Pops' Bucket

This Is Not A Drill

2007-06-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

I've read in comments elsewhere the opinion of some readers that they find it a bit too precious or pretentious of bloggers, when the reach the end of their run, to indulge in long-winded soul-searching farewell missives entirely for the benefit of themselves rather than simply one day disappearing from the face of the blog-earth.

I find that position to be interesting.

Pops

The Dreaded Placeholder

2007-05-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

While I realize I owe you all a great deal after yesterday's post, familial obligations require me to punk out for today and possibly tomorrow. For now, I'm going to have to leave you in the comforting, Oriental, redeeming hands of Chinese Jesus.

Konichiwa.

Pops

Memorial Bucket Cheap Picture Blogging

2007-05-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

[NOTE: I realize it's Wednesday and Memorial Day is now a memory fading with along with the symptoms of your sun-and-dehydration-aided alcohol poisoning, but it turns out that I totally missed a regular annual Bucket feature. That will now be rectified. If there's anything I'm known for, it's beating a premise to death in the name of space-filling. You are welcome.]

...if'n I stare at it long enough, I know I can move it with my mind. I seen it on that Star Wars special on Spike TV the other day. Real Obi-Wan Kenobi shit. Kenobi... is that a Jew name? It sounds like a Jew name. Plus just moving stuff with your mind seems kind of gay. Eye laser-beams would be way cooler. Like General Zod. But without the nancy-boy accent. Zod... that's a regular Christian name, I think. I can make eye-lasers. Just gotta concentrate. Think eye-laser thoughts. I'm the president, I can do anything I want. Eye-lasers... eye-lasers... almost... almost...

Speech time! Aw, hell. Sorry folks, I was busy... reflecting on the specialness that is Veteran's Day or whatever. Is it Memorial Day? I get them confused, but can you blame me? It's basically the same thing. You all get together here in Arlington and make me run through the exact same program twice a year with the flags and the wreath and the people crying and the old people in the funny McDonald's crew-member hats with all the writing and hardware on them. What are them called again? Where's Scotty? Hey Scotty, what are the old people in the hats called again? Oh yeah, "veterans". Creep me out, man.

Well, veterans, here we are at Arlington National Cemetary again. Just think, when you die, probably very soon, you could have a place here too. But if you want my advice, you'd better get on that dying train lickety-split because space is running low. Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes, men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi. That's right: my war dead. People can talk about "legacy" and whatever, but you just can't argue with raw numbers. When all is said and done, I plan on having put more people in this place than typhoid fever. Nobody forgets typhoid fever.

The danger is that the terrorists will try to distort the numbers after I'm done presidenting. I know as much as anyone that numbers can be made to say whatever you want them to say. Look at my polls. Sure, they seem like they say less than 30% of Americans approve of the job I'm doing and that nearly 60% want immediate or short-term plans for withdrawl from Iraq. The good news for me is that I'm the president. That's why I'm announcing now that I have signed this morning Executive Order #13435 whereby from herewith on out, All Poll Numbers Shall Be Deemed to Say the Oppsite of What They Seem.

Fight it if you want to people, but I'm already out there making it happen. It's the Executive Branch. You bring it to us, and we execute it.

Oh yeah, and I'm real sad about the sacrifices and the veterans and blah blah blah. Scotty, fire up the tape from last Veteran's Day. Y'all know I was going to give the same speech anyhow. I got some tech nerd over the White House to put it on DVD. It's got a real cool menu screen with my giant face and a fighter plane and a dragon. Totally bitchin'.

And last thing, I want you to know that I'm thinking about the lives of soldiers beyond just my term. Can't have Hillary or Barko Bama whatever guy passing up my Arlington numbers. Be aware that just before my remarks here, I was working on a new weapon that could give us immediate and total battlefield superiority and a significant deterrent factor that will assure our continued dominance as the world's only superpower. I can't say what it is as it's totally classified, but before I go, I will give you a hint: eye-lasers.

That's all I can say. God bless America!

Arrrgh!

2007-05-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

There seems to have been some consensus in the comments at the end of last week that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was destined to underperform financially when compared to its predecessors and up against its immediate non-Disney-ride-themed competition.

Granted this is using a very small sample size, but I can say with complete scientific certainty that this will not be the case. Based on my experience of having BOTH showings of said movie completely SOLD OUT in the very small window of babysitting kid-freedom Mrs. Pops and I were awarded, underperformance will not be a problem.

We're talking about a 100% sales rate of seats in the early-mid afternoon showings at the Regal Riverside Plaza Stadium 16 this past Sunday. If we extrapolate that out based on the latest sample-modeling techniques, we can postulate a 100% rate of sale at all theaters worldwide.

This means all box office records of all time will be crushed in very short order. I predict good things.

I haven't bothered to look at the actual box office results from the long weekend as I assume it will include theoretical numbers expressed in orders of magnitude that are not only beyond my comprehension, but may cause me immediate mental and emotional harm in trying to understand them.

Bravo, Disney. And critics, never underestimate the drawing power of Johnny Depp, even with the gnarly dreads and that horrible accent. Plus: Chow Yun Fat! How could it miss?

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.3

Pops

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #46

2007-05-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

Bug

starring Ashley Judd, Some Guy, Harry Connick, Jr.

directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection... need I go on? Oh yeah, and Jade too... I guess I did)

I would almost feel like I'm piling on if I said anything to denigrate this film. The good people who made and distribute the film already have let us know that they also hate it. I know it seems almost counter-intuitive to say so, seeing as they are giving it a Memorial Day release, one of the few prestige Release Dates for films in the United States.

But this is not just any Memorial Day. Already we have had the biggest opening weekend for any film in history (Spider Man 3) and a direct rival to that prize just last week in Shrek the Third followed by what is arguably the most anticipated (financially anyway, not so much if you're like me and you can't stomach people with tooth-jewelry) release of the year in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

So versus the already-built audiences for Spidey and Shrek and directly in the way of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom's perty mouth and Kiera Knightley's visible vertebrae, the people at Lions Gate have thrown us Bug. It's like that scene in Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo hides from the Imperials in the Milennium Falcon by floating away disguised in a trash-dump.

Am I a dork for making the reference? Sure. But you totally followed it, so live with that, Fonzie.

It's as though they spent the time and money on filming, editing, advertising and then said to each other "You know what? This feels like a 4th-place film at best. When is the best time to release a film that has no shot to rise above #4 at the box office during the entire course of its run?"

That answer? Clearly Memorial Day. If you release a 4th-place film in February, it only makes $6 million. The fourth-place film this weekend will proabably be closer to $20-30 million. These are not stupid people.

Plus it's hard for me to be negative as I am a huge Ashley Judd fan. Let me be a little more specific: I am a big fan of the hotness of Ashley Judd. It's clear that, even though not twins, there was some kind of gene-hogging going on to her benefit and against her sister Wynnona, not unlike the premise of the Schwarzenegger/Devito dynamic in the film Twins.

Sadly, however, the genetic windfall that is Ashley's has not been translatable to career judgment. Her string of barely-disguised Lifetime Original Movies about chicks being chased by Big Scary Men has been well documented. The promise of Heat and Kiss the Girls has been, by now, well and fully squandered, I think.

The only really good news about that is when the career starts to flag a bit, many hot actresses are willing to slum it in lesser material that includes extremes of violence and (oh yes!) nudity.

And this Bug? Rated R for some strong violence, sexuality, nudity, language and drug use. Sold!

Althogh I should point out that in this film as well, she is being chased by a Big Scary Man. Only in this instance, the obligatory abusive ex-husband is played by... Harry Connick, Jr.? Frankly they might as well have handed the role to a labrador puppy in a wicker basket full of soft fuzzy blankets. And still, more scary than Harry Connick, Jr.

Seriously, what's the Harry Connick threat? Past the very real possibility of be-boppin' or scattin' someone into submission or possibly drawling them into a state of hazy Southern comfort, I don't really see how you maintain realistic dramatic tension there. I'm only willing to suspend so much disbelief.

Despite the Connick factor, the reviews I've read say this is a highly competent, well acted, very effective thriller about a paranoid vet (played by Some Guy) who convinces Ashley Judd that scary government and/or alien sponsored bugs are in his body or after him or... something. Here's all you really need to know: two hours of people talking about bugs under their skin. Still in? Me neither.

Still, I wasn't kidding about the Judd thing. It's mostly people I don't know in a genre I hate, but come on. Nudity!

Two (out of three) on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

One for each Judd boobie.

Come get me, feminists! We can work out our differences in my home mud-wrasslin' pit.

Pops

Somehow I Know David Crosby Is Involved

2007-05-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

I generally try to stay off of the politically-themed posts two days in a row as contemplation of this stuff tends to tweak my gimpy bowel something fierce.

But there's a question now that's really bothering me and I just can't figure out what the answer is.

What do you think is more embarrassing to President Bush:

A) The birth of a healthy baby boy to Vice President Dick Cheney's TOTALLY LESBIAN unwed daughter and her TOTALLY LESBIAN unwed life-partner woman or

B) The announcement of a 10-foot-high statue of Bill Clinton to be placed in Kosovo, where he is celebrated as a liberator of the people for engaging in the limited, short, well-focused yet still controversial war he committed American troops to during his presidency.

Before you decide, keep in mind that with regard to A, that girl has be devotee of Sappho since Day 1 of the administration, so it's not like this is all a surprise AND just having her do this baby thing gives the Cheneys another opportunity to be dicks to Wolf Blitzer when he asks about it on CNN.

And with regard to B, remember that although a statue is going up, this is only in addition to the street that is named after Clinton and the giant 12-foot-high mural of him that also already exists. So again, no real surprises.

But still, both bits of news within a day of each other... that's gotta smart. It's driving me crazy not knowing the answer.

I guess I'll have to wait and see what he says in the impromptu, totally non-scripted news conference he has called today, presumably to answer this question directly for me.

And for that I thank him. Talk about a responsive government. I can't wait for the fresh, fresh bit of truth.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.1

Pops

You May Want To Sit Down

2007-05-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

What exactly is the purpose of military intelligence?

I'm confused because I used to think that its primary function was to be collected, deciphered, collated and directed to the necessary decision-making people and/or departments that would then parse it, analyze it, make reasonable conclusions about what it said and then use those conclusions to justify bombing the shit out of other countries until they forcibly agree to become free democracies like us.

That's kind of what the Bush administration has used military intelligence for, but really kind of not. They seem to be under the impression that military intelligence has the war-justifying and democracy-making qualities described above, but that it can be approached in a more selective, less collective way. I get the projected time-saving benefits of pre-deciding what you're going to accept from the collected data and what you're going to reject. Generally, I applaud anyone in government who is able to streamline overwrought processes in the interest of time, manpower and budget savings.

I don't know that military intelligence is necessarily where you want to start cutting corners, however. Sure, it may seem like you're cutting way back on billable hours by issuing directives to only consider incoming information that supports, say at total random, the invasion of Iraq and its connection to al Qaeda and/or WMD. But cruise missiles are really expensive. Sure, you can cut some more corners by withholding body armor and Humvee outfitting and maybe at the back end by curbing the quality of post-war recovery health care and health care facilities for the soldiers returning, but all in all, in a strict cost/benefit analysis, I'd say you're better served putting the time and money into the initial intelligence analysis to the tune of several hundred billion dollars and one midterm election.

It's not like the Bush people don't know how to keep secrets or what the importance of secret information is. We still don't know what Dick Cheney said to those energy people* way back in the early days of the administration, which shows strength and foresight and an unshakable commitment to principle. Bullshit principle, but once you commit, you commit.

The problem isn't the keeping of the secrets. What troubles me is the way in which these secrets are let go. Probably the less said about the Valerie Plame thing the better, but it is a case in point.

Now in preparation for a major policy speech and PR push ahead of the Democratic Congress' Summer Shenanigans Tour, our irascible, benighted leadership has decided to publicly declassify a bunch of stuff about Iraq and al-Qaeda.

If you're like me, you're thinking: "$15 monthly or $150 for lifetime membership? I'll take the latter! Thank you, asstomouth.com!"

More specifically related to this, you're probably thinking as I did: "Finally! Something to illuminate the real rationale for this drain on our resources, our manpower, our families and our 24-cable-news time we could be devoting to nonstop Paris Hilton Prison Watch!"

The thing that bothers me isn't that the president seems to be OK with the declassification of information solely for the purpose of punching up some paragraphs in some political speech he's giving. Frankly at this point, I'd be more alarmed if he weren't doing something like that. What bothers me is the total lameness of the declassified intelligence.

Here's what we now know, based on the information the government until two days ago was protecting us from:

1) Al Qaeda has been operating in Iraq (or at least trying to) since after the invasion. So very nearly helpful to the administration. Except for the italicized word above.

2) Osama bin Laden has given people in his organization orders to attack places outside of Iraq, including RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA!

Wow. Turns out this bin Laden guy? No likey us. Wants to kill us and everything.

You know, for people who take every opportunity to remind us of 9/11, they sure don't seem to have gotten the general point of that event. I would write them a memo, but somehow I suspect I wouldn't get the proper reaction to that either.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.3

Pops

* = I can understand their reticence. I suspect it has something to do with not being able to find a good text form to describe a nine-man reach-around.

Exploding Man

2007-05-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

So what we were able to learn from last night's much-anticipated season finale of Heroes?

1) Bad guys with a clutch of super-powers that render them near-omnipotent can be made to lower their guard and not defend themselves for up to 20 seconds if the attacker can manage unexpectedly to call them by name from behind. It's a little known super-villain weakness, but it exists, right up there with total-plan-divulging just before the end and leaving super-heroes alone whilst attached to a supposedly inescapable, overly elaborate execution apparatus. Lame I know, but if it weren't for these things, super-villains could not otherwise be defeated. It is, as I've said before, similar to the way dogs would rule the earth if only they were not vulnerable to the fake-stick-throw ruse. Life finds a way.

2) No price is too much to pay for a DVR or TiVo device that will let you record something whilst (that's two!) watching something else simultaneously. This has been made eminently clear to me since 24 began in earnest in January and I've been watching Heroes on Tuesday mornings (hence the later-ish hour of this post appearing) from the semi-comfort of my non-couch-like office chair in front of my computer with the grainy video and the occasional hiccups in streaming that imbue the dialogue with an extra layer of tension and drama as we wait for the buffering thing to buffer, mid-syllable. What's going to happen is I'm going to clear all the 24 episodes I have backlogged, order the dual-channel device from my TV provider and the old single-channel deal I'm using now will be introduced to my good, good friend Mr. Ball Peen Hammer. That's not me being cute about one of my tools, that's actually the guy's name. He's really good at breaking stuff. Generally he uses a mallet.

