sometimes i can't believe i still live in this country. i love it in principle, but in current practice... good god.
i'd also like to say that i just love the word "odious." it really rolls off the tongue (if not the keyboard).
fuck fuck fuck that odious son of a bitch bush

returning thoughts from an unexpected trip home...
took a wrong turn (or rather, the lack of a correct one) on the way down. i was listening to the baseball game, which we lost, and siouxs! was catching up on much needed sleep, and there may well have been other mitigating circumstances, but i stayed on 57s instead of switching over to 24e. priceless moment: the following two pieces of dialogue were one right after another, but hardly a true conversation based on their independance from one another s: "where are we?" g: "sikeston?"
my grandmother is a remarkable woman. i wonder sometimes if she has ever allowed herself more than a few minutes of emotion at a time. sometimes i think that i am the successor to that strength, though i don't have it the way that they (my mom has the same thing going on) do.
haven is still cute. i know by now that this is common knowledge, but i feel the need to mention it every time i experience it firsthand. seriously, when that kid smiles at you, you can't stand up. he is currntly a ladykiller. i don't know what to expect from him when he gets older, but if he could do it all right now, he would be up to his eyes in women. (to be fair, his eyes are currently about two feet off the ground.)
i didn't think i was going to get too emotional, and for the most part, i didn't. i teared up briefly when i saw little thing of flowers from haven pinned into the casket. earl, my step grandfather never had any children of his own, and was in fact, only married for the first time when he was seventy plus years old. haven was not his only step-grandchild who was really a baby when they met, but they did form a certain special bond. when earl didn't recognize my grandmother (he had alzheimer's), he still knew haven, even if not his name. the saddest i got at the funeral was from worry about haven and how he will deal with this whole thing.
hung out with laura and jonathan on friday night, though not as much as i might have liked. harley was there, and since i haven't seen him in a few years, that warranted some catching up. he was also in the best mood i have seen him in in years, which was good to see. i also finally got to see connie, who is still as connie as ever, though her husband and her children are regulating her medication a lot more than they used to (probably for the best).
that last paragraph made no sense except to a very select few of my readers who have ever been home with me, or for (hopefully) laura and harley, both of whom i urged to check out bastardskaramazov.com. i will try to kep theings more universal in the future.
i'm watching the cards game, so i'll end here. we're losing 8-0 to the fucking phillies. what the fuck. (fuckbush)

i've been posting very regularly for the past several weeks. there will be a short break in this, as siouxs! and i have to go to a family funeral in tennessee. i hope the rest the of the week is uneventful (for me, at least).
until soon
g

game one. i am going to be breathing cardinals today through friday, when the birds come back home. it's really kind of absurd how much of a baseball fan i've become. growing up knox vegas style, there were the knoxville blue jays, later changed to the knoxville/tennessee smokies (and were, at least then, a stl farm club), and when i was younger, we used to go to bill myers stadium to watch some fine minor league ball. if i saw a total of six innings in the perhaps dozen games i attended over the years, i would be amazed. i didn't know what to watch for, and subsequently didn't care too much about the outcome. i was mostly preoccupied with the "bad part of town" in which bill myers stadium sits (i think they tore it down), and fellow fans. i was also entranced by the sometime mascot (for minor league baseball, as far as i can tell), "the famous chicken," who was famous, apparently, on the virtue of being both famous and a chicken. if the chicken's website is to be trusted, he is also famous for being from san diego. how exactly i made the transition from caring more about the antics of a man in a chicken suit than the game being played to the rabid cardinal fan i am today is a story best left up to my therapist/psychiatrist/warden some day.
on a totally unrelated note, without ever having been to a 4h meeting, i think i have guessed what all those h's stand for. here's my list, but don't correct me if i'm wrong: horticulture, husbandry, home economics, and ho's. if that isn't the real 4, i'll eat my hat. more specifically, the beef jerky hat my cousin made me in 4h.

the final four is in the stl, and all i can think about is the away opener for the cardinals tomorrow. as you might have guessed from the last several posts, i am not the huge college basketball fan many make me out to be (i've heard one story that i am a fourteen foot tall 968lb duke fan; not only is this preposterous on a size basis, as there's no way i've pushed past the 935 mark, but also a true laugh that i would like my devils blue. i much prefer the standards of red and black, with the occasional pastel demon thrown in "for the ladies.")
but holy shit, there's about to be baseball again for the next six months... if it weren't the day after daylight savings time day (the bad one), i would hardly be able to keep still. well, that, and the beer marinated tissues.
i barbecued scallop/bacon kebabs last night. they were phenomenal, but i think next time i may have to melt some cheese over them to get the non-kosher triple play. would it have to be pig cheese, or will any old mammalian dairy product do? to anyone in the know, please advise.

