Stupid Shit

Gee, has it really been a year?

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:12:00 +0000

I'm in D.C. now. It's not a great place. Don't let anyone fool you.

But there's humor. Today I was outside the Target at rush hour. A traffic cop directing busy traffic on a rainy morning, made one guy move up, into the intersection. Just before the driver's light turned red. So now, the traffic with the green couldn't go.

This happens a lot when there's no traffic cop, right?

So why is the city paying this dude to fuck up traffic on purpose?

Fucking Grammar

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:53:00 +0000

A few years ago, the word "tsunami" was all the rage in the media. You know, "a tsunami of bad news," "a tsunami of dissent," "a tsunami of spouse-cheating governors." That kind of thing.

These days, the overused word du jour is "fraught." The annoying thing about it, aside from the constant overuse, is that just about everyone uses it wrong.

For example, just today I heard a guy, a journalist talking on the KPCC show The Business. It's a show about the entertainment industry, and you can podcast it if you like. Anyway, the dude being interviewed writes about the video gaming industry for a living, and he said that the gaming industry has always had a "fraught" relationship with Hollywood.

A fraught relationship.

What the fuck?

Fraught means full. For example, telling your wife or girlfriend she's mad at you because she's riding the cotton pony is fraught with peril.

It is not simply fraught.

From the guy's tone, I think he meant to indicate that the video gaming industry has had a strained relationship, or a relationship filled with tension--fraught with tension, you might say.

But not fraught.

So, to journalists everywhere, I ask this: You are getting paid to use language. Please use it well. Dumbasses.

Been there done that.

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:53:00 +0000

Not to put too fine a point on it, but my ex-wife's boyfriend just bought her a house. This posting is dedicated to him.

In case you doubt me

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:47:00 +0000

Read about the GOP's plans:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/19/politics/politico/main3949349.shtml

Geraldine was right

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:43:00 +0000

Obama has been mostly getting a pass as most people pretend that there's a new paradigm to race relations in this country.

He's lied about Tony Rezko, and he's lied about Jeremiah Wright:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4480868&page=1

All this means, basically, that he's just like the rest of the douchebags who run for office at the national level.

But here's the thing. When you show a black man shouting about race relations in this country, how blacks have gotten a bad deal, and saying "God damn America" from the pulpit, it tends to scare the shit out of white people.

Obama needs white people to vote for him. Leftwingers are generally wussy, and I suspect that a lot of them will run away thanks to the spectre of an angry black man in the White House. (Don't laugh--the right did an excellent job connecting Iraq to 9/11, and there has never been a demonstrable connection.)

Prostitution's Victims

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:41:00 +0000

So I've been reading a lot about the Elliot Spitzer case lately. I mean, who hasn't? And a lot of the fallout is about whether prostitution is a victimless crime.

Lots of writers, especially women, say it is not. For example: http://blog.nj.com/njv_kathleen_obrien/2008/03/prostitution_perhaps_not_a_cri.html

But seriously, most of the people writing the equivalent of "ewwww" are women. And they always denominate the wife (aka the long-suffering wife) as a victim of the crime.

I don't think so. Prostitution doesn't involve the sale of finite resources. Pussy ain't a barrel of oil. On the flip side, Elliot's dick isn't going anywhere either.

So unless the wife was horned up and wanted to get laid when Elliot was banging the pro, she's not a victim.

I'm going to say that people writing about the poor wife are more appalled at the "betrayal" of wedding vows. Fine. It is what it is.

But they never talk about the hooker's poor boyfriend/husband beind a victim. (Granted, there isn't one in the Spitzer case.) In fact, the critics usually assume that the hooker's boyfriend/husband is complicit, that he's practically a pimp. That's how you know the critics don't really care about the sex qua sex. (For a discussion of what sex workers actually tell boyfriends, go here: http://happyendingz.blogspot.com/2008/01/boyfriends-or-how-can-you-date-someone.html.)

Honestly, I think a lot of women want to feel sorry for themselves (or, by extension, other women). But women are hard on each other. Any woman who has ever had a job or gone to school knows this. They don't see themselves as hookers, ever, but they often see themselves as the wife.

So now I'll say it. Even though Dr. Laura is nuts, she makes a good point when she says that if men are happy to come home, they will. I think that's true in more than 90% of cases. When men are done working but dread going home, they find other things to do.

In keeping with the theme of this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:14:00 +0000

I submit this:

http://www.kmbc.com/news/15573073/detail.html?rss=kc1&psp=news

Still amazing

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:14:00 +0000

A guy who has some dough is married with kids and bored. He starts to fuck around, even going to pros. He does his best to hide what he's doing from his family.