3) People can do good all the time and make the right choices and suffer and sacrifice and struggle every minute of every day to maintain a sense of order and morality in a troubling, soul-eating world, but it's the smarmy snake-oil salesman with the capped teeth who gets to be the "hero" at the end just because he has a prostitute's sense of staging right at the climax. And no, I'm not talking about Newt Gingrich. Yet.

What the end of Heroes means is that the end of what has possibly been the best year of television in my lifetime is finally drawing to a conclusions. There are still two episodes of The Sopranos left for us to find out what happens in the final showdown between our hero Fatty McBald and his archenemy, Eyebrows Johnson. After that... my God, what do we do? How am I supposed to spend time with my wife if we're not watching, discussing or flaming each other on the message boards regarding Lost?

Social interaction not mediated by popular culture? What kind of marriage do the networks think this is? Welcome to Awkward City, population 2.

How many days until the new Bionic Woman starts?

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.4

Pops

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

2007-05-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

There are two principle reasons why I don't immediately run out and become a Jehovah's Witness.

The first, obviously, is the association with Michael Jackson. As a white man, I run the risk of being confused with him already. That's enough for me. The chances of us being mistaken for one another aren't huge seeing as I have a human nose and a chin that will not melt in temperatures over 80° Fahrenheit, but anything that increases those chances is enough to give me pause. Part of the unease is, yes, the pederasty business. Very nasty. But mostly I don't want any of his creditors coming after me by mistake. He's been spending time--and presumably borrowing money--from people in the Middle East. That's hand-severing country.

The second reason I don't run out and join the Jehovah's Witnesses is that, while I may seem to be a forthright, bold, even heroic figure here in anonymous print, in person I'm quite shy. Walking around knocking on the doors of people I don't know in an effort to talk them into something they most expressly do not want is not something I would relish. From experience I know that the dreaded knock of the Jehovah's Witness sometimes prompts otherwise well adjusted, socially adept people to dive behind their couches; the only worse, more personally offensive result is when they actually answer the door bearing something blunt and swingable.

I have no great desire to become a social pariah, either by association with the wrong people or out of a persistent, intrusive proselytization that presents deep-seated religious faith in the exact same mode as encyclopedias and home security systems.

Yes, I'm talking to you, annoying ADT representative for the Riverside area. I will not be worn down by your dogged pursuit of my patronage. If I'm not going to take the authentic Jesus, what makes you think I'm going to accept your free installation and reasonable monitoring fees?

But oh... Jehovah's Witnesses... after five children's birthday parties (including all three of my own) in the last six weeks, I am so nearly, nearly ready to join you, the Least Fun of All The Religions. No birthdays, no Thanksgiving, no pagan-ass Christmas. If it just weren't for those other things... I could envision a future of sleeping in and never, ever buying another Bionicle toy, but then I wonder: how soon do you make your people get up to go door-to-door-ing anyway? And with no birthdays nor any Christmas, wouldn't my kids just want Bionicles every single day of the year?

Nah, it's no good. I guess another option is to forsake organized religion altogether, but then I don't know if I'm comfortable with the position of not having a horse in the race, metaphysically speaking. I figure even if it's the Hindus that have it right, I have to get some credit for believing something and maybe I won't necessarily come back as a tapeworm.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.2

Pops

How Much Is That In Kroner?

2007-05-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

Normally Friday is a day to rejoice as I roll out my endlessly popular and cuttingly acerbic Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing series, but alas, this Friday, what we have is the release of the third Shrek movie and then a bunch of little piddly indy things as all the other total pussy major studios get out of Shrek's ogre way. And while I may not independently intend to see Shrek, as the father of three American children under the age of 9, it is my responsibility to expose them to as much advertising hidden within supposedly "artisitic" mass media as I can. To not do so borders on child abuse, frankly. I can't in good conscience contribute to the raising of children in this country at this time who aren't thoughtlessly dutiful consumers and who can reliably tell the difference between commercials and content. It would be like asking them to fail at life. Or become communists.

So I have no doubt that sometime in the next 2-3 weeks, this Shrek will be seen by me. It's not sadness you're registering, it's more the cold, rigid inevitability of familial expectation akin to the vacuous, unknowable blackness of death. But hey, that's what fathers do.

It is this kind of inescapable, doom-like burden of action that found me recently making the 90-or-so minute drive out to Carlsbad to take the family (as requested) to Legoland.

Normally, such requests would be dismissed, ignored or met with an appropriate level of fatherly violence. But as it turns out, I've already made the mistake of a) explaining the concept of "birthdays" to my children and further complicated the situation by b) letting them know when theirs are. Their day comes and they ask me to do things and, as a married person who sleeps, completely vulnerable, every night next to a woman who knows where we keep the scissors, I must make an honest attempt to appease these children.

Legoland, though, my God... I know we're spoiled in SoCal as far as theme parks go. We have the grandaddy of them all in Disneyland, we have one of the great roller coaster parks in the world at Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott's Berry Farm, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, SexxxWorld... that last one isn't quite as well known as the other and, when pressed, I will admit it's more of a book-and-novelty-item shop in a strip-mall somewhere between here and Fontana, but "theme park" is a state of mind; you have to decide what is more exciting, a boat ride surrounded by singing animatronic pirates or a place where you can potentially rent someone who will call you "captain" and agree to be "keel-hauled"?

My main objections to Legoland are that it is, first of all, almost EXACTLY as expensive as Disneyland to get into. This is a crime. Disneyland I am willing to ridiculously overpay for because I know once I am inside, I will be force-fed carefully staged, focus-group-tested fun whether I want it or not.

Legoland is more of an unknown commodity to me, only having been there twice now in my whole life. When I go there, I go in cold, not knowing what to expect. If I were someone else, this could mean the giddy excitement of anticipation and the wonder of discovery. For me it just means I can't make a detailed list of Expected Fun on an Excel spreadsheet around which I can organize my day to the minute. Pass.

Secondly, Disneyland is American. Walt Disney, although descended from Canadians and therefore tainted and possibly a spy, is from America, made his name in America, built his multinational corporation in America. Lego, on the other hand, is a multinational corporation founded and operated from... Denmark. I know when I think of fun and excitement, the first thing I think about are the Danes.

No, wait, hold on. I'm confusing "fun" with hopeless existential angst and the smell of cod oil. That's what I think about when I think of the Danes.

But oh, you have to try Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" Tilt-A-Whirl. It isn't any fun, but at the end of it, you will have a deeper insight into the ultimate meaninglessness of existence. And you will kind of want to kill yourself. Mostly from the motion-sickness.

The main problem with Legoland is the forgettable generic-ness of the place. There's a pirate area and a castle area and a science-y kind of area, blah blah blah. One section is actually called "Fun Land". Not a single one of their rides has been crammed down my throat as a feature film or a video game or a Happy Meal or anything. It's like they never heard of corporate synergy or vertical integration. The underlying subliminal message is subtle but frighteningly clear. They might as well call it Chairman Mao's Playhouse.

Already my kids want to go back, but I am reluctant. If I'm going to be gouged, I want to know that my money is going straight into the pockets of Hollywood Jews, where the money of all good Californians eventually belongs. Legoland cannot offer me that kind of patriotic assurance.

My kids don't like roller coasters, but at least if we went to Magic Mountain, I could promise them a front row seat to a murderous fight between authentic Los Angeles gangs. No gangsters go to Carlsbad.

You offer me nothing, Legoland, except the opportunity to be separated from my money at unreasonable rates and to be heartsick disappointed at what I get in return.

If I want that, all I have to do is fill my minivan up with gas.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.45

Pops

Valerie Bertinelli In A Muumuu

2007-05-17T09:36:00.001-07:00

I don't really like to brag about stuff, mostly because I think that the gifts I have make themselves so readily apparent, just exposing them to you in any way is practically bragging in and of itself. Also, as I've said before, I'm a very humble person. Probably the humblest motherfucker you've ever met. I kick everyone else's ass when it comes to humility and self-deprecation.

I also don't really like to talk about anything that is actually true about my real life. Sure, I tell you people that I have no job and I have three kids and a wife and that I'm a hetero male, but really, are you sure any of that is true? It's easy to believe what people tell you publicly, but when the autopsy comes back and we learn that "Jerry Falwell" is and always has been a woman, well, you'll know anything is possible.

All that said, it's with some reluctance that I tell you all: I'm worth quite a bit of money.

Now, before you all head for Riverside with a car trunk full of shovels, chloroform, some sturdy rope and a bucket of lye, I would like to point out a couple of things: A) it would be stupid to kill me outright because then you'd never get at my money. Better to torture me first so you can get my ATM card PIN out of me. Whatever you do, I ask you, do NOT tie me naked, face down over a barrel and then lash me with a cat-o'-nine-tails whilst asking me where my biology homework is. I would TOTALLY hate that.

And B) All the money I'm actually worth is pretend real-estate money.

Mrs. Pops and I bought our first house back in '99, which means all this housing madness has occurred while we were part of the market, watching our equity balloon and balloon, like Kirstie Alley every year since Cheers went off the air.

Like Kirstie Alley, however, as nice as it might be to have a little extra junk in the trunk, it doesn't mean very much (for us: financially; for Kirstie: hygiene-wise) if you can't get to it. My wife and I like to discuss what we'd do with our big fat wad of equity, but we know capital gains would kill us if we tried to take it out and we'd need every single penny of it if we ever wanted to move again within SoCal. So it isn't actually any kind of money that's worth murdering me over. But don't let me discourage you from the torture thing. It's worth a try.

The problem is, that fake though or enormous wealth might be, like Kirstie Alley again, it's now on some kind of bullshit diet that we think frankly it's undertaken just for the publicity. See, it's already all over the news how for the first time in 12 years the average house price actually fell last month. If our pretend equity fortune shows up on Oprah in a bikini, we're totally fucked. And I mean I-guess-we-have-to-move-to-Texas fucked.

Believe me, nobody wants to move to Texas. George H. W. Bush took his family there from Connecticut and look how that worked out for the rest of us. Do you think anyone would have voted for his son if he'd been from Connecticut? A New England Jesus-freak Republican? I don't think it's possible on a quantum level for such a creature to even exist, let alone win an election. But this is the kind of dire consequences I face should the real-estate market continue to deteriorate. The entire geopolitical state of the world may very well depend on my kids growing up unremarkably anonymous and godless California liberals.

With an eye toward a difficult future, belts are being tightened around the Bucket household. We've already downgraded from 12 HBO channels to 10. The days of our dog's regular monthly champagne enemas? Over. Goodbye deep-fried fois gras sticks for my kid's lunch, hello chicken fingers.

We make these sacrifices, because my wife and I realize it's all up to us. There's no use sitting around waiting for our public officials to help us out. We're Americans, after all. We're all supposed to do it ourselves.

Proud as I am of our country's long history of ignoring those who need help, I will say I sometimes envy a more corporatist, collective approach to social well-being as is practiced in Europe. Public servants there expect a certain level of involvement and interference with the slow slide down the social ladder that afflicts an expected percentage of the citizenship and are quick to react. For instance in Italy, specific economic realities are prompting a certain segment of the hostess and hospitality industry to offer their services, gratis, to alleviate some of the roiling, pent-up economic pressure that afflicts a population.

Sure, I could use a free handy every now and again, but as I said, I'm an American. Not only do I have a certain amount of built-in overdeveloped individualist pride, but the hostess-and-hospitality industry over here works somewhat differently. Italy enjoys a proud tradition of sophisticated concubinage, a mantle currently taken up and probably upheld by a wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa nudged into the profession by indentured servitude or organized crime. Over here we have a bunch of skeevy, scabby meth-heads.

That said, for the sake of my family, I'd totally take a run at Kirstie Alley. I hear she's swimming in Jenny Craig money.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.9

Pops

Jeremiad

2007-05-16T10:06:00.001-07:00

I have heard it explained more than once that the definition of genius is the ability to embrace simultaneously two completely contradictory ideas. This explains Albert Einstein's shocking and still-celebrated ability to appreciate all the beneficial aspects of Lite Beer.

It is also proof-positive that America has lost one of its brightest lights when Jerry Falwell was extinguished yesterday. After all, this was a man who devoted his entire life to the works and teachings of Jesus Christ--exemplar of charity and mercy and compassion and (above all) care for the least among us--and also owned a helicopter. Talk about your contradictory ideas. I have to say, I've had the "What Would Jesus Do?" question put to me many, many times and not once have I come up with "horde enough money to buy, fuel and maintain a helicopter". The level of genius required to reconcile those two positions must have been staggering.

AND Jerry was a big giant fat guy. Again, not so Jesus-y, if we're talking about general concepts.

Look, any idiot could have been St. Francis of Assisi. Jesus says: give up everything you have, spread my message, minister to the destitute and the sick and the lame, put aside earthly rewards and you will reap untold riches in the Kingdom of Heaven. And then what does Francis of Assisi do? Just that. Walks around all poor and barefoot, begging and scraping and tending to those on the suffering margins, exactly as Jesus said. What a tool. No imagination, that guy. He's like a Jesus robot: input instructions, follow instructions, no deviation, no originality, no genius.

And what did Francis of Assisi get for his trouble? Probably really smelly, first of all. And some kind of disgusting eye disease, I heard. And then, finally, he got made a saint. But only after he was dead. But then he was a Catholic, so the spiritual joke is probably on him as he rots in hell with all the surprised suicide bombers, Jews, gays and Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Jerry Falwell took this Jesus thing and turned it into something new, something exciting, something different. Like Newton when the apple fell on his head, sparking in him the flame of revealed truth in the form of all modern physics (and the idea that one should be more careful about where you sit), Jerry Falwell sat under the Jesus tree and was struck on the head by a giant bag full of money and then probably some kind of pot pie.

Like Francis of Assisi, Jerry did give, however. He gave us the gay Teletubby and the irrefutable evidence that Bill Clinton was both a cocaine drug lord and a murderer. Big stuff. Much more socially important than aid and succor to lepers and widows, or at least it is when you factor in 24-hour cable news channels. Who wants to see pictures of lepers? Gross.

