Army of Fun

2003-07-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

While some snark about the (in)frequency of postings to this labour of love that is Army of Fun, or AoF* to those in the know, I could just as well snark back well at least I have a life that doesn't revolve around the latest pop culture event the otiose programmers of mass media drop into our laps to entertain us but I won't 'cause my life, full though it is, has been sucking hard lately. Who would have thought divorcing your 19 year old Mongolian wife and having her kicked out of the country would involve so much financial, emotional and legal investment. I mean, it should be simple right?

Okay, so in retrospect I shouldn't have married her in the first place. Seriously, most men (especially of your mittel-european variety) can go to Asia and content themselves with dipping their pink quivering wicks into the wet slits of Indo-Chinese fleshpots, but me, oh no. First I have to head towards Mongolia (cold, flat, windy, booze made of fermented horse's milk with a dash of the same beasts urine)

2003-06-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Army of Savage

Hello All,

I was going to use this blog to make fun of Michael Savage today as part of the Neal Pollack sponsored Appropriate Michael Savage/Savage Savage Day. However, due to a certain proposal from a European advisory body with no power to enact it's proposal in Europe let alone in the States I have instead been forced to turn AoF into a forum for Michael Weiner himself. So with no further ado let me introduce today's guest blogger, the Savage Weiner.

Savage here my fellow reactiono-patriots, and if you think you seen me at the heights of my righteous anger before let me tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet. Apparently a bunch of bleeding crotch homo-libs have decided that they would mock me today for exercising my right to quash all opposition with frivolous lawsuits. Let me set the record straight.

First, it is not true that I am a card-carrying NAMBLA provocateur. NAMBLA does not issue membership cards. Next up it is not true that I "blow" dogs. Take a good look at that picture and you'll clearly see that I am the passive, though dominant, recipient of a pleasurable genital tongue bath. Turning to the alleged revelations contained within my recent email to Neal Pollack it should be clear that Mr. Pollack has quoted me selectively, purposely misconstrued my statements, and inserted his own speculations into my statements. While I have in fact sodomized many a dusky Messican lad I have always fairly traded whatever quantities of Tequila and money were necessary to gain the boys' co-coperation. Nor is it true that I had my way with them on this side of the border. I love Mexican Teenage Boners as much as the next man but they should stay on their side of the border lest they grow into threatening Mexican man penises ready to implant their mongrel seed into the blonde hearths of all-American Prom Queens. As for the many, many slanders made by this "blogger" I shall not even deign to answer them. He is a known intellectual and breakdancer who forges friendships across racial lines.

Looking at all this I have to ask myself, Mike, why all the anger? And I answer myself it just goes to show how evil, heartless and uncaring the queero-socialist lobby is. I mean have any of them bothered to get to know the real Michale Savage. Have they even wondered why a man would change his name to Savage and vent his ugly feelings in whatever forum will pay him to do so? I doubt it. If they did they might not be so smug in their judgments of my opinions. Do they know what it's like to be born to retarded blues loving parents? With a micro-penis and testicles that will never descend? To spend the first fourteen years of your life as a very ugly girl named Etta Weiner? Then to suddenly sprout a thick forest of body hair and be subject to painful micro-erections constantly chafing against your tight cotton panties? To have to change schools and change your name and to give up your dream of being the petite if ugly wife of a Japanese sumo wrestler? Wouldn't you have a penchant for changing your name after that? Wouldn't you be filled with rage that the only way you can masturbate is with a vaseline smeared Q-tip? Wouldn't you resent the queers and pinkos and shrill feminist and dark foreigners with their unquestioned identities (queers, pinkos, shrill feminists and dark foreigners, respectively) wrapped easily and solidly around them like the arms of a sumo wrestler? Well, wouldn't you?

Yours,
Michael Savage
(nee Etta Weiner)

2003-06-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, no blogging in a good long while, but what can I say? It's summer and I've been enjoying the late sun and evening breezes as I lay across the mesh of my hammock of youthful lust with beautiful women by my side, or at least dreams thereof, too much to sit down in the house and tap-a-tap inanely upon the keyboard. So then, what is it that's drawn me away from my lemon-spiked wheat beer and my imaginary, at least so my friends and neighbors say though not one has come up with cold-hard proof enough for me yet, squadron of tiki-torch wielding belly dancers? Nothing short of a crisis of state let me tell you. That whole pack of lies about WMD? US soldiers dying at the rate of like one a day plus who knows how many Iraqis? The wholesale destruction of our nation by reactionary maniacs? Nope, it's not any of those.

I know I run the risk of sounding glib, but try this on for size: Arnold Schwarzenegger could be the next governor of California. And not three-and-a-half years from now but this very next one coming up. The quick backstory is this: the CA budget blows, just about nobody is fond of the current governor, and the crazed wing of the CA Republican party funded by shystee senator-now-governor-wanna-be Darrell Issa launched a recall effort which looks like it might succeed. All that's bad enough and stupid enough but then there's Arnie sitting by and watching the disaster and threatening to throw his hat into the ring following the opening of T3 July 4th weekend. Aha, I said to myself. There's our out. The out for all right-thinking (as in correct not as in conservative) in California and across the nation. I beg all readers of this modest blog: PLEASE, PLEASE go see T3 on the opening weekend. Arnie claims he's busy with publicity, but it's pretty clear that after his last few disasterous releases he's just waiting to see if he still has a movie career left and if he doesn't...well then get ready for campaign speeches with the future governor pleading for the opportunity "to tehrminate ta bujet deficit like I tehrminate Maria's libido ev'ry night". So please go see T3 and save California from itself and the rest of you from us. Please.

2003-05-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

Even when lashing out in fear it is very poor form to kick a baby. That's today's lesson, and I know it seems obvious but I recently had to relearn it the hard way. I didn't set out to do it, I mean it's not like I was feeling a little anxious and just decided to kick a baby to take my mind of things and feel like a big man for doing so. I think it's pretty obvious I could take most babies down pretty easily, the possible exception being those profoundly obese babies you see every once and awhile in the weekly world news and that's just cause I'd wear myself out punching the cooing, obscene sack of fat before I could do any real damage, so it's not something I need to prove I can do. On the other hand, and let's remember that hindsight is twenty/twenty, it's not like this baby presented a clear and imminent danger to me (aside from the threat of infection some bodily excretion-borne illness commonly present in the burbling little disease vectors), though there was some confusion on this point. But enough with the explanations and excuses, let's move on to the story at hand, and I'll let whoever might be reading this judge for themselves.

Tuesday morning was a morning like any other. I was hung over. I was on my way to work. My hair, freshly showered, smelled of strawberries and papaya. I was on the first leg of my commute, the part that actually involves my legs, keeping up a good pace despite the feeling of thickness in my head and an accompanying hatred of the sun induced by the previous nights typical overindulgence of red wine. Ah, Syrah, or Shiraz, whatever the vagaries of its spelling I celebrate it, from its heady nose to its fruit-to-long-in-the-sun-but pleasantly-so-and-not-all-sugary-either finish (though in truth I really don't care what it tastes like after I finish the first tumbler), and the Persians who gifted us the grape they first cultivated in the fertile hills of their storied empire. Often when in Shiraz' thrall between the first rush of drunkenness but before the inevitable stupor I write poems to the grape, the wine and its cultivators past and present; poems I won't bother relating to you now or probably ever because to a stanza they are all very bad and largely illegible due to the lack of fine motor control that comes with serious inebriation and the ink smearing splotches of purple spittle that come from me hitting the poems' plosive syllables as I recite them to my faithful cat and advisor in the ways of romance, Texas.

So there I was striding down the street wondering if I should solicit Texas' opinion on my latest coffeshop girl crush while the heavens teased me by briefly, blissfully blotting out the sun only to strip the back the shroud of clouds seconds later allowing the sun's rays to torment me to the fullest when out of the corner of my eye, I have extraordinary peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of something tailing me closely. I stated at the sight but then forced myself to continue on a before. Whatever it was moved in a relentless, inhuman manner and I didn't want it to know that I knew it was there.

I first thought that it might be a vicious, aggressive animal escaped from captivity. Perhaps an Improbably Large and Vicious Mongoose that despite all precautions and safeguards (and note that even ordinary mongooses (mongeese?) are so savagely rapacious that they are normally illegal to import into the States under any circumstance unless they are dead or legless) had managed to burrow its way out of the Improbably Large and Vicious Mongoose Exhibit at the nearby zoo and was now intent on tearing me a part. However, I quickly discarded that idea as nonsensical since I knew there was no such exhibit at the zoo and it seemed improbable that such a mongoose would even exist. Still, what leapt next into my mind was if anything more discomforting.

Some years ago I had fallen in love with yet another coffeeshop girl. A deliciously sarcastic sprite with piles of curly brown hair and eyes that twinkled with all the possibilities in the world behind her stylish glasses. Sadly, while she would give me coffee, naturally enough, and the time of day and even occasionally ask me how I was doing my daily entreaties of marriage were getting me nowhere.

A psychiatrist later told me that a more balanced personality would have changed tact; would have gone in different, les extreme, less absolutist direction; would have in fact avoided the whole marriage thing until a reasonable amount of interest had been engendered on her part.

"Well, duh," I'd said, "I know that now. And, in point of fact, I did change tact."

"Really?" he asked, and lapsed into a silence that lasted for at least five minutes until I realized he was waiting me to tell him how or maybe just to see if I was ready to address the issue or something. I hate when they do that.

"I, uh, sold my soul to devil or at least I tried to," I said.

There was another silence as he tried to gauge whether I was being serious. I was. Finally, he spoke.

"Ah, hmm, and how did that work out for you?"

As it happened, it didn't work out so well, and I can't even say that I wasn't warned.

I'd pushed all of my furniture, there wasn't much of it, to one side of my studio apartment; I'd drawn a circumscribed five pointed star on the floor; I'd incanted; and then nothing happened so I waited; I'd gone to the kitchen; I'd gotten myself a beer.

"Mind grabbing me one of those?"

I spun around. Horns, mottled harlequin skin, cloven extremities, demonic ungenderable genitals...okay, then. I gave him, unfamiliar genitals aside and protuberances that could have been called tits if tits could look like that aside its voice had a timbre I associate with masculinity, a beer.

"Are you the devil?" I asked stupidly or so I thought.

"I'm a devil," he said.

Satan himself, once Lucifer," I tried?

"Mmm, not so much," he said.

"Oh," I said, and I must have sounded and looked rather crestfallen because he started explaining himself straight away.

"The Lord of the Dark Pit is very busy you know. Fixing election, corrupting small-town youth, spontaneously creating and destroying chemical and biological weapons, and Hollywood is just a constant headache. However, I am a fully accredited and authorized agent of the Master with the power to contract any deal as I see fit."

"Oh," I said, "Cool."

"I like to think so," he said.

"Well, then," I started, "there's this girl, Eli..."

"I know want you want."

"Okay then you probably also know that I'd sell my soul..."

"It's not worth it," he said.

"Excuse me," I said.

"It's not worth it," that very slowly emphasizing every word, indeed every syllable which admittedly in this case amounted to the same thing.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I thought we were here to make a deal, you know the standard thing, I sell my immaterial soul you give me what I want here on the material plane."

"I know," he said, "and I'm telling you it's not a good deal."

"See, I don't get that, I mean as a minion of evil..."

"Fully Accredited and Authorized Agent."

"Alright, agent, whatever, but an evil agent. So why do care whether the deal is good for me? Isn't screwing me over part of the deal?"

"Yes and no," he said. I rolled my eyes.

"Don't roll your eyes at me boy," he said.

"Dad?" I asked.

"Don't be stupid," he said, "but I am where he picked it up. Look, we're going in circles," which was literally true incidentally as we'd be walking along the circle that enclosed the pentagram on the floor and I was starting to feel a little dizzy, "and this dialogue isn't going anywhere so let me cut to the chase. First, you're really over-esteeming this girl and second we don't even want your soul at this moment. Don't interrupt, there's still a deal to be made. See, your soul is a melancholy one and we've got too much melancholy right now. We've got melancholy up to here," and he lifted a cloven hand to what might have been called a breast if breast could look like that.

"So what we need for a deal...You're familiar with the theory of humors? You know blood, bile, phlegm and so on? Well, what we're lacking right now in the Fiery Dominion is anger and anger is centered in the spleen."

"Wait," I said, "there's not enough anger in Hell?"

"Yeah, I know," he said, "it's weird, but everyoneâ€™s just been so depressed lately. There's none of the passion, none of the fierce joy, none of the fire figuratively speaking, of course, and..."

"Wait. So you want my spleen? That's it? I mean it doesn't even really do anything does it?"

"Nothing important for you. In the sense that you could live without it. As for us, we've got this thing. It's sort of like those plug-in air fresheners except we put in spleens and it generates this splenetic aerosol that wafts about and gets the anger back up to approved levels. And hey, we don't even need the spleen right this minute. We'll just, per standard deal with devil protocol, consummate the bargain at some point in the future. So what do you think?"

Well, I thought it sounded great at the time and I said so.

"Well, it sounds great," I said. "My spleen for the girl of my dreams? What's not to like?"

"Just to be clear," he said, "that's not the deal."

"What? You get something more than my spleen? I mean besides the anxious terror of never knowing when exactly you'll come to collect it?"

"No, it's just...I've already told you, it's the girl. She's just not all that."

"Huh," I said.

"Yes, she's attractive, and she's got a delightful little aspect of evil that endears her to me almost as much as it does to you but she's not, as they say, the one. At least, not for you."

"Oh, I see," this knowingly, "this is one of these little demonic tricks where you set me up to fuck up my end of the deal myself."

The devil in my studio apartment opened his mouth to say something but al that escaped was a little exasperated sigh.

"Believe what you want," he said then, "people always do."

And, as far as the negotiations, went that was that. The actual contract, printed it would seem on some kind of thin leaf of skin (what kind exactly I don't know as it seemed preferable not to ask) then materialized from nowhere like the demon himself. All that was left was to affix our signatures though to my disappointment this was done with ordinary ink and not blood at all. Blood, as it turns out, tends to fade and flake off during the course of a modern human lifetime and in recent years the illegibility of many a blood signature had led to many long, drawn out and, from Hell, Inc.'s perspective, unsuccessful metaphysical lawsuits.

After everything was taken care of, we stayed up, the demon and I, and we chatted for a while. Mostly about what hell is really like I think, but thanks to the beer and all the mystical energy fogging my mind I don't remember any details clearly, and at some point I passed out.

I woke up feeling groggy, wondering if, like a disappointing conclusion to a television program story arc, it had all been a dream. My suspiciously undone belt, suspiciously unbuttoned pants, and a suspiciously placed cloven hoof/hand print dipping below my waistband suggested not but given that nothing seemed missing, or transformed, or mysteriously, additionally hairy (though admittedly in my case this would take quite an addition to be noticeable), the only real way to make sure it wasn't a dream was down at the coffeeshop slinging espresso for some obscenely low hourly wage. Eschewing a shower, why bother if it was all true, I walked the four blocks to the store at a record speed.

I approached the counter. I ran my hands along the sides of my pants. I ran them through my hair. I asked her for a latte. I asked her to move in with me. She gave me the most quizzical look I've ever seen. She said yes.

And, it turned out pretty much the way the demon had said it would, which is to say not well at all. The sarcasm I had thought so delightful when dispensed in discrete helpings became absolutely intolerable when I faced it eight hours a day, sixteen hours on weekends from morning to night. It was about the dozenth time that I heard a deadpan "You call that fucking," that I decided to leave. This, mind you, after what I can honestly describe as reasonably good fucking and given the vocalizations and body spasms, I'm sure she should too. It's not that she was kidding; or rather she was but entirely at my expense and in a mean-spirited way. And, it was the same with everything else; a hundred different takedowns for a hundred different situations; 10,000 lacerations of my none too pure yet still affectionate heart; some familiar to all relationships, some of a character I would imagine associated with arranged marriages which our situation kind of resembled, many no doubt unique to her, bred and nurtured in an exquisitely sharp mind that for reasons unknown (to her) had lost control, hell been enslaved by, one of it's most basic drives. But this isn't Scenes From A Malefically Induced Cohabitation. No, the point is that I left, and that leaving wasn't enough, not by a long shot.

It's possible that may have neglected to mention that the exact form of my proffer to the mephitic minion with whom I negotiated, and thus the terms of the contract itself as I, with trepidation characterized by much eye squinting and a gagging nausea, later verified, called for the woman in question to love me for ever. Was it brimstone or crack I had been inhaling in that devil's presence? Whichever it was, it had certainly compromised the soundness of my judgment; the upshot, or downshot as the case may be, of which was that I could not get rid of her though Lord knows I tried.

When I moved out, the biggest clue you can give someone that it's over short of hiring someone else to fuck you on the sofa, she basically set up camp on my new doorstep. She was there when I got home and it was an odd morning that she wasn't there when I left. So I sold everything that owned that was sellable through ebay, had shippers pick up the pieces one by one until my apartment was essentially empty, abandoned everything I couldn't sell on various floors of my apartment building, so that one day I could simply walk past her endless watch on the apartment stoop and never return. I moved across town. I went further than getting an unlisted number I got a cell phone.

She found me anyway. I don't know; she must have followed me home from work the most obvious method of tracking me down. I knew this had been the flaw in my plan, and so I had spent the month after my surreptitious move inventing ever changing and ever more intricate paths home. Hopping on the el and then a sudden dash at the second, third, fourth stop through the chiming closing doors, up or down the escalator whichever the necessity may have been, into whichever bus was leaving immediately for whatever destination, and then disembarking randomly again and sprinting down a nearby alley before hailing a cab for the last leg of the journey home, or ducking into a bar in that final interstice of my convoluted commute where I'd drink myself silly while splitting my worries between (1) being abruptly confronted by Elise for that was the name supernaturally sear upon the unnamed skin of the contract (in German Gothic script, natch), (2) whether the odd girl at the bar who would fix her glance with mine was a collection agent for the Stygian Syndicate that technically owned my spleen and if tomorrow would be the day I woke up in an unfamiliar room lying on a bloody mattress in acute pain, the spleenless victim of a literal surgical hatchet job, and (3) whether my plainly evident affection for alliteration add a pleasing poetic patina to my literary efforts or were instead an annoying, insufferable affectation. But it was all for naught. As I've said, she found me anyway.

One night there was a pathetic yet vindictive knocking upon my door if a knock can ever be said to be anything other than rhythmic or desperate. Already knowing who it was I looked through the fisheye lens in my door to behold the onetime object of affection standing in the dim hallway looking as conflicted and possessed as she had for the last six months and would be forever hence I suppose. I didn't open the door or say anything. What was the point? I stood there watching her until she turned her back to the door and slumped against it whereupon I did the same thing. That's how we spent the night, back to thick slab of wood to back, her waiting for me, me waiting for her to go away which just wasn't going to happen.

The next morning, sighing excessively no doubt, I quietly packed two bags and exited my apartment via the fire escape in a klutzy, stumbling fashion nearly breaking my leg in a process that would have been funny if the leg in question hadn't been mine. Four hours and many hundreds of dollars later I was on a flight west to a city I hadn't been to in years and with no good plan whatsoever. All I had wanted was love and now I was an exile stalked by a demented lover and with a contract out on my spleen that could come due any day. It was hard to imagine what I'd done to deserve all of this.

And so it was on a Tuesday morning, a Tuesday morning increasingly unlike any other that I found myself stricken with visions of impending attack by beasts, natural or superly so; either way intent on tearing my precious if heretofore under appreciated internal organs from the relative safety of my torso. I swear I'll never poison my innards with booze again if I can just get to work safely, I thought. But that was a lie and I knew it before I had even completed thought. Besides, false promises and sob punctuated whinging wasn't likely have any effect on slavering predators or demons come collecting.

I stifled my impulse to wheedle.
I stifled my impulse to run.
If a fight was what was coming
My opponent would surely get one.

I turned quickly and I hoped unexpectedly, and in a paroxysm more of fear than of bravery I lashed out my foot in a tremendous kick.

And I kicked a baby. Or, more precisely, I kicked a pram or a baby carriage, one of those old fashioned sorts that the baby lies down and has a bonnet that can be and in this instance was pulled up to protect baby from the elements. Though in truth, and just to belabor the point, it would be accurate to say that that I kicked the baby in the same way I could say, well, to be precise I kicked the hammock you were in while you who were in the hammock could say, well, to be accurate I kicked you, because when I kicked the carriage the baby, with a wretched "mwaaa" rose out of the carriage and up into the air. Time, to repeat a useful cliche, slowed to a crawl.

Just as I was convinced the baby would be thrown out of its carriage and dashed upon the ground it reached the peak of its ascent and fluttered, almost gently it seemed, back to its resting place. At which point I would have breathed a sigh of relief if I hadn't noticed out of the corner of my eye, my senses at this point were preternaturally keen, the mother tense up ready to strike.

I threw my hands up to protect myself at the same moment she lunged magnificently, miraculously, easily clearing the carriage, her long, curly, nut brown hair streaming behind her, her hazel eyes flashing with anger and horribly, sinkingly familiar. The long skankish nails embossed with glittering red acrylic hearts, those were new, as was the tattoo (Gothic German lettering (also distressingly familiar) reading Liebestod and entwined by serpentine flames), visible thanks to her haltertop, which ran beneath her collarbone. Oh, she certainly looked worse for the years that had separated us up to this moment but there was no doubt about it. Elise.

And after the lunge, after the recognition, but before the impact, in that slow-fast bullet time moment, I managed to sum up my feelings about the whole situation succinctly if not manfully.

