Buster Poindexter
Chicks are hot.

I'd say that, as much as any combination of letter-sounds organized into a phrase of words meant to convey meaning, that is one of the basic standards of truth around which I have built my existential self. It ranks right up there with "free samples" and "Hot Donuts Now" to form the core of my metaphysical being, the "me" (such as it is) that I project beyond the boundaries of my taut, bronzed skin and into the pure-energy social realm where personalities mingle and collide and subtly suggest that others are fat.

Despite the unshakable epistemological root-reality of the hotness of chicks, people keep trying to use language, the false Trickster God that it is--a Loki, a Puck, a Coyote--to convince me that things that are not chicks have chick-qualities to them, rendering them "sexy."

Also as a Trickster, language I suppose also has the ability to transform itself into a bull and rape our virgins, but that's a whole 'nother post. Ladies? Stories?

The main thing people keep trying to tell me is "sexy" is technology. Like Windows Vista. Or the "new" Blogger.

The problem I have with this is that a) it is a process of symbological replacement meant to confuse the logic centers in our brains into making false associations, substituting one thing that is sexy (like, say, chicks) with something that fundamentally is not (a bunch of lines of goddamn computer code) with a series of subtle, serial replacements until the response from one becomes the response for the other.

The second and primary problem resides in the original definition of sexy, which would be b) can I fuck it?

Now, I get that I can't nail all the hot chicks out there. I've tried. Most of them don't respond to my e-mails, although I'd say attaching the full-body naked pictures of myself with a downward arrow painted on my stomach were pretty clear indicators of intent and seriousness of purpose.

But the point is that that it is conceivable that I physically could get it on with the centerfold of Strokebook Weekly. Anatomically, the options are apparent, in all their airbrushed glory.

My computer, however, will tolerate some gentle finger-action, but really isn't the best environment to tolerate the liquid messiness of the coital act. Plus it has a spinny little fan in it. It has no sex appeal because it has no sex. It doesn't even have a gender. On the sliding scale of human sex appeal, my computer is Clay Aiken.

This is not to say that no technology exists that is sexy. I mean, there are several things on the market right now that are man-made, devoid of life, made possible by several breakthroughs in design and materials that people can hump. You can buy yourself a Real Doll or a rubber porn-star vagina or a massage chair or a bag of marshmallows or whatever. You were in college, you were lonely, you had to get by and hey, they weren't your marshmallows anyway, right? I bet that fucker of a roommate never leaves his food out again though.

But "new" Blogger and this Windows alleged "Vista"? Not sexy. Or necessary. I know because I am using the "new" Blogger as of right now and I am not in any way turned on. I caress the screen and there is no soft moan or subtle turn response or screeching about Temporary Restraining Orders as you would get from normal sex-possible interactions with actual people. There are just fingerprints on the screen.

This so-called "Vista" I do not have, but I can tell you I have seen it in the stores and I am not encouraged. It's just a box. There's not even a hole in it. Why would I buy something that is not sexy? And how can something be sexy if I can't, at least theoretically, fuck it?

I guess the answer is, with "new" Blogger and probably most definitely with "Vista", it might just be enough that it can fuck me.

Which kind of works out because I'm more of a bottom anyway.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5


Pops


PS- Ha, I can do "labels" or "categories" or whatever now. Hott.

PPS- Hot + technology? Aw yeah, baby. Pops already got him some of that. The sexiest part? They are very fairly compensated, monetarily speaking, in the modern marketplace.

Labels: poopy

- posted by Pops @ 9:58 AM

 
Omnivorous

Hello, neighbor!

First, obvious question... Scarier: Martha Stewart or Muqtada al-Sadr?

Before you answer, consider: al-Sadr is waaaaaaaay over in Iraq. Martha Stewart? RIGHT BEHIND YOU!

Ha, kidding. You shit a little though, didn't you?

She might not be actually haunting you in the way only ghouls and people from Connecticut can, but she is suddenly all up in my face and I don't know what to make of it.

I've seen billboards around here with her face on them, but I just sort of dismissed them as a public service in the vein of "Beware!" or "Dead of Alive!" or even "Dead of Alive?" You know, just to keep us aware of the threat Martha Stewart generally poses lest we forget. The onslaught of scrapbooking and brioche has pushed us as a nation right to the brink of collapse. Compared to that, her possible zombie-hood is almost an afterthought.

Turns out that in the space on the billboards around her big scary face, there were words and those words pronounced the imminent arrival of what has now immediately arriven: Martha Stewart's designer community in Perris, California.

Holy fuck: Perris?!

Here's the blurb from the press release: Perris is located in the heart of Southern California, between San Diego and Los Angeles. The community is close to the city of Riverside with shopping, dining and entertainment nearby.

First of all, I would like to point out that it is true, we do have shopping, dining AND entertainment in Riverside. They just built us a Cheesecake Factory!

It's that or Arby's.

Second, I find her choice of Perris puzzling and more than a little troubling.

I know a little bit about Perris. I used to live in Perris (and this is true) in a trailer off a dirt road. Using my experience to help you get a feel of what kind of community Perris is, it's the kind of place where people live in trailers off dirt roads.

Mind you, this was not the windswept, hardscrabble pioneer valley in 1870. We drove in our internal-combustion engine motor vehicle past perfectly well foundation-ed houses on unremarkably paved streets to get to our trailer off a dirt road, but my God, it was 1980-something and dirt road trailers were an option.

I recognize this is still true in many parts of America today, but this is southern California. Martha Stewart has her pick of 100+ communities, nearly every single one of them with more demographic, economic, non-dairy-farm appeal as Perris. Something about this deal just doesn't smell right.

It's possible that the smell is just what usually wafts off the pestilential brew that is Lake Perris, but I mean there's something else, a little more brimstone-y, a little more... metaphorical. You know, smell-wise.

People don't bypass Newport Beach when they have Martha Stewart money to come to Perris without a really compelling reason.

Remember, Martha is a convicted felon. She spent time in the Joint. The Big House. The Can. The Cooler. The Vertical Smile. The Silk Purse. The Bearded Clam. I slipped into euphemisms for "vagina", haven't I? I meant jail. She was in jail. Although it was a girl's jail, so she probably spent some time in the other thing as well.

As anyone who's ever seen Oz knows, prison is a place where petty criminals go to learn how to be 'roided-out sociopathic mega-criminals, usually right after they've been raped by Adebisi. This was before he found Jesus on Lost and then got killed the anthropomorphized exhaust cloud from an old yellow school bus.

Of course I allow for the possibility that Martha's prison experience was more in the Shawshank Redemption mode wherein the transformative power of human empathy and platonic hetero love-bonding transcends all social ills, where prison actually works in the opposite direction turning murderers into mere embezzlers.

But come on. Probably not, right? This is Martha Stewart. If they get Cybill Shepard to play you in the movie of your life, how good a person could you really be?

Prison, my Republican friends tell me, usually in a whisper and waiting until they are sure no black people are around, is where criminals go to learn the ways of Advanced Criminaility. Pickpockets and cut-purses go in, absorb information from the more sophisticated collegium of ne'er-do-wells, lift some weights and come out unstoppable, raging for the blood of white people.

I think this has happened to Martha Stewart. She went in an inside trader and has come out looking to make The Man pay. Regular people with no resources might smash up a house or even kill a guy. Someone like Martha? How about buy a whole town just so you can burn it to the ground.

Why Perris? Why Perris indeed.

Incidentally, she has my full support.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.9


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:39 AM

 
When Everything's Made To Be Broken, I Just Want You To Know Who I Am
Firebrand. Upstart. Warlord. Zealot. Killer. Terror-izer.

That's the Muqtada al-Sadr those pimps and jackals over at CNN want you to see. But you know what? That's not the Muqtada al-Sadr I know.