i say "fu-uu-uu-uu-uck bush!"
and then shake it like you caught it on fire

failing that, just worry about the fuck bush part.

mitch hedberg and the pope... guess which one i'm more upset about.
i don't mean to be crass, and if anyone who reads this post has a problem, feel free to write me on a comment or an e-mail, but the pope was an old guy already. he wasn't bad as popes go, but his insistence on continuing the prohibition of roughly one in five people worldwide from utilizing birth control is positively cruel.
that said, back when i was a youth growing up in the southern baptist church, i was a pretty big jp ii fan. there were definitely some concessions to common sense made while he was on his watch.
i need to take a lesson from that howler monkey and get back to the funny stuff if i want to keep all three of my readers. thanks to statcounter, i have a decent idea of who you are, but even then it's more guess than anything else. as best i have been able to discern fom the info given to me by the good people (or robots) at statcounter, the bulk of hits coming to this blog are here by accident. many of them seem to be doing research on either the apache chief geronimo or the black panther elmer "geronimo" pratt and find little old me, far less revoutionary, though in no way embarrassed at the association. the rest of you, my visitors, seem to actually know me and yet somehow you still want to know the details of my life and hear me ranting about politics. perhaps you don't, but in any case, you're still looking out of habit, and i thank you.
by the way, i'm adding a new link (here, if i can't get the template changes in quickly enough). one of the only reasons i still pick up the riverfront times, a once decent free weekly run by the most liberal guy in the stl now turned mass produced mtv-ish bunch of porn and real estate ads interspersed with dick and fart jokes about local aldermen, is ths cartoon, which is a pretty good source for real information as well as a good "i think i'm gonna throw up at the realities of living in the u.s." kind of laugh pretty much every week.
i really need to work on my sentance structure. the only way to follow the sheer number of independant clauses and such in that last sentence would be to diagram it. i won't diagram it for you, but maybe if you asked siouxs! really nicely...
goodbye, mitch hedberg. you are already missed.

a letter to Michael Schaivo

she is gone. her suffering (or total lack thereof) has ended. your suffering is probably greater now than anyone's. the politicians aren't done, but now is the time for grieving, and moving towards closure. be strong. there are those that will still speak ill of you, and will continue to sanctify your wife, but right now is your time. her parents will have their grief as well, but they are the ones who stood in the way of life. your life, ours, and hers. hers had ceased to be a life fifteen years ago; everything since has been a personal battle for you and those who would villify you. it is good that you, her husband, the man who stood by her side, even though you could no longer receive anything from her in return, were there for her in her time of dying. you were the one who chose to love her and spend your life with her. now her life is finally, completely extinguished, and the fight is over.
do not think that they are done using you. in our current state of twisted hyper-morals, there are those who still see you as a way to take the attention away from their own, far less humane and more sinister actions. there are those who will continue to use this woman, your wife, who once brought you joy, to further their own ends. they are powerful, and will likely succeed in their aims, if only because they are capable of such ethical gymnastics as would baffle the average good person. do not believe them. you are a good person. you were a loving husband, acting on your wife's wish, and as such, you deserve to be called a hero. it obviously wasn't an easy decision, as it took you ten years to make. it is the bravery that we show in making such a decision that makes heroes.
if you believe in such, believe she is in a better place. in whatever case, remember that her life has been no life at all for the last fifteen years, and that now she is at peace. though it comes from a religion to which i personally do not subscribe, there is truth in the requiem "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." whether there is creator or a grand series of occurances that have put us here, we are all heading for where we came from.
while others use you and your suffering for their own soundbites and talking points, grieve, and remember what she was like those fifteen years ago. soon enough, time will go on, and the lawmaker/lawbreakers will have their own fresh injustices to cover afresh. you will be blessedly forgotten when the true criminals are once again swimming in their own foulness.
i don't claim to understand what you are feeling. whatever they may say, no one else understands it either. each persons grief is his or her own, and every situation is different. continue to be, and your life can continue.
know that there are those who reconize you to be the hero that you are, and may you have peace.