"Oh, poopy," I said. And then she tumbled in to me and we tumbled to the ground in a tumble of flailing hair and flailing clothes, flailing hands and flailing accessories.

We tussled, which her meant that she sat on top of me and punched and scratched and hurled a melange of invective and endearments while I fended off the blows and the raking nails and tried not to roughly to push her off of me. As for the rain of invective/endearment spittle that pelted my face, well, there wasn't much I could do about that short of the left cross I would never deliver thanks to my inability to transgress the somewhat sexist rule that one should never under any circumstances hit a girl. So I vigorously squirmed and batted her hands away especially whenever she managed to grab a hold of my hair since the idea of her banging my poor wine-thickened head against the sidewalk while declaiming her undying, and alas unkillable, love for me was particularly appalling.

It took awhile but eventually she did expend the maddest edge of her mad energy. The pummeling trailed off and naturally we started making out. She because, well, I think I've explained her motivation in some detail and me because it was better than, you know, being beaten. When I thought she was really into it, transported perhaps, tongue everywhere, an absurd amount of slobbering, I tried to make a break for it. She bit my lip drawing blood for the trouble.

"Ow," I said.

She said something incomprehensible less out of love-addled incoherence than that her teeth were still buried in my lower lip.

"Ewise," I tried, "whub a subpwise."

"Hah," she said.

"Bastard," she said.

"Yeah, well, uhâ€¦"

"Shut up."

"Okay."

We eyed each other for a bit, warily on my part, on her partâ€¦well. Cars whooshed by. I imagined their occupants staring at the tableaux as they passed but I wasn't about to take my eyes off of Elise to confirm that. The baby wailed. The baby! I'd almost forgotten.

"What's with the baby," I said?

"What do you mean?"

What did I mean? Actually, it was a good question. It occurred to me that I should have meant is it, the baby, okay? Shouldn't we, you know, check on it? I mean, I'd just kicked it, but that wasn't what I meant at all.

"Erm, whose baby, I mean, besides yours," I asked, "is it?"

"Our baby," she said, "it's our baby, silly."

Yikes.

"Our baby," this preceded by an authentic gulp. But, come on, I hadn't seen her in like three and a half, almost four, years, and there was no way this kid was anywhere near that old unless it suffered from some rare, perplexing and downright disturbing form of retarded growth, though in the unlikely case that that was true it would probably live to be like 320 years old. I tried to splutter such to Elise but she pre-empted me.

"All of my babies are our babies," she said.

There was absolutely nothing to say to that. Given the entire 320 years of her, our, wholly retarded baby's life span I could come up with nothing to say to that. Instead, I goggled and tried once again to struggle out from beneath her. She smiled a condescending smile and kneed me in the balls.

"Urgch," I said. "Christ, you're even more vicious than I rem-ahck," I started and then stopped saying as she dug her garish nails into my arms.

"Darling," I said trying a different approach. Her eyes if not her grip instantly softened. "Maybe we should check on our baby."

She nodded and slowly eased herself off me, not however lessening her grip on my left arm in the least. She escorted me over to the carriage. Inside was a terribly cute, if plaintively wailing, Eurasian baby. She rolled him over and pulled up his little shirt. As far as we could tell he wasn't even bruised and she pronounced him no softer than usual. I tried asking her about the baby's origins again, this time a little more obliquely. As it developed she'd met someone in her travels (the ones where she was searching for me) who "totally reminded" her of me. They got together for a while "since he was even more weak-willed" than me (like she was one to talk given that her will was totally bent by my nefarious machinations) and amenable to playing J. Fyrste/Elise dress-up/roll playing games. Given that I wasn't Asian at all I didn't quite get how that worked, but I decided that it was better to leave that whole line of inquiry alone.

"So," I said, "what do you want?"

"You, of course," she said.

I knew that, but, but what?

"But what exactly?"

"We're going to get married."

Oh no, we weren't.

"That's nice," I said. "But right now I've really got to get to work."

"I think our future is more important than that."

"No doubt, but how am I supposed to support us if I don't get a job."

"I don't trust you," she said.

"Fair enough," I answered. "How about this? Why don't I give you my keys? House, car, everything. I won't be going far without those. And you can even call my job, verify I work there." I offered her my phone. "You'll know everything. How could I, er, get away?"

She thought about it a second. Then she took the phone.

"Okay," she said, "but I'm gonna call."

"Okay."

She had to let go of me to dial the number.

"Promise not to run," she asked?

"Promise," I said.

I let her get about three numbers in and then darted across the street through a fortuitous break in the traffic. Home free, I thought. Sure, I couldn't go home, or to work, and my car was lost to me, but I figured that even though she hadn't shown herself to be a paragon of motherhood so far there was no way she'd abandon her kid. All I had to do was get across the street and keep running. But, I'd under-estimated her. I'd reached the dead median of the median when she plowed into me with a brilliant tackle. She put her shoulder right into the back of my left knee. As I did an ungainly, unearthed pirouette I wondered where she learned that, and then I crashed to the ground directly atop a water pipe jutting from the ground. Something cracked with a snap or snapped with a crack, whichever came first, and a wave of pain with a whitecap of bile washed over my body ending in the back of my throat.

"Oh god, my spleen."

"What?"

"My spleen. I think I've ruptured it." So this was it, my comeuppance, the settling of my debt in writhing, wrenching pain on the median strip of a suburban thoroughfare. And wasn't a ruptured spleen potentially fatal? Didn't it loose its payload of internal poisons into the bloodstream leading to some kind of toxic shock? Oh, I needed medical attention. And what if they just tossed my spleen into the medical waste? Could my demonic partners get to my spleen before it was incinerated with all the other offal and gore and fats. If they didn't would they want my soul or worse some body part I wasn't inclined to part with. I started crying, tears and huge whimpering gasps just sort of sobbing.

"Elise," I said, "call 911. Help me please."

"No," she said.

"No," I said! She looked at me with a mixture of concern and desire, pity and, and like she finally had me where she wanted me.

"Say you'll marry me."

Now, I was really sobbing, no two ways about it.

"Please," I said.

She pushed down on my chest. The pain was almost unbearable.

"Ask me to marry you," she said.

"Duress," I cried. "This is duress. Whatever I say doesn't count."

"Quit your whinging."

"Oh, god."

She pushed a little harder.

"Okay, okay," I said. "I'll marry you. Call 911"

"You have to ask me," she said.

"Elise, will youâ€¦"

"No, wait," she said and dug into her pocket. "This is my mother's engagement ring. Now ask me properly."

Painfully, resentfully I took the ring.

"Elise, will you marry me?"

"That wasn't very enthusiastic."

"Elise, will..."

"Start again. And we'll hear nothing now or ever about duress, right?"

I nodded.

"Elise, I'm in a lot of pain here," I said, but I mustered every ounce of fake enthusiasm I could and said through a clenched smile, for which the descriptors rictus and gritting would be too mild, "Elise, will you marry me?"

"And make babies with me?"

"Yes, as many as you want. Ten babies, dozens of babies, a whole passel of babies, I'll feed you fertility drugs and we can have like seven babies a year for the next ten years."

"No, stupid, you ask me if I'll marry you and make babies with you. And, anyway I only wanted two or three more."

Oh Christ. I seriously considered death and/or eternal damnation, but pain will out.

"Elise, will you marry me and make babies with me," I asked?

"Yes," she cried genuinely ecstatic. She got up and started doing a dance of triumph. A pretty lewd dance of triumph, but at least it reminded me of one of the reasons I'd originally fell for her.

"Elise," I said, "my ruptured spleen." She kept dancing.

"Elise, if you don't call 911 you'll be dancing on my grave."

She toned down the dance a touch and dialed the phone.

"Hello? Yeah, my fiance," said my fiancee, "he fell down and got hurt and keeps going on about rupturing his spleen. Yeah, I don't know, I guessâ€¦"

She went on and on, not describing my injuries anymore but about our miraculous engagement and our fabulous wedding to be. She did take a moment out to tell me help was on the way. I sighed with something that wasn't quite relief and tried to will myself to pass out. It didn't work but it felt better just to keep my eyes closed. I figured I'd just do that a lot from here on out.

2003-05-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hello Internet, it's me, J. Fyrste. I know it seems like I've been neglecting you lately, your pings, your packets, your switches, servers and routers, but that's just not true. I've meant to post to you lately, in fact there's a post I've been working on but you see it involves a moral lesson and since I'm very bad with those it (the post) has grown to epic lengths as I try to avoid the moral implications of it, and in point of fact I think I've found a good way around them (the moral implications) so I should be wrapping things up soon.

But a discussion of dithering and morality is not why I come to you today Ten-Thousand Myriads Interweb. No, today I come to you because it is my birthday and I would like to share it with you. You see while other people celebrate their birthdays with cake and small conical hats and paid for by their parents live-sex shows in their kitchens (for easier cleaning, I mean really, it's a real pain to get live-sex show stains out of carpet), I celebrate my birthday in my people's traditional manner: with an obscenity of booze and the speaking of bitterness about relationships past and present.

For those of you who may be reading this and may feel compelled to object along the lines of say, well J. as the only Chuckchi/Micronesian/French Canadian you or I know of this strikes me less as a vaunted tradition of your people than say a pathetic display of an immature, ill-formed personality, I say, shut up Dana. I'd say that during the three years of our relationship you should have learned that bitching about the day of speaking of bitterness only meant that on that day more bitterness would be spoken about you. Who are you to decide that my traditions are misogynistic? I suppose when I speak bitterness about Calvin and our experimental college years that's homophobic, too, eh? And where do you get off labeling things this and that when you were always trying to Euro-centrically trying to shove birthday cakes down my gullet. My peoples traditionally didn't have wheat let alone icing. We had yams and pigs and reindeer and semi-poisonous mushrooms and poutine and you always had to go rubbing that in my face with your delicious cakes. What was that about, eh? And while I have to admit that there may be something to the fact that eighty percent of my non-voluntary break-ups have occurred on my birthday as you pointed out you didn't win any points with me when your next announcement, on my birthday no less, was that you were breaking up with me. You were always so fickle. And you know, that's not even the worse thing about you as far as I'm concerned. No, the worst thing, the thing I'm still really bitter over was your inexplicable affection for "Dharma & Greg," easily one of the worst TV shows ever. No, wait the worst thing about you was that we only had one television so I had to watch that crappy show with you, and while I've done a lot of regrettable things in my life those hours spent watching the "wacky" antics of Dharma and Greg are the only ones I'd like to take back. You stole that time from me Dana, you stole them with your bad taste and I want them back.

Ah, well, I've got plenty of time for this. Thank you readers for indulging me in my birthday celebrations. I'll be like this all day albeit with progressively more slurring. Happy Birthday of Speaking Bitterness to me.

2003-04-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of months or so I've noticed a bit of a extra lift in my step, an easing of the saturnine grip on my withered, pharoah-hard heart. Maybe, I thought, it was the pleasant California winter the best I'd ever experienced and so much nicer than the winters I'd spent over the last few years in overcast, dank, though oh so atmospheric Seattle or the bitterness, both emotional and weathr-wise, of Chicago which we shall never speak of again. And then, maybe, it wa the growing length of the day. The invigorating sun splashing down on my shoulders from early morning to well into what only a short while ago was the pit of night. Or, even, dare I hope a fundamental shift in my psyche toward a more positive mental attitude.

Well, today I discovered that it was none of these things. Today I discovered that it was not the lightness of the sky nor a intrinsic lightness of my heart. Today I discovered that such foolish hopes are better left to protein deprived cultist or the gullible consumers of Successories if indeed there is a difference between the two. Today I discovered that I owed my sense of well-being to nothing more than advances in consumer technology, for today I left my iPod at home.

I didn't intend to do it. It was a simple oversight. I was distracted after reading something very funny and entertaining, and left my house with out it, my ears naked and exposed to the world. And, I discovered, or more acurately re-discovered, that the world and its inhabitants suck. Suck like cretinous, sub-morons trying to pass off losing lottery tickets as winners to the clerk at 7-11 while I'm trying to buy cigarettes and still make my train; suck like middle-school students who take up the entire side-walks with their, oh, I'm such a big man talk when what the little knee-biters really deserve, and it would shake the cool of them in a second, is a good cop-raping; suck like the ignorantly gleeful, or perhaps pained, cries of the occupant of a passing sped-sled; suck like the blank-eyed sad faced BART commuters of whom I usually manage to take no notice; suck like the guy who sits across from me playing some game, grating buzzes and nail across blackboard bleeps; suck like the homeless guy who tries to cadge one of my hardwon cigarettes; suck like you; suck like the book I'm reading for my book club (okay, maybe iPodlessness does not as much as that book); suck like this blog entry; suck like my own undrowned out thoughts.

Well, as god is my witness I shall never leave this house iPodless again. And apparently I could even upgrade to a new and somehow even better iPod. One that stores up to 7500 songs yet still only has the battery life to play 32 (and that's just 32 not 3200), yet still is somehow a giant consumer electronic product leap forward. But on the other hand, fuck Steve Jobs. And fuck you all, you nattering boobs. You all suck.

2003-04-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

What I'd like to do here, what I'd really like to do is make some snide observations about Mr. Personality like how the show would be better if all those guys with their Mexican wrestler-like masks were actually Mexican wrestlers or, as they say in Texas, "Messican Wrasslers," but I can't because it's Earth Day and, well, Earth Day is special. It's the day we, each in our way, celebrate Earth in all her ecological goodness.

I personally celebrate Earth Day by making sweet, sweet love to Mother Earth. So what, you think, on Earth Day everyone makes sweet, sweet love to Mother Earth. Well, not like I do because I mean I make love to the Earth in the biblical sense, as in cleave unto, as in I fuck her, dip my stiff wick into her yielding quick, and I have done so every year for the last thirteen years.

Ah, the joy of youth, the blooming of adolescent pistils and stamen, the first rush of conscious sexual desire, the rising of the sap in the spring. How well I remember those innocent days of perpetual boners as we called them at the time. It was an Earth Day of beauty surpassable, perhaps, only by the beauty of Denise L_____ whose sweet face and recently noticeable breast had led me to notice her recently in a new and exciting way.

That wonderful day I was lolling by the creek near the big rock we called "Big Rock," lying there in a patch of pleasant smelling grass, digging my hands into the soft soil, reflecting on Denise L_____'s abundant charms, enjoying the sunny skies and the spring breeze blowing over my face and my bare arms. Naturally, what with the care-free weather and my increasingly racy thought about Denise L_____, I soon became aroused. To alleviate some of the, er, stress I rolled over onto my belly and pressed myself into the ground.

However, mere pressure was not enough, and when I pushed my hands into the soft ground, in a spasm of pained pleasure I thought, why not. I dug out a small hole beneath me, pushed my pants down to my waist, squeezed the earth tight around my penis and went at it; I humped the Earth with the mad abandon only a teenage boy could. It was ideal, it was superb, it was ecstacy. I've never had a partner as wonderful as our big blue marble was that day, and I think she enjoyed too, at least if the 7.1 Richter Scale earthquake and killer tsunami off Sumatra were any indication. Throughout the following year I just couldn't get that day out of my mind. So the next Earth Day I renewed my carnal knowledge of Mother Earth, and the next year, and the next, and so on up to and including six pm PDT today.

Still, I think the whole Earth fucking thing needs to be taken to the next level, so I call upon all readers of this blog as well as everyone else in the world to join me in the first Annual Motherfucking Fuck Mother Earth Earth Day Gangbang. Together, I'm sure we could convulse the planet in a cataclysmic, The Core-esque paroxym of pleasure.

2003-04-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

I wish people would stop asking me if I'm pregnant. I mean first of all, I'm a guy. And then, there's just no way I'd start showing so quickly. Third, when you're thinking about making a comment on my appearance you should ask yourself: is it really that funny(?); do I really think I'm the first person to say such a witty, witty though obvious thing(?); and is it really appropriate for me to make any jokes whatsoever at this point considering that Iraqi kid who got his arms blown off(?). Fourth, it's all water weight so back off. And finally, it's all this girl Keitha's* fault.

See, I've been seeing Keitha for a little bit now and she's into all kinds of, shall we say, weird action, and I, at heart, am a capitulator so, after a couple weeks of her describing how much fun it would be (for her, I guess) to do all these things with (meaning to) me, I capitulated, though it must be said without any enthusiasm.

So. Okay. Well, I could go along with the bondage, I could take the hot wax, I could even stand the fisting (well stand isn't the right word, but I could ease myself out of bed after twelve hours curled up in the fetal position). No, it wasn't until she told me that she wanted to inflate my ball-sack with saline solution, a fetish so outlandish I don't even know how people refer to it, that I got standoffish again. But, having gotten me to go along with everything up 'til that point, and I haven't gone into the half of it, she figured, rightly to my chagrin, that if she kept after me about it I'd give in on this too.

So she'd ask me about it everyday and everyday I'd say no, until:

"Will you do it?" No need by this point for either of us to mention what "it" was.

"No."

"I'll get my breast done."

"I like your breasts now."

"You'll like them even more. There'll be more to like."

"I like them so much right now that it would be impossible for me to like them more. I regard your breasts with my maximum capacity for breast appreciation."

"That's so sweet."

"Yeah."

"So..."

"No."

"Well, how 'bout..." and here I could tell she was trying to think of some sex-capade we had yet to get to that I'd be into.

"Forget it. We've done everything."

"Hardly, everything..."

"Everything that I'd be into."

"Not a threesome." It was so obvious I was stunned I hadn't thought of it. But, I recovered, I thought, quite nicely.

"Girl, girl, boy, right?"

"You had something else in mind."

"God no, I mean, no."

"So..."

"Yeah, I still don't know." She still hadn't been clear on exactly how much liquid we were talking here.

"I'll clean your kitchen."

"In addition to the threesome, right?"

"Of course."

"Still..."

"I'll clean it for two months."

"Well..."

And that was about that. If only I'd known what I was letting myself in for.

Not much later I found myself strapped into the super-sized gyro-wheel that dominated Keitha's bedroom.

"It's for your safety", she said. Neither of us, she assured me with an affection grin, wanted to see any permanent damage befall the family jewels.

"Any permanent damage," I asked.

"Shhh, now," she shushed as she fitted a ballgag into my mouth, "No need to whimper." And with that she gave the gyro-wheel a push flipping me upside down. I didn't see how being upside down making me any safer, but between the blood rushing to my head and the unparalleled ball-shrinkage I was experiencing I wasn't going to argue about it. As Keitha busied herself just out of my sight my anxiety kept increasing as I fretted over what kind of gigantic syringe based horror she was up to.

She came back and knelt down next to my head. Did I mention she was naked too. She's very appealing when she's naked. She held up the syringe she would shortly plunge into my tenderest of regions and smiled a "that's not so bad after all is it" smile. To myself I thought, no that's not so bad after all. I mean the bore of the needle was larger than I would have liked but the barrel itself was slender and not at all the capable of injecting the monstrous volumes of my imagination.

She stood up and inserted the needle into my scrotum. I won't lie to you. It hurt. But, the pain passed soon enough. I can get through this I thought. Then Keitha disappeared again. I wanted to say, can't we just get over this, but of course I couldn't say anything.

I heard the door of her closet swing open and heard the squeak of casters being pushed across the hardwood floor. The four lateral legs and erect pole of an IV stand rolled into view followed by Keitha's bare feet. I lifted my head up as far as it could go. The look on Keitha's face then is probably best described as maniacal. She held a plastic sack of saline solution that was four liters if it was cubic centimeter. I made that muffled keening sound that I'd heard a thousand times in a thousand movies. She hung it from the stand and attached some surgical tubing to it's valve. She looked down at me.

"Get ready for some real fun," she cried. She attached the other end of the tubing to the syringe. She squeezed the bag. I saw stars. My balls inflated like a balloon being rapidly filled with saline solution. I felt them slap heavily and wetly down against my stomach. The pain was exquisite. I passed out.

I was still inverted when I awoke, but the pain was gone. Keitha was passed out on the floor in some kind of post-orgasmic but most likely non-post-coital bliss. I yelled through my gag until she awoke. When she did it was with the sweetest most sastified smile I'd ever seen on woman. Then she broke out laughing.

"Nnghh, nnghh", I said. Through her guffaws she managed to remove the ball-gag.

"What, what," I asked?

"Oh my god," she said, "You look pregnant." Somehow the saline solution had leached out of my ball-sack and settled around my middle. I wished I could pass out again. She flipped me upright and released me. I waddled over to the full-length mirror and collapsed in hysterics. I didn't just look pregnant. I looked way pregnant.

It's not quite a month later and I still look pregnant though the swellings gone down somewhat. I think sleeping in a cocoon of Saran Wrap has helped me sweat a lot of it out and I've never gone to the bathroom so much in my life. Keitha and I are still together and we've had our three-way and she says we can have more. But I still think I'm going to break up with her. As soon as she's discharged her two months of kitchen cleaning. A man can only put up with so much.

*I know, I know it's an awful name. Clearly, her parents Keith and Martha are idiots. It's not Keitha's fault.