And after all this, a life of service, he is stolen from us too soon at the age of 73. This has to be someone's fault. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this happen.

So, you know, thanks for nothing, abortionists. Way to fuck up America. Again.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.1

Pops

Blame Game

2007-05-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

I get that it probably isn't the easiest thing in the world to run a war. I know a lot more goes into it than we really give our elected officials credit for.

First there's the identification of a sufficiently menacing yet eminently beatable enemy. It seems simple enough for the most powerful military nation in the history of the world, but finding the right crackpot dictator in the right part of the world (can't have too many twitchy neighbors who might not take kindly to puppet governments next door) whom we can topple fairly quickly and whom we are certain--certain--has no Weapons of Mass Destruction to employ either in their own defense against our invading troops or (worse) in any kind of long-range retaliatory strike against American civilian populations. Collateral damage is something that happens to other countries in the wars we start. Imagine the PR fallout from having to deal with actual fallout. This is why we don't invade Canada. Sure, we could beat them down, but they could conceivably reach us with... something. Well, that and the Canadian Prime Minister simply doesn't have the right kind of mustache to be a credible international villain.

After the enemy is identified, then you have to beat them. And not just regular ole our-army-totally-kicked-your-army's-ass kind of stuff, which is also necessary, don't get me wrong; the other country must be completely and totally humiliated in a series of eminently photographable engagements covered by reporters right there on the front lines whose very survival depends on the successful outcome on behalf of those with whom they travel. You see, if a reporter is "embedded" and thus relies on the military for protection, transportation, food, shelter, camaraderie, military-grade contraception for the victory after-party, they tend to build in an ever-so-slight slant in favor of their lords and masters in their coverage. Sure, they'll cover it if things go badly, but odds are they won't be covering it for long. Yes, it's possible to win a Pulitzer posthumously, but what's the point if you can't go back to DC and enjoy it over daquiries with Bob Woodward and Wonkette at the National Press Club mixer?

Thirdly, I think of the logistical and financial outlay required to coordinate the carrier-deck-landing "Mission Accomplished" phase and I'm just exhausted already. The banner printing costs alone after we've already paid for the "active phase" of the war... When you think about it, that's a $100 billion banner. AND you have to find someone willing to go way up there to hang it. Yeah, it looked cool, but how many Seaman-Third-Classes did we lose in the attempt(s) to hang it? The responsibility behind ordering such a thing is really beyond my capability to comprehend.

What we're finding out now is that the invasion phase can go just fine, with a minimal loss of life compared to other total-conquest-and-seizure-of-nations operations historically and then all the rest of it goes to shit. This is bad news if you're operating a war entirely for the benefit of 24-hour cable news. They're not embedded anymore, so you know they're going to go with the pictures of people with their faces blown off. I get that "people in Baghdad go shopping" is also a story worth telling, but what's the picture you put with it? Where's the sizzle? With the bomb pictures, you get lots of sizzle. Lots of actual sizzle after the explosion but before the burnt shrapnel cools all the way down. Good stuff TV wise.

Taking this all under consideration, I understand and I tolerate the occasional bullshit "good news" story about how we killed the al Qaeda and/or Taliban "Number Three Man" again. We do it every 3-6 months or so, depending on what the presidential approval rating is at.

I get the impulse, like I said, but I'm sorry, the suspension of disbelief is starting to wear thin. I can tell the people in the Bullshit PR Plot Development department of the Pentagon (it's in "C" Ring, right between the Satellite Lasers department and the enormous Sexual Harrassment Response arm of the Judge Advocate General's Corps) are starting to run out of ideas. Like the James Bond people when they got to that last Pierce Brosnan one where he was windsurfing on a tidal wave and Halle Berry was "dangerous". Please.

The latest thing we're supposed to celebrate is that we've apparently killed yet another Taliban "Number Three Guy". This one's name? Mullah Dadullah.

It's like they're not even trying.

Mullah Dadullah. Somebody over there really needs a vacation. That isn't a person's name, that's what Bill Murray's character said the Dalai Lama said to him in lieu of a tip in Caddyshack. It's embarrassing for me, as an American because I can totally tell that "banana-fana" goes in between "Mullah" and "Dadullah". If I can see your process of creation so easily, your writing is lazy, Department of Defense.

What's worse? Here's the picture they released of him:

We fired Rumsfeld finally and this is the effort we get in his place.

At least Rummy I was scared of. And in the final analysis, isn't that a SecDef's main job? Not this "Mullah Dadullah" bullshit. Please. Just stop.

Go out there and get us riled about imminent nuclear annihilation from Iran or North Korea. Or mix it up and convince us someone new is about to kill us all, like Poland or Swaziland. I'm sure someone in Swaziland has to have the right kind of mustache.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.5

Pops

So's Your Mother

2007-05-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

I know you're dying to know just how we celebrated this latest Mother's Day here at the Bucket household. Frankly, there's very little to tell. First we all get up and my wife is treated to not having to serve me breakfast in bed. We let her off with light kitchen duty, just some eggs and maybe some kind of pork product, no pancakes or waffles or anything like that.

Then my three boys and I will hang out, play some Nintendo Wii, maybe watch some NBA playoff basketball while my wife is allowed to not sit and watch and pretend to be interested. Usually she will go upstairs alone and weep softly into a pillow, which sounds bad, but that's only because you don't fully appreciate how much she hates NBA basketball. Trust me, she would WAY rather be doing the solitary weeping thing than Bulls-Pistons Game 4 on the Superstation.

And then, because we love her so, we will find something else she really hates to do and then the four of us--my boys and I--will go and do it together and specifically not invite her. This year it was miniature golf. Her look of abject gratitude is very similar to her look of wounded betrayal, so it's hard to say exactly how that part went over. But she hadn't moved out by the time we got back, so I assume it was OK.

Then, at the end of the night, Mrs. Pops and I uphold a longstanding family tradition on Mother's Day by engaging in spiritually dissatisfying but procreatively efficient acts of personal intimacy. I figure: what better way to celebrate Mother's Day than to expose my wife and mate once again to the possibility of fertilization? After all, it's not specifically "Mrs. Pops Day", it's Mother's Day. As in celebrating the wonders of motherhood, which is a very specific thing, biologically speaking. She cries every day afterward until she gets her visit from Aunt Flo, which is difficult emotionally, but like I said, it's family tradition. I never asked directly, but I assume that's how my mother's parents celebrated the day every year. Like good Catholics, they had 12 children. As rough as the intervening 28 (or so) days annually are, in the end we are always happy and grateful that while I was blessed with ole Grandpa's hairline, paunch and distrust for anyone with skin darker than mochaccino, I didn't quite get all of his legendary procreative potency.

And that, in the end, is for my wife, the greatest gift of all.

I am (quite literally) a motherfucker.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #45

2007-05-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

Delta Farce

starring Dan "Larry the Cable Guy" Whitney, Bill Engvall, DJ Qualls

directed by C.B. Harding (The Blue Collar Comedy Tour, other things that are stupid)

I don't have a great deal to say about this film other than the studio declined to screen it for critics before its release, which is always a sign of greatness.

I would also like to say that, just from a conceptual standpoint, I don't know that America is ready for a ~~blatant rip-off~~ modern-day update of ¡Three Amigos!, emotionally speaking, especially if you're not going to include the classic "My Little Buttercup" scene. Bring it all or don't bother, is what I say.

Lastly, I would like to point out that this movie has producers, a budget, a full crew, actors, extras, craft services, professionally trained sound designers and film editors and (this is the most disturbing part) credited writers. I mean, I've only seen the trailers, but you know the entire pitch was "Larry the Cable Guy in the Army". Ho ho ha ha ho ho! Can't miss with the extra-chromosome set! Throw some ole dialogue in there to carry the thing along to 70 minutes of running time, tack a gag-reel on the end credits to stretch it feature length and viola! Yes, that's what those people say, they say "viola". Because "voila" is French and therefore terrorist-loving and gay.

Writers got paid money to cobble this shit together. And here I am, me and a thousand other more qualified people, laboring away in blog anonymity. I'm not saying that if I were put in charge of a Larry the Cable Guy in the Army movie that I'd necessarily do a whole lot better (consider the source material!), I'm just saying I wouldn't mind the option of selling out what meager ability I might have in exchage for some good ole fashion filthy Hollywood lucre. How hard could it be? Fart joke, gay joke, Mexican joke, repeat forty times, the end. My soul is negotiable too.

I don't know what's more depressing, that people greenlit this film at all or that I was not allowed to be part of it. I guess I should just thank my lucky stars and move on.

Motivated by a heady mixture of apathy, jealousy and a base-level cognitive ability to reason, I must rate this one with the dreaded:

ANDREW SHUE!

Which everyone knows by now means ZERO.

When someone pitches "Larry the Cable Guy as a social worker" movie, I had better get a call or I'll be forced to abuse my tastemaking powers here once again. All I'm saying.

Pops

A Note From Management

2007-05-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

From the erratic posting times to the great shrinking of post-lengths to the long absences and more frequent days off, I guess it's probably clear to most of you by now: I've lost a bit of my blog mojo.

Between my extended internet woes of a couple weeks ago and then my long, stupid illness, I've been off my regular blog game for the better part of a month. And now that I'm back here, mostly healthy, all connected up and able to resume my old schedule of posting and commenting, keeping the internets lithe, massaged and well oiled with the vanilla-scented edible lubricant of which the Bucket is an overflowing font, I find that... I really don't want to.

In the time I spent away from this thing, I realized what a rich and wonderful world exists out there in the hour or so I spend (start to finish) cobbling this crap together out of bits of news and a few scraps of regular ole personal idiocy on my part. I can get errands done, maintain my house, pay bills, visit people (actual people!), take the one son I have left not yet in school to parks and plays and story time at the bookstore. Or I can spend time on myself, reading, seeing movies I've never seen, honing my burgeoning Wii skills for use one day on the pro Wii circuit, model building, celebrity wax figure sculpting... there are literally thousands of other ways I could legitimately get carpal tunnel without having to sit in front of the screen every day and do this nonsense.

And honestly, if you think about it, do you really care any more? When was the last time you read something really great here? It's not that I don't think I'm capable, it's just that when I start phoning it in, I don't really think I'm fooling anyone. I have tried to cultivate a demanding, self-aware, sophisticated readership. OK, not all of you are there really (I'll e-mail you if I think you are, so check those e-mail boxes!), but many of you are just what I was looking for when I started this thing. And for that I am truly grateful.

So what's all this leading up to? Well, it's been nearly three years here. That's a pretty good run for any blog. The ones that last past this usually end up finding advertising, bringing in a staff of co-writers, raising the content to a more professional level, buying a more serious minded and permanent-sounding domain name and selling out. I have no plans nor any desire to do that. Just like I eventually had no plans or any desire to date Jenny Carlisle back in high school right around the time we graduated and I realized she had no idea who I was.

All that considered, I think the only real option for me is to take off the training wheels and see what else I can do. This has always been halfway between a tool and a crutch for me, helping me focus my writing energies while not really being a positive outlet likely propel me to anything larger. I enjoy the feedback, but unless one of you is secretly a writer's agent or a magazine editor or a book publisher (anyone? anyone?), there's a cap on advancement, blog-wise.

So I've made a pretty important decision. I am announcing to all of you today that I have once and for all decided... to keep going. To keep blogging. Every day, like usual. No real change.

All the rest of that stuff I said is logical and valid, but you know what? It's May in Riverside. It was like 100-degrees outside yesterday. My house is air-conditioned. My leather chair at my desk is pretty comfy. And like I said, I'm going to get carpal tunnel anyway. Might as well be for something I KNOW I suck at rather than trying to suck at whole new things.

Thanks for reading.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

They Always Said Donald Was The Angry One

2007-05-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

What does it take to outrage an American? Of course I can speak only for myself when I say that despite a 7 year effort to inspire me to action, the ravages of news cycle after news cycle, frankly, haven't really done much to get me out of my La-Z-Boy.

Controversial election in 2000, no WMDs, Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News... all egregious affronts to our national psyche and still, I can't even find patriotic arousal to fire of a sternly worded letter. Sure, they're all corrosive to my sense of self and my ability to feel happiness, but half a bottle of whatever's closest and I usually can't remember my name and everything's really funny.

You know what, though? Attack America all you want, Enemies of Freedom, but now I have to put my foot down. A country is one thing. But you don't assault the intellectual property rights of giant multinational diversified media conglomerates and get away with it.

I know by now you all must feel the same way having heard about the the dastardly tale of the Hamas Mickey Mouse.

I know things are rough in the Palestinian territories, but in the civilized world, we have something called copyright law. You don't just go infringing on it, willy nilly, and not expect to get (here) served with a cease and desist order or (there) probably invaded. It's a basic human freedom we take so seriously over here that we even allow corporations to propose, write and buy votes to secure passage of legislation protecting it. And if anyone knows anything about America, it's that we're only totally arbitrary about the things we think are the most important.

"You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," Hamas Mickey tells kids. "We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers."

Ha, but nothing about the importance of eating vegetables, so the joke's on them. Let see them push out the crusaders and zionists without the cartoon-mandated nutrition we all enjoy.

As disheartening as this kind of an assault can be, this is not the first time a beloved character has been co-opted for less-than-savory ends.

We're all familiar with this bastardization, of course:

Slightly less well known is the neo-Nazi character Kermitler, the Wetlands Anti-Semite.

Or NAMBLA's insidious incarnation of Snuggles, the Narcoleptic Bottom

All of which pale in comparison to the most famous beloved children's character stolen for nefarious ends:

And to this day, memorabilia from Uncle Joe's Cartoon Collective is almost impossible to find.

Don't let them do it to Mickey, too. Rise up! Somebody, rise up! I'd volunteer, but I'm pretty sure Israel is going to get to those people first, for that reason or something else.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.5

Pops

College Girls

2007-05-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm perfectly content with my alma mater's small-time reputation. It did what it was supposed to do for me: got me out of mom's house, introduced me to the idea of crushing personal debt and provided me with all the educational and life-building tools I would need later in life to flourish in my career as a person who drives kids around in a minivan and also sometimes blogs. And the funny thing is: that wasn't even my major!