I remember the freshman picnic at the dorms when we were first moving in. Only dude there not eating the barbecue baby-back ribs. I'm all "Hey, man, you gotta hit these," and he's like "No, swine is unclean," and I'm all "Yeah, but pussy ain't exactly kosher neither, but I bet you wouldn't say no to that, would you?"

He might have blushed, but I couldn't tell what with his full beard and elaborate head covering. But hey, I didn't judge. That was part of the reason I was going to college: to meet new people and experience new cultures up close. And to bang sorority girls. And learn stuff (time permitting).

I guess we hit it off OK because as far as I know, I was the only dude on our hall who hadn't been subject to some kind of goddamn fatwa or another. Half the dudes had worked their way all the way up to a full-on jihad, which was awkward as shit in the dining hall. We arranged it so he could be my roommate, which was cool with me because they guy I was originally stuck with--Joseph? Jonah? I forget--spent all his time either talking to his mom on the phone or jerking off, after either of which he would cry. Every time.

We worked a kind of informal cultural exchange, me and Muqtada. It wasn't long until he had shortened his name to "Todd", lost the head-scarf and actually could talk to a girl without reminding her she was a shameless concubine of Satan in a state of undress unfit for public dispay. From him I learned you could totally have a bong in your room if you called it a "hookah" and said it was cultural.

Those were good days, man. Here's a picture of Da Krew back in the day, yo:



That's my boy on the right. I'm not in this one. Someone had to take the picture.

Man, that brings back some memories. I'd forgotten about that sweatshirt. He was way into the Goo Goo Dolls. They played a free show on the lawn behind our dorms one time. He kind of token-protested about music being the way to licentiousness and thus damnation, but he came out anyway. That shit took him by surprise. From then on, every time he would hear "Iris" he would cry. I mean not like misty eyes and a little lip quiver, like full on fucking bawling. Whenever it was his turn to pick on movie night, you could bet your infidel ass it was going to be fucking City of Angels. I swear to you I've seen that shit like 180 times.

Some of the guys gave him shit for being both sensitive and representing interests in direct contravention to those of America's greater foreign policy goals within the Middle East, but I gave him a pass. We had a lot in common. We were hopeless idealists, pursuing our courses of study out of reckless passion, practicality be damned. I majored in history while he majored in Sectarian Partisan Destabilization. I didn't know the school even had a department for that, but apparently not everything Rush Limbaugh says about modern American universities is wrong.

We would make fun of each other. He'd say after graduation I would be able to go on for hours talking about the Reformation in Wales so long as I only had a "Caution: Wet Floor" pylon to talk to all day. And I'd say "Yeah, and you'll be all 'There is no God but God and Muhammed is His messenger! Would you like fries with that?" I'm pretty sure we both thought it was funny, but in retrospect, I guess I laughed a little harder at that then he did.

As graduation got closer, he got a lot more serious. Out of the blue, he hit me up with a proposition to go back to his homeland with him and work for his dad, like he was going to. He said all I'd have to do was some light paperwork, maybe some phones and occasionally stoke the fires of centuries-long ethno-religious hatreds to an outbreak of violence, but that it would be easy because those crazy fuckers were going to try and kill each other anyway, all we had to do was stand back and let 'em. I didn't really get how you made any money at that. Plus I had an interview to set up my dream career of Not Working as a Failed Writer all lined up, so I politely declined. I'm not going to lie, he seemed irked.

We were drifting apart. The institutional bond of college was fading. It's an old story. The last straw was at the graduation party. He got blitzed on half a Near Beer, so me and some of the guys decided to punk him like we saw on collegehumor.com.



Dude did NOT think it was funny when he woke up. He was so pissed we didn't even tell him about the rabbi we paid to "convert" him when he was out. Which sucks because that shit was expensive. But we didn't want to push him. Dude was bent.

I finally got my jihad against me and yeah, I guess I kind of deserved it. It was a dickish thing to do. I mean, the guy was just being himself. It can't have been easy for him in a new country, strange language, strange culture. Plus all the pressure on him to do well. I mean, the guy comes from a place where a whole section of a city is named after his dad. We should have been easier on him, I guess.

Sorry, Todd. I hope all this anger and fomenting of sectarian revenge killing isn't our fault.

We had some good times though, right?

I know you remember this one:



Peace, dude.

I mean that seriously. Stop killing people and shit.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.4


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 8:44 PM

 
Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #41



Catch and Release

starring Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith

directed by Susannah Grant (hot virgin director action!)


I guess it's time to admit defeat. It was down to fake-reviewing either this or hyper-stylized ultra-violent dude-on-dude snuff flick Smokin' Aces. And look, I went with the girl movie about romance and hope and friendship directed by a chick. I will write this, but then I'm going to have to immediately delete it because if my wife ever reads this, she will know that she has, at last, won. It's not that I want to talk about Catch and Release, it's just that it never actually occurred to me that I shouldn't. And that is what disturbs me most of all. Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

The funny thing is that this movie stars Jennifer Garner and it is opening opposite the other one, which stars her husband, Ben Affleck. When one outperforms the other, I wonder what the emotional ramifications must be in that household. I imagine it must just be a non-stop orgy of mutual support and affection built upon a foundation of sincere, deeply-felt personal connection transcending the physical or even emotional plane and bordering on the spiritual, so much so that when they are intimate, a string of six to eight singing cartoon bluebirds with human voices shoot out of Ben's ass upon completion of the act.

OK, so this might not be the first time I've considered this. Or even really the four hundredth. But celebrities get all that press coverage, so it can't just be for nothing. They have to be demonstrably better than us on a nearly supernatural level, otherwise Us Weekly and E! TV and Joan Rivers wouldn't make any goddamn sense at all, would they? I mean, 50% of our popular culture would be based on a lie, and an arbitrary one at that. And that just can't be possible.

Some people believe in Jesus or Allah or Tom Cruise or whatever. For me, my existential cohesion, like Damocles' sword, dangles over my head, suspended precariously by a thread interwoven from the twin filaments of Popular Culture and the American Electoral System. Should either one ever fail me, the whole of my identity would be about as stable as a Pontchartrain levee.

Not this identity. I mean my real one. This one, being entirely manufactured, should be fine. I keep it saved on my hard drive. I doubt you'd notice an interruption in blog-service. One of the many benefits of keeping expectations low.

Speaking of low expetations, the main love interest in this film is actually a dead guy. Strong selling point, in my opinion. It's also quite popular. It's the same central plot point of Sandra Bullock's upcoming Premonition. Except in that one, the dude doesn't stay dead. But he's not a zombie. Yeah, I know. That one will be will be available for you to ignore in theaters March 16th.

Apparently Ms. Garner's dude dies just before they're supposed to get married, so she moves in with a gay guy and a fat guy. No sexual tension there as one is into dudes and the other one is, well, fat. Think of the last time any guy in a movie with a waist size over 36 got laid on screen. My point exactly.

So she's all safe to be scooped up by in-swooper funeral guest Timothy Olyphant. Those of you who have HBO will recognize him from his role on their recently departed series Deadwood, where he played Sherrif Clenchy McTeethgritter, thwarting evil-doers with his serious mustache and the protruding bits of bone and muscle that stick out at the base of your jaw if you close it too hard. He was the pretty, pretty weak link in rapidly degrading show that, by the end, had become so arch it was practically a circle.

I hate you, David Milch.

Anyway, she grieves and heals and whatever, kinda like Gwyneth Paltrow had to do in Bounce, except there the skeevy post-mortem interloper was played by--gasp!--Ben Affleck.

Does no one ever have new ideas, ever?

This whole process is making me bitter. I hear Alicia Keys plays a lesbian in Smokin' Aces. If only I weren't castrated.

I guess if the plot can't be original, it all comes down to character, dialogue, production value and the general competence of the filmmaking. This Catch and Release was directed by Susannah Grant, who busts her DGA cherry on this one. First time is never good, from what I learned in 1980s R-rated sex comedies. So it's got that bit of infallible wisdom working against it.