j m judd

two posts in one day...
paleontologists in montana say that they've found soft tissue (blood vessels) inside a t-rex bone. i just heard about it tonight. i just tried to find something about it on the internet, but the only people who had something to say about it were a bunch of creationist assholes saying that it proved their "theory" that the earth was only a few thousand years old. they also took a freak occurance and ran with it, saying that the scientists also found red blood cells and hemoglobin in the one. this is not true. i'm posting now in the hopes that my blo will come up in a google search, because there needs to be at least one dissenting voice. just doing my part to keep the christian fundamentalist in their place (which is church, not the internet, or schools, or courtrooms, or the white house). go back to sunday school, churchy, and believe whatever you want.

this is all i am going to say about terry schiavo (at least today). when dubya was governor of tejas, he signed a law stating that people determined to be in a persistant vegetative state whose families cannot pay for continued treatment are to have their feeding tubes removed. (i don't often imbed links to blogs of people i don't know, but this gentleman had all of the facts i needed at the top of a google search results list, so thanks, Mark A. R. Kleiman.)
there's going to be a draft. i don't care what the politicians and officers say, there is going to be a draft. i'm glad i'm jsut six months away from being too old to get drafted. i suppose i'm also glad that my stepbrother michael volunteered for the marine corps rather than being drafted, if only on principle. at least as a volunteer, he stands a chance of getting to pick his area of service, or so i am led to believe.
the drive to kc yesterday wasn't so bad. i got a pretty good lunch out of it, anyway, and got to hang with kingston for a few minutes. i like to tell people that kingston is such a good friend because i can tell him the same stories over and over again and he never remembers that i've told him before. the man has no event memory whatsoever, and he is fine with that. he can tell you every spec of his old gr6 motorcycle (or whatever; i'm not a bike guy), but doesn't remember how many times i've been to kc since he moved there (it's 3, if you're curious, which you only would be if you're kingston [and if you're kingston, you've long since forgotten that i write on this blog]). what a guy. i miss that dude.
so, fuck gw bush, and tom delay, and jeb bush, and i hope at least one bush daughter has the syph. (wow, that was just mean for no reason... but i'll bet they think that daddy's a good president, so they deserve it anyway.)

lucky me. i get to drive roughly ten tons of truck and wine across the state, empty it all out, then drive back. last time i did anything of the sort, i had to find out once that such a truck is more nimble than i would have though possible. i also found out that it is less nimble than i needed it to be later that same journey, when i nearly tipped it over. i am watching out for that one turn, no doubt, but the rest of the drive will feature rain and assholes (or so i assume about the assholes).
getting my day started twenty minutes earlier than usual tends to throw me off for the whole day. let's hope that doesn't hold true today, or someone might have to die.
fuck bush

barbecued yesterday. i'm starting to get tired of grilling the same old burgers and chicken. it isn't that they aren't good, it's just the experimental cook in me wanting to do more. these may well have been the most unimportant two opening sentences of any post to date.
i realized yesterday that i can't actually make the claim that no one i know (approximately my age) is dead. there was a guy i knew in tennessee, ben (his last name eludes me at the moment). ben was an interesting guy. i can't say he was my friend, but he was something more than an aquaintance. i met my best friend back home in high school, but we weren't really that tight in high school. i started hanging out with her when i started going to rocky horror, and it was through this group of people that i got to know ben. ben never cleaned up the cat boxes, so his apartment was a little bit frightening. it was the sort of thing you could get used to, remarkably enough, but god forbid you ever had to much to drink or smoke or some such and had to sleep there. ben had a fucked up past by the time i got to kow him. his mom died of cancer over the course of several years, and i know that he was already depressed before that. because his mom was a nurse, she had access to all kinds of pills and such for her pain, and in the years after her death, ben became a fairly avid pill popper, (as far as i know) out of the stocks that she had in reserve. i tried some pretty freaky drugs over at ben's; when he was in a generous mood, he would lay out a veritable buffet of intoxicants for all of his approved guests. he also had a large collection of swords, which we would occasionally break out and fight with when we weren't too messed up, and a few times when we were. he was able to afford all this stuff partly on the insurance money, and partly on an advance that he had received for a sci-fi/fantasy novel he had written. he worked for only about a year of the four or five i knew him. the publisher for his novel sent his manuscript back and asked him to make a few changes, which he absolutely refused to do. he ended up keeping the several grand in advance money, and never did anything else on the novel.
ben hung himself a year or two ago. his depression had gotten worse, and i think there was som romantic entanglement involved. i remembered ben yesterday because i got a "red dwarf" disc from netflix; ben had the entire run of the series on vhs. i can't say that i miss ben, we just weren't that close. it was quite a sobering thought, however, when i realized i had forgotten him when i wrote the last long venture into the past.
sorry this was such a depressing post.
bush is a fucker, cheney's a monster, and diggity-don rumsfeld needs to be poisoned. (note: secret service, i won't be poisoning anyone anytime soon, even if they deserve it.)