I don't really spend a lot of time bragging on my school because, really, what would I say? Unless we're talking about ethnic diversity or soil science, there really isn't a lot to point to, nationally speaking. And even if I did know what "soil science" was, I'm not 100% sure anyone would want to hear me talk about dirt in any sort of depth. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me if you feel differently than I presume.

One of the things we did have was a rare and wonderful thing: one of the nation's very few semi-hot chancellors. Supermodel? No, but this is a hotness scale comparative to other Top University Administrative Officials. If we could get her to throw a phone, she'd be Naomi Campbell.

And now? Now she's run off all the way to... Purdue.

I understand, I guess. It's a much larger undertaking in terms of the size of the institution, the national recognition, blah blah blah. But still, it's in Indiana, for Christ's sake. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't sting just a little bit. And when the UC Board of Regents finally convenes and locates the inevitable Old White Dude with all the looks and personality you'd expect from someone who has devoted his life to both academics AND bureaucracy, that will just be the last bit of salt in the wound.

I know that's how it will go, though. Decent looking chicks might sneak into positions of importance every now and again, but western civilization just isn't comfortable with it, long term. I mean, look at what they just passed up in those recent presidential elections in France. I mean, honestly. And this was France. If they can't make it happen, what hope do the rest of us have? Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton? It's like God doesn't want us male submissives to ever be happy.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.0

Pops

Everybody Else Is Overwhelmed By Indifference And The Promise Of An Early Bed

2007-05-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

As I was out last night with my family, in one of those restaurants with the mid-level music in the background (you know, not so loud you can't talk over it, but just enough to so you won't be disturbed by the guy at the next table choking to death on his ¡Ay, Caliente! Boneless Buffalo Nacho Fries), surrounded by enough TV monitors to show every single thing on DirecTV that second, I looked at my family at the table around me and I remember thinking quite clearly: laying in bed with a 101-degree temperature for four days doesn't seem too bad in retrospect.

My wife excluded from that last bit of snideness, of course. I spend a lot of time in tacky chain restaurants because they're the only places I can take my kids where if they decide they need to throw themselves on the floor and scream at the top of their lungs, the staff there is mostly OK with that. And unlike fast food places, they'll even make an effort to step over them.

It was the first time I'd been out of the house since about mid-day Wednesday and I was feeling kind of tetchy. I was the one who suggested we get out of there, if only to escape the chiggers and silverfish spontaneously generating in my bed as I wallowed in the accumulated detritus of pestilential convalescence.

Free though I was, the omens were not good. Gas prices had jumped over $3.50/gallon down the street from me. Roger Clemens signed with the Yankees. Most gruesomely and disturbingly, a calf had been born with six legs, a full complement of BOTH gender sex organs and NO RECTUM. You know God is unhappy with something somewhere when you have to surgically build your cows an ass.

The story doesn't say if Sexopus the Heifer can talk or not, but if s/he could, I'm sure the message wouldn't have been any more clear than that which is broadcast by its very existence: Science has got nothing on nature in the genetic freak department.

Also: Beware the destruction of your idols!

It was mostly the second portent I took to heart, and it all made sense when, on a commercial break on the monitor on which was showing (and this is true) a 15-year-old beach volleyball match, I saw this.

Elvis Costello, Lexus salesman.

The only thing that saved me from committing immediate seppuku with my celery garnish was that I could not hear what he was saying. From what I've read, he's not asked to get all "rich Corinthian leather" and that sort of thing, but come on. And I know we can't be Angry Young Men forever, but Lexus? If he was going to break the endorsement cherry, I would have hoped it would have been something far less staid, middle-of-the-road, yuppietastic. Like Mountain Dew. Or Skechers. Or... hey!

How about Pops' Bucket? Sure, he's been my musical hero forever and it crushes me to see him pander to a mass audience in this country that has by and large ignored everything he's done since 1989, but hey, now that I know he's for sale, I might as well put it to my benefit.

Everyone check your couch cushions for spare change and send it in. We're going to buy us a local cable spot.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.7

Pops

I Am Not Well

2007-05-04T08:59:00.001-07:00

The following is a true story:

Scene: I am laying in bed, flu-ravaged, in and out of fitful, fevered sleep. In walks my eldest boy, Jacahabraden.

BOY: Hi Dad.

ME: ...eyeeearrrg...

BOY: How are you feeling?

ME: How am I feeling? Can't you tell? This is my normal I'm-totally-well pose with the deep hacking cough, the slow writhing in undeserved fluish body wracking pain and the heat you feel on your face the emanates from my slightly swollen, feverish body as though you were standing too close to a small star. Super-duper, kiddo. I just had a ninety minute conversation with my grandmother who, by the way, has been dead for eleven years. That was very comforting. So I'm good.

BOY: I brought you this in case you got hungry.

Boy produces a Quaker Chewy Granola Bar, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip flavored.

ME to self: What the hell? Doing something nice? Either he's killed someone or... no, I get it. The little punk read yesterday's blogpost where I blamed him and his other school-age brother for getting me sick and now this is his passive-aggressive attempt to make me feel guilty by being nice and trying to take care of me. No sir. Not in my house.

ME to Boy: Wow, thanks so much son. There's nothing a person suffering under the crushing weight of gut-splitting two-day nausea needs more than a little nosh, especially one with no nutritional value whatsoever. Here, let me go ahead and eat it right now.

I cram the entire granola bar into my mouth, hold until it becomes good and pasty and then spit it violently back in his sabotaging face. He runs out crying.

ME calling after him: That's right, leave me here, all alone. If I die from this, you won't see a penny. Not one penny, you sneaky little viper! You stay out of here from now on! Stay out unless I call you, and then you had better come running! Until then, you leave me alone, all alone up here to die in peace, unloved!

And then, alone, I wept bitterly from the bounteous sorrow of my stricken heart.

Yet another victory!

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9

Pops

Late, I Know...

2007-05-03T12:23:00.001-07:00

...but I have a good reason.

I love my kids and all and I'm glad they're out there in the world being properly socialized by wet-willies and dodgeball at school, but there's a limit. Sure, I want them to eventually go to college and get good jobs so that when they refuse to support me in my old age, it's a conscious choice and not just because they can't afford it. If they're going to get their generational revenge, I want it to mean something, I do.

But this school thing where they associate with a wide range of kids from a bunch of different households, all of which apparently are rife with disease, is not working out for me.

I went for a period of about 3-4 years without getting sicker than the occasional cold or the odd run-in with the clap, as boys will. Then my kids started school and I have since unwittingly lent my sinuses and digestive tract out to be a holding-ground and dispensary for every endemic nuisance known to man.

Like today for instance...

I'm tired of being sick. The only clear alternative is to home-school my kids... in one of those plastic rooms they kept John Travolta in in that one movie. No, not Staying Alive, the other one. But then I'd have to spend even MORE time with my kids, which I don't think my insurance carrier would approve. At a certain point, there are only so many anti-depressants they'll pay for.

Until then: hack hack, cough cough, oh God please let me just die.

Pops

How Can I Provide You With Excellent Service Today?

2007-05-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

While I enjoyed the mimosas and crab-cakes-eggs-benedict mornings on the days in which my interwebs were tangled, I know in my heart of hearts that I missed out on some really great stuff being blog-incommunicado. I missed the lively, restrained, dignified debates sparked off by the Don Imus thing that finally--FINALLY!--settled for us definitively the questions of race, political correctness and free speech.

I mean, my God, Imus AND Sharpton. Two of the world's best examples of surviving mullets still alive in captivity and I missed it; the Great Hair-Off '07 and I was down with a pulled digital hammy. I don't think I will ever be able to forgive myself.

No, you know what, I should know by now that I shouldn't underestimate my capacity for self-forgiveness. I find in general that it isn't all that difficult to convince me to see my side of the story.

Really mostly it was the people at AT&T who fucked everything up for me in the short term.

OK that really wasn't fair. I would like to offer a public apology to the people at AT&T Broadband who stayed on the phone with me patiently, over a dozen times, expending many many man-hours in order to eventually not fix my problem. For that I'm sorry, AT&T. I'm very sorry you are not very good and don't really provide a lot of the services you promise. Also, a lot of your people are kind of dicks.

That said, I did get a few laughs out of talking to "Antonio" with the Peoria-by-way-of-Gujarat accent. Or "Mary" who, bless 'er, couldn't manage to not soft-trill her Rs or replicate a flattened Midwestern American-neutral nasaly O sound for the life of her.

And for those of you who would find racism in the above sentence, listen, it's not the fact that they're clearly South Asian or their accents in particular that amuse me. It's just the pretense of trying have them play at being American as if a) they could or would even desire to pull it off in the first place or b) we would be fooled into happy consumer complacency by it is the most comically wrongheaded corporate misadventure since the last time the Cuyahoga River caught on fire.

But enjoy it while you can, America, because if I know anything, it's that even if it's 50 years too late, corporations eventually see the errors of their ways and take all the fun out of their being socially and ethically retarded. What do the people in Cleveland have now? Clean river, clean lake, water that when a match is dropped into it, unremarkably extinguishes said match. And all that took was thirty years of government oversight and strict enforcement of existing environmental laws. So see, eventually companies "get it".

AT&T Broadband Tech Support will "get it" one day too and that will be a sad day. One day "Mary" will be free to go back to being Rupinder or Saraswati... and be out of work, supplanted by a new generation of Indian tech-support desk-slaves reared under a more forward-looking AT&T policy emphasizing truth-in-advertising where Indian parents sell their children's naming rights away at birth. "Mary" might still have the accent, but by Jove, she will really be a Mary. Beautiful little Mary Catherine Lo-Cost Hi-Speed DSL Service GoldenPalace.com Singh, lover of poetry and ponies and fancy dress parties and providing you with the same quality substandard service in exchange for a handful of rupees and all the ethernet cable she can eat.

Corporations today are like Columbus in 1492, except instead of Jesus and smallpox, they bring skilled-labor training and a reasonable reduction in overhead. I hope it all works out for them as well as the first thing worked out for Spain.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.6

Pops

PS- Click on link: I did not write this. The Onion's access to mind-reading technology, however, frightens me a little.

Mayday!

2007-05-01T09:53:00.001-07:00

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

Karl Marx, in an article written for the New York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857

See, the point ole Uncle Karl was trying to make is that flaws in the system can be fatal flaws, but if they are of the system, they are likely forged by the system itself; not a by-product or an accidental side-effect, but something honest and crucial, without which the system does not perpetuate--or even cannot exist. And further, the promises built into the system that are then ignored, delayed or frankly unrealistic then become the trigger for that system's ultimate destruction. In this way, for example, the modern bourgeoisie seeped in and themselves enjoying easily mouthed ideals of democracy, freedom, equality and meritocracy in practice benefit greatly from the denial of all these things in full or in part to the wide majority of workers whose labor serves to enrich the owners of the means of production (the bourgeois themselves) at the expense of those at the bottom without whom the system of capitalist expansion is impossible and to whom all roads to a well-earned improvement of their station are not only so narrow, so treacherous but also well guarded and better hid.

This is the impetus for small actions that swell into ever-increasing larger ones that will eventually result in the inevitable, calamitous reconciliation of a paradox, a contradiction, a dialect of unmatchable--in both color and type--threads woven into the fabric of our culture and our society that can only mean the certain unraveling of the whole.

Or at least that's what it meant last year when millions of people took to the streets on May 1 to cry out for the rights and the needs of the alienated, alien forgotten and then went for some barbacoa.

But this year, even goat-meat tacos, I guess, weren't enough to keep the perpetual bus of inevitable revolution running. People are still coming out--there will always be a certain percentage of America's young people who will protest anything so long as there are math tests that can be missed--but in fractional amounts compared to last year.

I despair for ole Uncle Karl and his insisted-upon can't-miss revolution. I mean, he's been dead for almost 125 years and still the only places that really tried it weren't even really capitalist bourgeois democracies in the first place. Communism is in serious danger of becoming the Tony Mandarich of political philosophy. The only reason we shouldn't feel bad for Communism is because utopian theocracy will always be it's Ryan Leaf.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.0

Pops

And For My Next Trick, I Shall Attempt To Put My Head Into The Mouth Of A Living Ant-Lion

2007-04-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well. Here we are, all Sunday-night-like, ready to go back to our regularly scheduled nonsense. Only, you know what? Even though I now possess the means by which to amuse and entertain you, I don't know that I really feel like it. Without my blog to keep up, I've had some time to think about things. Want to know what I figured out?

I'm not your tap-dancing monkey.

Oh, do your little routine, tap-dancing monkey. Confound and amaze us with your controlled and seemingly-considered actions so out of character with the bestial disorder of conduct so usually associated with your species.

And then I figured out something else: you know what would be really cool? A tap-dancing monkey.

And then I thought the tap-dancing monkey thing wasn't really fair to me because really all I have is a bunch of words in which to try and engage your mind's eye or perhaps develop ideas that are absurdly paradoxical or widely contradictory to the extreme point of comical reconciliation by sheer insistence on the consistency of the premises.

Compare that to a tap-dancing monkey. All that monkey really has to do is tap-dance and you're in, right?

Not fair to me. Not by a long shot. So then I felt a lot better because, you know what, I don't have to be as good as a tap-dancing monkey. Because nothing in the whole world could be.

It sounds like a useless academic argument, like that time I tried to prove in that one blogpost the existence of God by updating Descartes' onotlogical proof of Him with references to Henry Weinhard's Root Beer. OK, that was stretching a little bit, but this is not all theory. I base my argument here in the realm of strict reality that can only be justified by undeniable material evidence from an irreproachable source.

Of course I mean YouTube.

Happy Monday, most of you.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.999

Pops

PS- I started this uselessness with no earthly idea that I could find the video I found anywhere on the interwebs. God bless YouTube.

Not Front

2007-04-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be completely straight with you people: once my interwebs started working again, this was not the first place I went. I only have a minute or two to post, but I wanted you to know that upon the glorious news this morning that I was back up and living, I immediately went on a five-hour porn and personality-quiz binge that's been itching to happen since the world went dark on me lo this past week.

It's not that I don't love you, my incomparable, faultless, loyal Bucketeers, but sometimes the fleshly desires of man... um... hello? Anyone?

Great, you all fucked off to Fark.com or something, didn't you? A dude can't turn his back for three or four days... you interweb people are a fickle bunch. Where is the Ally McBeal dancing baby right now, I ask you? You don't even know. On to the dancing banana with the song about the peanut butter, like the dancing baby never existed.