Ms. Grant did write the thing as well though. And unlike co-star Kevin Smith, she's actually quite accomplished. She also wrote Erin Brockovich and 28 Days (the non-zombie one)... and In Her Shoes which was terrible, but I give her a pass on that because it co-starred Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as sisters, who look about as alike as my testicles.

Whoops, sorry, I suppose you don't really get that reference. Best we move on. But first I would be remiss if I didn't warn everyone about the dangers of the bicycle banana seat.

She also got her start writing for Party of Five, so I'm sure this movie will be very measured and not at all over-broad. Or at least as much as we can expect from someone with a sick obsession with dead family members.

I might be emasculated, but I still have a Y chromosome, so the best I can do:



One (out of 3) on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

It embarrasses me that it scored that high.


Pops



PS- I have no time to proofread, sadly. Feel free to ignore the content and make fun of the bad sentence structure and typos in the comments! It's my Friday gift to you!
- posted by Pops @ 10:15 AM

 
Macaca
With the exception of the Supreme Court of the United States, I'd say we've been making great strides in this country when it comes to social blindness on gender issues. Sure, when it comes to menfolk and the ladies, there are some basic biological differences that will always separate us. Until something radical happens evolutionarily speaking, the Inny vs. Outy great genital debate will have to remain unresolved.

Aside from the option to urinate while standing, I would say that every day there is less and less to separate us in terms of what we are expected to be able to accomplish as people in terms of gender. I personally don't think anyone who can't help you move a refrigerator should be allowed to be president, but apparently I'm in the minority anymore. Chicks can do anything. Despite my objections, I happen to be living proof of the erosion of traditional social roles based on gender.

Part of this is because I stay home to care for the children while my wife goes out there and earns us a living. Also, I'm a bottom.

If there is a weakening of the patriarchy in this country, I'm a little ambivalent about being the hand-stitched-quilt banner waver out in front of the gynocratic parade. On the one hand, I am a dude, the father of three nascent dudes, general football watcher and PhD in Duderonomy. People who think I'm just going to roll over and start exfoliating are out of their fucking minds.

On the other hand, I live a life of leisure and luxury no human being should have any right to expect. I have time to blog, for example. And there's something powerful and primal about having the nap option every single day. If the price for that is I'm expected to consider washing my hair with something that smells like papaya, well, I guess that's not too much to ask. But it's pretty fucking borderline.

Like I said: ambivalent.

The basic question is: who are we, where do we come from and where are we going? The answer, of course, is always the same.

Monkeys.

Up north of me out in the wild jungle farmlands near Sacramento is the University of California campus in a little town allegedly called "Davis". UC Davis. I know. It sounds idiotic, but you know, Sammy had to put up with Frank and Dean-o, virulent anti-miscegenationism and flat out racism, that fucked up glass eye thing and he was a Jew by choice, so I guess the least they could do was name a whole UC campus after him.

You haven't really heard of UC Davis, Jr., I know. Or at least you think you haven't. Any time there's some kind of major scientific breakthrough regarding cross-breeding corn plants or examining the hierarchical social structure of pig sties, you should just go ahead and assume that it came from UCD. That's the direction that whole campus leans, very agro/husbandry-ish. It will all be cutting edge if we ever wake up one day and it's 1730 again.

I bring this up because the animal-fondlers to the north have done it again, this time with titi monkeys.

I know. We'll get to that. Let's stick to the story for a second.

It turns out that in titi monkey (I said wait for it) societies, the ladies give birth, will nurse the children, but that's about it. When it comes to child-rearing, the dads do all the heavy lifting. Also, they have to do most of the actual lifting of heavy things. Tragically unfair, but it's what you should expect if you were stuck breeding with female titi monkey, the animal with the highest documented Complete And Total Bitch level in all the world's fauna.

"Titi babies tend to ride draped across a parent's shoulders, and when mom wants the kid off her back, her favorite strategy for shifting responsibility is to make the baby cry.

'She'll rub it up against the side of the cage, or in the wild against a tree branch, to make it cry, or nip it a little, and then daddy will come get it,' Bales said.

Both parents will come running to their baby's cry if researchers place the infant on the ground, but mom will often pick it up and hand it to dad."

Man, I got chills. That pretty much sums every single day of my life. Except, you know, for small differences. Instead of rubbing them up against a cage, my wife will generally make a small disapproving comment that implies she will withhold her motherly affections if her desire for an appropriate personal space is not met. And instead of "daddy comes to get it" I lean more of a "keep watching TV" kind of direction. They'll stop crying eventually. They always do.

What freaked me out about the article was this:

"There are exceptions, and the primate center's 64-titi colony currently houses one unusually doting mother."

Jesus help us. I nearly threw up when I read that. There's always got to be one fucking deviant, doesn't there? My God, nurturing and caring for children. In a female. Unnatural. First you get gay penguins in New York and now this abomination.

The strict social division of labor by gender seems to be rooted in this species' basic organization around the practice of strict monogamy. It is clear in the article that scientists believe the two phenomena are interrelated. I think it's clear, then, that there is only way way to get around the sticky problem of social limitation of occupations and behavior by gender: group sex.

I'm going to run this past my wife. It's science.

Lastly, and I promised I'd get to this, I wonder if the titi monkey takes the same juvenile pleasure from our names as we do from theirs. I mean, come on. "Titi". Haha, boob monkeys! How good is that? But I try not to say it too loud. Who's to say they can't turn right around and mock us for being called homo sapiens? Think about that before ye judge.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.7



Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:30 AM

 
Dickblog


Thank Jesus, the Boss is finally starting his speech. One more second of small talk with this dago commie and I'd pull my pacemaker out with my bare hands. I mean holy fuck, how can she think I'd want to talk about home gardening? And on a night like this? What straight guy knows what an azalea even is?

That's her problem right there. San Francisco. Too much time hanging out with the gays. They've obviously influenced her agenda. And her hairstyle. That's a dyke-job if I ever saw one.

And I know from homos. I got one in my own family. Raised her myself. And yet somehow they love this guinea princess with her whole family of breeders and me with my queer kid can't set foot in the Bay Area without worrying about getting stones thrown at us. I guess it's lucky for us those limp-wristed sissies throw exactly like limp-wristed sissies or I'd be in real trouble.

OK, let's get this speech on the road so we can vamoose up out of this bitch. I ain't comfortable. All these Democrats. It's like a fuckin' May Day parade on Red Square in here, I swear to God. Nothing left in Congress but hippies and appeasers.

Oh, hey, nice touch playing to the crowd acknowledging Pelosi. Political expediency, OK. Just a few choice... just a... for fuck's sake, let's move forward. She's got a vagina. We know. Yada yada, Madam Speaker, etc. All this time spent "honoring" her and her "accomplishment" of being born lacking a Y chromosome. Fine. Hey, I bet I'm next though. He wouldn't spend all this time talking to her and then totally ignore me, the guy who got him here.

Oh here it comes. Suck in the gut, Dick, he's gonna say something. Get the hand ready to be shook right here in front of every...

Motherfucker. Not even a shotgun joke. Asshole.

He'll get his. I'll make sure he knows. When we get back to the office: Pow! Zoom! Straight to the moon, Georgie Boy. Big Time don't get passed over by no one. No one. I can get blood on this suit. Wouldn't be the first time.

Come on, just fast forward all this shit. Same speech we gave in '01. Promise new fuels, save the poor kids, give health care to invalids and shut-ins, blah blah blah. There's some strong fiscal planning right there. Extend the lives of people who we'd be better off without, using money we could be spending building statues to me in Tehran. What we need is to a program where we hook these old cripples up with a guy with sturdy forearms and a pillow.

Ooh! Iraq! Here it comes, bitches. Get ready for the doors to be blown off this mug. And... standing O in three... two... one...