2003-04-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

Alack and alas. I'm tired, as I've been developing a life lately, and so I'm not going to go into much here and now. Go read G. Beato on celebrity and pop-culture and Iraq, paying particular attention to the dearth of cool entertainment in Iraq. I've been on in real life myself about the serious lack of even rudimentary marketing skilz. I mean those videos of Saddam exhorting Iraqis to futiley resist the onslaught of the American Socio-Cultural Borg (oh, Iraq, you shall be assimilated and you will come to wallow in the joys of media-saturated hyper-reality, too bad the last episode of "Buffy" will have aired by the time that happens but the DVDs will be available) are laughably bush league. Sub-Community-Access even. I mean the backdrops look as if they'd been made by a bunch of developmentally and behaviorly troubled fourth graders and the editors clearly need to take an extension course at Saddam Community College. So despite all the deaths and that whole thing about them not actually having the chemical or biological weapons (the casus belli for those of you with an attention span longer than a week, by which I mean everyone in the world excluding most of my fellow Americans), I have to think that we really will be enhancing Iraqi lives once we teach them the power and the glory of sweet packaging.

2003-04-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

I am as a god. Army of Fun is now averaging like eighteen hits a day and I never look at it anymore myself and barely even post to it. And still you come. And are often disappointed. Yet still you come.

To celebrate this monumental mile-stone I believe I'll contribute more to the economy by buying if not more stuff then more expensive stuff. Hopefully, my actions will help stave of the coming world recession. To start with I think I'll get myself some better quality home-furnishings. This means I'm going to stop buying stuff mail order from Cracker Crate & Bigot Barrel, or as it's known in TX, WI, AL and DE FUBUFANNDBANND (For Us By Us For Aryan Nazis Not Darkies By Aryan Nazis Not Darkies (and yes there are intellectual property issues)), an operation out of Idaho.

Now I know several of my pretend long-time readers are asking how it is someone with such a resplendent, pan-global ethnic and national heritage, including Lunda, Yanomami, Icelandic, Ethiopian, Polynesian, Dutch, Micronesian, Ainu, Italian, Hmong, Saami (that's Lapplander for the less aware readers out there), Yoruba, Turk and Lichtensteiner could buy home furnishings made by Nazi children and their doughy visaged Nazi moms. Let me provide the confused with a quintessentially American answer. The stuff is cheap and of reasonable quality for the price. But what about all the horrible things I'm supporting by buying CCBB products. Well, I also own a car and my trust-fund consists entirely of stocks in aero-space corporations (sky-rocketing by the way) so what are you going to do. Don't get me wrong, I won't miss the lamps that spout anti-semetic rants in a bad fake German accent, or a couch that occassionally goes on and on about pickaninnies, or the end tables and their constant warnings to be alert against the rising tide of the yellow peril. Plus it's always nice just to have new stuff.

And okay I'll admit it. This upcoming buying spree not just or, even really, about saving the economy. What with the SARS and the impending outbreak of World War Three (following the US invasion of Syria and Syria's subsequent attack on Israel) we're all going to be dropping like a bunch of Iraqis in a van so why bother saving.

2003-04-01T07:53:00.000-08:00

Celine Dion keeps appearing to me in dreams lately. Now, normally that statement would be total bullshit like 74.7% of this blog, Army of Fun, usually is, but this time i swear it's true. She drives into my dreams in swooping, elegant ess-es just like she does in that commercial of hers they show right before movies to get everyone pumped and primed, or perhaps the other way round, for the upcoming entertainment, except in the case of my dreams her painfully accented messages to me are the entertainment.

She comes to me in my dreams and asks questions like, "Are you ever going to post about your trip to DC?"

I say yes, it's just that I'm very busy of late and my notes are kind of confusing and I don't know if i should be witty or serious.

"Bouf," she says. "That is not the issue. i do not think you should ever write it. It is un-American and therefore evil."

I point out that she is in fact un-American being Canadian and all, and in any case she can't stop me.

"Sacre blew, I am more American than you are," she says. "Who fled oppression into the waiting arms of opportunity, eh? Who now lives in vegas the true spiritual capital of the united Statesers? As for my ability to stop you, i have more power than you can imagine. as a warning I shall cause your shift key to intermittently stick."

And, intermittently stick it does. and now, I am very afraid. But in the dream I stood up to her bullying.

'Oppression?' I said. 'you're a canadian.'

"Poutine head,' she replied. i don't know what that means but i will guess it is insulting. "Poutine head, have you never heard of socialized medicine or of the restrictions on imported american entertainments? What need have i of communist health care as I am inexplicably wealthy? What need have i of restrictions on entertainments when i am so monumentally talented? Now i keep my American money in an off-shore account and i am free."

Celine took my silent shock at such stupidity as assent.
"See, you have no answer. I have made you a better american. Now you will not so cavalierly mock our nation during wartime. also I command you not to take part in the mocking of the Cheney's sponsored by the execrable tea-bagger Neal Pollack. i don't know how you could even contemplate it considering your friendship with them."

"But they're funny," I say. "Dick, he has like heart attacks all the time. He eats sausage made from babies and washes it down with their blood and is always surrounded by pace-makers. why, I even have it on good authority that he recently died for what would have been for good if Bill Frist hadn't been able to re-animate him using techniques first perfected on kitties. Of course as a side effect he now tries to skull-fuck everyone he sees with his push-button penis, but every procedure has it's down sides.

"And Lynne. Well i happen to know from personal experience that Lynne is a serial groper of young men and boys. I was at a party at their place once and i had to go to the bathroom. well, lynne was outside the bathroom and claimed it was occupado. then she grabbed my package with her right hand and pressed her left against my bladder. I asked her what the hell she was doing. She said it was just a little fun, a little joke. i said hah-hah Lynne very funny now let me go. She said she would...but not until she felt a little dribble. Ha-ha Lynne I said, I'm not pissing myself for you. she said she wasn't joking anymore and pushed harder. Luckily someone else came to use the bathroom just then and she let me go, telling me to just go use the can, there wasn't anyone in the bathroom actually but she'd get her dribble sometime. When I got downstairs my good friend george p (bush) pulled me aside and said 'hey man, never go to the bathroom unless you can see lynne around. she's into wierd stuff.' 'Like grabbing your dick and pushing on your bladder," i said? 'Yeah, how'd you know...oh, sorry.' 'yeah,' I said and told him how it went down. 'You're lucky man. Once she gets her 'dribble' she'll rub up against you til she climaxes. and by the way, i'd avoid the silver spring (md) greyhound station if i were you. she hangs out there a lot to get her wierd fix on and i hear it can ger real wet and ugly.' Thanks for the tip Pay', I said cause I often call him that, Pay, the Spanish for P."

Then, in my dream, Celine slaps me.

"That is what I am saying about," she says. "You must never reveal those things to anyone. That is mockery. That is insolence.

"Now sing with me 'America the Beautiful'"

And i do because she's twisting my arm.

Surprisingly we sound pretty good together. Unsurprisingly, I am the better singer. But i get my come-uppance when at the end just as we hit the shining in 'from sea to shining sea' she hocks a loogie right into my mouth.

Fucking Canuck.

2003-03-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

Still working on the Washington Report. In the meantime:

From J. Fyrste's Little Blue Notebook of Distressing and Depressing Realizations, entry: 752

Discovering that you are more or less responsible for the "election" of President George W. Bush because of post-break-up tension with your ex-girlfriend who, as it turns out (though you don't discover this until much, much later), is one of the three fates mortally embodied and her moods change the course of human affairs.

2003-03-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

From J. Fyrste's Little Blue Notebook of Verified Romantic Fact: vol. 1

My love will make you prettier.*

*Objectively so, not just in my eyes

2003-03-24T00:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been gone to Washington DC for the past few days. I just got back. Like just an hour ago. I enjoyed my trip, mostly, but I am very, very happy to be back in the land where people are normal by my standards of normal. So once I get some sleep I'll post later with my pithy and pissy commentary on the whole thing.

2003-03-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI has recovered a valuable copy of the Bill of Rights that had been missing for 138 years, bureau sources said Wednesday.

Attorney General John Ashcroft immediately had it shredded then turned over the scraps to Justice Antonin Scalia who used them to line Justice Thomas' gilded cage.

2003-03-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

So just about as I had reached one of the many local liquor stores on my way home from work--where by the way they recently installed these video monitors in the elevators and this company called in a lame attempt at mild humor Captivate (because the elevator passengers are a captive audience get it) pipes in news and weather and, naturally, ads, and now typically this is of course the sort of thing that--if you've read Army of Fun more than once--you would think would get my dander and my snark up because this website is all about snarky dander when it's not about fey wryness or feigned ignorance, but the thing is it doesn't because no matter how stupid or annoying this whole thing sounds and the Captivate name is (break for breath), the thing is: what else are you going to be doing in an elevator but staring at the door or whatever floor-number display there may be, or if you're me hoping that the white-haired old lawyer looking guys will decide to maybe not grab my bulging crotch today cause they're still cruising on the pleasant (for them) memories of yesterday's ball-cupping (and I certainly must stay that the incidence of groin groping and even crotch eyeing has certainly dropped since the installation of the video monitors); just as I arrived at the liquor store for the day's pint-plus bottle of after-work, destressing beer up pulled a large ice cream trucks containing not just frozen dairy treats but also the three very hot Latinas (with lustrous nut-brown to raven hair and wearing halter tops) that apparently vend from the truck. I slowed down to watch them don their hoodies and I entered the liquor store neck craned just as they dis-embarked and, and that's it. Does there need to be more? What do you think this is Penthouse Forum? If so you are sadly mistaken. The only thing I want to do with girls is smoke a little dhoob and watch some TV. Get your mind out of the gutter, pervert.

2003-03-18T20:02:00.000-08:00

Note: I originally posted this on 8 February 2003 but because Blogger is a buggy piece of shit pain in the ass it appears to have disappeared from my archives. That being the case I've decided to repost it so hopefully it will be archived though a month-plus later than it originally appeared. I just hope it's the only one. I suppose I should check. But what does all this mean for you? Well, it means that if you read it when I first posted it then you can skip it, but if you were not so lucky now is your chance so get to it. JF.

I finally got "Jill" out of my apartment a couple of days ago. She'd been there since early last Sunday morning and she was beginning to smell. Don't get me wrong it's not like I killed her or anything or that she was at all dead in a literal way. But let me start at the beginning.

'Twas, in the Victorian sense of the word, last Saturday night and I had agreed to meet some friends of mine at an appointed place at an appointed time. Naturally, I was little late so, in order to catch up with the others, I had no recourse but to indulge myself in alcohol quite rapidly so as to, as the Yiddish would say, "get my schwerve on". As it happened this also helped orient me to the hipster crowd and decor, so different from the homey comfort I find during my frequent trips to my beloved local Appleby's, which filled me with social anxiety. In no time at all I was filled with the juniper berry milk of human kindness and easily slurred my way through a heated discussion of electro-clash and would have dazzled Derrida himself with my insightful deconstruction of Big Trouble In Little China, the finest motion picture ever made. But the night was not free of mishap, as is often the case when alcohol flows freely down the gullet, and mishap takes many forms from being chased by an irate homeowner after a delirious, delightful roll through his dafodils to rib bruising tumbles down an unfortunately placed stairway. In this instance it was a simple case of miscommunication and an ill-timed cigarette break that led to my friends and I becoming seperated.

Abandoned, I did the only thing I could do. I headed to a dim corner of the bar and ordered another drink. Shortly, I found myself, surprisingly, in a full-fledged conversation a girl.

But surely Mr. Fyrste you say, it couldn't be that surprising for a man as obviously witty and clever and thus attractive as yourself to be engaged in conversation with a woman or, in fact, any number of women. And I tell you friends that this was once true. At one time I was a chick magnet. And, I suppose that in many ways I still am, but things have never been the same since the Incident. The Incident was a turning point. The Incident was unfortunate. The Incident changed everything.

The incident occurred thusly.

She said I was creepy. The term "stalker" may have been carelessly bandied about. That said, all I was trying to do was snap a picture of her and from a respectable distance at that. She objected. She warned me not to do it. I naturally assumed she was just flirting, and called back that this is a free country. She bent down and picked up a fist-sized rock. How wonderful, I thought, I'll get a funny shot of her playfully, girlishly tossing a stone in my direction. I brought my camera, one of those slim, rectangular plastic numbers that slip conveniently into almost any pocket, to the ready. How was I to know that in her senior year of high-school she had been the starting pitcher for her team in the state-wide fast-pitch softball championship game?

Though she later claimed she had no intent to hit me, she threw that rock with remarkable accuracy and force. It crashed directly into the camera, knocking me unconscious while simultaneously launching shards of the shattered camera through my upper eyelids to lodge in my frontal lobes. Two weeks later, when I could understand human speech again, the doctors explained to me that I had suffered the equivalent of a partial lobotomy. The effect of which would be diminished and/or inappropriate emotional effect. The girl in question visited me in the hospital to apologize and explain, as I previously mentioned, that she hadn't intended to hit me, so would I please not press charges. Perhaps as a result of my injury I believed her and did not have charges levied against her. Still, the infatuation was off. The infliction of brain damage is a deal-breaker.

Since then I have had great difficulty meeting women. Sure, they are still drawn to my rakish good looks, but I suffer from an almost insurmountable charm deficit that fails to endear. How could it not when they come out with a clever bon mot and I respond in a robotic monotone easily taken for sarcasm that they are as witty as they are beautiful. Explaining my situation does no good as both brain damage and stalker-like behavior are widely regarded as red-lights.

Nonetheless, there I was somehow holding my own in conversation. Her name was "Jill". She was there with another girl. Because I am an American and therefore look at the world through the filters and structures of pop culture I decided that Jill was meant to be the "snarky best friend," ostensibly less attractive than her taller more carefully put together appearance-wise companion, but still cute and with a wicked sense of humor.

Jill it turned out is a graduate student studying the social construction of female body in light of changing modes of intellectual production during France's Second Republic. She also told me she had not watched television in nearly two years. Perhaps all this explains why she found me entertaining despite my inability to be amusing in a conventional sense.

At some point, her friend excused herself and left. Jill and I stayed on swilling down liquor and chatting away. Come closing time I invited her back to my place for another drink and she acceded. We stumbled back to my apartment. I splashed some gin into a couple of tumblers and we tumbled onto the couch, Jill practically in my lap. She wondered if I had any pot. Yes, yes I do, I said. Can we smoke it, she asked. Yes, yes we can, I said. So smoke up we did, and then she excused herself to go off to the bathroom with a brushing kiss upon my lips.

After about twenty minutes I realized she hadn't yet returned. I found her on the toilet pantsed and asleep. As gently as possible and with an eye toward wedgie avoidance, I dressed her and put her to bed. Then I fell asleep myself.

I remember stirring briefly around eight am or so feeling something was amiss. I was alone and I didn't remember leaving the television on. But the previous evening had left me so discombobulated that I couldn't be bothered to think about it. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

When I finally got up for real I had the unpleasant realization that I was missing one curly haired brunette. It was hard to imagine that she had left since she'd been even more fucked up than I, but perhaps waking up in a stranger's bed had driven her to distraction and flight. Coming out of the bedroom I discovered that no such thing had occured.

There she was sitting on the livingroom floor, transfixed by the television. I don't remember what she was watching. Some old sitcom maybe. She barely took notice of me. Just enough of a turn of her goggle-eyed head to whisper with awe, you have cable. And then she turned her stare back to the screen. And there she sat for the next five days--without sleep as far as I could tell, eating only when I brought her food--but for very occassional trips to the bathroom. I didn't mind at first. It was nice to have a girl around the place even if she just lumpishly sat there watching the television. She didn't care what she watched. She didn't complain when I clicked over to my favorite programs whether it interrupted something she'd been watching or not. She didn't say much. Every once in a while she'd say, wow, this is great. I didn't know if she were talking about a particular show or just television in general. I'd seen this reaction to breaking a television fast before. I'd even experienced myself. The irresistability of its flickering glory. The hypnotic joy of mass entertainment.

Eventually, I got sick of it. She wouldn't let me turn off the set nor would she leave. In short, she was cramping what little style I have. It didn't help that I'm a sucker for television myself. If it's on I'll watch it, and so quickly all my other obligations and plans went out the window. Plus, like I said way back at the beginning of this she was stating to smell bad.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If she wouldn't leave then TV would have to. I went outside and cut off the cable. When I came back in she was banging on the television demanding it to further entertain her. I told her to settle down. The cable must have gone out, I said. I'm afraid they'll have to send someone out. It might, I said, take awhile. But I want TV now, she whinged. I told her not to worry. That it would come back and when it did so could she. Besides, I added, she should go home. I'm sure she had things to go and plus, I said, she was starting to smell really badly. That seemed to do the trick and she came back to her senses and decided to go home.

Oh, what joy I felt when I finally had my place back to myself. Still, she's a nice girl and we've decided to go out next weekend. The paranoid part of me thinks that she just wants to pump me for info about Angel's convoluted backstory, but this could be the start of a beautiful relationship. And believe me, if things go well we're going back to her place.

2003-03-17T20:48:00.000-08:00

Blech Aargh Schtizt Augurgle Aiiieee Blarg Ruh-Roh Threat Level Rorange Glaak Krevell Klaven Urk Let Slip The Transgenic Pigs of War Ahooga Baby Glurk Heip Plahg Moral Moral Moral Moral Moral Clair-uh-tee Yeehaw Urgliop Haauh.....

Ok, just had to get that out. I'm feeling much better now so you can just put down the phone and that syringe full of haloperidol for now anyway. Keep them handy though I could slip into catatonic paranoia or slavering jingoism, hey it could happen, at any time.

But enough with that, eh? These things happen right? It's the human condition no doubt. The fighting, the stabbing, the piercing with projectiles, the burning, the pillaging, the raping, the razing; clearly it's what we do. "Why is that do you think, Mr. Fyrste?" is a question that has never been asked. Luckily, I often have a lot of time on my hands to ponder the ponderable and ponder I have. Not that it took much thinking. Even the most cursory observation reveals the answer. The default mode of humanity is that of dangerous hick.

At one time the entirety of humanity was mired in savage hickdom kind of like chimps are today. Sure, many people look at chimps and think they're oh so cute, but take a closer look and you'll find a shit-flinging, sister-raping proto-hick. Shave a chimp and give him some crystal meth, a mullet wig and a flag to wave, and you'll have a hard time picking him out at Mid-Western kegger.

Anyway, over time a few people clawed their way out of a constant state of benighted lust-anger to lord it over their peers and to invent effete theater-going. Over time technology has allowed more and more people to join the ranks of frou-frou intellectual aesthetes (though even privilege and money and education are no guarantee that any particular individual will be able to rise out of dangerous hickdom (see: George W. Bush, below), but most people remain dangerous hicks. I would postulate about eighty percent, thus I call this theory the "DH-80 Theory" (that's Dangerous Hick-80 (Percent) Theory for any dangerous hicks who may have made it this far).

But enough with the definitions, how about some examples. They're easy to find. Almost any trouble you can ever think of was either instigated by dangerous hicks or by the mobilization of dangerous hicks:

Attila the Hun: Clearly a dangerous hick

The Crusades: Largely made up of dangerous hicks

The American Revolution: Everyone knows that the American colonists consisted entirely of the cast off hicks of other nations

The Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon was of course a Corsican and Corsica is a well known dangerous hick breeding ground

The English Empire: Maintained by unleashing England's dangerous hicks on the dangerous hicks of other lands (see: American Revolution)

World War I: Triggered, quite literally, by a dangerous Serbian hick

World War II (European Theater): Let's just say that it's no accident that Hitler first attempted to sieze power in Munich, Bavaria the heartland of German hickdom

World War II (Asian-Pacific Theater): Japan was doing just fine at joining the industrialized world until their dangerous terroristic hicks hijacked the military and then the entire government

Chinese Communist Revolution*: Say what will about Mao but he was the master of utilizing DH-80 Theory. The whole idea of sending out the cadres to win over the country-side was nothing but applied DH-80 Theory; direct the constant lust-anger of the dangerous hicks at your enemies and the battle is already won (see also: every Commie movement since then)

Colombia for like the last 70 years: the result of a veritable national orgy of dangerous hickdom

Afghanistan: Historically dangerous hicks (the Afghans) are invaded by another group of historically dangerous hicks (the Russians) which somehow results in the rise of a cult of very odd dangerous hicks (the Taliban) who would rather oppress and cover up their dangerous hick women rather than "do them" making them unlike almost every other group of dangerous hicks in the world

West Africa: Hacking off people's hands or just simply hacking them up is an ancient hallmark of dangerous hicks

George W. Bush: Despite access to the best of all things the man is clearly either a dangerous hick or, at best, a wannabe dangerous hick deeply in the thrall of dangerous hickdom, not that it matters

On the other hand it's not like effete theater-goers like myself are necessarily all that much better. We just try to work it out in therapy. In any case, we're all doomed anyway so, whatever.

*You may be wondering why I chose the Chinese Communist Revolution rather than the Russian Communist Revolution. Well, to be honest, I can't actually discern any part of Russian History that isn't all about dangerous hickdom. It's all just one huge continuum of D-H Theory.

2003-03-14T02:45:00.000-08:00

Random jottings. Oh wait, I didn't have to tell you that. This is a blog.