I have no complaint about any of it. I've been married. I know what it's like to sleep with a woman who doesn't want to fuck (or at least, doesn't want to fuck me).

If you're a crusading law-and-order prosecutor, however, you're a hypocrite.

Sorry, Elliot. You fucked up.

But I get it. I understand everything he did. Well, except spending $4000 on a couple of hours of snatch, primo though it must have been. I mean, come on! Four grand?! Motherfucker. (I will say, however, that I once averaged out how often I got laid in my very long marriage, then divided it into what the marriage cost me, dollarwise. As a practical matter, I probably did spend $4k a pop. And it was harder to get her to consent than it would have been with a pro. I assume cash buys some acting ability. C'est la vie.)

Elliot is going to land on his feet. He's a rich guy already. He made almost two million bucks in 2006. With his business and political connections, he'll find a good gig making a lot of money, whether he's disbarred or not. He just won't be able to run for anything again.

He's proven, though, that the need for strange is a powerful motivator. If someone had taken him aside (where's Jiminy Cricket when you need him) and asked him if he were willing to give up his office and family for a couple of hours with a pretty, petite girl named "Kristen," he might have thought twice. But it's not the stakes that will stop someone from doing it. It's the likelihood of getting caught.

What Elliot didn't count on was that he'd made some enemies over the years. I suspect people were gleeful to figure out he was stepping out on his wife.

If nothing else, he threw the right a bone. I mean, the last four or five big sex scandals were gay Republicans. The right needed this. Of course, at least Elliot likes girls, same as Bill. There isn't much to criticize.

Amazing

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:36:00 +0000

So, last week, my computer, which runs Microsoft Vista (which sucks, bad), automatically downloaded some updates. After that, the machine ran horribly--it was choppy, hesitant, slow.

Luckily, I figured out that heaving the machine against the wall was not the answer. Instead, I removed all but two of the updates (which are apparently not removable).

I then changed my settings so updates don't take place automatically.

In the words of The Who: I won't be fooled again.

Next time, Mac.

President or Beer Buddy

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:34:00 +0000

I hear people (especially women) say all the time, "Yeah, Hillary's smart and experienced, but I just don't like her."

I used to hear people say about W, our Fearless Leader, "I like him. I'd like to have a beer with him."

I don't need to like my president. I'm not against it, but my criteria for voting for president do not include wanting him or her to be fun at a freaking cookout.

Romney, too

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:36:00 +0000

http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/dog.asp

Fuckers.

Fuckabee Huckabee redux

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Check this out:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/huckabee/dog.asp

Ass-kickers for President

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:10:00 +0000

I've heard people criticize Hillary Clinton for trying to fuck up the Nevada caucuses. According to the complainers, she's trying to disenfranchise voters, and that's not something dems should do. That's a tactic of the right.

Well grow up, pussies.

I'm heartened that there are dems somewhere that can be streetfighters. That kind of thing wins. Do you think we had the last eight years because everyone played nice? Yes, it lowers the tenor of the debates. Yes, it cheapens the concepts of freedom and liberty. But if people like Karl Rove are to be muzzled, then the fight is going to have to be with his tactics.

Does anyone remember a few years ago when the right (Rush Limbaugh started it, I think), pushed the concept that the dems "hated" W? The left responded with some namby-pamby answer along the lines of, "No, we don't hate him. We just hate his policies."

Well, wah.

The right answer was, "Fucking A. We hate the motherfucker and we're not giving the country over to him."

The electorate responds to people they think are capable of kicking ass. It's the "I want to have a beer with him test." People want to have beers with people who seem like winners, not wusses.

Say what you will about Hillary. She's an ass-kicker. That will serve her well if she gets the nomination, because the right is full of liars and cheats.

Do you want to be pure, or do you want to win and change the way the world looks?

I Wanna Be President, So Trust Me

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:05:00 +0000

Ok, imagine you are a guy from Hope, Arkansas, and you have decided you want to be President. Imagine, too, you're doing pretty well, that people think you're folksy and kind. They think that even though you are a right-winger, you're not all judgmental. You just like God. And you hate sins but not sinners.

So far so good, right.

But there's this other dude, from a weird religion, and he is likely to kick your ass. So what do you do? You're doing so well with positive messages, like "I'm a Republican, but I'm not mad at anybody." Still, playing nice is threatening to make you an also-ran. You do not want to go back to Arkansas, not when there's all that marble and limestone to check out in DC.

So you bite the bullet and spend some dough on an attack ad. A "Romney's Health Plan: $50 for an abortion" kind of thing. That ought to scare the shit out of the voters.

But will you run that ad? No. Why? Because maybe it will piss off the voters. Did you think of this before you spent the money on the production? Of course. Now you have the ad, and the only thing you have to do is get it shown without making people mad.