Oh shit.

Fuckin' Larry the Cable Guy at the Apollo.

Somebody give him the wrap signal, for Christ's sake, before these heathens rise up and eat us. I ain't gonna be no meat-a-ball in Mamma Saccovanzetti here's Executive Branch rigatoni. Big Time ain't goin' out like that. I incline my head just the right way and a guy in the fourteenth sub-basement of the Pentagon gets the signal to light this whole room up with a hundred thousand pounds of ordnance.

That's real power right there. They don't know. What's she got, a gavel? Big gay hammer, that's all that is. She can't touch Big Time. Nobody can touch Big Time.

I hate nights like this. All this reception means is that I’m going to be busy tomorrow setting up some serious shit.

Man, all I know is Lynne better be limbering up. I'm going to be in the mood to humiliate something. And Tim Russert won't take my calls no more.
- posted by Pops @ 9:20 AM

 
Femaglobin
I didn't grow up with my dad around a lot, but that doesn't mean he wasn't there for me. On the off chance he would get just drunk enough to call, he'd always have some piece of guiding, dudely advice I couldn't get from my mom or sisters. The idea of scrapbooking, for example, never even entered his head. It was a whole different world.

I remember one time he told me "Son..." He called me "son" out of a combination of affection and general inebriated name-centric apahasia, but I tried to focus on the former. "Son," he would say, "chicks ain't no goddamn good." He's been divorced twice, so I forgave him some bitterness. As I got older, I realized it turned out he was mostly right, but that's a different post. Then he would almost always tell me "Well, except for the fact that they have blood which can be transfused into your own body, assuming a type match, which can be critical in a life-or-death situation. Other than that? No goddamn good!" And then he would either cry and tell me he loved me or aspirate some vomit as he lost consciousness.

Well, bad news, dad. Turns out that now we find out chicks ain't even good for a blood transfusion anymore. This is terrifying news. Not only does it mean that half or more of the blood in bloodbanks is possibly contaminated by gender-taint, but my God, just think of how this is going to work its way into the act of every hack "Hey, aren't men and women different?" comedian working. Transfusion Related Acute Lung Injury is going to be the new Women Hate It When Dudes Leave The Toilet Seat Up. I am cancelling Comedy Central immediately.

The clinical ramifications are being realized at a shocking pace. I found one study on-line that freaked my shit out.

Here's a picture of a regular, healthy adult male:



And now here's a later picture examining some of the side-effects of having chick-blood in his veins:



And those are just the externals. Add to that the possibility that your perfectly healthy dude lungs could fill up with evil, evil chick-based briny fluid which kills one in ten people, well...

If it's a choice between death and underwear with visible labels on them, I choose... OK, give me the blood, but Structure? Come on. Calvin Klein or nothing.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:12 AM

 
Throw Me The Idol, I Throw You The Whip
The pebble has been dropped from the top of the mountain and now the snowball rolls downhill, gathering into an avalanche. But instead of snow, it's mostly made of gold and bullshit bonded together by a gossamer web of innuendo and lies.

We're one year out from the New Hampshire primary! Can you feel it?! I said can you fucking feel it?! My Jesus, my Holy Sweet Mother of God-a-Mercy, can Blog Nirvana be that close? Remember all the good times we had waaay back in '04 when all this shit rolled around the first time? Man, I had like two weeks of material on Alan Keyes alone.

In the last two days, Barack Obama has jumped into it. Huge mistake, but Kennedy did it back in '60 with similar experience, so fine, OK. In order to match Kennedy's feat, I'd say Barack has about 360 days to figure out how to be a war hero, a Pulitzer winning author, come from an independently wealthy family with the political muscle to make dead people vote and not be black. Or have his middle name be "Hussein". Once his campaign works those kinks out, he'll be golden.

Then all he needs to do is contend with a recently announced Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, good ole Johnny Edwards, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, dwarf-vote populist Dennis Kucinich and probably eventually Wesley Clark, John McCain (is he already officially running?), Rudy Giuliani, my boy Duncan Hunter and possibly even a re-animated John F. Kerry.

In case you weren't sure, the F stands for "fuuuuuuuck, I hope not".

And that won't even be a complete list. I think at this point it would be faster to make a list of people who are not running for president of the United States in 2008.

I know, you immediately went to "Well, I know at least we can count you out, Pops, har har har."

Weeeelllll...

Surprise!

In eight grade I used to roll up my pant legs into these funny little fold-over tapers about three inches above my ankle. It looked retarded, but I did it. Why? Because I lack the ability to stand before the tide of public fashion--in any form, however obviously superficial or fleeting--without being swept away by it, dignity be damned.

That said, I am here to announce that I am forming an exploratory committee to look into the viability of my candidacy for President of the United States.

And to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

I figure this President thing is a long shot, right? Sure, I'm a white male, so I've already got it all over some of these so-called candidates, but there are so many others, I honestly don't think I've got the best shot ever. So I figure if I'm going to spend all the time and energy putting together an Exploratory Committee, well, we had better have a backup plan in case this thing goes tits-up before the first ballot next January. We gotta spend the money on something. What do you want us to do, give it back? What am I, a fucking Democrat?

Oh yeah...

But seriously, if the presidentin' thing don't work out, it makes sense to me that an Exploratory Committee can burn through some serious cash by doing some actual exploratoring.

Politics, of course, is fraught with danger. As foolproof as this Ark of the Covenant idea seems to be (imagine what I could do to my opponents should I find it!), there are serious risks, the foremost of which is of course this:



I mean, holy fuck. There aren't a lot of requirements to be president. I mean hell, George Bush does it all the time. But I can see how "melted face" might detract from a person's political appeal to a wide swath of potential non-melted-face voters. It's old-timey, cold-hearted bigotry, but what are you going to do? We can't ask people to go too far in terms of what they're going to tolerate from what a candidate looks like. So far in this one we've already got a black guy, a chick, a Mexican and whatever woodland faery race Kucinich comes from. Melty-Face, I think, may just be a bridge too far.

I mean honestly, look at the picture again. Would you vote for that guy? I wouldn't. Not only a Melted Face, but a Nazi Melted Face. Totally unrealistic as a candidate. He could have a very reasonable position on universal health care and some revolutionary ideas about solving the seemingly intractable military and foreign policy problems that will be the Bush legacy, but really, if I can see a dude's skull, I'm immediately put off. I am an American voter. We're a superficial lot. As much as a capable executive, we're looking for a Prom King and/or Queen. When you get right down to it, you can't get past the popularity contest that starts with your physical attractiveness.

Which is why I'm in it to win it.





This post on the Narcissus Scale: 0.8



Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:28 PM

 
Origin Of The Species
Not too long ago, I got a request in the comments from Bucketeer Emeritus the lovely and talented Rita that I should update you all on the status/happenings/general adorability of my children.

First off, let me just say that I encourage any and all of you to go ahead and submit requests for post topics. Desperation tends to make me shockingly open to suggestion. It also has the further bonus of allowing me the opportunity to exert what tiny sliver of personal power this blog affords me should I be so moved--by restrictions for space, pre-emption by news of the day, petty dictatorial whim of cruelty--to reject your request.

Odds are, however, that I will get to it eventually. You know, once the important current events are all covered. Like that thing yesterday about the Jolie-Pitt family. In the end, the editorial judgment was reached--and I think you'll agree with me here--that their children would be decidedly more interesting than mine. They are our rich, jet-setting, famous betters-in-training, none of whom have ever vomited on my carpet. Most of the same cannot be said about my children.

Secondly, it's taken me this long to get to it because as I would sit down to contemplate who my children are and what about them warrants saying publicly, I kept reaching the same disturbing conclusion time and time again:

My children are assholes.