I like my shirts like I like my women (ok, ok, and boys aged 17-21): shiny. Nothing quite sets me aflame with passion like glistening sweat soaked skin especially if the shiny, musky perspiration is co-mongled with the earthy yet fresh scent of the outdoors, a preference which has led to several torrid affairs with mighty calved, tattooed bike messengers, and nothing makes me feel so good within my skin as draping that self same skin in a lustrous fabric. And so in pursuit of the sheen of happiness I have acquired quite a few of these glossy garments, closets full of them in fact. Kind of like Jay Gatsby's very large collection of shirts only faggier. If I were to invite you over to my house and then show you my shirts and toss them around the room in a manic burst of gleeful, giggling self-satisfaction you would probably feel uncomfortable and want to leave, but before you could make your exit--full of embarrassment for me and eyeing me carefully lest in my manic burst of gleeful, giggling self-satisfaction I decide to see what our blood and innards look like strewn around the room--you would note that my room, with all those many shiny shirts falling here and there, looked like an unlikely industrial accident somehow involving a sweat-shop and a Jheri-Curl factory.
****

When I want to peer into the darkness of my soul I just go down to my nearby BART station and jump on the train. I also take the BART to work which is admittedly problematic since that means my commute require a trip through the malefic nether regions of my psyche so it would do my co-workers well to keep me happily gruntled or else, look out! Anyway, as soon as I enter a BART station the sweat of anticipation manifests itself in my pits and begins to streak down the sides of my trembling torso. My jaw slackens, my eyes glaze over, and I leave this world to enter an obscure, befogged reality that I'd say was reminiscent of the films Dreamscape and The Warriors (truly a nightmare world I'm sure you'll agree). But then again maybe I say that just because this guy, who is in both the above mentioned movies, appears to me seemingly in the flesh, kind of like "The First" on Buffy come to think of it, and urges me to take horrific actions like throwing someone else or failing that myself in front of an oncoming train. He works up to it slowly with great patience and what could almost qualify as rational argumentation and then just as the pressure wave in front of the train strikes my body and I can't help but flinch and wonder what it would be like if someone were hit by a train he screams, "Do it! Do it now! You know you want to!" So far I've resisted and David Patrick Kelly/The First spends the rest of the trip taunting me, talking about that time my parents locked me in the shed for a week, and insinuating that my uncles molested me--shuffling me between them like their favorite deck of child porn playing cards that, by the way, featured them molesting me--and reminding me of that time two other boys and I cruelly and maliciously killed a turtle for no good reason (and god, I still feel really bad about that, so way to push my buttons of weakness evil vision guy), and calling me a pussy. He admits that last one, calling me a pussy, is pretty weak on those days when I find the strength to stammer out mumbled objections to him, but he says that if he keeps trying one day it will get to me and then he points out that my bizarre muttering is making the other passengers uncomfortable. "Look how they're all moving away from you," he says. "Why dontcha do something about it...pussy."
****

Finally, some music that I recently came across and really like: Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People

2003-03-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

So, in a couple of weeks, just after the potential deadline on a new UN resolution regarding Iraq, I have to go out to Washington DC to attend a wedding. So what with the invasion most likely then ongoing and all I expect security to be tight and I doubt even my high-level government connections will help me avoid intense scrutiny at the airport. While I look forward to most of the intimacies of a personalized search, I'll happily remove my belt for anyone and the wandings set me all atingle, by the brave men and women who secure our airports, I'm less sanguine about the mandatory body cavity searches required under the Patriot Act if hostilities are underway. Very few people enjoy body cavity searches and unhappily for me I am not one of those people. I've considered the possibility of inserting larger and larger objects into my, uh, body cavity access way in order to minimize the shock and awe of the inspection experience, but then I thought that if my sphincter were too easily accesssible it might arouse suspicion and lead to some further unimaginably invasive searches. So now I'm not sure what to do.

Anyway, that unpleasantness aside it looks like I'm going to get to contribute to the national security and war efforts. Don Rumsfeld rang me up just the other day (I guess our mutual friend Dick Cheney told him I'd be out their way) and asked if I'd be willing to take part in a project vital to our national security. Naturally, I agreed to it. I've done some work for "Rummy" in the past, and though I don't know how my wearing an Hawai'ian shirt, ball hugging red shorts and a fake mustache as I scrub Rummy's toilet while he whistles the theme song to Magnum PI and intermittently warns me in a raspy and threatening tone not to "fucking look at [him]" helps national security, I am firm in the knowledge that Donald Rumsfeld does know and that's all that really matters.

2003-03-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

From J. Fyrste's little blue notebook of derision and insight vol. 4:
In the future everyone will be in pornography for fifteen minutes.

2003-03-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Warning: I'm going to talk about the upcoming war and shit. If you're sick of talk about the war, and I don't blame you one bit because I'm sure sick of it, then just scroll down to the previous posting where you'll find some mocking of the President I wrote a couple years ago but is still applicable today, or if you want some non-political humor, and I won't blame anyone for that either, then click here and read something else I wrote back in the day that makes fun of Ohio, a girl, and, as always, myself. Hopefully, once I've vented a bit I can get back to writing about bears and women of fantastic inherited wealth, or making fun of the nations of the Commonwealth (can you believe they worship a queen?!? by making animal sacrifices?!?), or maybe about that time I was living in Seattle when...no, never mind I'll get to that later.

I am so sick of the war. Obviously, it's a big thing. Deciding to kill people always is or at least it should be. But, to mix metaphors, it sucks up so much bandwidth that many other important things slip under the radar such as every domestic issue from appointments to the judiciary to preservation of the environment to zero job growth. Now I don't think that pushing all that off of the front page is the prime motive for the war within the Bush Administration, I attribute that to other crazy calculations, but it certainly worked out well for them, eh?

I am so sick of the war. My raised-on-TV very short attention span has been taxed to the limit. So I'm starting to feel like jesus christ just invade Iraq and get it over with so I don't have to hear about it anymore. Yeah, that's a selfish and cynical position to take but after all I am an American. And I'm concerned that that's exactly how we, my fellow Americans and I, will feel and act once it all goes down. We'll all just move on to the next thing and the oh so heralded liberation of Iraq will become a drag on the federal budget and some Americans will get killed and suddenly a "friendly" new dictator won't seem like such a bad thing and who is going to complain. The go war crowd will be agitating for the next war and the no war crowd will be protesting the next war, and the failure of a "democratic Iraq" will just be something to blame on your opponents who ever they may be rather than anything most people are interested in pursuing. I mean, Afghanistan anyone?

Oh well, I think I'll just retire to my safe-room. Well, actually my bathroom and while I don't think that sealing up the door and the vents with duct tape and plastic will protect me from that biological or chemical attack (that's not gonna happen where I live anyway), I now have one hell of a kickass make-shift sauna and I could use a good shvitz.

2003-03-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

Look! I'm posting something I wrote years ago because I'm feeling lazy and bitter today. Thank god it's still relevant.

Bushonics: A Viral Meme

Intoduction and Etiology

At first it spreads almost subliminablably. In fact you're barely aware of it taking a hold on you. The first symptoms are indeed mild and you might mistake them for humorous remarks meant to mock the president, and mild slips of your erstwhile nimble tongue. In truth, though, the meme is working its way through the language circuits in your cerebral cortex, subtly altering them in order to replicate itself and cause you, the victim, to begin uttering nonsense in the form of spoonerisms, mixed metaphor, nonsense words, and in the terminal stages complete gibberish that endsin an encouragement to faith and/or prayer. However, these unfortunate victims are typically unable to understand themselves as to what they andothers should have faith in or as for what said prayers should be said.

Victims often become first aware of the spread of the viral meme through their consciousness while on the phone. Psychologist's and other experts tend to believe this is because all of the information focused on and communicated takes place in verbal form without the distractions of body language and other visual cues. One patient who had moved into this secondary stage of Bushonics, marked by notable slips of the tongue and the use of poor grammar while one is not purposefully mocking the president, noted that in a conversation with a friend they had both noticed each other and themselves slipping into Bushisms. "We were saying things like 'superfulous' and 'in oppose to'. It were a terrible thing to be suddenly aware that this meme have gotten a hold over you, but at least then I had faith-based subject-verb agreeance. I hope someone can find an end to this solubilty quick."

As Patient X, quoted above, keenly noticed in the third stage of the viral Bushonics meme's course, the victim, probably you right now, begins to lose all concept of subject-verb agreement. For example, one might say "my friends is coming over" or "do the car smells funny to you". Sadly, though Patient X had noted the progress of the meme in the secondary stage, he did not seek help until well into the obscenely ungrammatical tertiary stage by which time, for almost all of this meme's victims, all the known interventions, which often help those in the secondary stage, have no effect in reversing the course of the viral meme.

In the terminal quaternary stage the meme stricken patient loses all ability to string words together in any meaningful way. That a given person has reached the quaternary stage is relatively obvious to those around him or her who have not themselves been infected. Unfortunately, the rather widespread media vectors of this meme are leaving fewer uninfected people to notice the problem. In addition the patient in the terminal stage becomes a serious hazard to others as he or she broadcasts the meme with every single afflicted utterance. At this point in time the only option to prevent the patient furthering the spread of the meme is quarantine and confinement. The only positive aspect of the terminal stage is that the patients become incredibly faithful in some random concept for reasons they are incapable of explaining in a way that anyone can understand and spend much of their time in garbled prayer or repeating biblically derived malapropisms.

Vectors and Susceptible Populations

As noted above the most obvious of vectors is the mass media coverage of Patient Zero and President of the United States, George W Bush, or 'Dubya'*. The broadcast media are especially egregious in this area as they often broadcast Patient Zero speaking in both the equally dangerous live or prerecorded formats.
We can only count ourselves lucky that those closest to him appear to be aware of the danger of this meme and have therefore kept his oratory appearances, and thus subsequent public exposure to the meme, to a practical minimum.

Coverage of Patient W is not the only way this meme spreads. Responsibility is also to be found among late night talk and sketch programs where it appears in the guise of 'comedy'. As one who has taken the extreme risk of treating those stricken with this viral meme, and who has seen and heard for himself the dire condition that results from the meme's replication, let me assure you this is no laughing matter. Other vectors include allegedly 'humorous' impressionists, wags, web sites which cover or mock the President's statements, someone in your family, and very possibly your best friend.

Some have hypothesized that certain segments of the population may be particularly susceptible to the spread of this meme though no thorough studies have been completed yet. Populations that may be extremely vulnerable include the very young,
Texans, those who speak English as a second language, the undereducated (who already often possess very poor skills in the use of grammar), and the overeducated as they are most likely to be frequently exposed to the highly infectious 'statements'* of Patient Zero/W. It is however possible that some undereducated segments of the population who have alternative grammar traditions of their own (e.g. inner city minority populations, the Amish, residents of rural Appalachia) may have a natural resistance to the Bushonics meme, thanks to the strength of their own traditional memes.

Complications

Not much is known about possible complications as a result of the effect of the Bushonic viral meme. The primary reason for this is that patient self-reports are, to be generous, unreliable and, to be accurate, incomprehensible. Nonetheless, as the BVM is known to induce a complete breakdown of grammar and syntax in it's victims some have postulated that patients may be further endangered by the spread of opportunistic memes normally regarded as harmless, such as Perotine Encephalopathy and Systematic Ratheremia.

- Dr. Ignatius Glottalstahp, MD

2003-02-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentleman, I have been to the future and returned with future news.

Anti-Americanism Reaches New Peaks

By Quentin Travers
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2004; Page A01

In a stunning display of anti-Americanism voters yesterday sought to replace President Bush with Democratic rival Howard Dean.

With most votes counted in the forty-nine states where elections were held, Florida cancelled it's elections a week ago and polls never opened there, it would appear that Governor Dean has carried the day. However, the Administration has signaled that it will not take this affront to its honor and dignity lying down. A Senior Administration Official has told The Washington Post that the White House is planning to call for a nationwide recount as well as other steps to "rectify this brazen attack against this President, the American people and God."

The citizens of California and New York, or "New-raq", as Administration insiders have taken to calling the state, have particularly raised the ire of the President, according to Bush's advisors. "Given the treasonous behavior of the Californians and New-raqis the President considers it within his power to declare them enemy combatants and thereby disqualify their votes," said one Senior Official, "Our position is, you cannot let these people trample the will of patriotic Americans."

At a White House briefing Ari Fleischer faced some difficult questions including the following exchange.*

"Isn't the President disrespecting the Constitution?"
"No. The President has a great respect for the freedom of religion, the 2nd Amendment, the separation of powers, presidential authority and the Electoral College. So I think it's disingenuous to say our President disrespects the Constitution."
"What about the constitutional right of citizens to have their voices heard?"
"The constitution provides for the Electoral College."
"So citizens' votes don't count?"
"I think I've answered your question, Helen. Guards!"

In Florida, Governor Bush defended his decision not to open the polls following pre-election numbers running 3-2 in favor of the anti-American candidate and the resulting potential for "terroristic voting". Despite several outbursts of civil unrest, Governor Bush maintained, in an appearance late last night, that his decision was the correct one saying, "I do feel vindicated. This is [an election] result only the French or Al Qaida could love."

Florida's Secretary of State said that in lieu of an election the State Legislature would select Florida's delegates to the Electoral College. Amid a flurry of winking and nudging at a joint press conference early this morning, both the Governor and the Secretary of State said they were sure the Legislature's choices would be the "proper ones".

The Washington Post sought Governor Dean's comments on the Bush Administration's response to yesterday's results, but neither the Governor nor any member of his campaign staff could be reached. Reports that the apparent President-Elect was hustled away from his campaign headquarters by armed men and is currently languishing in cage at the Guantanamo Naval Station could not, as yet, be confirmed.

In a related story, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay remains in an undisclosed location following his attack on Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Representative Pelosi died this weekend after Rep. DeLay ripped her throat out with his "freedom teeth".

Today spokesmen for Rep. DeLay held a press conference during which they brandished a preliminary pathology report, which they said showed that Rep. Pelosi was in possession of biological weapons. The report indicated that Rep. Pelosi's intestinal tract was infested with the deadly bacteria e. coli. DeLay's spokesmen dismissed Democratic contentions that such an infestation was normal for all human beings and to be expected.

DeLay's spokesmen maintained that the late Minority Leader was "nothing but a bag of bio-weaponry," pointing out that Rep. Pelosi had within her body "enough of this bacteria to sicken or even kill an entire kindergarten class,"

"Considering that America was one Fleet Enema away from a national tragedy we should be applauding Tom DeLay for taking such courageous actions to avert a nightmarish biological attack on our children. He is truly a national hero," one the spokesmen concluded.

*Just kidding, the WaPo would never report such an exchange under any circumstances.

2003-02-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

I may be covered in slop but I've got some inside info on the CBS Saddam interview, so please read on. Go ahead, do it.

Okay, so I was finishing up my shift at Red Lobster (doling out "lobster" and "butter", or as we call it "I Can't Believe It's Not Rancid" to glazed-eyed slack-jawed low-tipping ingrates, but it could be worse, I could be stuck in the kitchen all day filleting nutrias (the other other white meat) and jamming the greasy flesh into ceramic faux-lobster carapaces) when I noticed that someone had left behind some papers in one of those clear plastic binders. Normally, I would have just chucked it-- because I hate every single person that comes into that hell-hole and whenever they leave something behind I'll either steal it if it's valuable or chuck it just out of spite if it's worthless to me and then deny ever seeing it, and believe me someone's forgotten work product no matter how much they might value it is falls into my worthless crap category-- but this was stamped property of CBS News so I stashed it under my ort spattered apron so I could peruse it after I got home and squeegeed the grease and nutria filth off of my beleaguered body. And so, this is I found myself in possession of a transcript detailing the off-camera preliminaries of Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein parts of which I reproduce immediately below.

Dan Rather: So, Mr. President, I must ask why you chose me for this exclusive interview.

Saddam Hussein: I will be honest. Wolf Blitzer asked first and we said yes, but when he showed up he was very nervous and his beard was slicked with flop sweat...

DR: Hah! I knew when it came to it that Blitzer would fall apart faster than a flapjack condom.

SH: Er, whatever. No, you see, naturally the flop sweat of Blitzer made us suspicious. So we searched him and discovered he was wired...

DR: For sound? It is an interview after all?

SH: No, with explosives.

DR: Oh, wow. Color me more surprised than a sheep at a West Virginia frat house.

SH: Uh, yeah. At first we thought it was a CIA plot, but when we checked the bomb we saw that it was a totally amateurish job. Probably I would have escaped unscathed if covered in Blitzer bits. We confronted him and he admitted he had acted solo. He figured that if he had succeeded his ratings would have been obscene.

DR: But, so, you just let him go?

SH: Of course. I understood entirely. Who doesn't want good ratings? He would have killed across all key demographics.

DR: True.

SH: But, yes, believe me I am more happy to do this interview with you. The man who succeeded Cronkite, who was like a father to us all. A man we could turn to, the man who made us all feel like we had walked on the moon with the astronauts of Apollo. How I miss his soothing but authoritative voice. Is Walter as magnificent in person as he was on our screens?

DR: Oh yes indeed.

SH: I knew it must be so. I try to model myself after him you know.

DR: As do I.

SH: See, then we have very much in common. But, tell me, what was it like to step into those hallowed shoes.

DR: It was a great honor, of course, but also a little overwhelming. For a while there I was crazier than a coon in a moonshine still.

SH: Is that some kind of racist joke?

DR: No, no. A raccoon.

SH: I do not understand.

DR: Small mammal native to North America. Ring tailed, black circles around eyes. They're always knocking over trash and stuff. Getting in more trouble than Roman Polanski at a teen-age slumber party.

SH: (unintelligible)

DR: Excuse me? I didn't catch that.

SH: I said you are the mother of all cornpone adages. I know, I know, it's hacky, but it's my bit. If Jay Leno can do it why can't I?

DR: No reason.

SH: Are you okay? You seem anxious.

DR: Well, you know, homicidal dictator and all.

SH: What homicidal dictator?

DR: Uh, you?

SH: What? Who told you that?

DR: It's what everyone says.

SH: Who? Who's everyone?

DR: I don't know. Everybody.

SH: Everybody?

DR: Everybody.

SH: Damn.

DR: Oh, jeez. Now I've just made it worse. I'm more anxious than a midget hooker in an NBA locker room.

SH: What is it with the racial jokes?

DR: No, it's not. I was just...

SH: Oh come on. The NBA has many black players and it is a well-known chestnut around the world that black men are well-endowed.

DR: I just meant...

SH: I know what you meant.

DR: There are white NBA players.

SH: Yes, but no one makes sexual jokes about them unless it is to mock them for having the small penis. In which case why would the midget hooker be anxious?

DR: Okay, okay. I'm sorrier than...

SH: No, no more of this "more this than that". Do it one more time and not only is this interview over but I will throw you in the dungeon and let Uday rape you.

DR: Rape me?

SH: It's his new thing. He saw it on Kingpin. It was not a very good show but it had some good torture scenes that the boys and I really enjoyed. I don't necessarily approve of Uday's new taste for the man raping, but I think it's just a phase. He's very easily influenced.

DR: Rape me?

SH: Saddam does not repeat himself, but I think you understand me. Okay, let's do this thing.

2003-02-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

Often I have so many thoughts running through my mind I am paralysed by their very multiplicity. Or maybe that's just what I tell myself. Maybe that sound in my head isn't the incessant buzzing of a hive of thoughts but instead the dull roar of the void. Sometimes I just don't know. In all likelihood my confusion over the state of my mind dates back to my decidedly odd childhood. Typically, the French have a turn of phrase that describes the nature of my upbringing but of course it is difficult to render it properly into English. So while a Frenchman would instantly understand exactly what I meant if I told him "je suis élevé par les ours" the literal English translation "I was elevated to strike price the bear" doesn't make much sense and the more colloquial form "I was raised by bears" just doesn't have the power of the original. In any case, raised by bears I was.

Naturally, I am not a bear but a human being. It's just that I had the misfortune to be brought into this world by a pair of flaky, crunchy hippies. Less than a year after I was born, the exact dates are hazy in everybodys' memories, my parents took me on a marijuana inspired trip across the country. We were in Yosemite when fate and the effects of too many drugs intervened to change my life forever. That day my parents decided to "drop" some Happy Hippy Sunshine Acid and take a nature walk. At first everything seemed fine. They admired the nature around us impressed by the sensuousness of the colors they percieved, and imagined that the embodied spirits of the forest frolicked unseen behind the nearest trees. Unfortunately we soon got lost, as will happen often to drug-addled hippies hiking through the forest, which further unhinged my barely rational parents. They wandered on fitfully, starting first in this direction then in another, until we came across a patch of blueberries where they decided to sit down and collect themselves. While they tried to get oriented and stem their rising acid panic I gorged myself on berries. Maybe if I hadn't eaten the berries and maybe if hadn't ended up stained a deep purple over most of face and body then things would have been different, but I suppose that given their state of mind I should just be grateful that what my parents thought were blueberries actually were blueberries and not some poison and that I did not die a twitching, effluvia spewing death on a bed of mouldering pine needles.

Still, it's not as if things turned out well at all. A reconstruction of the moments leading up to my abandonment in the wilds would go something like this:

Me: Coo, slurp, argle.
My Mother: Look at him eat those berries. He's like a little bear.
My Father: (eyes narrowing) Like a bear? Maybe he is a bear.
My Mother: Our little bear.
My Father: (increasingly agitated) I think he is a goddamned bear.
Me: Gurgle, rarnf.
My Mother: Bear!
My Father: (completely pixilated) I know. Why do we have a bear?
My Mother: (pointing) No. A bear!
Bear: Growl. Roar. Gnash.
My Father: (panicked, grabbing my mother's hand) Run! A bear!
My Mother: Our baby!
My Father: (off his nut, negligent) No, he's a bear. The bear wants the bear.
Sounds of hippies crashing through the underbrush.
Bear: Gruh?
Me: Coogle?
Bear: Nuzzle.
Me: Coogle.