How? As Pooh said, "Think think think."

Ah, who are you kidding? You knew all along.

You go on the news and you tell people you almost went negative. But then you decided that sort of thing has to stop with you. So you tell everyone you're not going to run the ad. Now they can't be mad at you for being negative. But you also give the ad you're not going to run to the news people. So they run it. Yay! They run it, and they run it for free! Woooooooo!

You know you're smart enough to be President now. You're saving money, getting the word out, and looking like a good guy, too. Who could see through that?

Maybe Mitt's new campaign slogan should be "Fuckabee Huckabee." Well, if it weren't so negative.

Buy me a car, daddy

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:53:00 +0000

Cadillac has a new commercial in which a hot chick drives her new Escalade, enumerating all the expensive yet shitty gifts her husband has bought her over the years. The upshot is, she likes her new SUV.

Now, from what I can tell, this chick is A++ primo pussy. She's obviously sold her booty for whatever booty she can collect from the guy who pays her rent. And I know there's no getting rid of the whole pussy for payment concept here in the US (and maybe anywhere).

But damn, does it make me want to buy a Cadillac for anyone? Nope, I don't think so. Of course, I no longer have a succubus attached to me to tell me that I do want to buy her a Cad. So I'm lucky.

I bet the ad works, however.

You poor sons of bitches.

Today's racism scandal

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Ok, so. Lots of eople defended Michael Vick's dog fighting by saying it was cultural and it was the way he was raised.

Well, fine.

Shouldn't that apply to Dog the Bounty Hunter?

Of course, both are assholes. But still.

And another thing.

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:14:00 +0000

Disagreeing with the current administration doesn't make someone a traitor.

Well, maybe. I mean, maybe everyone who hated Bill Clinton (by way of example) was a traitor eight years ago.

Maybe those people hated freedom back then. Stupid fucks.

Misdirection

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:55:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed that when someone starts complaining about George W, his defenders don't actually defend him? Instead they generally do one of two things: they talk about what an asshole Bill Clinton was or they call the complainer unpatriotic.

Patriotism can take many forms. I believe in the concept of the loyal opposition. The adversary system, whether in law or government, keeps people honest (to a point). That's what checks and balances are--opposing forces keeping an eye on everyone. To call a dissenter unpatriotic is a cheap shot at best. At worst, when the accused knuckles under, you can run a country that way. The Democrats over the last eight years have been a sorry excuse for a loyal opposition. They have only risen to the challenge once they figured out public opinion was turning against George W. Having said that, however, I can understand some of their fear. After all, McCarthyism was based on nothing but fear and accusation. All you need is a guy like Roy Cohn. Or, say, Dick Cheney.

As for Bill Clinton, the worst thing he did was get a blow job and lie about it. Sometimes rightwingers will say that he didn't prepare the country for the possibility of terrorism on American shores.

Well, that's all well and good, but 9/11 happened long after the Bush administration was up and running. Transition teams were in the White House shortly after the election in November 2000, almost a year before the attacks. They knew what Clinton knew long before the inauguration. Beyond that, no matter how you slice it, Clinton is not the guy who started a war in a country to make his dad proud, ran up the deficit higher than Reagan did, and spent any good will the USA had after 9/11 by bullying the rest of the world and ignoring real threats like North Korea.

And this from a guy who was raised Republican in Indiana.

1930's Italy? How about Germany?

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:00:00 +0000

If you need any more evidence that our country, Florida in particular (go figure) has become a fascist state, just watch this video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sE76LQwT6qA

The kid getting tasered here was arrested for "inciting a riot."

Hmm.

Well, that's not what it looked like to me. It looked like he was a perhaps overly exuberant guy who wanted to tell John Kerry that Kerry really won the 2004 election and to ask him about impeaching Bush (which should happen, as far as I'm concerned).

What you don't see in the video (and there are others on youtube) is anything that looks anything like a riot or the makings of it. The venue isn't even full, and most of the people look pretty lackadaisical, even when the kid is getting taken down. What you don't see are people (including the guy arrested) who are threatening anyone at all--cops, Kerry, other spectators. The spectators look like they're half asleep.

When I was in college, William Rehnquist came to speak. He was shouted down by dozens of protesters and cut his speech short. That crowd was WAY more boisterous and aggressive than this kid was. People were removed, but no one was hurt.

The U of Florida kid was subdued, on the ground, cuffed, before the cops tasered him. In fact, he was begging not to be tasered. Then they did it anyway.