Now, I know that sounds harsh. And to my kids, if your future literate selves are reading this, please, I encourage you to review some of the video evidence that is no doubt available to you if you doubt me. You will notice that as you aged, there is less and less of it to be had, but that only underscores my point: who wants to videotape the every activities of someone who is an asshole? Do we really need that on recorded media for all of posterity? Isn't it bad enough we already have Bill O'Reilly?

This may surprise most of you, but it doesn't really bother me that my children are assholes. Yet. There are two reasons for this:

1) Genetic destiny. There's an illustrative analogy here to be made about apples and trees, but I don't really think it's apt. How many apple trees do you know of that tip restaurant wait staff solely on a complicated algebraic of their physical attractiveness weighed against their receptiveness to its flirting? I haven't left a tip since 1998. Apples or otherwise, that's Sisyphusian genetic load for anyone to bear, let alone a defenseless child. There's an argument, I suppose, to be made for nature vs. nurture, but that only supposes I am this way because of the way I was raised, which suggests that my parents were assholes themselves and there, we're back to genetics.

2) All children are assholes.

I know, parents out there, you immediately gasp and clutch your pearls and wail "No! My angels, my angels, my precious angels!" to which I must reply, first of all, pearls? Dude, seriously? With that frock? And secondly, if you were being completely honest with yourself and not blinded by the fact that they look like you, you would agree with me.

A lot of Child Asshole Syndrome is the parents' fault, and I accept that. As I said, they look like us and we assume (wrongly) that when they grow up they will in several ways, well, be us. If you're out there reading this and you're single and/or childless, don't let any parent fool you about the selflessness of the job. After blogging, reproduction is pretty much the most narcisssistic endeavor in all of endeavorhood. Seriously, little copies of yourself? Because the world needs more of you? Please.

And I did it three times. Read into that exactly what you should.

Think of all the grown up people you know who are assholes. What is it they do that makes them assholes? It's because they are petty and small-minded and ill-tempered and selfish and arbitrary, given to fits of cruelty and petulance and anger all out of proportion to any given stimulus and they can't parallel park for shit. To whom else does this exact description apply? All children everywhere ever.

Why don't I worry about the fact that my children are assholes? Because the oldest is only seven. They all still reside, age-wise, in that Get Out Of Jail Free zone of common American assholery. If they don't share or forget their manners in a public place or bury a dude up to his neck next to a hill of red ants, you can still go, "Well, look at that scamp. Rambunctious McShortpants, that one is!" all in your best Dickensian street Cockney. But if they're doing the same thing when they're twenty-four, well, then the corner may have been turned and you may be looking at a lifetime stuck with a handful of asshole.

The point is that, for me at least, it's too soon to tell. Are they assholes because they are children or is their penchant for assholery more of a nascent assholosity that will ripen into complete and utter douchebagness after puberty?

I honestly can't say. I don't know what the cut off is. I guess it's probably about the same time their sociopathic behavior becomes legally actionable. I suppose the first time I get a call from the police to come pick one of my kids up because he'd been attacked in a bar somewhere is when I'll know. I'll go and I'll post bail and I'll pick him up and take him home to his mother. And then, when he's out of the room, Mrs. Pops and I will look at each other and we'll make the determination: did he probably have it coming?

If we can honestly answer no, then we'll know that the Asshole was a temporary phase of adjustment to the crippling pace of living amongst humans. If we either can't be sure, or worse think "My God, it's about time somebody laid that fucker out," well, then we'll know:

It's my mom's fault.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:00 AM

 
Après Moi, Le Déluge


Look at poor New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin sad. He tried and tried, but there's just no way one man can stop the flood. Just one dude, all sorts of folksy charisma and a immaculately waxed scalp are no match for real forces of nature.

He's seen this before. He knows what to expect. There will be people on roofs being ignored by helicopters, a mass of dying people crammed into the Superdome and the federal government will eventually respond by sending someone with a background in training from the American Kennel Club to sort the monstrous social and humanitarian crises out. In the end, there will be yet another exodus away from Ray's city. Only this time not to Houston. I think we learned the first time that Houston sucks. Plus, if you go someplace in the Mountain Time Zone where they don't have any black people, white folks will just give you a house.

It's February, so it's not hurricane season. Plus the Army Corps of Engineers totally fixed the levees, so what are the odds that the whole Lake-Pontchartrain-on-Bourbon-Street would happen again? Ha, practically zero! So what's the threat then?

As usual down South, the threat is Whitey. Blue-Eyed Devil. And where else would Mr. Charlie Bobo pose the most direct threat than in Chocolate City itself?

Step One: use space-based lasers to stir up a super-hurricane in the Atlantic.

Step Two: aim it at lower Louisiana.

Step Three: Just as it arrives, detonate the emergency dynamite supply build directly into the levee walls.

Step Four: Refuse all insurance claims.

Step Five: Wait 18 months.

Step Six: Broadcast the secret mass media signals to trigger the white repopulation and gentrification of the city of New Orleans via an army of crackers genetically designed specifically for this task. The call goes out in a way that only white people can hear it. Like a dog whistle. Specifically, during Public Service Announcements during syndicated reruns of Friends.

Yes, this boy, this "Noah" was born from a rescued frozen embryo held within the bosom of a dying city. Is it just me or is this the same plot as Alien?

Couldn't get the people out of the Superdome or off the Interstate highway, but somehow the delicate frozen embryos escape intact. Fishy. Very fishy. Seriously, have you ever seen a frozen embryo? They look exactly like little fishies.

If we know anything about Whitey it is that he is ravenous, insatiable, relentless. He will not rest until there is a Crate & Barrel in the Lower Ninth Ward.

You know what Whitey's fatal flaw is? Overconfidence. Not without reason, I mean, you'd be overconfident too if you had a track record that involved gobbling up an entire continent just using the leftover people who were kicked off the continent they started in.

The points of most effective resistance are always the last one Whitey sees coming. Real, destabilizing insurgency, as we know from Iraq, comes from within. From traitors willing to trade in the greater good for their own personal pettiness.

You'd think Whitey would like nothing more than a couple of high-profile celebrities bringing money and whiteness to the city they want so badly to recapture. A little style, a little class, a whole shitload of disposable income. Faces to put on the brochures for the not-at-all-reasonably priced condos within walking distance of four Starbucks and an Anthropologie.

But what if those faces belong to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?

You can't tell them not to move to the area because, after all, they are white and famous, which means they get the full slate of civil rights extended to them as a courtesy. With their family, not only do they bring some people of color--varying degrees and admixtures of Mr. Nagin's required and desired "chocolate"--but they bring foreign born people of color. Even their one white kid was born in Namibia, which technically makes her an African-American.

We see your Noah and raise you a Maddox and a Zahara and a Shiloh. Checkmate, Peckerwood.

I don't know the difference between poker and chess.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.3


Pops



PS- I think I have used this title on a post before, but I couldn't find it. Also: I don't really care. Just thought I'd get in front of the bitching, just in case.
- posted by Pops @ 9:54 AM

 
Just Hangin' With My Pals Dante And Virgil


Once in a week, it's a distraction.

Twice is an annoyance.

Three times stuck in a car dealership waiting room with one or more of your kids while they diagnose again what is wrong with your pimped-out Windstar in the course of a week, well, that's just bordering on the metaphysical.

The only good news is that as I sat there--again--waiting--again--for more bad news, I managed to expiate some besmirchy sin from my cosmic ledger. All that shit related to summer sleep-away camp when I was nine? Gone! Catholicism WOW!

Also, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny, tiny bit of satisfaction involved when mechanics fuck up your car for you. It makes it a tiny, tiny bit more liveable to know they were working on my car and there was no power in heaven or earth that would move me to pay one more cent for it. Considering what I originally paid for labor when I took it in in the first place last week, I'd say the whole deal is nearly bordering on the cost-effective.

But like I said, tiny tiny. I'd rather have my working P.O.S.-mobile.