And so this bear, who was a momma bear, took me home to the rest of her cubs and I became a bear, but at first not a very good one. I gamboled poorly and was easily bruised by the other cubs. I couldn't scramble up a tree to save my life. I couldn't rend flesh with my teeth because I didn't have many teeth. My sense of smell was inferior. I was a sub-par bear. I was, in short, a bear-tard.

Happily, as I grew older I became a better bear. I learned to climb trees. With my prehensile paws I could fish as many, if not more, salmon from a stream as any other bear. Thanks to my odd proportions, at least from a bearish viewpoint, I was far sneakier than the average bear and soon held the record for purloining picinic baskets. And while I didn't have the brute strength to tear open a car my upright posture allowed me to carry loot back to my den. Among my fellow bears I was a sought after foraging companion.

Yes, for awhile there it was all gravy and it just kept getting better. Pubery hit and new vistas of ursine pleasure opened before me. My new alluring odors and well provisioned tree-hole had the females flocking to my den. For a time I was the young bear stud to mate with. And mate I did and with wild abandon. Every day and every night the forest would echo with the rapturous growls of myself and my consort of the hour.

Alas, it could not last. In time it became apparent that for all my furious thrusting I could engender no offspring. Despite my mastery of bestial technique I was eventually shunned by all but the most slatternly she-beasts.

In my new found free time I found myself more and more often lurking at the edges of campsites listening to the strange human grunts, so different from those of us bears, emanating therefrom. I became intrigued with the wierd patterns on the inedible packaging humans wrapped their food in. Somewhere deep inside the linguistic center of my brain connections were being forged. I would try to make human noises and did my best to turn into meaningful sounds the wierd patterns on the paper and plastic strewn about my den. Always I hid these efforts from the other bears though I did not know why I did so. One day I forgot myself and in front of my fellow bears I uttered my first word, a guttural, griding "Hershey". That kind of freaked the bears out and I was ostracized further from the only society I had ever known, the society of bears.

Then one day I was spotted by some humans during a foraging raid on their encampment. "Hey kid, get away from those bears," some one said, and I knew they were talking to me. I turned and howled, "No, I bear," but the damage had already been done and my life as a bear would soon come to an end.

The people reported their sighting of me to the park rangers. As it happened, there had be occassional reports of a wild bear boy down through the years, but this was the first sighting that involved contact. The authorities decided it was time to take action and they sent out teams of rangers to track me down. I eluded them for days but finally I was cornered. I did my best to scare them off with an elaborate, slavering display of ferocious aggression. I pawed the earth, punched and shook trees, and drew myself up to my full height. It was all to no avail. I could not scare them off and so I did what any good bear would do. I made a mad charge at them determined to maul as many of them as possible. And I was brought down by a hail of tranquiliser darts.

Thusly, I re-entered the fold of humanity and began the long, and as yet incomplete, process of becoming a fully functioning human being. But that is another and much longer story.

2003-02-20T12:50:00.000-08:00

In these dark times as alliances and international bodies are riven with argument, as lies whistle incessantly past the spittle flecked lips of US and Iraqi leaders, as the spectral darkness of war without end threatens to blot out the sun of peace, as the last fraying stitches of our latter day, high tech belle epoque snap in the unyielding wind of change, as America's bitterness towards the French reaches record highs, as both the frequency and quantity of my daily drug intake increases--and here I might add that with a base of Paxil, any benzodiazepine and judicious lungfuls of the killer reefer it's hard to go wrong; in extreme conditions doubling up on the benzodiazepines and adding booze to the mix will not only provide you a preternatural, if clumsy, calm but also prevent remembrance of many of the awful events, as the world stands, nay teeters, on the precipice of the brink of the abyss, as...as I ramble on clearly in love with words and my deployment of them--and clearly, given my infrequent postings, it is a miserly love; I give them to the world reluctantly; these literary nuggets which I dispense with straining difficulty like the reluctant spoor of a bed-ridden, unMetamuciled geriatric (and, yes, that comparison may be unseemly and also kind of inaccurate but still), as all I've mentioned and more transpire, one question buzzes through more educated or curious heads than other questions. Why is it that a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of the US populace hate Ben Affleck more than they hate Saddam Hussein?

I ask this question not to bury America in heaps of elitist scorn, after all I join many of my fellow Americans in their derision of Assfleck, but in an attempt to find a solution to this terrible, pop inversion of priorities. I mean seriously, Saddam Hussein is a serial deployer of chemical weapons; he repeatedly gassed his Iranian foes and Kurdih citizens of Iraq; he invaded Kuwait and Iran; he has people killed and tortured not only in the course of his devious machinations but on his whims; his sartorial sense, though it works occassionally, is largely questionable (Goodfella suits and Bavarian hats?). And li'l Bennie Affleck what are his crimes? In general an inexplicable, in terms of talent or effort, rise to fame on the basis of a script he probably didn't even write. More recently there's DareDevil and his relatively unrestricted access to J. Lo's dense ass though this last may be punishment more than crime. Obviously, America's priorities are deeply out of whack. Since it's impossible to hate Affleck less, I guess we could try hating Hussein more, but to just say that seems too abstract. A concrete plan is in order.

I suggest that the solution is to start casting Saddam Hussein for "Affleck" roles. Just imagine how much more contemptible Saddam's malefic resume would be if it included star billing in Reindeer Games and Pearl Harbor. Or the revulsion America would feel if subjected to Saddam's bristling mustache jutting from a red leather mask. So I say let Saddam be the next poorly acted iteration of Jack Ryan, and let him star in alleged romantic comedies with Sandra Bullock. To confuse the issue even further Affleck could play Saddam in Saddam! From Baghdad To Babylon, a film chronicling Saddam's rise to dictatorial power and then his further rise to Hollywood "It-Boy".

Admittedly, this plan could backfire. Saddam has an undeniable Burt Reynolds-like caddish charisma what with the mustache and all. America could fall head over heels in love with his as yet undicovered stylish acting chops, and his off-screen antics would soon have the tabloids aswoon. The next thing we know he'll be caught canoodling with Sharon Stone and Julia Roberts on the set of Pretty Woman 2: The Quickening, and America will be down on it's knees begging for more, more, more.

On second thought, let's just declare Saddam Hussein President-For-Life of France and Iraq then invade both countries. I think Ameica could get wholeheartedly behind that.

2003-02-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

I wish I could wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day but I can't do it. Not because I am a bitter man once too often tossed unceremoniously into loves ash-heap, but because the world is held hostage. Because the world trembles in the cold shadow of a madman who possesses and uses bio-chemical weapons. I speak, of course, of that vile pagan spawn with the potential to destroy the world as we know it, Cupid. Why have we not addressed this threat? This well-known threat who shoots people with poisoned arrows to take advantage of the evil biology of our tingling nether bits and override our higher minds. Cupid can make young men fall in love with octogenarian women. Cause young women to lust after animals. Presumably, he can even make you gay, or worse, a Catholic priest. Thus far he has only been known to strike one victim at a time, but intelligence network chatter indicates he may be working on a "love fog" which would allow him to strike down his victims en masse.

Where are our leaders on this important and timely issue? Perhaps they have already been compromised. Perhaps as we speak, Condi Rice and Paul "P-Dog" Wolfowitz are furitively scrabbling to nudify each other in some infrequently used West Wing supply closet. I have tried and tried to get this important issue the attention it deserves. I have written hundreds of letters to our current and previous presidents. I have appeared on numerous street corners to warn the public of this scourge. I have stood upon Kofi Annan's doorstep naked as the day I was born in an attempt to shame him into action. Thus far it has all been for naught. I need help. So now I ask you to join me. Bare your naked body in all it's shamefulness before as many authority figure as possible until Hans Blix searches Cupid's realm, including his cloud palaces, and disarms him or until America blasts him from the sky.

In the meantime I offer the following bio-chem terrorism (Cupid and non-Cupid related) prevention/avoision tips:

Cupid: To prevent piercing by bio-chemical tipped arrows wear as many layers of clothing as possible.

Non-Cupid: In a pinch, seal your nose and mouth with duct tape to make a very efficient temporary gas mask.

Cupid: In the event that you find yourself falling in love immediately turn yourself into John Ashcroft. This is especially important in instances of same-sex love falling.

Non-Cupid: During a chemical/biological attack wrap yourself in Saran Wrap and zip yourself up tight in a sleeping bag. This will not protect you but will spare the rest of us the sight of your horrible writhing and blistering, and will make body disposal just that much easier.

Cupid: Do your part to stem the pink tide of love terror by beating down any couple you come across.

Non-Cupid: After a chemical/biological attack send children outside first. Since their small size makes them more susceptible to such weapons, chances are that if they survive so will you.

Both: Never go outside.

2003-02-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

"The terrorists have an interest in very serious weapons of chemistry, evil biology and even radiological consequences," Ashcroft said.

I get the feeling that to John Ashcroft all biology is evil biology.

2003-02-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

Just some personal mental house-cleaning type stuff today. No jokes, no divertissements. No need to read on unless you happen to be Ivanka Trump or the Olsen Twins. But, just in case any extraneous readers decide to press on, I'd should probably mention that the following are my responses to inquiries submitted by the aforementioned female persons in response to a previous posting on this site, in which I offered succor to those women sufering from the burden of fantastic inherited wealth.

Ivanka, let me first say that I was pleased to discover upon reading your kind entreaty that your status as a child of privlege has not inhibited you from attaining a rudimentary grasp of the written word. Nor was your letter tainted with the skank of the obscenity-laced, and nearly illiterate, "missives" I recieved from the Hilton sisters which I immediately discarded. I do have one word of advice if I may: "they're" is a contraction of "they are", the word you're looking for is "their", the third person possessive pronoun.

As for your suggestion that we "get together" I am afraid I will have to respectfully decline. Your problems seem far too intractable for me to handle caught as you are between the Scylla of the Donald and the Charybdis of Ivana. Your recent foray into modeling speaks of your troubles more than any letter ever could. This attempt to win your father's love by reliving your mother's life can only lead to sorrow on the level of Greek Tragedy.

Even so, I'd like to say that the diorama that you sent of us making love on a speedboat off the Florida was fantastic. You really captured the details down to the floating carcass of a recently rundown manatee. My only quibble is that I do not look exactly like Wesley Snipes nor have I ever worn a dashiki while "doing the deed".

Now, as for Mary-Kate and Ashley or, as you appropriately and no doubt obliviously prefer to sign your notes, Mashley* I only have one thing to say. Please leave me alone. There are so many reasons I say this that I don't know where to start enumerationg them. How about with the fact that my posting was directed women possessing or due to come into fantastic inherited wealth. While there's no denying that you have a lot of money, your money is tainted with the stench of money-grubbing effort. But we're rich, you say. But we have so much stuff, you say. You say you have airplanes and horse and airplanes with horses in them so you can gallop through the skies at thirty thousand feet. Well, I bet none of those things are in your name(s) cause neither of you is legal. And, about that whole legal thing, well, it raises at least one other issue, and, honestly, I can't be expected to wait around for a year and a half unti you are. Not that either of you seem to understand that. Not if your belief that I could marry both of you at the same time is any indication, and no Ashley it is not legal in Canada. Finally there is one more issue that I am hesitant to bring up, but I think I must so I will try to be as delicate as possible. Namely, the two of you are only marginally attractive. So, if it were possible to marry you both, it would be the equivalent, to me anyway, of marrying one good-looking girl and one ugly one. And I'm sorry, but I could never marry an ugly girl and all the pony-filled, gold-plated airplanes in the world can't change that.

*because they send me mash-notes, get it?

tip o' the cursor to Scott Bronco for his contributions to this post

2003-02-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

I finally got "Jill" out of my apartment a couple of days ago. She'd been there since early last Sunday morning and she was beginning to smell. Don't get me wrong it's not like I killed her or anything or that she was at all dead in a literal way. But let me start at the beginning.

'Twas, in the Victorian sense of the word, last Saturday night and I had agreed to meet some friends of mine at an appointed place at an appointed time. Naturally, I was little late so, in order to catch up with the others, I had no recourse but to indulge myself in alcohol quite rapidly so as to, as the Yiddish would say, "get my schwerve on". As it happened this also helped orient me to the hipster crowd and decor, so different from the homey comfort I find during my frequent trips to my beloved local Appleby's, which filled me with social anxiety. In no time at all I was filled with the juniper berry milk of human kindness and easily slurred my way through a heated discussion of electro-clash and would have dazzled Derrida himself with my insightful deconstruction of Big Trouble In Little China, the finest motion picture ever made. But the night was not free of mishap, as is often the case when alcohol flows freely down the gullet, and mishap takes many forms from being chased by an irate homeowner after a delirious, delightful roll through his dafodils to rib bruising tumbles down an unfortunately placed stairway. In this instance it was a simple case of miscommunication and an ill-timed cigarette break that led to my friends and I becoming seperated.

Abandoned, I did the only thing I could do. I headed to a dim corner of the bar and ordered another drink. Shortly, I found myself, surprisingly, in a full-fledged conversation a girl.

But surely Mr. Fyrste you say, it couldn't be that surprising for a man as obviously witty and clever and thus attractive as yourself to be engaged in conversation with a woman or, in fact, any number of women. And I tell you friends that this was once true. At one time I was a chick magnet. And, I suppose that in many ways I still am, but things have never been the same since the Incident. The Incident was a turning point. The Incident was unfortunate. The Incident changed everything.

The incident occurred thusly.

She said I was creepy. The term "stalker" may have been carelessly bandied about. That said, all I was trying to do was snap a picture of her and from a respectable distance at that. She objected. She warned me not to do it. I naturally assumed she was just flirting, and called back that this is a free country. She bent down and picked up a fist-sized rock. How wonderful, I thought, I'll get a funny shot of her playfully, girlishly tossing a stone in my direction. I brought my camera, one of those slim, rectangular plastic numbers that slip conveniently into almost any pocket, to the ready. How was I to know that in her senior year of high-school she had been the starting pitcher for her team in the state-wide fast-pitch softball championship game?

Though she later claimed she had no intent to hit me, she threw that rock with remarkable accuracy and force. It crashed directly into the camera, knocking me unconscious while simultaneously launching shards of the shattered camera through my upper eyelids to lodge in my frontal lobes. Two weeks later, when I could understand human speech again, the doctors explained to me that I had suffered the equivalent of a partial lobotomy. The effect of which would be diminished and/or inappropriate emotional effect. The girl in question visited me in the hospital to apologize and explain, as I previously mentioned, that she hadn't intended to hit me, so would I please not press charges. Perhaps as a result of my injury I believed her and did not have charges levied against her. Still, the infatuation was off. The infliction of brain damage is a deal-breaker.

Since then I have had great difficulty meeting women. Sure, they are still drawn to my rakish good looks, but I suffer from an almost insurmountable charm deficit that fails to endear. How could it not when they come out with a clever bon mot and I respond in a robotic monotone easily taken for sarcasm that they are as witty as they are beautiful. Explaining my situation does no good as both brain damage and stalker-like behavior are widely regarded as red-lights.

Nonetheless, there I was somehow holding my own in conversation. Her name was "Jill". She was there with another girl. Because I am an American and therefore look at the world through the filters and structures of pop culture I decided that Jill was meant to be the "snarky best friend," ostensibly less attractive than her taller more carefully put together appearance-wise companion, but still cute and with a wicked sense of humor.

Jill it turned out is a graduate student studying the social construction of female body in light of changing modes of intellectual production during France's Second Republic. She also told me she had not watched television in nearly two years. Perhaps all this explains why she found me entertaining despite my inability to be amusing in a conventional sense.

At some point, her friend excused herself and left. Jill and I stayed on swilling down liquor and chatting away. Come closing time I invited her back to my place for another drink and she acceded. We stumbled back to my apartment. I splashed some gin into a couple of tumblers and we tumbled onto the couch, Jill practically in my lap. She wondered if I had any pot. Yes, yes I do, I said. Can we smoke it, she asked. Yes, yes we can, I said. So smoke up we did, and then she excused herself to go off to the bathroom with a brushing kiss upon my lips.

After about twenty minutes I realized she hadn't yet returned. I found her on the toilet pantsed and asleep. As gently as possible and with an eye toward wedgie avoidance, I dressed her and put her to bed. Then I fell asleep myself.

I remember stirring briefly around eight am or so feeling something was amiss. I was alone and I didn't remember leaving the television on. But the previous evening had left me so discombobulated that I couldn't be bothered to think about it. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

When I finally got up for real I had the unpleasant realization that I was missing one curly haired brunette. It was hard to imagine that she had left since she'd been even more fucked up than I, but perhaps waking up in a stranger's bed had driven her to distraction and flight. Coming out of the bedroom I discovered that no such thing had occured.

There she was sitting on the livingroom floor, transfixed by the television. I don't remember what she was watching. Some old sitcom maybe. She barely took notice of me. Just enough of a turn of her goggle-eyed head to whisper with awe, you have cable. And then she turned her stare back to the screen. And there she sat for the next five days--without sleep as far as I could tell, eating only when I brought her food--but for very occassional trips to the bathroom. I didn't mind at first. It was nice to have a girl around the place even if she just lumpishly sat there watching the television. She didn't care what she watched. She didn't complain when I clicked over to my favorite programs whether it interrupted something she'd been watching or not. She didn't say much. Every once in a while she'd say, wow, this is great. I didn't know if she were talking about a particular show or just television in general. I'd seen this reaction to breaking a television fast before. I'd even experienced myself. The irresistability of its flickering glory. The hypnotic joy of mass entertainment.

Eventually, I got sick of it. She wouldn't let me turn off the set nor would she leave. In short, she was cramping what little style I have. It didn't help that I'm a sucker for television myself. If it's on I'll watch it, and so quickly all my other obligations and plans went out the window. Plus, like I said way back at the beginning of this she was stating to smell bad.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If she wouldn't leave then TV would have to. I went outside and cut off the cable. When I came back in she was banging on the television demanding it to further entertain her. I told her to settle down. The cable must have gone out, I said. I'm afraid they'll have to send someone out. It might, I said, take awhile. But I want TV now, she whinged. I told her not to worry. That it would come back and when it did so could she. Besides, I added, she should go home. I'm sure she had things to go and plus, I said, she was starting to smell really badly. That seemed to do the trick and she came back to her senses and decided to go home.

Oh, what joy I felt when I finally had my place back to myself. Still, she's a nice girl and we've decided to go out next weekend. The paranoid part of me thinks that she just wants to pump me for info about Angel's convoluted backstory, but this could be the start of a beautiful relationship. And believe me, if things go well we're going back to her place.

2003-02-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

Yes! I have recieved hate mail which is my raison d'etre for maintaining this site. To wit:

From: "Joseph Brundige"
To: jfyrste@yahoo.com
Subject: f off
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 22:54:58 -0500

I'm tired and I can't get into it too much, but I just wanted to let you know that I think you are an arrogant prick. I don't know what blogs are, nor do I remember how I found your page, but you and your friends are stuck up pseudo intellectuals [sic] who are totally useless to everyone but yourselves. I fucking love australians. They may be intolerant at times, but they are in general 100 times more genuine then your smarmy ass. And I don't think its really fair to judge that beautiful nation from the perspective of the gay porn industry, to criticize it for its lack of an ozone layer, or to leave the country on the basis of an American owned beer commercial.

thanks, good night.

That last sentence is so hysterical it makes me think that it's a joke. I sincerely hope not because it's funnier if it isn't. And though Mr. Brundige claims that he does not remember how he arrived at Army of Fun, I'm pretty sure that a web-search featuring the terms gay+porn+Australia+gangbang was involved. Not that there's anything wrong with gay porn.

As to all those pseudo-intellectuals out there who may actually enjoy reading stuff here, let me apologize for my recent absence. It's been quite a week. I'll fill you in on all the details shortly, and then get back to the regular irregular updating.

2003-02-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

When I graduated from college in the early '90's I was desperate for a job in publishing. I applied for positions all over these United States, but I couldn't get one to save my life. So I started to look overseas and eventually landed a job at Grunters, a gay Australian hard-core porn mag. Now, I didn't recall applying to Grunters, but I was able to sort it all out with one phone call. It turned out that a resume I'd submitted to Life Down Under, a general interest magazine, had been circulated throughout its publishing empire which included a flourishing porn business. In addition to Grunters they also put out Going Down Under, featuring girl-on-girl action, Outback Nasty, featuring dusty trailer-park gangbangs, Arse Arsenal, featuring all flavors of ass-play, and several others. If it had been my choice I would have gone with Going Down Under, but it was Grunters that wanted me so Grunters it was.

Obviously, I had some qualms. I mean first off, it wasn't even an editorial position, but rather 2nd Photo Archivist. On the other hand, they promised opportunites to learn about the editorial side so at least I'd get some bankable experience. Second, it was, you know, gay porn, but I'm pretty open-minded and I figured I'd get used it with time. Third, it was in Australia a place about which I knew nothing that I hadn't seen in Paul Hogan vehicles. I guess I thought it would be a lot like Texas--hot and dusty, it's people full of that odd bonhomie bred by ignorance--except with a lot more cute marsupials. Oh, how wrong I was.

Within moments of disembarking the plane I discovered I'd entered country populated entirely by dangerous rednecks whose idea of a good time was getting shit-faced drunk then beating down an "Abo" and shaving his head. If you've ever seen Australian rules football on ESPN you know what I mean. It all made me very nervous. I could only hope that my co-workers who, as I guessed correctly, were mostly gay would be more tolerant types as a result of living as gay outsiders in a straight society. I soon learned that in Australia tolerance meant only that you hadn't actually kicked the teeth out of a swarthy foreigner. And these weren't even what we call in the US country-folk. No, the country-folk were a breed apart truly terrible to behold, and beheld them I did in my one and only trip to the Outback. These are people who make the most randomly violent, crank-addled American hayseed look like a rank amatuer, look like a big-eyed seal pup you want to embrace and protect from harm. These sun-addled wrecks--brains curdled by the heat, noses withered and eaten away by numerous skin cancers, the women sporting perpetual black eyes--have ten-times the temper, ten-times the misplaced anger, and are ten-times more vicious than anything America can offer.