It's a good thing I've only got 80 or 90% of my total self worth wrapped up in this thing. Otherwise I think I'd be in big big trouble.

I love you. Come back.

Pops

2007-04-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Due to unforseen motherfucking technical goddamn difficulties, the Bucket will not be cocksucking seen at its regularly horseshitting assface bunghole scheduled balls time. It has taken me 11 turdburgling attempts to felching publish this assreaming colostomy-bagging prison-shower-raping post. Please stand santorum by for more monkeyfucking dingleberry blumpkin information as events meat wallet warrant. Wank vagina gonad Nickleback prostate. Thank fucking you.

Welcome To The Working Wiik

2007-04-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

If any of you were wondering: Who do I have to fuck to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii?

The answer? Me. I got one. You all can touch it for the low, low price of my total sexual gratification. Sound too steep? I got propositioned at least three times on my way out of the Toys R Us. I don't want to ask you people to prostitute yourselves, but it's what the market is apparently demanding. Those Toys R Us employees can be really aggressive.

That's right, I am now of the member of the exclusive club of American owners of a Nintendo Wii gaming system, a cozy little group of only 2 million. I haven't run in these kinds of rarified circles since my membership in the Peter Cetera Unofficial Fan Club expired. I don't know what happened; they just stopped cashing my checks. It might have had something to do with the fact that right at the end, the only ones left in were me and Peter Cetera.

The lure of pretty electronic Wii pictures and a whole new way to get carpal tunnel isn't what put me off my regularly scheduled Sunday night post, however. While I am no longer ensconced in Internet Hell, I have only managed to work my way up to Internet Purgatory. The service is erratic and sketchy and will continue to be so until we get some things sorted out. If/When this post goes out, it will have happened in a brief but glorious window of time wherein the floodgates of basic Information Age data transmission were thrown open by the rapturous intermittent functioning of twenty-year-old technology.

Little series of blinking lights, deliver us.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

Fiber Optic Uber Alles

2007-04-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, Hitler. Why must your birthday always be such a chore?

Bastard DSL-in-the-process-of-changeover is making this the longest blogpost in the history of the Bucket, which is saying something. And magically, that is the case even though this one is merely two lines long.

I was going to punt today's post by diverting your attention to something else interesting, but it takes like half an hour for me to get any URL to fucking load up, so that's out.

Instead what you get is me bitching and then leaving you all hanging for the weekend. And "hanging" is exactly what I'm going to be doing, the silk ascot I got signed by DeForest Kelley fastened to my neck on one end and the rafters at the other, blink 182's "Adam's Song" on a continuous loop on my CD player if this shit doesn't get resolved.

It's going to be a bitch to acquire and install rafters, but you know, I'm going to need something to keep my hands busy while I have clogged up internet tubes. And don't suggest masturbation either because, I mean, come on. Masturbation without the internet? What am I, a caveman? Totally unnatural. I might as well try to do it using my feet.

Hey...

I suddenly gotta go.

Pops

Hulk Out

2007-04-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

My wife's second favorite thing about me is the fact that I rarely get angry. I mean really really angry. Mostly what happens when I get all charged up about something is that I just get kind of... dizzy. I know it sounds very Scarlett O'Hara, but there is a medical reason for it. I found out several years ago that I am allergic to my own adrenaline. It's totally true. I have a violent auto-immune reaction whenever I am stimulated to a fear, anger or any other kind of intense response. There's a great deal of falling down, some compromise of the excretory function control, maybe even the occasional seizure. I'm not sure about the last one, but I've been trying to pre-emptively swallow my tongue while awake and lucid for safety's sake. No luck yet.

Even though I am uncommonly gifted in the coordination and athletic departments, I never succeeded in high school sports. In game-time situations of any kind of pressure, the adrenaline would hit and down I'd go, all spastic and flailing, which got tricky while pitching a baseball game. I'm pretty sure my record for Batters Hospitalized will never be approached, let alone broken.

Like anyone with any kind of health-issue to navigate, I've learned to cope. I my case, I do it by being a generally serene, together, with it dude. Sometimes my laid-back attitude other people mistake for disdain or pompousness. The fact that they are right about both those things more than half the time are just handy coincidences. Other times people will mistake my Zen-like impermeability to perturb as some kind of latent post-dirty hippie-ism, which I profoundly (but calmly) protest. Love of peace does not make one a hippie. I have never and will never wear moccasins nor have I listened to a Joan Baez record. The last place you are going to find me is in some goddamn field having sex. That's just asking for Lyme disease, in my opinion. At least for me, I can claim my passivity on a medical condition.

So while I should be angry that a) Crazy McShooty made a video tape of himself and b) had time to make a video of himself, drive it to the local post office, mail it out, maybe stop at the liquor store for some smokes and lotto scratchers, get bantered at by Jay and Silent Bob after he had already killed two people and c) that NBC has released any of this shit over public airwaves, setting a really awesome precedent for the next fucking kicked-dog whose inability to get laid drives him (and it will be a "him") to bloodshed.

Ha, but the jokes on him, the dickhead. Nobody fucking watches NBC.

See? Still not angry. I can express myself colorfully with a certain level of detached bemusement other people find both inspiring and intolerable.

But now I have to go because I am having all kinds of DSL issues this morning and I'm not sure this will even go out. I'm in the process of transitioning carriers, so I don't know if that's the issue or what, but man, all I want is to get my weather report, maybe check some e-mail and download a little bit of the lesbian clown porn that I find so soothing. But for fuck's sake, it just sits there and is loading, loading, loading... You know, I paid good money for "Ringmaster"-level access to pieintheface.com and I can't even get onto it when I need--I mean NEED--to. You know, this fucking blank white screen doesn't really do for me what I need done for me and if it doesn't fucking start fucking working right fucaollllijweffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Where Is Charlie Murphy When You Need Him?

2007-04-18T08:54:00.001-07:00

We all deal with national tragedies in different ways. We have our methods of easing the burden by sharing the experience in common with our fellow mourners, but for each individual, the manner in which grief manifests itself and is coped with is as varied as a fingerprint. Which is appropriate because all fingerprints look like little frowny-faces.

After 9/11 I remember with some fondness and a little sheepish self-consciousness how I dealt with that: by wandering around, randomly attacking Sikhs. Not Arabs, not Muslims, but Sikhs specifically. I would see Arabs and they just looked too much like regular dudes for me to really get that visceral boost I needed from mindlessly assaulting someone who represented the Alien Other. Sikhs with their beardy faces and their turbans, well, they are straight out of the Conflated Racial Type handbook. Aziz who owns the car stereo store near me, he wears cowboy boots for fuck's sake. Granted, in California that's reason enough to kick someone's ass, but not when I'm looking to sate by irrational bloodlust against nameless foreigners. Plus he gave me 15% off the LED effects lights for under my hooptie. And I'm saving up for this dope-ass Kenwood amp. You do not shit where you eat.

After the Virginia Tech thing, my response has been a little different. It's more of the immolation-by-chocolate response. It's far less extreme socially speaking and the only danger it poses is to the seams of my clothes. So if my grief is a fingerprint, it would be only half-frowning and smeared with a layer of cake frosting directly from the can.

Other people cope in different ways, most private, some much more public. For instance, comedian Dave Chappelle made himself feel better by being on stage for over six hours straight at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

I don't know for certain that it had anything to do with the VATech thing or not, but I'm kind of hoping. If it's just Dave staying on stage and refusing to leave, that just means that Dave is fucking crazy and I'm not ready to accept that. My system can't take two such tragic shocks in the space of a week.

The article makes it clear that the audience was stunned by Mr. Chappelle's achievement. They said they "tried everything" from exaggerated yawning to asking each other loudly what time it was and then being mock-surprised that it was in fact "that late" to raising the house lights, cleaning up around him, casually mentioning what a "big day" they all had tomorrow and finally just wandering out, leaving Dave talking and talking and talking to one game audience member who was found out later to have been dead since Hour #2.

What I think this tells us most about humans and how we operate is clear: Dave Chappelle needs a job. Because a) he's clearly got no place else to go and b) he needs the money. He passed up $50 million from Comedy Central. That's not an easy thing to make up to your wife.

Luckily, the Laugh Factory pays its comics hourly.

Dave Chappelle would also like you to know that he's available to work for you. He will emcee your corporate event, speak at your church retreat weekend, do ten minutes of ethincally appropriate material at your family reunion/bar mitzvah/quinceañera or even--for about $80 and a half-pound bag of weed--just come over and, you know, hang out.

I read that the previous record at the Laugh Factory was set by Dane Cook at somewhere over 3 hours, a record Dave shattered with his marathon set. I think that's how I'm going to start really healing: by having people take things away from Dane Cook. If someone could just undo his millions of album sales, I think I'd be totally healed. Get on that, would you, Bucketeers?

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.9

Pops

Angry Little Man

2007-04-17T10:02:00.001-07:00

Dear Potential Campus/Workplace Rampage Shooters,

Hello!

If you're reading this, that's already a good sign. It means you're not already at the cross-eyed, teeth-clenched, no-going-back stage. Sure, you're probably loading magazines or oiling disassembled gun components as you read this, but you're here which means you're either looking for some light entertainment or were merely misdirected here by Google while looking for (judging by common results) candy in bulk (a "bucket" of "Blow Pops" for example) or perhaps Brad Pitt's dick. Or maybe both, although if you are looking for both simultaneously, maybe it's something you should have your therapist help you parse out.

Oh and also? Please get a therapist.

Before you walk out and put into motion your final plan of revenge against people you don't know but you hate anyway because they aren't a fucked-up sinkhole of shame and inadequacy like you are, consider the results of yesterday's action. What conclusions will people reach about you?

Thirty-three people dead is too many. Too many, that is, by exactly 32. The news blurbs (always charmingly rote) all contain some variation of the phrase "...murdered [x number] of people and injured [x number more] before turning the gun on himself." The conclusion inferred is obvious: all these rampage shooting types are clearly dyslexic.

They always get the order of operations backward. If you're feeling low, the proper sequence is to shoot yourself in the face first, then go out and try to shoot a bunch more people. Not only is it more socially conscientious, but think of the challenge! It's not hard to shoot randomly into a phalanx of unarmed, unsuspecting people, you pussy. Try doing that with most of the back of your own head missing! Sure, you'll get your name in the newspaper either way, but if you shoot the innocent people first, you're risking a markedly disproportionate number of Disfavorables underneath your Name Recognition poll numbers.

And yes, OK, being honest, if you still kill people after shooting yourself, you'll still be reviled. But at least there will be a sense within the news-consuming audience of "well, OK, fair play at least, he took the first bullet." Or, best case, the MSNBC people will play up the potential zombie angle with all kinds of baseless conjecture and Chyron-graphic-supported hysteria and then Robert Rodriguez will make a movie about you.

And also, just in case you were wondering, shooting up a school doesn't make you patriotic. I know al Qaeda says that Iraq is now a "university of terror", which is stupid. But the proper response is not to say "no thanks, Habib, this is how you make a University of Terror!" and then terrorize a university.

First of all, just a touch literal.

Secondly, if you want to help, join the Army. They'll let you shoot all the people you want. You might even get a medal for it if you shoot the right ones! Plus the guns are free and you get paid. If you're worried your little mental condition might disqualify you, I'd say you'd have been right to worry about four years ago, but now...

Sure, if you're a raging sociopath, it will be just as tough socially for you in the Army as whatever school it is you go to now, but at least if you get ideas about shooting at your colleagues there, they're also armed. Again, it all comes back to fair play.

Just something to think about.

Also: the medication is not optional. Take it. Or if it's really getting to you, take two dozen. More helps.

God bless.

Pops

The Ball Jar

2007-04-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry it's so small,* but it was the only digital copy of the cover I could find.

I would like to point out that I first became aware of this book in the book-section at the front of my local grocery store, where I was doing the grocery shopping today, as I do every Sunday and have done for the past decade or so. See, I do the shopping so as to obtain the food-items I will require later in the week when I start with the cooking that I do for each and every meal for the five people who live in my house.

I had more to say, but then I noticed that the $22.95 hardback was priced at around six bucks and well, it occurred to me that not a whole lot more needed to be said.

Except that the cover makes no sense. I mean come on, it's about "lazy husbands" but the guy is totally going out of his way to lift his feet so his wife can vacuum under them. That doesn't constitute "housework"? Every man reading this knows that that kind of capitulation is only one step away from being wrist-deep in a slurry of toilet-water, Comet and trace amounts of your own excrement. Like most PhDs, this Joshua Coleman clearly understands nothing about the practical, day-to-day exigencies confronting the subjects he studies. It's all "theory" and "research" mashed together into a "synthesis" and a series of "well-thought-out and rational conclusions". Fucking eggheads.

This book is clearly marketed to chicks. I hear the alternate title in the paperback version for men is called How To Be Pussy-Whipped, with a special foreward by Ashton Kutcher.

I'd read that book. Demi Moore is still hot.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.0

Pops

*= that's what she said.

GDIF

2007-04-13T09:25:00.001-07:00

I don't really understand the motivations behind suicide bombings. But then I'm an American. We believe that human life is an inalienable right, something to be respected and defended. Our core tenet about the indivisible sanctity of the individual's right to exist is what defines us in opposition to the more corporatist social structures and tendencies of what are seen as even our closest cultural neighbors in Western Europe. The idea of suicide bombing is absurd to us as it is a voluntary abnegation of the most basic building block of a human society in a democratic meritocracy: the voluntary erasure of a person and all his or her associated potential to one day develop into something socially meaningful, like a telemarketer or a night-shift assistant manager at a Del Taco.

These basic differences of self-realization come to the fore in those moments of most extreme pressure, like in whatever it is that drives a suicide bomber to suicide-bomb. That's how that society does things, I guess. It's weird to us to think of blowing yourself up in a crowd and taking random people with us when we go. When checked against our cultural mores and practices, it just seems so pointless and wasteful.

In America, we know that when we are disgruntled, the proper thing to do is to go to somewhere you know while wielding a shotgun, shoot some people you mean to shoot because they have displeased you in some way and then kill yourself after the police arrive and all hope of escape is lost.