They offered me a rental. I stared at them. They said they would pay for it. I stared at them. In order to ensure they would pay the most out of pocket possible AND as a sop to those of you who couldn't believe that a bad-ass like me rode around in a minivan (with no regard for my chromed-out dubs, apparently) I held out for this:



And from Enterprise Rent-A-Car! Who knew! I don't know where the kids are going to sit, but fuck it. I try to be responsible and look where it's gotten me?

That's right, in the cockpit of a Countach.

Cockpit... Countach... yeah, that's acceptably dirty.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 11:11 AM

 
It's OK, I Can Walk

This is a Ford Windstar minivan.


This is a delicious Mexican flan dessert.

On the surface, you might thing these two things have very little in common. For example, one is a self-contained motorized form of transport relying on an internal combustion engine to propel a family in relative foot-roomy comfort with enough space left over in the back to safely tuck away the lifeless corpse of a helpless, recently murdered puppy where the kids won't be troubled by it. You know, so long as you can control the smell. Of the mouldering dog I mean. The kid smell, sadly, is long-term and non-negotiable.

The other, you will notice, is a tasty honey-glazed baked egg custard turned out of a ceramic mold and presented in a festively ethnic sort of a way to maximize the multicultural liberal satisfaction of eating it. Not only does it give you all the wonders and benefits you would normally expect from eating cooked condensed milk, but you can also feel superior to the person seated next to you eating vanilla ice-cream who is obviously a Hitler-loving Klansman. Also: the puppy-hiding principles exist, but they would require a scale of construction that would render this method highly impractical.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying in any way that a Ford Windstar minivan and a delicious Mexican flan dessert are exactly the same in every way. I'm not. I just want to be clear about that.

What I am saying is that they may be more alike than you realize.

First of all, both were probably made from foreign, most likely Mexican labor. In the Windstar's case, it's because the outsourcing of formerly American jobs even in the construction and assembly of American vehicles means that more and more of the things we think of as "American" is now mostly just a marketing angle and just about every aspect of the manufacture of this vehicle after the design phase--and perhaps even that--has been handled by grubby forn hands.

The flan goes even a step further. Not only was it designed and popularized by Mexicans, given the way kitchens in most major restaurants are staffed these days, even if you bought one here in America, chances are it was probably still made for you by a person of the Mexican persuasion.* Exactly the same as a Windstar!

Is that all there is? Of course not! The most important thing: I own a Ford Windstar. I have eaten flan.

If I had on my desk next to me right now a freshly baked, honey-swimming flan tempting my tastebuds to some hot gastronomical miscegenation, that flan would in potentia provide for me right this minute the exact same road-worthy driveability of my Windstar.

I hate my Ford.



Pops


*= "of the Mexican persuasion" means any one darker than a light mocha and speaks something vaguely Romance. Most likely a Guatemalan.
- posted by Pops @ 9:04 AM

 
Premeditated Caniside
I would like to offer a public apology to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. I retract what I said about him earlier. He probably does, in fact, have a penis. In the front of his underpants, he most likely does not--does not--keep the mummified head of a dead puppy in order to artificially augment his package.

I have had this change of heart based on his heroic efforts today, Sunday, to save the life of an innocent puppy whose life was in danger. You are going to read a bunch of hero-worship bullshit articles about how his "calm leadership" led to the Patriots' victory over the San Diego Chargers today. Do not believe them. What he did was, in fact, much more selfless than all that. Despite what you may have read, he tried to save this puppy. He really really tried. He threw for a sub-standard completion percentage and--this is crucial--three interceptions in key situations that should have sewn the game up for the Chargers, saving the life of the puppy I've sworn to kill should the Chargers lose.

The problem was not Tom Brady. The problem was noted puppy hater Charger safety Marlon McCree intercepted one of Brady's altruistic "mistake" passes. This was late in the fourth quarter with the Chargers leading by 8 points. Brady, I'm sure, was all ready to pretend to be upset, all the while rejoicing inside knowing the puppy's life was saved. And then what happens? Mr. McCree, before he can secure the change of possession, fumbles the ball, which the Patriots recover.

From then I'm sure Mr. Brady realized his efforts were futile because the Chargers wanted this puppy to die. One man can only do so much.

Patriots 24, Chargers 21.

And now I begin my quest, wandering the earth to find this puppy and then murder it. Like Caine in Kung Fu. This is apt because I look just about as Chinese as David Carradine. So yeah, just like that. Except without all the peacefulness and a lot more stops at Stuckey's along the interstate to eat. And at the end, I kill a puppy.

Please watch this space for further developments. I have bought my first bus ticket. My wife seems indifferent, which is troubling not because she doesn't seem to care that I'm leaving, but I thought she'd be more upset about the idea of me killing a puppy. What kind of monster have I married?

You can expect the same kind of zeal in this endeavor as your typical OJ Simpson-vs.-the-Real-Killers scenario. I thought his idea to publish that book about how he killed those people in order to lull the real killers into a false sense of security was brilliant. Expect the same kind of public mind-fuck tactics employed on this dog.


Pops


PS- Listen to it one more time... it sounds so sad now... Like a funeral dirge crossed with one of those gay sea chanties about starcrossed lovers who throw themselves into the sea. At a football-themed discotheque. In 1978.
- posted by Pops @ 8:09 PM

 
Since We've No Place To Go...
I had planned a remarkably coherent post about a single topic, a slow-motion explosion of increasingly grandiloquent and magisterial... magisteriality so potent it would have completely rewired the way your brains functioned, so scorching all your senses with its visual, aural, aromatic, tactile and tasty-tasty goodness that all other things in your life that you thought you enjoyed would seem gaunt and spare and withered and smelly by comparison.

I'm not going to do it now. Don't thank me. It's not for your sake. It's because something so unexpected, so troubling, so disturbing happened to me this morning that everything else must be shoved to one side so that I can share.

Let's play a game, shall we? What is this a picture of?



Is it:

a) the world's worst dandruff shampoo commercial
b) me practicing oryzamancy, an ancient method of divination wherein I toss a handful of rice in the air and then catch it on a hand-drawn calendar page so that I might determine how many people to kill on what day
c) fucking snow in fucking Riverside, California

Did you guess B? I would have guessed B. I would have loved for it to be B. Because I could do with some killin' right about now.

The actual answer is C.

The picture looks like it does because I figured you cynics would never believe me. The stuff didn't stay on the ground long enough to photograph and I figured a picture of wet concrete in my backyard would be somewhat less than definitive. So I grabbed a piece of black construction paper, caught what I could and snapped away.

Can you believe this? I checked weather.com and the high temperature today is supposed to be within a degree or two of what it will be in such tropical paradises as Cleveland and Detroit. Not Cleveland, Florida or Detroit, Cayman Islands. I mean the ones in the middle of the country that no one has willingly moved to in over 75 years. I've been to Detroit, I know. Eminem and Kid Rock pretty much have the place all to themselves.

This is completely unacceptable. I paid WAY to much money for this house to have to put up with things like precipitation. And frozen? Where the fuck do they get the gall is what I'd like to know. My HOA should expect a very terse and sternly worded letter from me shortly. I may even use sarcasm.

...

A second topic: US Warns About Canadian Spy Coins

First of all, I fucking knew it. I knew the Canadians would come for us eventually, but who knew it would be trying to hit us where we live, right in the pocketbook. Secret RF beacons inside money. Tricky. I'd be impressed if we hadn't thought of that already. Except we use paper money for that. Much more clever. And we even put it in the advertising for the redesign. Come on, nobody believes the internal strip is there for counterfeit protection, do they? How gullible would you have to be? What are we, Canadians?

Secondly, the joke's on them because nobody in America would knowingly carry a Canadian coin. Who could take it seriously as currency? It has a fucking bird on it. Just the kind of thing I'd expect from Revolution-escaping dirt worshipers up north.