As for my job it did end up getting to me. But it wasn't the gay porn. It was the cracked, reptilian, melanoma spotted skin of the models. I couldn't tell where the workboots ended and where their calves began.

In fact, the terrible condition of the average Australian's skin soon soured all aspects of my life that involved naked Australians. My sex life went to seed. Closing my eyes didn't help because I could still hear and feel my skin rasping against the girls' leathery shells. The best pair of breasts I saw had the appearance, and all the appeal, of a wrinkled, month-old, sun-bleached grapefruit. I don't actually know where all those attractive Australian actresses come from, but I imagine it's a kind of inverse Time Machine thing with fine-skinned Eloi raised somewhere underground to protect them from the harsh environmental conditions and brutal populace above.

In the end, though, it wasn't the weather-beaten boobs, creased asses, or even the benighted savages roaming the streets that drove me out of that horrid excuse for a nation. No, it was one simple television commercial. One simple, vile, hateful, racist advert for Foster's appropriately enough. It was one of those Foster's Australian for beer ads. I know, I know it seems odd that they'd run those ads in Australia but no one ever called the Aussies bright. The ad starts off with a desertscape. Then this cute Aboriginal girl, her clothes torn, comes running across the shot. Followed by a gang of savage Outback rednecks seemingly intent on raping her. The announcer intones, "Bestiality". Then, "Foster's. Australian for beer." Indeed. And "yikes" is American for I'm out of here.

2003-01-31T13:01:00.000-08:00

People often come up to me and ask me, "If you're an atheist what do you believe?" My first impulse, unless the inquirer is wearing hot pants and too much make-up, is to throw the scalding hot coffee from my ever present Dunkin' Donuts bottomless mug in their slack-jawed faces and scream, "I believe in pain," in the manner of a professional wrestler. It is very hard for me to restrain this impulse and so I hardly ever do. Then there's that moment of embarrassment as I realize that I'm wearing my I'm An Atheist And I Believe t-shirt as I usually am when people randomly ask me, "If you're an atheist what do you believe?" By that time, though, my questioner-slash-victim has moved on to other questions. Typically, "Why, why did you do that?" or, "Jesus Christ, why did you do that?" or from those with self-esteem problems a plaintive, "What did I do?" except with more pained sobbing. This always leaves me a bit confused as to which question I should answer first. But really, I want to be helpful, I want them to understand where I'm coming from, so I get down on my knees if that's necessary, and it usually is because at that point they're typically lying on the ground in the fetal position whinging on about, "oh god, oh god someone help me," or somesuch.

So I get down on my knees and say "There, there, it's going to be okay. I've seen this many times and there's nothing to worry about. It's a first degree burn. It'll just be some redness and blistering followed by a little peeling. It's like a bad sunburn really, and actually it's not even that bad being restricted to your face and all." I like to think they take some comfort in that.

"Now," I say, "let me take your second question first. And the answer is I don't know the answer. Who knows why we do what we do? Why do I fall in love with needy, high maintenance women who wake up angry? Why do I feel embarrassed for Jack, Chrissie and Janet while watching "Three's Company" when their imbecilic antics are meant to amuse me? These are questions for the ages."

"As to your original question, well, I think it should be obvious that I wear this t-shirt ironically. Which is not to say that I believe in God because I don't, but that the statement on this t-shirt is intentionally, essentially ironic. And honestly, you must be terribly foolish not to see that."

I can't really know if that satisfies them. I suspect not from the way they often stare wild-eyed at me as if to say they understand thus far but there is more they want to know. Like what do I base my ethics on in the absence of a higher power? I'd like to tell them, I truly would, but there's never time. I have to beat it before the five-oh show up.

2003-01-30T00:48:00.000-08:00

Jolted into clinical apathy by the State of the Whatever speech on Tuesday, I find myself incapable of caring about squat for the time being. If you absolutely must be entertained I am the man who will fight for your honor, reviews* the Cristina Ricci vehicle "Pumpkin" upon my request, and in doing so dashes my hopes for hot Ricci-on-Retard action. Which on second thought may be the actual cause of my apathy.

*Warning: contains gratuitous use of the word "titties", any use of which sends a clammy chill down my high-falutin' spine.

2003-01-28T15:02:00.000-08:00

In the late 1990's when jobs were as easily plucked from the aether of opportunity as plump ripe plums hanging low from the over laden boughs of plump ripe plum trees I obtained, in two days following a spell of dizziness and whimsy, a job in a PR firm. There I wrote press releases, blast faxed and cajoled a certain type of journalist, and hand-held clients wondering when their press would materialize. And there was a lot of the hand holding. We were not what you would call a prestige firm. No, we came along and picked up the leavings after the sweetest fruits, to extend a metaphor, had fallen as if by magic into the hands of the better and the brighter. In fact, after periods of extended hand holding and increasingly less reassuring reassurance our lesser clients would sometimes slip their sweat slicked hands free from mine and use their newly freed digits to gesture obscenely while raving on about "bottom-feeders". I, ever diplomatic, would refrain from pointing out the onus they laid on themselves with such accussations. For if we were bottom-feeders then they were what settled at the bottom, weren't they. And they didn't make it easy for us.

Examples? I have a few:

Pen-tos. Trademark issues aside, eventually resolved, a pen that dispenses breath mints was not a terrible product in principle. In reality, the mints were annoyingly small and they were dispensed every time you clicked open the pen whether they were wanted or not. Good if you were selling refills, bad if you kept flicking mints all over your office. Apparently, they are now selling well in Japan.

Personal Hygiene Goggles. One of many odd products imported from Japan. Apparently, they protect your eyes from, uh, eye disease I guess. The only press we were able to get these was of the "Wow, those crazy Japanese" variety. Another thing, by design they fit across the face very tightly leaving users with racoon eyes hours after taking them off.

Sugar Scabs. Gummy-like candy that looked convincingly scab like. They'd even stick to your skin awhile so you could remove them and pop them in your mouth for maximum repulsive effect. We got pretty good coverage for them in How Convenient: The Journal of Franchise and Independent Convienence Stores (no link available, sadly) and in some local papers. Surprisingly, they never caught on.

Health-Scents. Another Japanese product. This was an egg-shaped device that you'd hold under your arm for sixty seconds while it soaked up your sweat. Then you'd link it to your computer for a chemical analysis. It could also automatically send any anomalous results to your doctor. Originally, its US distributors wanted to call it the Odor Orb. We went out on a limb and pointed out that they might as well call it the Stink Egg. Besides, an orb is spherical not egg-shaped. In any case, the press was again mostly in the "wacky Japanese" vein. Right before I left the job someone had a stroke of brilliance and we got it a lot of coverage in women's magazine as a device that measured hormonal levels for women trying to get pregnant or practicing natural birth control.

Hein-eez. Worst. Product. Ever. It was criminal of us to take this account, but the inventor was a failed movie producer who thought we could turn it into a Hollywood fad. I like to think that by taking him on we performed a service to the movie-going public, not that you'd notice. Anyway, Hin-eez was a thin foam cylinder, "using space-age technology," that "wicked up perspiration and odor". Also, I think it was supposed to prevent wedgies. Unfortunately, it was highly visible under most clothing thus giving the impression that the user been in such a rush to dress they had neglected to remove some kind of sex toy from their ass. Even the Japanese were uninterested in it.

2003-01-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

Army of Fun's Weekend Kids Page Presents
Fun Facts About International Sex Symbol Hans Blix

Hey, Kids! On Monday International Sex Symbol Hans Blix presents his interim report on the disarmament of all around bad man and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to the UN Security Council. Here are some fun facts about the Chief UN Weapons Inspector.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, is a master of Ironhead Style Shaolin Kung Fu.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, can melt glaciers with his personal warmth.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, makes very good sushi.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, has served as a judge for several Miss Universe Pagents.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, showers with VX nerve gas and starts off each morning with a steaming cup of botulinum toxin.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, gives one hell of a massage.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, was the inspiration for the films "Maid in Manhattan" and "Kangaroo Jack".

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, is the creator of Blixos, Sweden's answer to Legos.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, holds the record for the world's most luscious eyelashes.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, has actively broken up more than two dozen marriages. His mere existence is responsible for the dissolution of countless relationships.

Hans Blix, International Sex Symbol, is an International Sex Symbol.

2003-01-24T20:24:00.000-08:00

So much with the politics lately. And while the politics is kind of important, I apologize to those of you, okay, okay the one person, who comes to this site for the flat jokes, half-assed witticisms, ill-conceived satire and news of my foundering relationship with Lara Flynn Boyle. And oh my god is that relationship on the rocks. Sure, she's a cheap date--I've never seen her eat more than one of those single pats of butter that come with the free bread at any decent restaurant--and she's always holding, but lately she's been going around the bend.

I'm sure you all saw her at the Golden Globe awards. I sure did. I couldn't make it myself but she told me to be sure to watch because she had a surprise for me. Imagine my crushing disappointment and embarrassment when the surprise turned out to be that horrid ballerina outfit. I immediately turned off the television and crawled into bed for a couple days emerging only to post to this fine site. Meanwhile, my phone was, of course, ringing off the hook as she tried desperately to contact me. There was no way I was going to answer it or even check the messages as I was pretty sure she was in full-blown Mariahesque meltdown mode.

My fears were confirmed early Wednesday morning when I was jarred awake by incredibly loud banging on my door accompanied by incoherent screaming. I tried to ignore her but eventually she broke a window to gain entry. Let me tell you there are not many things as distressing as being confronted by a bloodied Lara Flynn Boyle dressed as a Munchkin at two in the morning. I managed to calm her down long enough to tend to her wounds, but as soon as I had her bandaged up she started up again and regrettably nothing was going to calm her down but a round of J. Fyrste style loving. I say regrettably because the combination of her wild energy, protruding pelvic bones and penchant for reverse cowgirl have left me badly bruised and walking with a gait reminiscent of a man simultaneously afflicted with both hemmorhoids and an enlarged prostate. I must get out of this relationship. Any day now she's going to go Oompah-Loompah on me and, well, words fail me.

2003-01-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, blah. Events, you know that whole war thing, dictate that I write about politics again

Chuck "The Thousand-Pound" Krauthammer creaks into Op/Ed pages across the land today on his Axles of Evil to lecture us about the need to enforce the "Bush Doctrine" by attacking Iraq. While I find a lot to disagree with--his characterization of the North Korean crisis, the gist of his entire argument (because in a fit of pique we said we would, by the way), etc--one line in particular stands out to me.

And having said [referring to statements by Pres. Bush], again correctly, that the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam is an intolerable threat to the security of the United States, there is no logical way to rationalize walking away.

The idea that these weapons are "an intolerable threat" to the US is precisely what I've been puzzling over the last couple of days. How, exactly, is that?

As best as I can recall the historical record leading to this point goes something like this:

1983-1988: Iraq uses chemical weapons against Iran and the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War. The response of the US and it Western Allies, who backed Iraq in the war was, during this period, let us say less than emphatic. To be fair, the attack on the Kurds eventually got some attention, but not much became of it.

1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. Led by the US much of the world agrees that the invasion "will not stand".

1991: Operation Desert Storm commences. Dick Cheney warns U.S. will retaliate if Iraq uses chemical or unconventional weapons. Iraq having been whupped withdraws from Kuwait. Cease-fire signed which includes provisions for destruction of CBWs.

1991-1998: Hide and go seek between UN inspectors and Iraq. Some weapons destroyed others presumably not.

1998: UN inspectors withdraw. Bombing commences. Continues on and off to the present.

2001: Terrorist unaffiliated with Iraq attack New York City and Washington DC.

2002: UN inspectors return to Iraq.

2003: US must attack Iraq as "intolerable threat" to US security.

It seems to me that something is missing there. Some key point that makes Iraqs presumed possession of CBW's such an "intolerable threat" to the USA that we must attack them alone if need be. Especially considering that UN inspectors are in the country at this very moment. One would think that this in itself would constitute a reduction of the threat. A threat, mind you, that was not so intolerable at the time of Desert Storm, when we were fighting Iraq, that the US needed to topple Saddam Hussein.

While Iraq's possession of chemical and biological certainly should concern the world war seems an extreme reaction to the threat considering that Iraq has no way to deploy these weapons unless we go to them. And no good reason to deploy them except under the same circumstance. Surely, the leaders of Iraq know that if they shared such weapons with terrorists, and there is no evidence that they have done so, Iraq would suffer the severest of consequences. Evidence that the leaders of Iraq have taken such a course of action is the only way I can imagine Iraq constituting an "intolerable threat". The Bush Administration while making assertions left and right doesn't even seem to be pretending, at least not very well, to have such evidence. Unless such evidence is presented I'm afraid I've got to side with the French and Germans against waging this war at the present and for continuing containment.

2003-01-24T11:11:00.000-08:00

My favorite game in the world is "What Do You Have In Your Attic". It's best to play when my "opponent" is out of town. Often you don't even know I've made my move or if you do then you don't know that I'm the one you're playing against.

Another great thing about "What Do You Have In Your Attic" is that I can use the game pieces in my second favorite game, "Selling Your Stuff On E-Bay".

2003-01-23T13:33:00.000-08:00

Even a fabulist has to surface from beneath the rippling waves of imagination from time to time and breathe the stale air of reality. Given my choice I would have stayed under longer and I shall return to those blissful benthic depths as quickly as I can, but before I do let me address, inspired by the January 23 post of Mr. Suckfuldotcom, a few real world issues. Just give me a second while I swap the hat of high literary style for the hat of Op/Ed. Goddamn it, I can never find anything around here. Looks like I'll have to go with the hat of not so much with the high literary style. I don't remember what it does exactly but here it goes.

Oh, man, dude this hat is like so awesome. Not like our stupid, blowsuck economy that sucks so much right now? I even heard that it might like double-scoop or something. Except that instead of 31 flavors there'll only be one and that flavor will be ass. Cause like the President? It's like he's all like whatever dudes. And I know that people are always bitching about how much credit or blame the president gets for the economy, but still. Can't you be graded on what you do? Like whether you inspire confidence or like this or like this? Seriously, that dude really needs to get his shit together, but he's still all like, hey I gots other things on my plate yo.

And that other plate? Like war on the Iraqians or whatever? What's up with that? Cause the Bush people are like well we kinda haven't decided yet but still they're totally sending like 150,000 troops to the Middle East plus a whole bunch of British guys too. And they're all, hey UN inspector guys give us your report now, and the UN guys are like hold on, and then the administration goes well whatever cause anyways Saddam has to prove he doesn't have weapons? But then they say that doesn't matter cause they have proof that Saddam's in violation. But then it's like but we can't tell anyone about it for whatever? And they're all well we'll make our case or well we made our case, one of those and anyways this is like a faith-based invasion so whatever, if you're not for it you're like a wussie-islamic-commie-traitor-playa'hater, but like everyone else in the entire world is like oh my god, what the fuck, can we talk about this please. And we're all like no. And the french are like okay then, nous ne allons pas aider vous. And the germans are like, ja wir sind mit die frankenreichers. Wir nicht machen der krieg mit Sie. Keine Weg. And we're like, way. And then they're all, keine Weg. And then we're all, way. And they're still, keine Weg. So we're all, whatever, it doesn't matter what the French and Germans think cause they're so gay.

So gay? That's not appropriate. I have totally got to remove this gay hat. Oh my god. Damn it, it's totally stuck. This sucks, dude. Ow, okay got it.

So, yeah, there's all that stuff I tried to express above, plus the packing of advisory panels and the judiciary with hard-right ideologues in what I can only assume is a continuing attempt to destroy America. It sucks. It's depressing. It's so 1991.

To quote our cranky, nap-needing President, who proves that irony is dead at least at the White House:
"This looks to me like a re-run of a bad movie and I'm not interested in watching it." Yeah, join the club chimp-boy.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, we're a captive audience.

Ah, well, enough of that. The next entry will return to the irregularly scheduled cavalcade of whimsy. Unless the war starts sooner than I expect.

2003-01-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

Paxil, I believe, is the finest drug known to man. Sadly, I don't have any. I mention this by way of explaining the lapse in my publishing at this fine site in particular the difficulty I am having completing my expose of my secret relationship with Dick Cheney. But please, do not despair. The story is coming. I am just bogged down in the details, drowning beneath of sea of illuminated words, struggling to obtain fleeting moments of clarity or at least a couple of wry-smile-inducing bons mots. So again, do not despair. I plumb the depths for you and you alone. Besides. I despair enough for us both.

Paxil, I maintain, is the finest drug known to man. Regrettably, my prescription lapsed long ago. I mention this by way of explaining the compounding dread I feel upon waking each and every morning, or afternoon, or evening (I take a lot of naps). It is a dread not contingent on any of the many unfolding horrors currently, er, unfolding in the world. Were I a soldier stationed in a windswept, desolate corner of the Middle East awaiting war--waking up to cold desert skies in a constricting, sweat-soaked sleeping bag, the silicate grit chafing my damp inner thighs heralding another day of painful forced marches through blinding sandstorms in my anti-CBW suit that smells like high school locker-room all the while tormented by painful, itching welts inflicted on me by insatiable sandfleas--then, then my dread would be understandable. As it is my feelings of doom are inexplicable and possibly even perversely self-indulgent.

Paxil is, I insist, the finest drug known to man. Unhappily, I go without its comforts. I mention this by of explaining the deer caught in the headlights expression I adopt in any social situation. I mention this by way of acknowledging my recent slowness of wit and my difficulty in holding up my end of a conversation whether the social situation is a job interview or a party (incidentally, I went to a party this weekend and while I was in no shape to enjoy it I did manage to refrain from fleeing in terror thanks to several glass of wine and sumptious array of pot-infused confections).

Paxil is, I repeat, the finest drug known to man. Woefully, I am bereft of it. I mention this by way of explaining my failure as of yet to have married a woman of fantastic inherited wealth. If by chance you are a woman of fantastic inherited wealth then let me commend myself to you. I am reasonably good-looking, can still be reasonably described as a young man, and if kept in Paxil reasonably entertaining. Entertaining enough at any rate to keep you distracted from the terrible burden of all that money. No longer would you spend endless lonely nights worrying that your life long exposure to all that money has made you indifferent to the real problems of this world; that you are nothing but an emotionally cold, selfish, expensive shell of a woman. When we gather together with your equally wealthy friends and you all begin to fret that the burden of all that money has, perhaps, left you feeling that you are better than other people, I will point out that you all clearly behave in exactly that manner, and my pointing out of that flaw will be your and their salvation. By Jove, you're right, they'll say. We are flawed just like other people. Here, have some money. With me as your confessor and acrobatic sexual companion you will once again be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of fantastic inherited wealth. We'll race down the Florida coast in an expensive speed-boat smiling and laughing heartily and never once thinking about all that money. When you ask, in a manner not at all haughty or in any way fraught with the cadences of all that money, for a turn at the wheel, I'll throttle our ridiculously pricey speed-boat down and put her into a turn that sends up a cascading sheet of water that, in conjuction with the blazing sun, bathes you in a radiant glow more splendid than anything you could buy even with all that money. And then the water will come crashing down upon us, and you'll clap and giggle with the innocence of an idiot child or someone with fantastic inherited wealth, and my love for you will grow. And when you take the wheel, after we pound a bottle of champagne so rare less than a thousand people in this whole wide world know of its existence, and mow down a gentle, lolling manatee in your innocent glee and drunkenness, I will take you in my arms and wipe away your tears and reassure you. I will tell you that with all that money you can buy a million, no ten million acres of manatee-infested shoals and set up a boat-free manatee preserve that will ensure their survival for another thousand years. Really, you'll say, through your charming, guilty snivelling. Really, I'll say, and you'll be happy and clap like an idiot again, and even do a little happy dance that sets ajiggle that twenty pounds you gained since our wedding (and about which you worry makes me think you're fat but that I really think makes you look better, less like a starving child and more like a woman), and I'll get up and dance with you, and then lay you back against one of the plush, calf-leather seats and we'll make slow, Paxilated love for hours as our boat gently rocks amid a slick of blood and offal.

Army of Fun would like to thank the good people at SmithKline Beecham, purveyors of Paxil, for their generous endowment

2003-01-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney: Phone Pal
Part Two: None of that stuff I promised last time...still no pay-off...morbid imaginings...

The white on white on white of the chez Cheney left me dumb-founded for the second time that evening. Dumb-founded and afraid to touch anything. While I took it all in the girlfriend's father, let's call him Leslie because if that had been his name I would have felt less threatened by him than I actually did, made our introductions to the Cheneyette. She was pleased to meet us. She wasn't sure where Dick was, showing some other guests around the house she thought, but he'd be back shortly. In the meantime we shoould help ourselves to a drink, she said gesturing towards a bar, white lucite and mirrors, in a room to our left, which in addition to the bar contained about ten or so other people.

And then, just then, from our right came a menacing barking laugh, and we all turned towards it as our fight or flight response kicked in. A door opened and in waddled Batman's sneering nemesis the Penguin though without his trademark tophat or umbrella. This was some party. But wait, despite some broad similarities of appearance it wasn't the Penguin at all. No, that tottering gait, that resplendent pate revealed by a receding hairline, that now all too familiar sneering rictus, belonged to, I realized, former Defense Secretary and serial heart attack victim Dick Cheney, the man of the hour himself. And he had spotted us. And he came over to welcome us to his home.