i was looking back the other day at a few of my posts from years gone by... first of all, it's really hard to imagine that gthedamned is a few years old at this point. the main thing i noticed is that i have turned this almost completely into a political ranting page, which is fine, but back in the day as it were, gthedamend was more personal. there was a time, particularly during my last period of unemployment, when i posted frequently about my day to day goings on, rather than my reactions to the country and the world we live in. while i am not going to cut out my leftist agenda by any means, i think i need to bring back a certain element of geronimo back to gthedamned. that said, the only political thing i am going to say in this blog is that we really need to start taxing the wealthy more if we ever plan to get this country fixed (or even just stop its decline).
there are a lot of people who i went to college with and a few from high school that i have been thinking about lately, wondering what has become of them. from time to time i hear rumors that so-and-so moved to this city, or this asshole got married, or whatever. as yet, i haven't heard that anyone was dead, which is a good thing, but i'll lay odds that someone who i once considered a friend is dead now (and i'm not talking about people who were grown when i was growing up, but people approximately my age). i guess this is coming to mind because siouxs!'s ten year class reunion is coming up this year, and mine will be next year. i also went to the doctor monday for the first time in roughly ten years, so i'm just feeling this sense of a decade. i'm not sure what it means.
anyway, before i ramble off into infinity, i have a request. i want to hear from people that i haven't kept up with as well as i might have liked. if you are someone i know (which, no doubt you are if you are reading this) and have e-mail addresses of someone else i know, or even just information about people from our mutual past, send them to me, drop me a line and fill me in, or something. or don't. see if i care.
much love to all, and sorry for the sappiness.
fuck bush.
g

i like ranting about politics. i love baseball. it would seem to stand to reason that i would like the congressional hearings on steroid use in mlb a lot more than i do. instead, i can't stop thinking about what a waste of congressional time and taxpayer money this is. no, i don't think that baseball players should use steroids, and i don't think anyone who does should have a chance to get into the hall of fame. i think baseball itself needs some serious internal work to make it more enjoyable for everyone instead of purely profitable. this kind of thing is the reason for the commisioner of major league baseball and all of the various functionaries therein.
baseball is called america's pastime. i've never heard of a time when that meant the government needed to take a hand in straightening out the kinks. if there were sport that the government were going to take an interest in, one would think that it would at least be international (and don't even talk to me about canada; if our world series were truly open to the world, we damn sure wouldn't win it every year). does the house of commons ever interfere with british league football? does the king of spain ever overturn a jai alai final? of course not. i'm not calling for a separation of sport and state, i just don't want to pay for it.
this is all because that jerk-off is a former team owner, isn't it? is that what he means by "ownership society?" fuck bush with a louisville slugger (i'm sure there's at least one slugger from louisville willing to take one for the team like that. or rather, give one for the team.)

well don't i feel like the advertisement whore...
i just sent out a bunch of e-mails (all individually written, not a form letter) to tell people to go to the bastards karamazov website which is going well and has some video posted now. i realize that maybe posting on this blog will garner one more potential surfer, but that's still a reasonable percentage of our total hits. please give it a look, as jah has been working really hard on it, and i for one think it's pretty damned funny.
fuck bush.

well don't i feel like the advertisement whore...
i just sent out a bunch of e-mails (all individually written, not a form letter) to tell people to go to the bastards karamazov website which is gong well and has some video posted now. i realize that maybe posting on this blog will garner one more potential surfer, but thats still a reasonabl percentage of our total hits. please give it a look, as jah has been working really hard on it, and i for one think it's pretty damned funny.
fuck bush.