Why would I kill some random mother or son in a marketplace when I can specifically rid the world of that douchebag Chad in Accounts Receivable? I mean, he has his teeth capped AND he gets them laser-whitened. Plus he knows I saw Mindy from Payroll first and still I heard he finger-banged her at the office St. Patrick's Day party in the TGIFriday's. Shotgun shotgun shotgun, right? All logical and meaningful.

This is why the suicide bomber phenomenon troubles me. It's just so... foreign to me, in every conceivable way.

When a high-profile suicide bombing occurs, I do try to find out what the message is behind it. I'm not going to lie to you; it's not easy. I admit that sometimes when I'm feeling kind of low or just plain lazy, I usually just fall back on the standard "Death to Israel/America" which is obvious, I know, but man, the sheer volume is enough to tax any imagination, even the one that just came up with the Mindy from Payroll thing a couple paragraphs ago.

This one that happened yesterday, though, for the first time, I was kind of excited about it. No, not the loss of life or the chaos caused or what it means for the security of the fledgling Iraqi state or whatever. That stuff is obviously a bummer.

But the other thing--the meaning--my God, it was so apparent to me what this particular suicide bomber was trying to tell us:

RUDY IN '08!

Poor, poor John McCain. What a personal slap in the face this must have been for him. 2000 seems like forever ago, doesn't it? I think the time is coming very soon when Senator StraightTalk has a very serious press conference where he announces he is dropping out to spend more time with his illegitimate black child.

Man, that's gotta still sting a little.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.4

Pops

Sky Father, Heap Big Trouble

2007-04-12T09:34:00.001-07:00

War is complicated. You have all the logistical nightmares of moving a huge amount of people with all the necessary supply and materiel, the morass of practical details involved in knowing whom to blow up and when, the mental and spiritual grind of deciphering intelligence data and then deciding which parts of that data to selectively ignore if it in any way countermands your publicly stated goals... it's a lot of work.

Taking a page from their own book, the Bush people have decided that the best way to fix an already complicated problem? Invent a whole new level of bureaucracy in the form of a new office which will need to be staffed and then shoe-horned into the chain of command.

Dear Easter Bunny,

Please send us a War Czar. And some of those marshmallow Peeps. And some of those Peanut Butter M&Ms. Those are really good. Oh, and Osama bin Laden. You know, if you see him.

The thing about war is that once you get going, it's not like playing Risk. It's not all about pushing some pieces from Kamchatka to Yakutsk and then rolling some dice until you have one piece left and your enemy has none. You've got commanders in the field who need all kinds of different things--personnel! body armor! orders!--and just won't get off your back about it. I swear, people start getting shot at and all of a sudden they get all insistent about stuff.

It makes sense that in that complicated situation, with all those commanders in two theaters clamoring for stuff like "supply" and "direction" you would need to invent a position within the government that was kind of a catch-all, someone to whom those individual commanders could turn for guidance... like if the commanders were represented by a tribe of Native Americans, they would have someone to turn to, like for instance a medicine man. Or no! A chief. Someone to be the Chief of the Commanders maybe, yeah. That would work. The last resort of decision-making responsibility. A commander, but the Chief-Commander.

Yeah, "War Czar". This is what you have to think of when modern circumstances demand it. I blame the Framers of the Constitution. If only they had thought of this originally. But I guess they were too busy being slave-owners and poncey book-readers to know that one day someone would fly planes into our buildings because they hate us for our freedom.

So not only is it their fault for giving us the freedom for which we are hated, but they didn't give us the necessary Chief-Commander either. One more reason I say take Jefferson off the nickel and replace him with Reagan. Not only is Reagan a real patriot whose contributions we can concretely measure by his total non-inclusion in any damning governing documents of note, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't fathering children with his or anyone else's slaves. He was too busy giving all the power of his lucid mind to the fight against Communism.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.2

Pops

PS- Oh, about yesterday. Yeah, kind of embarrassing... I forgot, I don't have any railing on my stairs. Or, to be more specific, any stairs. Man, was my face red when the FD got here. So no pictures.

Ulysses And The Siren (Glazed)

2007-04-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to have to be brief as I'm planning on having one of my kids (who are, I remind you again, HERE WITH ME ON VACATION FOR A WHOLE WEEK) get his head stuck in the stair railing later. It seems cruel, I know, but I can call the fire department to come save him and then I can have some adult human contact, if only for the brief amount of time it takes them to grease up his head (or however they resolve situations like that) and rescue him.

Before you go calling the cops (my God, please, maybe they'll come out and investigate!) remember that a) this is not a life-threatening condition and b) I promise to post pictures!

You can try to talk me out of it if you want to, but I've already got the donut tied to the end of a string, so there's no going back now. He's going to go wherever that pendulum of pastry goodness leads him. The Involuntary Response toothpaste is already out of the tube. I can't put it back. That's why it would be irresponsible of me NOT to use it for my own benefit. I'm thinking of him.

Just know that I am being careful. For instance, I only bought one donut.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

Cornwallis At Yorktown

2007-04-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

This blog thing is much harder to do when my kids are on vacation. The obvious reason is the distraction of having three children of various ages around me asking for/jumping off off/trying to talk each other into eating stuff all the time. Don't worry, I haven't abandoned my basic parental approach of Salutary Neglect; I still harbor the long-term goal of having them violently declare their independence from me, followed by a protracted and ruinously expensive war that will end in my total humiliation after the intervention of the French navy. Such is the cycle of the relationships between fathers and sons.

I want to ignore them--desperately, desperately--so I can knock this thing out, but it's the shrieking that makes it hard. They're boys, I know, but they're all under 10 still, so I'm dealing with a fair amount of shrieking on a regular basis. It's a hard thing to ignore. Part of it is an involuntary response to that sound. Then factor in my ultimate legal responsibility for their safety and it almost requires a response, if only for the look of it. Shrieking tends to get the neighbors' attention.

The situation presents its own set of particular problems--possibly Child Protective Services intervention not least of them--but the main problem for me as a blogger is the threat of being locked in a Bushian bubble.

I'm on total information lockdown. I get my news from having a spare minute here or there to peruse a newspaper, from the radio as I drive to and from taking my eldest two to school or from Maggie Trinh, the nice Vietnamese lady who does my cuticles for me. Not only can I not give you the latest in current events, but until my kids go back to school, the goings-on among the former Boat People in Garden Grove are off the table as well. Not like I went there particularly often, but it was nice at least to have the option.

But alas, not only am I completely out of the loop (is her son Danny still dating that awful white girl?!) but my cuticles are completely out of control. It's like my nail-beds are the borders of Germany as established by the Treaty of Versailles and my nails themselves are Poland, 1939. This aggression must not be allowed to stand.

The best I can do for you people is occasionally glance at the internet headlines before I rush this thing out between shrieks.

As I was doing that today, guess what picture got my attention?

Lawks. And it goes with this headline: Severely obese fastest-growing U.S. overweight group.

Yes yes, very serious, fat people in America. Not only is it a direct threat to their health with all kinds of spun-out ancillary impacts on health care in this country in general, but my God, the poor camera people, both still photographers and the TV ones who have to go out and film them all from the neck down. It just isn't right.

And then I read the caption from the picture itself: it's a Reuters picture of a person waiting for a flight at Heathrow, which last time I checked was in London. As in foreign.

What the fuck kind of discrimination is this? American fat people aren't even good enough to film in a totally humiliating, dehumanized manner to illustrate a point about our own culture? We're even outsourcing the pictographical representations of our own failure as a people now?

This is the slippery slope they warned us about when Dell started staffing their Tech Support from Mumbai. Americans can't even get a job as faceless lard-asses anymore. And by God, we practically invented faceless lard-assness. Or at least we perfected it on a grand scale.

We lost the steel makers, the car factories and now this.

I'm going back into the bubble. At least there I can have false hope, just like the president.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.2

Pops

You Got To Burn To Shine

2007-04-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

Lent is officially over and once again I've celebrated by eating an entire life-size solid chocolate Baby Jesus. The troubling racial ramifications of a cocoa-colored Jesus who is then consumed by a white dude (me) were (as traditionally) overwhelmed by deliciousness and sort of forgotten when I passed out from the hyperglycemia.

But I'll be damned if I celebrate with any heathen holdover rabbits.

I mean that literally. I will be damned.

This way, still, as ordered by Jesus on Easter: Gluttony? Achieved!

All in celebration of our Lord and Savior's Resurrection.

Past the license to over-indulge, where are the benefits? Sure, Gates of Heaven opened, God and sinners reconciled, but you know what, at least President's Day I can expect a significant discount when I want to buy either linens or a mattress. Is capitalism saying to me that dead Lincoln is worth more to me financially in the form of reasonably priced bedding than our Risen Lord? Where are my Easter sales? It makes no sense.

But in some ways, I guess it's smart for retailers to not even try to match the grandeur of the defeat of death and the rescue of every human's eternal soul with some kind of cheap gimmick. I think that's why they're all mostly closed on Easter. They can't help but fall short.

And they hate the Jews.

Yes, I'm talking to you, Bed Bath & Beyond.

But mostly it's the fear of falling short in the face of so much build-up. That's also the reason I am going into the last six episodes of The Sopranos with measured ambivalence. How can they possibly match episode-to-episode what they represent in the history of television? They can't.

But you know what, I'm going to watch anyway. Just so I can have the right to bitch about it later.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.8

Pops

A Hunger Artist

2007-04-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

Let's get the horrible, awful, no-good, very-bad news out of the way right up front: Sanjaya advanced on American Idol! Can you believe it?! I have no idea who this is and have still never seen the show, but apparently, this incident has National Tragedy written all over it. I haven't been this exercised about something I don't give a shit about since Twin Peaks.

The other, REAL bad news is this: no fresh Bucket tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, what we in Catholic-land call a "Holy Day of Obligation". In practice, not so much on the "holy", real heavy on the "obligation".

I bitch about it, but you know, Muslims have to fast for a whole month during Ramadan. We only have two days per year that we're asked to fast (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and even then, it's really only for half a day until dinner, which we usually eat at about 11 am on fast-days. See, because then the fast is broken and it's right back to my regular diet of jalapeño poppers and cuba libres. But on Good Friday, they're jalapeño poppers and cuba libres for Jesus. An important distinction spiritually, but one that is lost on my gastrointestinal system. Most of my innards are agnostic at best.

My kids have a half day of school today and NO school tomorrow, which is, for those of us who value the luxury of waking without the aid of an alarm clock above diamonds or reputation, the best reason I can think of in favor of allowing just a little bit of Jesus into the public school classroom. Sure, the Shinto kids won't be taking the day off for the same reason, but I bet they'd still lay around and play PSP games all day anyway.

Lay around and play PSP games all day for Jesus. Without even realizing it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and gorge myself in preparation for tomorrow's privation. I'm like a camel, except instead of a hump on my back I have a certified American Male Dicky Doo and instead of life-sustaining water in it, I carry jalapeño poppers and...

...aw, you remember.

Easter is Sunday, so I'm thinking I'll be back here Tuesday at the latest. But CHECK EVERY DAY, AT LEAST SEVEN TIMES! It might pay off. Just think what would have happened if on the third day nobody thought to check Jesus' tomb. He would have risen from the dead and nobody would have noticed at all, there would be no Christianity and my kids would have to go to school tomorrow. It's an awesome responsibility, but I know you're up to it.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5

Pops

At Delphi

2007-04-04T09:23:00.001-07:00

I am a man. I don't think there's any question about that. My potent musk of masculine virility permeates everything I do, so I think it's safe to assume that you all get a digitized textual whiff of it every time you read this blog. I also assume that for all of you lady Bucketeers and about 10% of you dudes, that's the main thing that brings you back here again and again and again. I've read most of my posts, so I'm sure it can't be the writing.

As a man, I feel the need on occasion to roast meat over a fire. I don't particularly enjoy it, but there's a primal instinct that activates deep within my brain, set off by some unknowable trigger. OK, if I had to guess, it's probably to counteract a momentary lapse of manliness, like for instance if I catch myself noticing a woman's poor fashion choice instead of the woman herself ("Oh my God, she's trying to pull off an A-line dress with shoulders like that! Look everyone, it's Wladimir Klitschko!").

Errors like that require me to act in the manner of my prehistoric, pre-metrosexual forebears, but dropping some pre-cut frozen hamburger patties on my natural gas grill. Just like the caveman.

So anyway, I'm out there last night cooking (I think I had accidentally been too excited about a preview for American Idol the night before) and my middle son was watching, standing by, passively absorbing a Man Lesson, all of which I offer for free, silently, like Gary Cooper with no poncey lecturing or gay hugging at the end. Meat goes on red, comes off brown. He either fucking gets it or he don't.

I'm seasoning up the patties as they cook--just like the Caveman!--with my special, very manly personal concoction of grill spices. Just your standard stuff like seasoned salt, cracked black pepper, a touch of garlic poweder, some ground ginger, oregano, barley, saffron, vanilla bean pods and a radish cut into a rose for garnish.

As this mixture passes through the air in a cascade of applied flavorosity, my boy hits me with another unanswerable question.

"Ooh, Dad! Dad!" He's very exercised. True to form, I ignore him completely. It sounds mean, but generally speaking the conversations I have with any of my children do not require participation on my part.

"Dad! What if meat were made of powder?!"

I love all my sons, Saladin, Tar-MacAdam and little Pfaegynn, all in their own way and for who they are. Originally, yes, I loved the middle one the least out of a combination of learned social response and--a middle child myself--as a form of sublimated self-loathing I then healthily transferred on another target.

But now that he's older, more able to express himself, to show what kind of a personality he has and will have as he grows, I can honestly say I'm past all that now and I can love him less on his own merits. And I do.

It's because of the questions. Still with the questions. They come at me in impossible "What if...?!" form now. What if our hands were pudding? What if birds ate people? What if books had mouths? What if I pointed this at you and it was loaded?

I like to think it's just the seed-root of an active imagination that can see beyond the obvious and empirical to a universe of possibility bounded only by the limitless combinations his young and supple mind can conjure.

But mostly it just pisses me off because I can't think of an answer.

As I was grilling, this time it was easy. I just told him "What if you didn't ask so many fucking questions? 'What if meat were made out of powder?' What are you, retarded? Go shit in a bag, you little freak" and then I hit him with the grill spatula.

I know it was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. What's the right answer to a question like that? In retrospect, it's obvious:

"If meat were made of powder, Keith Richards would have snorted it."