Leslie, as we're calling him, stepped forward to take Dick's hand. Dick was glad he could make it, and who were these other fine people, Dick asked as his eyes slid over our little group lingering on my girlfriend a little too long for my liking. Leslie pointed us each out in turn, his wife, his daughter, me.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr....uh, Secretary Cheney," I said.

The corner of his mouth not permanently congealed into a sneer curled up in what I chose to believe was a smile.
"Call me Dick."

A severe looking woman next to him harrumphed.
"And this is my wife, Lynne."

We all said hello as she took us in, lingering on me a little to long for my liking.

Finally, Dick suggested, thank God, that we all refresh ourselves. Dick led the way while my girl and I fell to the rear.

"This is so weird," she said.

"Yeah," though weird wasn't the word for it. Downright creepy was more like it. I couldn't explain why but when I shook Dick's hand a chill had gone through my body. This is a man, I'd thought, this is man who if he believed it would benefit him, would eat babies.

At the bar we got our drinks. Gin and tonic for me. Dick had a Manhattan that he drained off in one amazing gulp. He gestured towards the Latino bartender.
"Say what you will about the Messicans," he said, "and there's plenty to say, but they sure as hell know how to make a drink." He barked with laughter at his own "joke" while the rest of us stood in silence. Dick looked at me and I could see it occur to him that I might very well be "Messican".

"No offense," he pleaded.

"Too late," I said.

"I apologize. Some of my best friends' grandchildren are Messican."

"The word is Mexican."
"Sorry. I really am, kid." He tried to smile again which he really shouldn't do.

"You got gumption. I like that," he said and clapped his hand on my shoulder, and again I got a sickening flash of Dick sitting down to a repast of infants. Dick digging into a repast of rack of baby, baby au jus, kung pao baby explaining between mouthfuls that, heh, it's good for the heart, slurp, heh-heh, thins the blood, lotsa the good cholesterol, heh, chomp.

Shuddering, I followed Dick's lead a chugged my drink. And got another. This was so not my scene. Retired military men talked about past glories and new weapons systems, young lobbyist chatted up graying CEOs, older women discussed the current state of education their faces monuments of disgust ("if we only still had school prayer"), President Clinton was repeatedly slandered. I had several more drinks.

Next: all that stuff I promised last time, I swear. Groping! "Gnomes"! Intrigue!

2003-01-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney: Phone Pal
part one: in which a set-up goes on for far too long...the Cheneys' land-scaping is appraised...I enter the chambers of Dick

Some years ago I saw, dated, co-habitated with a more than reasonably attractive woman who broke my heart. Admittedly, my being caught swapping spit with her just shy of eighteen years old cousin might have been an issue. On the other hand, she, the squeeze not her under-aged cousin, left me for a lawyer so its not like she's a good person either. Which really is neither here nor there. No, what's important here is that through her, or more accurately through her father, I first met Dick Cheney.

I'd been assigned to attend an products expo in DC for the industry rag (what industry and what rag is unimportant) for which I was working at the time. I was a low man on the totem pole there and didn't usually do that sort of thing, but a conspiracy of absences, vacations and busy schedules led to the head of my department appearing at my work-station one afternoon.

"Want to go to DC," he asked? I hadn't expected the question and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Was it a personal inquiry, work-related, a prelude to sexual harrassment?

"Um, sure," I said; the perfect non-affirmative affirmation.

"Great," he replied. And then it was all blah, blah next week, blah, info, blah, travel arrangements, blah.

I called my girlfriend to tell her the news and asked if she wanted to go. She was like okay. Her father lived out there, he was small player but a player nonetheless in the military-industrial complex (once in the military then a purveyor of deadly product), and he was always complaining he didn't get to see her as often as he liked; and the company would put us up and she could use her frequent miles for the trip, it sounded like a good idea.

A couple days later her father called. He'd love to see her, but he'd been invited to a dinner party at Dick Cheney's home. We could come if we wanted to.

"Dick Cheney, huh," I said. "Wasn't he George Bush's uh, wasn't he in the Bush Administration?"

"Yeah, something."

"I don't know if that's my scene."

"C'mon it'll be fun."

"You're kidding, right."

"Interesting?"

"Well, maybe."

So okay, now the plans included a night at the Cheneys'. Anything to keep the piece*, right? The days passed as they do, there was a flight, there was a hotel check-in, there was an expo which I couldn't tell you a thing about even if I wanted to. There was the arrival of her dad and his wife at our hotel, there was awkward conversation, there was the ride to the Cheneys' during which there was more awkward conversation. Finally, there was the Cheney abode in suburban NoVa.

Ah, Dick Cheney, how your demi-manse exceeded my expectations; the walk-way lined with moving model oil-pumps, the lawn and trees darkly glistening under a sheen of that same rarified petroleum (despite the oil-pump motiff we had trouble believing that they would coat the grounds with it until I knelt down, plucked a slick blade from the earth and touched it to my tongue, "thirty-weight," I intoned authoritatively, though actually I had no idea), the lawn jockeys of various hues cavorting upon the shimmering black expanse (and, was it just me or did it seem the peach toned jockeys were over-seeing the cavortings of their darker brethren), and, here and there, what appeared to be quite explicit erotic garden gnomes locked in flagrante.

What could I do faced with such a scene? I gaped. I giggled. I gently elbow-nudged my girlfriend and raised my eyebrows. I tried to determine whether the display made me more or less interested in meeting the Cheneys. I wondered if they'd have a doorman that evening.

They don't. One of their daughters was doing door duty. I don't know which one. Back then I didn't know there was anything to know about "which one". The interior was a blaze of white: white carpets, white furniture with white cushions, white furniture with glass surfaces, the white country-style knick-knacks-- a white basket with white flowers and a white teddy bear inside, stuffed carcasses of albino beasts, pictures of white historical/political figures. I guess you could call the place "Wyoming tasteful."

*Unintentional Freudian spelling slip, but it works.

Next: my dinner with Dick...a lustful groping...the truth about the "garden gnomes"

2003-01-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

It was this past Monday. A Monday where America waited, hands aflutter with anticipation, for the newest Bush proposal to simulate, er, stimulate the economy. I'm afraid I wasn't doing my part. I was in no condition to make my preparations for lauding or critizing el jefe's latest. See, as often happens after spending time with children I'd been infected with some bit of the microbial nastiness that ceaselessly festers within them. It had been having its way with me for a few days and I'd been doing my best at ignoring it so it would go away, but finally it was obvious that I was going to need medical attention. An unfortunate turn of events, yes, but what else was there to do?

I called a friend of mine, let's call him Gary; not that he particularly wants to be called Gary, but when I brought up the idea of including his actions in "Army of Fun" I told him I'd use a pseudonym, and he was like, oh, okay, I'm okay with that I guess, whatever. Just don't call me Quinn okay? And I was like okay, sure, that never actually occurred to me, which was a lie because of course I had what with him being Eskimo and all, and by "and all", I mean gay. But I'm not saying that for cheap laughs. Like I'm all, oh, ha-ha a gay Eskimo, let's mock Gary, the 'skimo 'mo. Well, maybe a little bit, but still. No, I tell you that because so would Gary. He's one of those guys who throws those social labels out there within like ten minutes of meeting him. Gary is he who he is and he doesn't want anyone to mistake him for what he's not. As for you scoffers out there, the ones who think, like I really need him to tell me that, cause, oh yeah, like it would be so hard to peg a gay Eskimo, think again. Because it's not exactly like the lower forty-eight are awash with Eskimos. Sure, it's easy enough to figure that Gary's got Asian ancestors, but sans parka, seal-skin mukluks and a hunk of whale blubber stuffed in his gob, there's not really any telling in Gary's case whether that ancestry goes back 12,000, 120 or 20 years, or s is the actual case with your 'skimo migration to the America's 5000 years. As for the gay, well not being gay myself I can't speak to the efficacy of soi-disant gay-dar, but in my experience straight people either over-or-under-guess who's gay or not by way. Admitedly, I found this all out in less than ten minutes of knowing Gary, but it was kind of a special case. I was at a party desultorily chatting up this girl. Desultorily because I was busy obsessing over this girl I'd hung out with a few times, and because she was in the midst of this on-again, off-again, on then off, then maybe back on again at the time relationship. It was a kind of fun conversation and she was kind of attractive, I love girls in boots, but obviously it wasn't going to go anywhere. Anyway, Gary comes over to say hey to her, and she introduces us. Gary says hello and gives me this funny look then asks if I'm Eskimo. I'm all like no, no I'm not. Why do you ask? And he says that he's Eskimo and that I remind him of an Eskimo friend of his. Which happens to me a lot. Not being taken for an Eskimo precisely, but reminding people of someone else they know of this or that ethnic background. Anyway, I tell him that I'm actually Yanomami and Lunda, geographically pretty far away from Eskimo, and launch into explaining how my parents met which is always the next question anyway. As I'm doing so another guy comes over and gives Gary a more than friendly, quick around the shoulder squeeze and then of he dashes. Guy turns out to be, Gary explains, someone Gary started seeing lately so there you go. Gay. Eskimo.

Anyway, I call up Gary and he's willing to give me a ride where ever I need to go since he's free for the day having recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. I've been in those ranks for a considerably longer time myself which added a whole extra dimension to the being sick thing: having no health insurance. So I dig out the phone book and turn to the government pages looking for someplace to go. And, okay, I think I've found one. G' arrives and off we go to one of the county clinics.

Which as it turns out isn't accepting new enrollees currently. I'll have to go somewhere else to enroll in the guv'mint health program. Somewhere else turning out to be a very run down looking hospital up in the foothills somewhere. So Gary, who was kind enough to stick around until we were sure I'd be taken care of, drives me up there. I talk to the tired looking nurse's aide behind a pane of glass and yes they will see me, eventually. Great. I tell Gary he can take off, as I'm sure he's got something better to do, and he does, telling me to call him when I need a ride back. Muchos gracias G'.

The only thing more depressing than a bunch of sick, poor people, ranging from the guy with the back-cyst in the out-patient waiting room to the various scarred and worse by life invalids lounging in the sun in their wheelchairs, is the realization that by any reasonable definition you yourself number among the very people you find so depressing. Plus, the seating is not very comfortable being all metal with no cushioning and the seat you're, by which I mean I am, sitting in is broken, but it's conveniently in a corner so that I can slump ailing against the wall.

It takes two hours before they even look at me to give me an appointment. An appointment for three hours later. I wait. I have no choice. My throat is so painful I can barely swallow, which I have to do a lot because my throat and mouth are coated with a hot, foul film and my salivary glands are working overtime wash it all away. I involuntarily bring my hand to my mouth everytime I swallow. I think it's some kind of bacterial infection, strep or it's ilk. I spit a lot.

Now, many people would think that this was a bad experience. And, it kind of is, but I will get to see a doctor eventually so it's a lot better than suffering without care, not being able to eat or drink and eventually losing my hearing due to the damage caused by a curable bacterial infection. So this is the portion of "Army" where I advocate "socialized medicine" as it's opponents sometimes refer to it. As if the idea of socializing the health of the social body is not just undesirable but somehow evil. Yeah, current government run health-care is pretty crappy. But that's because it's marginalized not because that's the essence of it. As things stand now there's money to be made and the government is not going to compete with that. Just think about this: when Clinton Health-care went down in 1994 it's opponents warned us we'd face health-care by bean counters and denial of procedures due to cost. Well, they were right. Th difference between what we have and nationalized health-care is that the people have no say over those responsible for managing there health-care.

Eventually, I got to see a doctor. He asked me a couple questions. He looked down my throat. He prescribed anti-biotics and codeine, exactly what I thought, though I would have hooked myself up with better narcotics. Sigh. Thanks for caring.

2003-01-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

From the good Roger Ailes, a story of Brit media-types running amok.

2003-01-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, is I suppose the appropriate thing to state, so state it I will. Happy New Year. Ah, and now we're both satisfied. Wait, you say, we're not satisfied at all. Happy Fucking New Year? We get that from our friends, from our families. From you? You better give us more. Where are your ten best lists? Your round ups? Your invaluble notes on what's in and what's out? Throw us a bone. Cast your pearls before us teeming swine.

Well, uh, I, uh, wow. I didn't expect such a contumacious reception. I'm stunned by the heat of your comments. I suppose a good mollification might be in order, but considering the results of my last supposition I'll just ask you to cease your fashing obloquy. Face it, you're unlikely to find a ten best list here, there are plenty of other places to find them and that's all I'll say about it because I'm getting perilously close to violating one of my few New Year's Resolutions.

Resolution: Don't blog about blogging.

So rather than getting blogged down in that (blogged down! get it? man, I kill me.) Where was I? Right. Rather than explanations of thisnot and whithernon let us use my recent trip to St. Louis as an entre into the usual Discursive Discourse^TM.

Actually, there's not much to it. I was delivered into a white Christmas much to my horror. I have little use for snow or ice except as a beverage enhancer. In my adult life, I've appreciated snow only during my time in Seattle where after about an hour or two of snow the precipitation would come to it's senses, realize where it was and revert to snow-obliterating rain.

In: Placing your entertaining, edgy, funny show on fox.
Out: Your show ten weeks later, max.
In (at least among three year-old boys related to me): Power Rangers.
Out: Elmo, though you'll be relieved to know that there's still a place for Rockin' Ernie.

Out from the airport, Lambert-St. Louis it's called, out from the city itself into the suburbs; the small towns of old houses of various sizes, but tending toward the cozily small, that some would undoubtedly find quaint and charming; the areas of new development largely consisting of McMansions and trailer parks, and there's a nice third-world/feudal type arrangement sure to engender class resentments in any reasonable country though here in the USA I'm sure vouchers for religious schooling and a god-given flat-tax will surely curb any potential problems; and, of course, Walmart-anchored strip malls by the score.

In: "Fucking A"
Out: "Shit, yeah"

Typical week with the family. Stress-induced arguments. Crimination and re-crimination. Intra and inter-ethnic strife. Sex scandals, always involving one party outside of the family, thank you. I played Barbies alot. I caught a cold. I flew home on New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve itself is another story. And, what with the flying and the cold, not a very good one.

In: "Angel"
Out: "Buffy"
In: Anything Airbus.
Out: Anything Boeing 7x7

One last thing I want to mention is how much I appreciated the new airport security. I hadn't been on a plane since September 11, 2001. Not for any grand reason that's just how it worked out. Sure the lines to the gates were longer than I remember, but no longer is one asked the stupid bag-packing/chain of possession question, and the screeners seem more efficient and attentive, so good. Plus, as someone of, let us say, a certain indeterminancy of ethnicity I was pleased to note that I was hassled less than I had been in the past. Maybe this will change but I was glad for once to escape the repeated wandings and swabbings I'd been subjected to previously. Especially, that time at Sea-Tac when I suffered the indignity of having a latex-gloved security apparatchik push a chemical detection stick down my pants and swab my ass-trench for explosive residue. In their defense, I imagine that one could shove enough C-4 or Semtex up one's ass to explode a plane, certainly more than you could fit in your shoes. Still, who's done that and what profile did I fit? Unshaven, brownish, appearing to suffer from gastro-intestinal distress? Here's a better and much more common explanation than an ass-bomb: it was ten after seven in the a.m. and I had to drink three cups of coffee to drag myself to the airport.

While we're at it I do have one suggestion for the security profilers. I seem to recall the the 9-11 hijackers had shorn themselves of body hair, so let's be on the look out for people with a suspicious lack of same. Anyone whose arms seem unnaturally smooth should be pulled away for further inspection. Those found to be lacking in all body hair will be detained unless they can provide medical documention proving they suffer from alopecia universalis.

Resolution: Be sure to maintain luxurious, sexy coat of body hair.

2002-12-25T06:49:00.000-08:00

So it's early X-mas morning. In a few hours I'll be winging my way to St. Louis, Missouri. Or as the locals would have it, Missour-uh. Why would I do such thing? Well, through a series of travel related mis-judgements and mis-haps that would make both our Hamitic and Scandie relatives proud that (St. Louis, Missour-uh) is where my brother ended up settling. And now he has a family. I'm sure his kids , who are also part Scot-Irish (and while I have nothing much against the Irish, I'm a bit worried about that Scot part because, let's face it, Scotland is the Olduvai Gorge of white-trash), are already tearing their way through their putatively X-tian holiday plunder. Anyway, my brother has promised a traditional holiday. Traditional for my family anyway, so I'm sure to be missing out on the whitefish and lentil porridge as well as the fjallagrasamjólk, mmmm fjallagrasamjólk, as I type this. I should be there in time for a hearty supper of lutefisk wat though, and if I'm not there's sure to be left-overs. When it comes to lutefisk wat there'll always be left-overs.

2002-12-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hoo-boy, what makes the Japanese so mad? From sexually potent soy-sauce to their fondness for making everything ur-cute to the ubiquity of schoolgirl uniformed anime characters to their pioneering of humiliation television their pop-culture is wierd, wierd, wierd. Whether you think that is a good or bad thing depends on the observer. For myself, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, as my vast collection of Hello Kitty merchandise will attest. Why I like it, I don't know. Maybe it's the years of mind-addling drug abuse. Maybe it's that the cute stuff mirrors my own ur-cute Ethiopian/Icelandic visage. Probably both. I've taken a lot of wondeful drugs and I'm cute beyond measure (as far as the latter goes, given my heritage how could it be any other way; soon my plans to systematlically cross-breed my two peoples to create an ultimate race of Vogue ready super-models will come to fruition... Bwah-mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-etc).

For more direct links to Japanese cute check out the invaluable memepool and scroll down to the Dec. 18, 2002 listings.

2002-12-24T13:52:00.000-08:00

Urg. Just watching a CNN report on Iraqi Christians and Christmas. They cut back to the anchor, and she's all like "Many people will be interested to know Christmas celebrations are tolerated here" or something to that effect. Say what you will about Saddam Hussein, and there's no doubt he is a bad man, a very bad man, a murderous, people gassing bastard, but Iraq is pretty much a secualr country. Since we're set to invade it, we US of A people should know that. The politicians who want to invade it clearly have their reasons for eliding that point, so if the population by and large is ignorant of the fact at this point I feel secure in blaming the media. CNN, I'm looking at you.

2002-12-23T16:08:00.000-08:00

Newsday reports (via Atrios):

Utah's largest employer, the Mormon church, is cutting hundreds of jobs to counter a drop in investment income and a decrease in tithing by its members.

About 600 employees of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepted an offer of voluntary early retirement effective this week...

Look, Bob, it's simple. Either take this generous voluntary retirement package, or become Satan's bitch and burn eternally in a lake of hellfire. It's your choice.

2002-12-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Mr. Gore...

I didn't know much about Al Gore before he became VP. Sure, he'd run for president in 1988, but he didn't make it past the primaries and I couldn't vote anyway so whatever. So when Clinton picked him as his running-mate, I was like oh yeah, that guy. The husband of that PMRC woman with the strange name, which honestly wasn't a good thing. But with the VP-ship came exposure and then there were books and what not, and despite the fact that he came off a little bit stiff, he seemed like a bright, dedicated, capable man. In fact, the more I saw him the more I liked him. I felt that if he became our president the nation would be in good hands. And then, it looked like he'd probably win. And then, it all went to hell. The press screwed him over endlessly. (Check out the Daily Howler for documentation and details and details and details. And never forget that the Al Gore says he discovered Love Canal story was a complete and utter fabrication. And remember that it was such a transparent fabrication that the reporter who started the whole thing, one Ceci Connelly of the NYTimes, was busted on it by teenagers, and suffered no repercussions whatsoever. Would you be so lucky in your career? Hmm, would ya?) People believed the spin. I know very intelligent people who still give it credence today. America was somehow convinced that he lost the debate to the monkey-like performance of a man who thing all math is fuzzy math, except for the execrable and obvious bullshit his advisors/handlers produce by the sheaf load. Then there was Ralph Nadir (yes, I know). Then Florida and the Supreme Court. And then the recrimination. All so, so sad. So Mr. Gore laid low for awhile, grew a beard, whatever, wrote books. He didn't form a shadow government though I wish he had. No, he took it well, this good man stricken by fell forces. And now, comme on dit, they won't have Al Gore to kick around anymore. I think he made the right decision and for the right reasons. But maybe, just maybe, if we're unlucky enough to be subjected to, oh god I can barely stand to type it, eight years of (shudder) Bush, Mr. Gore will take another shot. If he does, I'll vote for him. He'll be our best hope to fix the damage. Merry Christmas, Mr. Gore. You deserve it.

2002-12-20T18:40:00.000-08:00

Blast From The Past

So this was first posted way back in October over on Suckful dot Blog which is in the process of moving over to the Suckful domain proper. Obviously, I am affiliated with the producers of Suckful which has a glorious if erratic history stretching back to early 2001. Anyway, this isn't that great but I do want it archived here for my convenience. And, yes, I would like to meet Noelle Bush. She might actual be kind of cute, though its admittedly hard to tell from the mugshots.

An Open Letter To Noelle

Noelle, liebchen, darling addled flower of the Florida Bushes, may I, to borrow a phrase, say I feel your pain? May I go further and say I would like to scoop you up im my arms, hold you closely, and with my gentle fingers bestill the coke-induced quivering of your lubricious lips? For you are alluring, related to the powerful, and presumably as well-educated as one can expect a Bush to be, and because I too know the pain of being raised by the hand of high-handed arrogance in an ethnically mixed family (in my own case Leichtensteiner and Turk).