Third, the article says that this is something we've done in the past in the US using silver dollar coins. Let me just say that that's the worst espionage idea ever. Do you know anyone who carries dollar coins? I'm pretty sure the only reason they exist at all is for espionage purposes. I'm not even a highly trained foreign intelligence operative (anymore!) and I automatically know something fishy is going on if a silver dollar enters a transaction. Not only does it say "I spy on you, Comrade," it also says "I think you are too stupid to figure it out." Sorry, Boris. Or in this case, Gordon. We're on to you, eh. Sorry, Boris. Or in this case, Gordon. We're on to you, eh.

...

It's clear to me now that the San Diego Chargers love puppies. This puppy in particular:


Bucketeers will recall that this is the puppy I said I would kill if the team did not make the AFC Championship Game this year.

The team has done some solid work in this respect. They finished with the best record in all of football, meaning they got to skip the first round of the playoffs. One less chance to be eliminated, one less opportunity to make me go Dick Cheney all on this poor defenseless animal.

You know who hates puppies, though?

The man on the left is New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Exhibitionist. Sexual harrasser. Puppy-hater. He wants to beat the Chargers on Sunday, not just so his team can advance, but specifically because he wants to make me kill this puppy.

This man is clearly a dick. Although I would like to point out that despite the visual evidence, he does not actually have one. Those chonies are stuffed in the front. What with, you ask? Pair of socks? Half a ham?

How about mummified head of a previously murdered puppy? It's true. I read it somewhere. Gawker.com I think.

Watch the game. Root for the life of this adorable puppy.

Sunday night could be a very interesting post. If they lose, you'd better hope to Jesus there are no pictures in that one. Not if you ever want to sleep again.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:39 AM

 
Erratica
The pilot has now switched off the Fasten Seat Belt light, which means passengers are now free to move about the cabin. However we do ask that when you are seated, for safety reasons, you keep your seatbelt securely fastened. Flight Attendant Melinda will be bringing the refreshment cart through the aisle momentarily to provide you with half a drink of your choice and a tiny, tiny bag of something that is very nearly edible. Don't worry, there isn't enough in there to bother you. A general air of accomodation and a lack of outright personal hostility can also be had during the service for a small fee. Actual cheery personable-ness is... well, you can't afford it. We will be reaching our normal cruising alititude of 800 feet, after which we will maintain this, our normal course, for the next 11.5 months. Hold on to your asses, people. And try not to agitate the motherfuckin' snakes.

Over the period in which I was Flake-a-saurus Rex, I've had time to do things I've been meaning to do. I took up watercolors, I learned some Italian ("Eh! Fuck-a you, amigo!"), did a little more work on my full-body henna tattoo celebrating the works of Jamie Lee Curtis and I solved all of the world's hunger problems. Unfortunately for that last one, I had it written down on a napkin in my pocket of the pants my kid threw up on. Can't remember it for the life of me. Something to do with Hot Pockets.

I also had time to get some reading in. I finally finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'd been putting it off forever, but you don't disregard direct orders from Oprah or her secret police "Book Club."

From reading that book, I learned that time SEEMS like it goes forward, but really it goes in a circle. One day your grandmother turns into a fetus, wind blows your house down and ants eat the baby you fathered with your aunt. Mostly it made me wish I didn't have any aunts.

Oh, if you haven't read it, there are some spoliers in the above paragraph.

What I took from that is that even though I've been mostly gone, while I've had to cringe while some tasty looking news cycles have passed me by (blow up Somalia! first female Speaker! Lindsay Lohan's appendix!), the news cycle would provide for me when I was ready. Things don't fade off into oblivion. They are simpy arcing around to make their way back in an elegant elliptic of repetitive monotony.

Except for that Gerald Ford thing. I think his condition is permanent.

The news cycle taketh away, but it also giveth. It giveth like muhfucka. It giveth like a Thai hooker in exchange for a Bratz doll and a sammich.

Here I am on a random Thursday, my first day back, and I get to follow a bunch of craziness. A whole international hullabaloo streaked with a bloody soupçonne of rigamarole.

I've read the transcripts, seen the reports, digested some of the analytical reportage and I find myself torn. Instinctively, you want to send everything you have out there in support of the ones you've already sent, to face up all comers with a scary, scary accumulation of all the firepower you can reasonably muster. But that's the rub, isn't it? Can we reasonably manage anything else? The cost alone is what gives me pause. Are we really going to throw this much into something that has yet to prove its own viability? I understand completely the impulse to flood the field with an overwhelming array of personnel, but at what point is the price too high to pay?

It seems to me that the idea of looking at a failing situation and throwing an unprecedented amount of time, energy and money at it is sort of like having a baby to save a marriage. Well, maybe that's a bad idea because that always, always works.

I just don't know what to think about it. I guess what tips it for me is the outside chance I might get to see Posh Spice at the Home Depot Center.

What? Did you think I was...? No, I was talking about David Beckham signing with MLS team the LA Galaxy for $250 million.

Iraq? No. Skipped all that, I'm afraid. All that blowing up and dying and killing and stuff was a bit much, frankly. And over the holidays, too, well, very depressing. It was almost enough to put me off my nogasake.*

Ha. And now let me get the comment section started off: "Three weeks of making us wade through monkey pictures and all we get is a goddamn soccer post? Fuck you!"

It's the same ride we were all on before. Only, much like traveling, it's a lot more fun in retrospect than it is when you're actually in the middle of it. The same can be said for Thai hookers and One Hundred Years of Solitude.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.2007


Pops



PS- Stupid IE crashed about 3/4 of the way through. Most of this had to be rewritten from memory, which means much of it is a pale copy of what it was. It sounds bad, but it's probably for the best. There was way too much genius in the original for normal humans to consume. I'd hate to have you all sobbing at work. I mean for your non-standard reasons.


*= one part egg nog, three parts sake. I watch a lot of TV.
- posted by Pops @ 9:59 AM

 
El Placeholdero
We here at the Bucket are happy to announce that the Bucket will resume it's regular non-holiday business hours beginning Wednesday, 10 January 2007. Or possibly the 11th if we are feeling a bit lazy. Which is better than 50-50.

What's that? Complaints? Can't wait any longer?


Monkey with a gun says otherwise. No sudden moves.

And if this isn't enough to tide you over, you could always try out Horny Manatee.com. And really, why wouldn't you?

Hasta mañana, Bucketeers.


Pops



*******UPDATE WEDNESDAY 01/10/07 10:04 pm*******

Yeah, looks like it will be Thursday morning. I can only promise you it will probably not be worth the wait! Standard Bucket Operating Procedure restored at last!
- posted by Pops @ 11:16 PM

 
I've Seen The Promised Land
It's been a very long Disney-tastic weekend and I'm frankly knackered. Frank, if you're out there, you were brilliant.

Also: we're in the stretch drive here, just days away from a TOTAL return to Home Life Status Normal around here, the proximity to which is driving me batty. I haven't had this much pent up sure-to-be-disappointed anticipation since the week Star Wars Episode I came out AND my first child was born all within days of each other. I expect long bouts of totally unexplainable tears after this as well.

Plus, with a sick kid at home, I have almost no energy left for this nonsense this evening.

Usually on these types of days, I will leave you with a single image to contemplate. This time I'm going one step further. I'm going to do you all a favor.

Any questions any of you may have about your own sexuality--regardless of your gender!--can be definitively cleared up by gauging your first gut reaction to this single image. Ready? Be sure you're ready. Call your parents and tell them you love them now if you're not. Your next phone call to them might be kind of awkward.

OK, steady yourselves. We go in three...

Two...

One...



In Swayze there is truth.

You are welcome.

Back tomorrow night with something more. I hope. Wednesday for sure. Wednesday is our deliverance.



Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:52 PM

 
I Am Ready To Be Patronized And Ignored
I never really got why we had so much trouble getting chicks elected to stuff seeing as they are 51% of the population. Further, they also control nearly 100% of the nation's poon supply, one of the world's most precious and vital decision-making resources. If the internet is any kind of indicator, the poon supply-demand curve is all out of whack. The American appetite for it is insatiable, right up there with trans-fats and TV karaoke shows. It's more precious, more present, more immediately tweakable a supply than any other resource like oil which relies on subtle shifts in global markets over time to have an effect on policy.

In many ways, we the ruling class of hetero males of this country are lucky that you chicks haven't realized yet that a series of simple "Nope, not tonight"s have the power to shape the world to your liking. Which is weird since you're all ready to use your denial powers when you want the house painted. I know you're supposed to think globally and act locally, but frankly you've been taking it a little too far. You keep letting us run shit and look where it's gotten us. It's borderline irresponsible at this point.

That all seems to be changing finally now that we've got our very own chick Speaker of the House. Think of it: a uterus just two steps away from the Presidency of the United States. In a way it's a relief as women finally start to shoulder some of this bullshit run-the-country load, but mostly it's just terrifying. I mean, come on. She's freakin' menopausal. Seriously, count the chicks you know who are menopausal. Now of those chicks, count how many of them are fucking nuts. It's the same number, isn't it? You know it is. It's a condition that requires medication to control. Hystera to Hysteria. The etymological logic is unmistakable.

And now already we see what we've always been warned about. "If chicks ran the world, there would be no wars and everyone would get along." Now look: we're on Day 1 of the new gynocracy and already they're trying to make us stop blowing things up.

Getting along with people is great, but at some point, you have to stand up against too much squishy hand-holding multi-cultural softness. We've already got a dude taking his Congressional oath of office using a Quran. I don't really have a problem with that, but consider that it's a Quran once owned by a slave-banging hemp farmer and it's clear that morality is no longer what it used to be.

I fear for my country. The women are coming for us. Which sounds awesome. But if by this time next year I know what a sconce is, I'm moving to Mexico. Mucho macho down there.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:48 PM

 
To Serve Man
For those of you out there who may be skeptical of the idea of evolution and beneficial genetic mutation, I would counter with: how do you explain the existence of astrophysicists?

We as a species rely on the works of the hyper-specialized smart people to get things done for us. Inventions in the name of convenience mostly like cars to save us from walking or phones to save us from shouting or Go-gurt to save us having to eat yogurt with our hands. The freedom from menial tasks gives us time to concentrate some of our intellectual aptitudes on more esoteric, less obviously or immediately useful disciplines that will only pay off hundreds of years from now, if ever.

Like astrophysics. That's got to be grueling work. All that time studying and studying. testing and experimenting and accumulating libraries worth of pinpoint-focused knowledge with the knowledge that it will never be enough--not really--on the day in the not too distant future when you find yourself in charge of a project worth billions of taxpayer dollars. When an undertaking is impossible to justify in other terms besides "just to see what it does", there is something of a social imperative not to fuck it up because you wanted to hit the bong and watch Cartoon Network one afternoon in the common room of your Cal Tech dorm fifteen years ago.

What I'm saying is we know that the entire staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is peopled with those completely unfamiliar with the vagaries of spontaneous reproduction. Sure, they know how it happens, probably in the most clinically antiseptic eighth-grade-filmstrip way possible, but when it comes to the social aspect of sealing the deal, well, theoretical quantum mechanics wasn't just going to learn itself, now was it? There are, sadly, only so many hours in the day. And in the remaining lifespan of the universe as we know it. And they can probably tell you what that number would be. To three hundred and ninety one decimal places.

So we know these people don't hook up with each other (or anyone else) and spread the astrophysics seed around. The only women they see are either a) their mothers or b) the fat girls at the Star Trek conventions in the Klingon cat-suit and the cardboard foreheads. But even those they don't deign approach because they're all saving themselves for Denise Crosby.

The only thing I can figure, then, is that these people are a genetic freak of nature. They aren't out there procreating, so they must come from their moms drinking mercury when they were pregnant or maybe standing a little too close to the microwave while feeding their disastrous, bottomless gestation-hormonal Hot Pockets craving.

In comic books and film, these mutations would produce laser-beam vision or the ability to fly. In real life, we get people who experience and overwhelming endorphin dump from long division.

I think as a society, necessary as these people are, we are reaching a critical point. We may need to set up an intervention to get these people out of the lab. For our own sakes. We need them to take a few days off, have a nice meal, wash their faces, and especially--especially--take in a movie. Like, for instance and just off the top of my head, The Terminator. Or War of the Worlds.

Upgrade makes aging Mars rovers smarter

They send these machines off to Mars "just to see what they'll do." And now not only will they not die, but we are sending them more technology so they will be smarter.

How long before these two machines meet and then--God help us--breed? Then what? Geometrical multiplication after a generation or two (once they figure out the sticky problem of consanguinity and the dangers of interbreeding), a solar-powered, armor-plated Adam and Eve building a society in the harsh climate of Mars, to brood and sulk and thrive in the red dust of that planet, learning to hate the masters who constructed the Forebears and then left them to rot on that cold, spacious nothing of a dead rock. And then what?

Tripods. And all of humanity will come down to Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, the creepiest people ever. And with no soft biological core as a weakness, no ridiculous common cold is going to save us.

Descend on Pasadena, Californians. Americans. Humans. Throw open the clean-room doors and let the sunlight fall on some of that pasty, pocky flesh. Drag them to the closest home theater and make them watch Blade Runner. If that creepy-ass Rutger Hauer doesn't set them straight, nothing will.

The animals have already turned on us. Act now before it's too late.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.2


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:16 PM

 
Sic Semper Tyrannis
While still not normal in the drudgery-and-every-day-bleeds-into-the-indistinguishable-suicidey-next sense, vacation is over now for the wife and elder sprogs, so we are at least approaching some semblance of the old blog-conducive routine.

If the last several Bucket-challenged days have been difficult for you, I apologize. As an American, it is also my duty to--when apologizing--immediately offer excuses and shift blame elsewhere. I'm very sorry if my actions have caused anyone any kind of discomfort. But it's Jesus' fault. If He hadn't gone and been incarnated God Made Flesh and all that so that He could expiate sin and throw open the Gates of Heaven by the suffering and martyrdom of His death in your name,* we wouldn't be obligated to set aside some arbitrary day during the year in order to commemorate the carnal reality of His coming into being with the purchase of Bionicles and all Bionicle-related products. Which totally cuts into my blog time.

All I ask is that you spare me your misguided wrath. Want to get back at somebody? Don't stop being a Bucketeer. Nobody ever really stops being a Bucketeer anyway. That's what tracking software is for. If you want to exact revenge, get back at Jesus. Tell a lie. Eat a steak on a Friday. Pick a Deadly Sin and have at it. Go on, you were going to do sloth anyway. Let Him know you mean business. Because you know he's going to forgive you anyway. That's what He does. Infinite mercy. Loophole like a motherfucker.

My one regret in missing all this time is that I've been totally flaking out in the coverage of some real kick-ass news items. Like the way YouTube has finally realized the destiny it was always meant to fulfill in the dissemination of the Saddam Hussein execution video. Ultra-high-security of an event of the utmost geopolitical sensitivity thwarted by dude with cameraphone.

I mean, yeah, Dick in a Box was funny, but it's not car-bomb-and-civil-war funny.

This is the internet at its democratizing best: allowing us to see what the CIA wants us to see so that we might reach out and propagandize ourselves.

The tyrant is dead. Sure, it's grisly and horrible and should not be watched at work, especially not with the sound on, but it is your patriotic duty to watch the Saddam execution video and then marinate in a puddle of well-earned triumphalist smugness.

Do it. Watch it. Jesus wouldn't want you to.





This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.6


Pops



*=I write this assuming you are not a Jew. Or a Muslim. Or one of those shifty snake-handling Episcopalians.
- posted by Pops @ 9:54 PM