And then I should have hit him with the grill spatula.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9

Pops

It's happening. Two down, 160 to go. I've got all my personal happiness riding on the Perfect Season, but I feel OK about it. I can't see any way it goes wrong.

Cache

2007-04-03T09:55:00.001-07:00

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am relieved. Here we are in April of the year before a presidential election--a good 9 months before New Hampshire '08--and the issue of who is going to win has already been decided for us. Think of all the free time we're going to have during what would otherwise be a long, tedious, drawn-out primary season next year! All that time and energy spent concentrating on all the meaningful races that will occur in the period from the beginning of January to about the second week of February... I don't know about you, but I'm already making vacation plans. I've got two tickets on the Creme-de-Menthe train to La-Z-Boy City where I will occasionally nap when not loudly bemoaning the inferior quality of the second season of Heroes.

It is a grim, clear, triumphantly American truth that elections in this country are about money. The proponents of Campaign Finance Reform would have gotten farther with their reform movement if only they had been able to sustain a three-month-long television blitz, hire banks of hundreds of cold-calling telemarketers and maybe flown a few key Senate committee members to crucial Campaign Finance Fact-Finding Mission to places where the real economic abuses take place, like for instance Aruba.

The failure of the Campaign Finance Reform movement means we have to accept the unsavory reality of money's determining factors in elections. That in mind, it is with some great relief that I can tell you that the next president of the United States will be Willard Mitt Romney, the Man from Michigan/Massachusetts/Utah.

Also he is from three states. Another advantage.

Or if it isn't Mitt, it may be Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, the Woman from Illinois/Arkansas/New York. Another three-stater. I'll be honest with you, that didn't occur to me until I just typed it out. I hate it when I blindside myself.

Anyway, those are the two whom we know have raised the most money.

Sure, there's a little problem of Mitt Romney not actually registering above the margin of error in a lot of polls, but he is a Republican! And a conservative (now)! And deadly handsome! And he believes in Jesus...

...sort of. He's a Mormon. It's Jesus, yeah, but it's the sort of "talked to the Native Americans" flavor of Jesus who makes believers into the God of other planets if they're good. Yeah, I know. I'm a Catholic, so I know about being part of a weird-minority-but-powerfully-influential subgroup of Christianity. You might say that one thing that Mr. Romney and myself have in common is sects appeal.

Did you catch that? Sects appeal. Because it sounds like... you know what, forget it.

The Romney camp, naturally, takes his lead in fundraising as some kind of evidence of enthusiasm for his candidacy that has somehow not found its way into the polling as yet.

And yet in the details we see that most of his impressive influx has come from his contacts amongst other venture capitalists and (wait for it...) the Mormon Church. It's sort of grassroots if the grass was made of green-painted gold, hand-planted one blade at a time and then allowed to marry as many other female blades of precious-metal grass it wanted.

And we know all of Hillary's money is from China and aborted fetuses. Much sexier, but can any of those make a God of some other planet if I vote for them? China maybe, but not until they get their space program a little further along.

It's only April of '07, so I'm reserving judgment. It's the only responsible thing a voter can do. Especially since Obama hasn't disclosed his totals yet. Only when I have all the information can I know for sure who the money wants me to vote for.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.5

Pops

Opening Day was yesterday. Day One of what will be a magical, historic 162-0 undefeated 2007 season for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Seal Beach and (parts of) Fresno. You saw the streak start here. Prepare for certain bliss.

Cousin Oliver

2007-04-01T22:33:00.001-07:00

Help me out here.

When you see the headline Family Ties' Youngest Busted for Assault, what do you immediately think?

"Oh shit, Tina Yothers finally broke out and fucked someone up!"

Not just me, right?

But I click on the link and it's a picture of... some dude. I look at it and I'm all "Who the fuck is that dude? Oh shit, Tina Yothers finally broke out and underwent total gender reassignment surgery!"

So I was, like, totally sold on that story as a blog premise. This was clearly the most mind-boggling Family Ties-related news since Mallory was the headliner--the headliner--in that movie she was in that also starred Julia Roberts and Liam Neeson.

But no, it turns out that there was some goddamn kid who was added to the show right at the end of the run, the way shows will do when they're running out of steam. Same thing they did on The Cosby Show after Rudy got old and ugly and on Growing Pains when little Ben got old and ugly. Nothing ruins cherubic adorability like some puberty. It's a short step from sassy precociousness to a throbbing, angular, transluscent horror-show virtually indistinguishable from Spock when he was on the Genesis planet. You remember.

So a show either has to add a new cute kid and/or Ted McGinley. As far as I know, only Happy Days and Married... with Children ever attempted both. The resulting 1980s Ethiopian famine should be enough to dissuade others from trying.

The reality is: someone I never heard of got arrested for some sadly unremarkable act of predictable despicability. I guess I could say that I learned the lesson that dousing your significant other in alcohol while they sleep and then applying a "choke hold" to them subsequently are bad things to do, but you know what, I kind of had an inkling already.

I am surprised to find out that this kid is, in fact, NOT Marilyn Manson. There were no accusations of blood-drinking, put-on androgyny or contact-lens mishaps in this story. So Bonsall is clear. That means I'm back to square one trying to figure out if he's Paul from Wonder Years, Wesley from Mr. Belvedere or my own personal dark-horse, Soleil Moon Frye.

Tell me I'm wrong:

A skosh more lipstick, maybe a little heavier with the pancake, punch her in the eye once to get that Petey from The Little Rascals look... Yes? No? Just me?

OK, not even me. I should be more careful. This is how internet rumors get started. But only if you readers tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.7

Pops

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #44

2007-03-30T08:47:00.001-07:00

Blades of Glory

starring Will Ferrell, John Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler and Craig T. Nelson(!)

directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck (those Geico "Caveman" commercials)

I'm in my early thirties, but I've already been married a long time. It will be ten years this year, in fact. A full decade is enough for me to know: I will probably never see Blades of Glory.

Do I want to? That's a complicated question.

The premise is borderline-retarded. Male figure-skating rivals are banned from singles competition and thus skirt said ban by entering the pairs competition--together. Will Ferrell and that Napoleon Dynamite kid and whammo! Instant movie, right?

I have a master's degree. Not a lot of people can say that, so I'm proud of it. Despite the bragging rights and the opportunity to get my ass kicked in almost any bar in America should I mention it, the responsibility that goes along with an advanced degree is that I'm supposed to show some kind of intellectual sophistication that innoculates me from interest in movies that include fart jokes and a huffy skein of homophobia disguised as humor.

And yet I like Fall Out Boy songs and I am drawn to Blades of Glory.

As a further complication, the reason I mentioned my marriage earlier is that I only get to go to movies that my wife will agree to accompany me to. Yes, I could always go to a film by myself--and have done--but there's something sort of sideways about it when you have the option of companionship and you still elect to go alone. The way I figure it, if I'm going to skulk off with the shame of having my tastes de-valued, un-validated and rejected and then turn that into unsupervised Pops-alone time, the obvious place to spend that time? Titty bar. That's what a real man would do.

But then again, a "real man" would probably also buy Toby Keith records and vote for George Bush.

Man, being a dedicated Registered Contrarian is hard work.

The real prize for any Registered Contrarian is to confront someone whom you automatically and unthinkingly oppose (for the sake of the Contrarian principle, the details of which are in the Registered Contrarian oath, which we all refuse to take, naturally) and find a way to bullshit them into changing their point of view. That way you can have a whole new perspective to reflexively gainsay.

Mrs. Pops, however, is wise to this scheme. If you need any further indication as to her powers in this respect, I still have yet to see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. She is a worthy foe, which is all a Registered Contrarian can hope for.

I must rate this film:
Three (out of 3) on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

Unless any of you agree with me in the comments.

Like I said, it can get complicated.

Pops

Ad Misericordiam

2007-03-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a shorter than usual post today. I know I just got back from an extended absence and you people demand--DEMAND--that I give you your usual thousand-word pointless missive that both sums up the appeal of the Bucket and alienates you at the same time with its sheer volume. But alas some things can't be helped. I cringe when I think you might come upon some fresh Bucket and have it take less than a half hour to read.

Today is a Special Day in that Special Day way you can only get when your kid goes to Catholic school.

My son is making his first confession today. All alone behind a closed door in a little dark room with a Catholic priest, my healthy, attractive seven-year-old boy. Gosh, what dad wouldn't be super-excited about that?

I'm happy for my kid, I really am. He's going to go in there and experience the incitement to confess, to voluntarily enter himself into a power relationship (with the priest in particular and the Church overall) in which he is the subjugated and controlled member. He hasn't yet read Foucault's History of Sexuality, Part 1, so think he'll be OK with it. When he does, though, WOW, is he going to hate my ass. And Freud's.

It's part of the cycle. He got some inkling of what Catholic Guilt really entails from Sunday school, his religion classes and dabbling in some of the rites, like Lent this year where he gave up cigarettes. He doesn't actually smoke (what kind of a father do you think I am?), it's just him trying to game the system right out of the gate. When the Catholic Guilt finally fully sets in, he'll realize it only works if you give up something you REALLY LIKE so you can be a grouchy, miserable bane-of-your-family for forty days. Only by being truly unhappy can you ultimately know Jesus.

I'm also excited about this confession thing because I'm happy about any activity in which my name might come up. Just to ensure I'll be worked in there, I've been a total dick to my kid over the last week or so. That should push him over the "honor thy mother and father" commandment breach, I think. Wish me luck.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0 (I'm on a roll!)

Pops

L'Être et le néant

2007-03-28T10:04:00.001-07:00

I should have known something was up when I changed planes in Houston. If you've never been to George H. W. Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport, you don't really need to go. If you've been to any other major metroplitan connector hub, you know what it is; if you haven't, imagine your local indoor shopping mall, except about four times as sprawling and with an International Arrivals gate. It's very techno-now and window-y and shiny, outfitted with all the latest inconveniences of modern air travel.

When I left my 170-some-odd passenger 737 at the gate, I made the long trek through the moving sidewalks, past four gift shops and at least seventy book stores, two escalators and one train ride(!) away to my connecting gate. There, sitting, waiting for me was the most adorable little flying can of certain death I had ever seen.

Look, I'm sure little planes are just as safe as big planes. I don't recall hearing a whole lot of stuff in the news about the little ones falling out of the sky like Old Testament frogs or anything, but still, if you're a city guy like I am, you're used jumping from international airport to international airport, which means volume passengers, which means six people to a row, minimum. It's not that one way is better than another, it's just what I'm used to. When I fly, it doesn't feel right if I don't feel like I'm the only survivor under a four-ton pile of dead bodies. It's all very overwrought and inappropriately Middle Passage of me, but I'm an American. I tolerate what I've been conditioned to tolerate by the commercial necessities of mulitnational corporations. Any instance where I am not forced to tolerate such conditions--overcrowded planes, nutritionally bankrupt fast food, Nickelback--I can be very put-out. Testy even.

Plus the size of the plane I was about to board (after the requisite layover, naturally) also served to underline the reality of what I was doing and to where I was going. I was leaving the world of "international" and headed to a Panhandle. I was going regional.

The flight was short, but it was a white-knuckle affair the whole way. It's not that it was particularly bumpy or in any way physically harrowing, it's just that... it's hard to explain, but I was in seat 1A. There was no First Class, so on this particular plane, I was a) up front and b) IN A ROW ALL BY MYSELF. To my left was the window. To my right, the aisle. Right of that was a little cubby where the one--one--stewardess kept her little drinks trolley. All I could think of, with no one next to me, was that if we were to veer drastically off course and crash in the Andes, whom would I eat? There was no natural choice for me to make. Or alternately, who would eat me? Everyone else behind me was happily paired up with a row-mate for their emergency dining pleasure. But me, I was destined to be left, shunned, alone, frozen to death, completely untasted by an otherwise starving mob of motley cannibal survivors.

Out of desperation I asked the stewardess to lick my forearm. She would not.

I was grateful to land at the regional airport, which was, let me just say, regional. Instead of those tow-carts they use to push planes off from the gate, they were using two-by-two teams of what looked like yaks, which seemed geographically inappropriate. And the guy on the grounds crew who directed us in used glass lanterns filled with some kind of either lightnin' bug or incandescent salamander. It was hard to be sure, but all I know is electric light doesn't spook like that.

The rope-ladder down to the hardpack dirt runway was a little tricky, but when I reached the bottom, there was a welcome crew just like if I'd arrived in Hawaii, except instead of a lei, they present you with a plug of chaw and a styrofoam cup. I was just about to refuse it when the shooting started.

Some of the regional people, apparently, ain't too keen on the flyin' machines and the "outsiders" they bring with them. Luckily all the meth and moonshine makes them really shaky and not particularly good shots. In total, I'd say no more than four of us were killed.

A long walk, one pontoon skiff ride down a "crick" and one detour to get treed by a bear later and I reached my destination. It wasn't much, but they were family. If they wanted to live in corrugated iron geodesic dome using only a brood of overly friendly coonhounds for both mattresses AND the only source of warmth, well, that was OK by me.

I stayed at the Holiday Inn.

This post on the Narcisssus Scale: 10.0

Pops

PS- Solidarity, brother. There are such things as good lies.

Reinsertion

2007-03-27T09:50:00.001-07:00

Phew! I just flew in from [CENSORED] and boy, are my [CENSORED] tired!

OK, so it's clear to me already that the delicate nature of my work prohibits me from saying exactly where it was or what I was doing while I was away. All I can say is that while my mission may/may not have been to kill the president of Paraguay with a fork, it ws nearly as exciting. By that I mean that at one point, I was chased by federales. Don't worry, that's only dangerous if you're accompanied by Paul Newman.

What I can tell you is that my trip found me existing for the better part of a week in one of America's panhandles. Sorry, that's as specific as I can get, but that should at least narrow it down for you: Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Nebraska, Alaska... If you've never been to any of these places, I'm sure you can tell from the context that geographically speaking, "panhandle" is American for "shithole".

I say "panhandle" and you immediatley think of a banjo, don't you?

It's also synonymous with the act of debasing yourself by begging other human beings to sustain you with their charity. Considering the amount of federal dollars that go to support the people who live in those regions, I'd say that's not far off.