I too, Noelle, dumpling learned in the bosom of my family that chemical enhancement could ease the pains of life. How vividly I recall those mornings out on the garden terrace where my parents would swill smuggled duty-free liqour, my father regally settled in a fine deck chair, my mother taking nips while scrubbing the expensive tile which, my father would say, was naturally befitting a Turk (my sister Cassandra and I were assigned the task of polishing the silver). Too soon I was also calming my tender nerves at the family trough and from there it was but a short step into full-blown dangerous drug dependency as I traipsed through the party spots and back alleys of the continent and the States. Embarassing to the family? Surely. Particularly after it was discovered that papa was keeping some of the residents of the family properties in what amounted to serfdom. My failings made it all to easy for base critics to howl that we were decadent, atavistic aristos. I ended up in rehab as papa fought back mightily, rightly pointing out that it was the government's job, not his, to free its citizens from peonage.

As for myself, the rehabilitation process was difficult. More than once I was caught in the ecstatic throes of a drug binge at the facility in which I was ensconced, and subsequently yanked from there and consigned to languish in the dungeons of the traditional family seat of Rotarschaffen Schloss for up to two miserable weeks. My trials finally ended when I became tired of being bounced hither and yon, and co-incidentally my father gave up his quest for power. My family was able to come together to focus on what was truly important and provide the loving support I needed. So, Noelle, do not give up the fight just yet. There is hope in the form of your own strength and Bill McBride. And, perhaps, one day we could get together?

2002-12-20T16:46:00.000-08:00

Clearly, I am irresponsible. Ok, perhaps it's not so clear from reading this blog, which only has three entries of which this is the third, but if you knew me better you would say "Young Mr. Fyrste is clearly irresponsible", and when you said it you would pronounce my name correctly as feerst-uh rather than first, and you would probably also think that in addition to being amazingly irresponsible that I am very pretty for a boy, and might even conjecture that the latter has something to do with the former, and it's even possible you might resent me for it, but, in addition to being irresponsible, pretty and seemingly comma-happy, I am also modest and generous and I would probably forgive you for resenting me, and if we knew each other quite well, I might even acknowledge that your conjecture (that is the irresponsible/pretty connection) may have some merit.

Now, my readership may be asking, what has the above to do with anything? So, the readership adds, assuming that you are telling the truth, it is now known that you are pretty irresponsible and irresponsibly pretty. So what? And, even though you admit to being flawed in one way isn't gratuitously lauding your god-given good looks the very definition of vain? And, doesn't that put the lie to your claim of being modest? And, isn't that the very definition of false modesty?

Dear reader, if you would just back off for a second I'll tell you. Here's the thing; while I, after many half-assed attempts, have discovered that I cannot help myself, and while seeking your help would be a mutual waste of time, help is, as they say in more benighted regions, a-coming. Thanks to the noble efforts of the noble administration of our noble president at least one aspect of my rampant irresponsibility shall soon be curbed.

See, in addition to my general cavalierity and many other shirkings, I use the wide-world ten thousand myriad interweb irresponsibly. Why, look at my first post. Not only do I rip off the WaPo's IP wholesale, I also conceivably slander former, present and potential members and allies of the current presidential administration and the GOP as a whole. I mock their positions using crude and obscene neo-logisms and portmanteau words. I use hyphens far more often than a proper American should. Hell, I even implicitly imply that there are certain government officials and pundits I might like to kill. Add to this that I may have, at some point in the past, out of simple curiosity looked up bomb-making instructions on the internet. Not that I'd want to blow anybody up; I'm just saying.

Thankfully, I may now be stopped. At the very least I should definitely be looked into. But up 'til how could I be monitored surfing the web and toiling away in obscurity.

The Bush administration is planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users.

While the proposal is meant to gauge the overall state of the worldwide network, some officials of Internet companies who have been briefed on the proposal say they worry that such a system could be used to cross the indistinct border between broad monitoring and wiretap.

An official with a major data services company who has been briefed on several aspects of the government's plans said it was hard to see how such capabilities could be provided to government without the potential for real-time monitoring, even of individuals.

The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet."

A technology that is deployed without the proper legal controls "could be used to violate privacy," he said, and should be considered carefully.

If you're anything like me that last statement had you worried for a second. Like, maybe, those "legal controls" might prevent the feds from saving me from myself, but then I heaved a sigh of relief as my thoughts turned to AG John Ashcroft, and "enemy combatant" designations, and "detained without recourse to counsel." And I knew, "legal controls" aside, my gum'mint would always look out for me.

2002-12-18T23:47:00.000-08:00

A post in which politics is blissfully ignored and a pop culture entertainment phenomenon is examined: A Not So Brief (as it turns out) Review of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"

Like many people I've really been looking forward to this film. Like many, I first read this trilogy as a child. As the ploddingly stout, quick to anger, duskily complected, yet red-headed product of a Samoan-Irish union they were a godsend. I could easily imagine myself as one of the Fellowship setting of to do just battle against the cruel forces of total evil.

The years passed and I grew into adulthood. I became a more patient man, a man comfortable with his large, imposing body (a no longer plodding body thanks to the Atkins Diet, for which, sadly, I had to give up coconut mashed potatos, mmm coconut mashed potatos, but it was worth it), a man with a future, a man with fond memories of Tolkien's trilogy. Then, still in my early twenties, I made a grave mistake. I read the Lord of the Rings again. It was a shattering experience. Had the psychic pain of freakdom I'd felt as a child made me stupid? These were truly terrible books. The turgid prose, vapid descriptions, mind-numbing digressions, weak characterizations and those "songs", those god-awful songs, the appearance of which on the page would set my eyes aquiver as they sought the exact frequency that would cause themselves to rupture and spare my brain future exposure to this tedious rubbish. On re-appraisal of the Rings I found myself forced to agree with Edmund Wilson's judgement that it was " a children's book which has somwhow gotten out of hand" and not a very good one at that. Philip Toynbee summed it up as "dull, ill-written and whimsical", and while I have nothing against whimsy, the first two descriptors are dead-on accurate of the books' unforgivable flaws.

Still, when I heard that Peter Jackson was going to make the three books into movies I felt a bit of a thrill. Trapped beneath the dead weight of Tolkien's eye explodingly bad writing was a decently plotted adventure tale with dark overtones. If anyone could save Tolkien's work and restore it to it's former place in my heart it was Jackson. I'd enjoyed what I'd seen of his early "splatstick" work and I count his brilliant "Heavenly Creatures", an exploration of fantasy and murderous violence, among the better of films of the 1990's.

Even with my faith in Jackson, when I sat down to watch "Fellowship of the Rings" I felt some trepidation. Could he streamline the story and get at its cinematic potential or would he get bogged down in an ill-advised attempt at utter faithfulness to Tolkien? Thankfully, he got it. The film genuinely wowed me in a way no film had since I first saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark". It isn't a deep movie, but in terms of pure entertainment it's hard to imagine anything much better. It's beautiful, well paced, compelling plotted and occasionally moving. Jackson extracted great performances from his cast, particularly Ian Holm as Bilbo. It's a bit part but one requiring a range of emotions which Holm captures beautifully. I love "Fellowship" and it stands up after repeated and repeated and repeated viewing.

Now then, on to the question at hand: Does "The Two Towers" measure up to "Fellowship"? Keeping in mind that the question is kind of unfair, on which more later, the short answer is no. It's to fragmented and too busy by "way", even though it elides chunks of Tolkien's text and ends earlier than the book. This is more Tolkien's fault than Jackson's, and Jackson does an admirable job of being as faithful to the plot as possible, but having to cut between the three plotlines of the scattered members of the fellowship robs the second film of the first film's momentum and left me caring a bit less about the characters. That said, it is a fun movie and I will watch it again. The set-piece battles are well done which is a good thing since they make up a lot of the film.

The Battle of Helms Deep, where the vastly outnumbered remnants of small kingdom along with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli make a desperate stand against Saruman's dark army, that takes up much of the last hour of "The Two Towers" is particularly spectacular. It's all darkness and rain and flights of arrows and clashing steel; grunting foes and bloody pitched fighting and breaches stuffed with the bodies of orcs and men. On the downside, we never really feel like our heros are in peril, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli come off as essentially indestructable. Contrast this to, say, Branagh's "Henry V" where though the outcome of battles are similarly never doubt they are much more desperately and heroically moving. Of course Branagh was working from Shakespeare.

Well, anyway, let's move on to the adventures of Frodo and Sam. This for my money is the best thread of the movie. The only one where the characters really display some depth. I looked forward to returning to their adventures throughout and was a little let off whenever we cut away from it, which is appropriate I think since their mission to take the One Ring to Mordor and destroy it is the heart of the story. Plus, we have Frodo, the only character whose outcome is truly in doubt, who comes increasingly under the sway the Ring of Power. Plus, we have Sam, the best friend a hobbit or man could ever have, who struggles to cope with his companion's growing unhingedness. Plus, we have Gollum, captured early on by Frodo and Sam, who, in addition to being batshit crazy, is the best CG character ever. Ever. I can't say enough about Gollum. His appearance is truly amazing, just fucking incredible. He looks practically real. I mean he's clearly not but I can't say why, nothing in particular sticks out. Maybe his textures are a shade off from "real-life" textures, but just a shade. Really, there aren't the words. You'll just have to see it for yourself to believe it. I'll just say this: if the best revenge is living well, then the best fuck-off to JarJar Binks is Gollum. Choke on it, Lucas. Gollum is all this and a fully fleshed out character as well, albeit, as I mentioned earlier, one who is batshit crazy; torn, as he is, between his desire for the ring and the possibility of redemption. There's actually a scene, several really, that consist of nothing but the conflict of the two sides of this digital character that are entirely credible. That Jackson and the designer's and Andy Serkis, who provided the voice and movements, managed to pull this off is nothing short of a cinematic landmark.

Anyway, I've rambled on quite enough for the present, and besides I hear a spam and whiskey smoothy (which would be the national drink of my people were there enough of us to form a nation, or a people for that matter) calling my name. I think I have some more to say about this film but I'll wait to see it again, which I will in the short term future. To sum up as if my opinion matters: I liked "The Two Towers" but I don't think it's as good as "Fellowship". If you really liked "Fellowhip" you'll really like this. Of course, if you haven't seen "Fellowship" don't go see this until you have. I mean why would you? Which reminds that I almost forgot to say why I thought my question "Does 'The Two Towers' measure up to 'Fellowship' was unfair. It's unfair because this obviously isn't a stand-alone movie. It's more dependent on the films that book-end in than any other movie I can think of and Jackson to his credit knows that. We don't get a lot of repetition in this move and there's not really a beginning or end in a traditional sense. I can't wait to sit down and watch the entire trilogy back to back to back. I think it's only then that we'll be able to give the movie the appraisal it deserves. Given that this has been released as a seperate film, maybe that's an odd thing to say. Nevertheless, I'm convinced that the "Rings" trilogy is a whole different animal, with a much greater depth of, and dependence on, continuity, from series we've seen before.

2002-12-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

Until last week I'd been in something of a self-imposed media blackout since the woeful events of a certain Tuesday in November. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and I find myself once again slogging wearily through the morass of good ole US of A politics and media. Don't cry for me. I'm already dead.

So then what have I found upon my lamentable, by me, re-awakening to Dubya's America? Pretty much what I'd expect:

Poorly concealed bigotry in Republican leadership?
Yeah. Well. Check.

Imminent stacking of the federal courts with wingnut activists who can't see an implied right to privacy in the Constitution, no doubt because the 2nd Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights that they don't view as a polite but unnecessary suggestion?
Yeah. Well. Check.

Rapacious environmental policies bought, written and overseen by corporate contributors?
Yeah. Well. Check. (Hey, looks like I hit the trifecta)

And, finally, increased taxation, both relatively and absolutely, of the poor and middle-class?
Hey. Wait a minute. What.The.Jibb.Tuh.Fuck. I'm missing something here, right? No, no apparently not. Look, I'm just as aware as everyone else in America (possibly the world) that the more or less official Republican economic policy is "I gots mine", but what the hell? This is the plan? Hey, you know what? Don't follow that link. I'll just steal the WP's intellectual property and post it here (solely, for the purposes of examining what I can only delude myself into hoping is an incredibly ill-conceived and ill-starred trial balloon). Come, let's go to the newsprint.

Warning: Snark Condition Red

New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden
Poor Could Pay A Bigger Share

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 16, 2002; Page A03

all credit where credit is due, after all

As the Bush administration draws up plans to simplify the tax system, it is also refining arguments for why it may be necessary to shift more of the tax load onto lower-income workers.

Ahh, simplification. Urge to kill rising.

Economists at the Treasury Department are drafting new ways to calculate the distribution of tax burdens among different income classes, which are expected to highlight what administration officials see as a rising tax burden on the rich and a declining burden on the poor. The White House Council of Economic Advisers is also preparing a report detailing the concentration of the tax burden on the affluent and highlighting problems with the way tax burdens are calculated for the poor.

Oh, those put upon affluents. Paying taxes must be such a burden on them what with all that money.

The efforts would thrust the administration into a debate that until now has lingered on the fringes of economic policy: Are too few wealthy Americans paying too much in taxes for too many, and should the working poor and middle class be shouldering more of the tax burden?

Well of course they should since as any free-wheelin' geniusified CEO would tell you, go where the money, er, isn't?

"The increasing reliance on taxing higher-income households and targeted social preferences at lower incomes stands in the way of moving to a simpler, flatter tax system," R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned at a tax forum at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday.

Taxing higher incomes...target "social preferences" at lower incomes. Yeah, well that's the definition of a progressive, no liberal, no socialist tax system. Jerk. Urge to kill...rising.

The Council of Economic Advisers' "Economic Report to the President," scheduled for release late next month or in early February, is to include a section arguing for new methods to calculate the distribution of tax burdens on various income groups.

For new methods, read "Obfuscatory, plutocratic niu-se*"

The Treasury Department is working up more sophisticated distribution tables that are expected to make the poor appear to be paying less in taxes and the rich to be paying more.

What I just said

Answering critics who say the working poor do face high taxes because they pay high Social Security payroll taxes, outgoing White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey told the AEI tax forum that the 12.4 percent Social Security levy should not be considered when tax burdens are calculated. Lindsey said the Social Security tax is ultimately returned to the taxpayer as a benefit.

Hey Mr. Lindsey, the point of taxation in a republic or a democracy is that money is pooled for collective benefit. Idiot. That's the point. We can argue over who should pay what, and increasingly thanks to your ilk whether the appropriate people benefit (e.g. actual people rather than say well-heeled, thieving corporations). But if you know of some tax money that isn't benefitting taxpayers in any way, well can I have it? Seriously, half-wit, even the Heritage Foundation guy quoted further down gets this (which helps boost my desperate hope that this is just a trial balloon of stupid that'll go down quicker than an Iraqi kite in a no-fly zone)

Lindsey compared the Social Security tax to a deposit in a neighborhood bank's Christmas Club. In such clubs, periodic deposits are returned in a lump sum during the holiday season, and Lindsey said no one would consider such deposits a tax.

sigh

Early this month, J.T. Young, the deputy assistant treasury secretary for legislative affairs, lamented in a Washington Times opinion article: "[Higher] earners cannot produce the level of revenues needed to sustain the liberals' increasingly costly spending programs over the long-term. . . . If federal government spending is not controlled, then the tax burden will have to begin extending backward down the income ladder."

I can only imagine that by "liberals" he means the non-bigot wing of the GOP since last time I checked the Republicans were set to be in charge of both branches of the guvmint which request, set, authorize and yes "control" spending. Seriously, again, who's tax-and-spend now? C'mon, who?

The tenor of the administration's policy discussions marks a dramatic shift from early in 2001, when Bush sold his 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut as a tool to "take down the tollgate on the road to the middle class," emphasizing its beneficial impact on workers "on the outskirts of poverty." At that time, the administration fretted over the tax burden on the working poor, which the White House calculated to include federal income taxes, state taxes and the Social Security tax.

Yeah, but that was apparently before the entire Republican Party doubled up on their Hubrisil^TM (provided gratis, incidentally, by the pharmaceutical industry).

When administration officials pushed the need to create private investment accounts to supplement Social Security, they specifically warned that taxes paid into Social Security would not necessarily be returned unless the system was reformed.

Which, by the way, would render sub-moron, has-been Lindsey's point both null and void.

William W. Beach, an economist at the Heritage Foundation think tank, said he was sympathetic to Lindsey's argument that the Social Security tax is not really a tax. But, he said, it was a dangerous argument for a Republican to make.

"Do I allow defense spending to offset my income taxes since I like to be defended? Do I allow road taxes to offset my profits taxes because I use the roads?" he asked. "If you do start down that road, it's hard to see anything as taxes."

Well, duh, that about sums it up.

But for the purposes of a tax reform debate, removing Social Security taxes from consideration could have a sizable impact. The top 5 percent of the nation's taxpayers paid 41 percent of all federal taxes, a hefty share, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But that same group paid from 56 to 59 percent of all income taxes, an even more impressive burden.

That would be the effect of removing payroll taxes alright, considering that after a certain point you don't pay them anymore. Hell, why not exclude all wage-based taxes from the debate that way the top 5 percent can end up paying, like what, 85 percent of all personal taxes, which is even more "impressive". Urge to kill still rising.

"If we take out Social Security, the poor will look very lightly taxed," said Robert S. McIntyre, of Citizens for Tax Justice, a tax research group backed by organized labor.

Whoa, look, an actual quote from a non-conservative organization. Oh, they're backed by organized labor though, unlike AEI which apparently recieves no backing and is just a group of free-thinking intellectuals

Democrats say the shift could prove ominous for lower-income Americans. And they appear eager for the fight.

Democrats eager for the fight? Wow, this really must be ominous. Cue organ music and thunder claps.

"These people are setting the tone in saying the poor really are not being taxed enough and that the burden is too high on the rich," said New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "We're going back some 70 years."

"Back some 70 years"? Ah, music to Trent Lott's ears. He must be getting ready to whoop it up under the GOP's Bigot Tent. Still, "these people are setting the tone"? That don't sound like fighting words to me.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.), a member of the committee, said: "I don't think there's any question you have a number of extremists in the Republican ranks that would like to see the wealthy do very well. They're going to try to make the case that the average American is overtaxed and subsidizing the poor."

But to some conservatives, the shift is long overdue. Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has argued for two years that the nation is entering a dangerous period in which the burden of financing government is falling on too few people. In such an environment, the masses will always vote for politicians promising ever-more-generous social programs, knowing they will not have to pay for such programs, DeMint warned.

"This issue is coming to a head," DeMint said earlier this month, just minutes after making his pitch to outgoing Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill. "You can't maintain a democracy if the people who are voting don't care what their government costs."

Right, because this is all about defending democracy.

DeMint and his allies have called for a national sales tax to replace the income tax. For those below the federal poverty line, sales taxes paid would be refunded, but under the system, at least they will have seen the cost of government, he said. The working poor would accept a higher tax burden because they would be relieved of the need to file a tax return.

And there you have it America, clearly some, if not all, conservative politicians believe that if you make less than like 75 grand a year you must have gone to school on the short-bus, the sped-sled, the sweet pickle wagon; and they see no harm in taking advantage of your presumably imbecilic selves.

DeMint called his ideas "the duck's feet under the water," propelling his proposals forward invisibly.

So that's what he calls it. I call it the asstastic musings of an ass-hatted ass-clown.

Conservative thinkers at the Heritage Foundation and other think tanks have begun expressing similar opinions. Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial page made waves with an article titled, "The Non-Taxpaying Class."

"Workers who pay little or no taxes can hardly be expected to care about tax relief for everybody else," the editorial stated. "They are also that much more detached from recognizing the costs of government."

sigh

But advocates of this new line can expect a furious backlash. Liberal commentators have already reduced the argument to an appeal to tax the poor, and even conservatives worry that the label will stick.

"It's hard to conclude it's anything else," said the Heritage Foundation's Beach.

Only because that's exactly what it is.

Michael J. Graetz, a Yale University law professor and tax reform expert, said he could not figure out where the administration's arguments are supposed to lead.

"I would be very surprised if the agenda is to put more people on the tax rolls," he said. "That doesn't seem like a good political agenda."

"I mean, really, at least when the first Bush Administration scored crack in Layfayette Park they didn't smoke it, " Graetz did not add.

But Democrats say that is exactly where the administration is heading. Matsui said he sees the seeds of a disastrous Republican overreach.

Yup, Hubrisil^TM

"The president is making the case that people who earn between $50 [thousand] and $75,000 a year should be paying a third more taxes," Matsui said. "I'd love to debate him on that."

But McIntyre worried that in the marketplace of ideas, the new argument could carry the day.

"I would hope the public would find it repugnant," he said, "but I suppose you never know."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

You know, sadly, you never do know. In a country where just about everybody thinks until their dying day that maybe, just maybe, they'll be the next Bill Gates or at the least, Larry Ellison, you might just be able to convince them to go along with this kind of crap cause they figure when they're all rich and sleeping on a bed of shredded hundred dollar bills that they gots theirs so the hell with it. What's a bit more in taxes today? When I'm stupid wealthy and really need the money it'll be there.

Urge to kill rising.

*niu-se is Mandarin Chinese for bullshit, which you might have been able to guess. The meaning that is not the language, though maybe that too.