Here's what the conspiracy theorist in me has to say:

A kid got up to ask questions of a national political figure. (Political speech gets the most First Amendment protection, too. Read the U.S. Supreme Court case called Posadas, for more on this.) He was obviously anti-Bush. Florida is the place where election irregularities brought Bush to power. Florida is run by Bush's brother. The police are an instrumentality of the government run by Bush's brother. They didn't like what the kid had to say and brought him down hard because of what he was saying. That's where we are. That's how far we've come in eight years.

This is an outrage. Everyone who's ever had even a thought that went against the majority should be scared shitless. I know I am.

No one ever thinks Nazi Germany could happen again. Bullshit. You're watching it happen every day.

Stupid Shit in NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:59:00 +0000

Ok, so my buddy Max is getting divorced. He has two little kids and got fired from his job a couple of months ago. He got behind on child support, but not because he is a dick. It's because he has no money.

His wife had him thrown in jail.

Now, how should he look for work (or work at all) if he's in jail?

See, in this case it's not about the money. She really really hates him.

But I'll tell you. Women like this ruin good men for the rest of the chicks out there.

Windows Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:22:00 +0000

I wanted to give my ringing non-endorsement for Windows Vista. I recently bought a new laptop after the losing three hard drives in six months on my old Dell.

The new one is not Dell.

It has Windows Vista, however, and Vista sucks ass. In a bad way.

Stay with XP if you can.

Vista takes forever to load, forever to shut down, and it crashes for me about once a week. Minimum.

XP was good.

Microsoft, you fucked up.

Gay has nothing to do with it

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:05:00 +0000

My theory: If you're a United States Senator, charged with a lewd act in an airport, and you think pleading guilty will really make it go away, you're too stupid to be a United States Senator.

Star Wars, yes, the movie

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:54:00 +0000

Here's something I don't get. In the original trilogy, Episodes 4-6, these droids, C3P0 and R2D2 escape from Princess Leia's ship and land on Tatooine, the planet which bore both Anakin and Luke Skywalker.

(Now, in the prequels, the droids are omnipresent. They are around Queen Amidala and Obiwan and Anakin and all that for all three movies.)

The droids arrive at Tatooine and they are purchased--surprise!--by Luke's Uncle Owen. And what doesn't happen? C3P0, who is more gossipy than the queen of the Pride parade, DOESN'T say, "Skywalker, huh? Any relation to Anakin? That dude's Darth Vader. I used to work with his girlfriend."

In fact, he never says it through three movies. Wouldn't you think C3P0 might say sometime, like when they're on the cloud planet with Landau, "Gee, he used to be such a nice kid. Why I remember, when he was so cute and cuddly and won a big speeder race back on Tatooine." In fact, when he went back with R2 and met up with Luke, he never said, "Oh yeah, Tatooine. There used to be this great ice cream place just outside of Mos Eisley back in the day."

And since I'm on this: When the droids take an escape pod, some Imperial dude tells Vader that there were no life forms on their pod. Vader knows, of course, that the droids were on it. But later, when the Millenium Falcon is taken aboard an Imperial cruiser, Han, Chewy, Luke, Obi Wan and the droids hide in the smuggling compartments, and no one finds them. So, what? The Imperial forces scan pods but not ships on tractor beams? Please.

Other than that, I have fun watching these flicks. Well, the first three.

Sopranos

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:00:00 +0000

Opinions are like assholes, right?

No catharsis, which is the accepted convention of dramatic storytelling. That sucked. I get the existentialism. I really do. I watched and enjoyed Groundhog Day. But characters change. This is why we watch (or, gasp, read) the stories people dream up. To learn how to live, or how not to.

So we were left with life continuing as it had.

Realistic? Sure.

But that's not why we watch.

Alternatively: maybe Tony did get whacked, but in keeping with the thing Bobby said in on the lake, it comes without your knowing it's coming. The same idea can be found in mob movies all over, for example Goodfellas.

Fine.

But we weren't in Tony's head watching the world go by for the last 7-8 years. If this was Tony's lights going out, there was no groundwork for it.

Cheap.

But, hey, I'm not the rich guy who created the show. Maybe David Chase knows some shit. I suspect he does, even if the show last night felt like a big "fuck you."

Call it what you will. I call it half a blowjob.

Skip's Election Prediction

noreply@blogger.com (Skip) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:23:00 +0000

I've had a moment of clarity.

I'm pretty sure it will be Obama or Clinton for the dems.

But who will be on the red side?

Fred Thompson.

For weeks, I've been thinking no way could he be a contender. Then I realized. He evokes everything about another older politician and actor who was very successful: Ronald Reagan.

So it will be Fred--a smart, smooth, famous, Southern (Southerners do very well in Presidential politics) guy against either:

A black man with a funny name or

A carpetbagging woman from Illinois/Arkansas/New York.

Shoot, why even have the election? Someone appoint Fred quick.