All that said, any place is Shangri-La if you get to spend five days kid-free there. I'd do the Shawshank Andy Dufresne Sewer-Pipe Shit-Crawl to Freedom for five days in a row if it meant I didn't have to visit Higglytown or get anyone any juice at any point for the duration.

No, no, I love my kids. I really do. It's just that I love them more when other people are watching them.

The good news is that you have me here, at your blog beck and call, interruption free... for the next 4 1/2 months.

See, the bad news is I've got another trip planned, this one in early August. My travel agent quoted me some prices on that Shawshank Shit-Crawl and, well, there was a minimum age (12 or older only!). How could I say no?

The ambivalent news is that while I was away, I've practically set records for readership according to my Sitemeter thingy. I have no idea how to take this. On the one hand, you want me to leave. On the other hand, you show up in droves here--at my blog--when I'm gone. I'm at my most popular when I'm not even here, but then if there were no me, there would be no "here" for you to come to and mock me with your vigorous smart-ass interest.

Maybe it's simpler than I realized: maybe you people are just addicted to existential irony. To test this theory out, the entirety of the Bucket this week will consist of block quotes from Sartre. Nothing separates the wheat from the chaff like long passages of Les jeux sont faits in the original French. It definitely weeded out the non-believers at my Mommy & Me reading-group.

Totally got them back for making me do Lipstick Jungle... again!

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.9

Pops

PS- Yes, I got out on an exclamation point. I'm clearly rusty. Forgive me.

Gone Fishin' Day 4

2007-03-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE APPROPRIATE DAY, YOU FUCKING CHEATER!

It's entirely possible that when you read this (and I know you waited until Sunday night/Monday morning) I'm already back in California. If that is the case, then you can chalk this one up to laziness and jet-lag.

Frankly I've got nothing left for you.

I did want to share with you maybe the best two-game streak of Yahtzee! in recorded Yahtzee! history.

Bottom right, last two scores.

And that's how I teach my kids that they can't win every game. By crushing them. You should see us play Ping-Pong. It's not easy to explain the welts when I take them to school the next day.

Back live on Tuesday.

Pops

Gone Fishin' Day 3

2007-03-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Friday! Another work week behind us, am I right people?

And if it's Friday, you know what time it is. It's time for Pops' Poetry Slamm. Holla.

Everyone's watching, to see what I'm goin' do
Everyone's looking, but they don't give a fuck about you
Everyone's wondering how they can get their hands in your pocket and their boot back on your neck (which they never took off in the first place, they just wrapped it in velvet and convinced you it was an accessory--an excessory--that you needed to have and they sold you for the low, low cost of three easy installments of $14.95 plus shipping and handling and your identity/dignity/soul)
Everyone's trying to get it right

Everybody's working for the weekend because nobody will pay them a living wage so they can earn enough money between Monday and Friday--40 Hours and a Mule--so they can maybe accidentally spend some time with their fatherless children, enjoy the comfort their employers take for granted, stop and look into the eyes of their spouses to find something like love or satisfaction there instead of desperation despair-ation Despair-Nation. And they wonder why we rise up.

Rise up.

RIIIIISE UUUUUP.

You want a piece of my heart?
Fuck you. Cut it out first. Nothing else is for sale.

Um... that's it. It's kind of awkward printed out. It sounds better at an open mic. It doesn't have the same impact if you can't hear the congas.

Pops

Gone Fishin' Day 2

2007-03-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Man, is it Thursday already? Time traveling is easier than they make it look on TV. If this gets out, it's going to be hell on our entire Mad Scientist-based economy.

You want to know what's not easy? Thinking of material for five blog posts in one sitting.

So here, I'm punting.

Enjoy instead the company of well-known character actor Curtis "Booger" Armstrong

Pops

Gone Fishin' Day 1

2007-03-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

I think the most appropriate topic for today's post would be to ask the question: how the fuck does Blogger not have a delayed-release time-bomb type posting option? I would love to be able to date and timestamp my posts and then have them appear at the appropriate pre-set hour to complete the illusion that I care enough to post even while I am gone, but no, apparently that kind of crazy technological functionality just isn't possible. I mean, we'd need a computer or something to figure out something like that. They can do it for anti-diarrhea pills, but not for a blogpost.

And oh man, hey, can you believe that thing that happened? You know, that one that's all over the news? Man, it totally took me by surprise. Especially if it was the crash of the plane I might currently be on. That would have surprised me greatly, possibly in the tragical past tense.

Instead, here's hoping it was just speculation about Bob Barker being the father of Anna Nicole's baby.

Pops

Heroes Returns April 23rd

2007-03-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'll be the first to admit it: yesterday's post really wasn't my best ever. It had about four or five half-baked ideas in it, any one of which might have been an OK post developed on its own, but thrown in there like that, all defenseless and unformed... it's like dropping a fetus off at kindergarten.*

It's like making gumbo, only instead of shrimp and okra, I decided I would use gravel and old pencils. You know, because I had some of those handy.

It's like Thing that is not dissimilar to Other Thing. It's all fucking metaphory. Or simile-ish. I get them confused.

You're going to have to forgive me for yesterday though because, you see, I am distracted. I don't really know how to say this in any way to make it easier, so I'll just come right out and say it:

I'm leaving you.

Not forever. Just for a few days. I get on a plane tomorrow morning at a very reasonable hour for most of you, but considering that I live on Pacific time AND I have no job, it will be for me too disagreeably early.

As for why I'm leaving and to where I am going, well let me take those questions one at a time:

1) It's not me, it's you. I'm not really sure how or why, I just think it was time it was said by someone somewhere.

2) Well, that's more complicated. Once I've got the blindfold on and I'm locked in a trunk inside a black C-130 that doesn't officially exist, I tend not to ask questions. Four year anniversary of the war. I can only assume something special is being planned.

This is not the first time I've been forced to leave you all for an extended period and I can tell you already this year that it won't be the last. Just know that every time I do leave, I think of you all often. Mostly when the giddy realization hits me about half way through the morning that I don't have to slog through another blog post that day. Then I say something to myself on the order of "Whee!" and pound another celebratory Shirley Temple Is A Whore (Sprite, grenadine, Courvoisier and rohypnol).

This time, however, things are different. I've decided that I'm going to take care of you all while I'm gone. I know you look to me with affection and good will and--most importantly--the aching, bone-marrow need, not unlike the way Rush Limbaugh looks at OxyContin. Or cake. Or the way Newt Gingrich looks at chicks who are not his wife. Or, again, cake.

I'm going to post a week's worth of stuff all in advance. But you shouldn't act exactly like Rush with a cake. Try to dole it out, day by day, to tide you over. The last thing you want is to be half way through a day's work on Thursday in the grip of a massive Pops jones.

We'll be back live Tuesday morning.

Now take my hand. Stay with me. I'll get you through this.

*=our Catholic school I have found to be deeply ambivalent about such an act.

Accomplished Mission

2007-03-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

I know the political posts bore some of you, but that's OK, I understand. I know it can get repetitive having to listen to me drone on and on about the things I decide are important, willfully ignorant and/or stubbornly dismissive of all contrary points of view. But I figure, you know, it works for Fox News.

See now, I'm ashamed of myself. That shot at Fox News was completely gratuitous and, what's worse, predictable. I'm always the least comfortable blogging when I'm writing things you can all sort of see the obvious end to. Remember, I'm the guy who brought you the Talking Celebrity Penis Advice Column. I like unorthodox; not really bothered with what you might have to sacrifice sometimes to get it. Like tact. Or class. Or decency. Or really even basic quality. Just so long as it keeps you guessing.

Political posts--once the author's leanings have been deduced--are really a no-win situation if your stock-in-trade happens to be unpredictability. I have a hard time imagining any of you wondering "Hey, I can't fathom whom Pops might have voted for in the last election."

I find it much easier to imagine you wondering that while you are naked, however. Yes, you. All of you. Not all together, but individually. You know, because I respect you as a person. A naked, naked person. While sitting on a stone bench in a public square in front of a large fountain the centerpiece of which is a peeing cherub. And eating an ice cream cone. You, not the cherub. Yes, I'm sick, but in a really very specific way that is either totally harmless or serial-killer-in-training. I guess we'll only find out for sure when after I figure out how to get your addresses from your IP number thingies. Which could be any day now.

The point is, I wanted to talk about politics for a second, but I wanted to warn you that what I was going to say might totally surprise you.

I am reconsidering my position on the George Bush presidency.

Have I gone insane? Am I just a sociopathic contrarian bastard bent on doing the opposite of whatever a majority of people are doing? I will say that that was the reason I stopped being a Justin Timberlake fan. I was fine following his career while he was toiling away as an anonymous member of a little can-do indie outfit called *NSYNC, just one of five, working their way up gigging in, I don't know, probably coffee houses and little juke joints for a decade or more before being plucked from obscurity. And then Justin goes solo and he's all #1 record in the country and that was it for me. All that *NSYNC integrity, just wasted. Bye bye bye. Gone. This I promise you. And I want it that way.

Listen, George Bush has gotten a fair amount of stick about his inability to do... well, really anything associated with the job of chief executive of the most powerful nation in the history of all mankind.

But consider: is the mere fact that he can't do what we expect with any level of basic competence any reason to dismiss him?

Yes, of course, but before we do, I would like to point out that he has done just about everything he said he would do. The record is astonishing.

"I am a uniter, not a divider" This was a deeply bifurcated, wildly distrustful nation of Blue and Red States, one Fort Sumter away Confederate General Peter Pace descending on Washington to purge it of the gays (a direct threat to Congress... talk about your Rump Parliament! Hey-o!). And then George Bush arrived to bring us together. After he tore us apart, sure, but then there was the together thing. See, nearly 70% of the nation believes he sucks at his job. When was the last time 70% of people agreed on anything? Those 4 out of 5 dentists who recommended Dentyne, that's when. George Bush has given us unity. And not just any unity; approaching cinnamon-gum unity.

"The United States should not be involved in 'nation building.'" I know, I know. Say what you want, but have you seen Iraq or Afghanistan lately? Do they seem nation-built? Promises kept, sir.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Finally, I say to you doubters: HA! Chemical weapons are being used in Iraq even as you read this. Did it take four years? Is it mostly our fault by creating the insurgency situation? Sure. But is it more or less our fault than the original chemical weapons we sold Saddam Hussein in the first place? See, not only do we win on merit, but we win in relative moral terms as well.

I don't know about you, but I am buoyed. Mostly I just can't wait to see how that Hurricane Katrina thing turns out for the best, long-term. Not for New Orleans specifically (because, I mean, holy fuck, right?) but just as a political and/or semantic abstraction. Which, as an American voter, is all I'm really interested in.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

Don't Think Of Pink Elephants

2007-03-16T10:47:00.001-07:00

I'm a little troubled. Here we are a mere 20 months away from the next presidential election and I am still not 100% sure: who's fault is everything?

You know what I mean. In 2004, everything was the fault of the gays. They wanted to get married, which meant traditional families were threatened, which in turn made gas cost more, flavor left all food and God sent a hurricane to destroy New Orleans.

But that threat has mostly been dealt with; considering the overall lack of interest as a front-burner issue, I can only assume all the gay people have left and/or are no longer interested in their own civil rights.

I did appreciate General Peter Pace's attempt to make us all feel better again by revisiting the issue, but really, when the only person who comes out in support of your position is Sam Brownback, the Ted McGinley of the Republican field of contenders, well, I think you know the shark has been well and truly jumped.

Immigrants kind of worked for a while (they're expensive! they are brown! they are politically defenseless!) but then they started putting e coli in the spinach and onions we were asking them to pick and we learned our lessons there. Nobody wants salmonella on their grapes.

Where are the commies when you need them? I'll tell you where they are: they're being adopted by Angelina Jolie. I mean, even the chances that that kid grows up to become a sleeper agent deep within the megacelebrity infrastructure at the heart of our country aren't very good anymore.

They are trying right now with the subprime lending stuff, but that really feels like a late-winter "Shark Attack!" type story to me. You can't even really put it on the cover of a magazine. Until they get some kind of spokescharacter to help brand that idea, I'm just not on board. Maybe a cool zombie rising from the grave, slowly limping toward unsuspecting victims, his arms heavy, flesh rotted away to show sinew and bone underneath, a deep, steady moan as he pounces on his victims and forces them to accept variable interest rates on long-term loans that will eventually require a significant raise in the lending APR.

See? No legs. No zazz.

I don't know what this says exactly, but I would say that as of this second, right now the only clear enemy all of America has?

Harriet Miers.

For the second time in a year she has risen to become the bête-noir of American politics, the Bush Administration in general.

See, she already established her bona fides as a worthy adversary whe she was introduced in her first appearance in the famous "Case of the Dead Chief Justice" where she turned out to be cagily and dastardly totally underqualified for the job to which she was nominated. And in public! Somebody well worth our scorn as Public Enemy #1.

And now it turns out she was the sole mastermind behind the latest episode, this "Case of the Stuff that Happened That I Really Don't Understand". US Attorneys! People getting fired! E-mails! Karl Rove!

I don't know what she made the president and the Attorney-General do against their will, but the press sure covers it a lot, so it must be so so bad.

How long before she is an affront to the traditional family and a threat to the tastiness of food?

2008 will come down to one issue: what does each candidate think of Harriet Miers? The leadership of the Free World will hang in their answers.

Unless they are Sam Brownback.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.1

Pops

Who Dis?

2007-03-15T09:28:00.001-07:00

I'm never the first person to buy the latest and greatest piece of gadgety wizardry. I like my movies well hyped, but when it comes to things I have to integrate into my daily life, all the gizmos and whatsits that promise convenience and only deliver unnecessary complication, I'm generally nonplussed. I don't have an MP3 player. I never had a PDA. Newest, smallest, fastest, sleekest? Not impressed. I don't have that kind of fetishized reaction to shiny plastic gewgaws. Not since a SaladShooter™ killed my dad.

But I am married to a woman who works in the fancy-pants tech field, which means every so often, I get some scary spousal pressure to put out... lots of unecessary money to pay for some newfangled thingamagoober. To "support the industry." She says she does it all the time and I'm not pulling my weight. I always come back with "they don't put silicon chips of any kind in a double-headed rotating vibrator. You don't even know the difference between electronics and mechanicals!" and by then she's usually on the other side of a locked door, humming the same monotone sound she always hums in there. Honestly I don't know how she has the lung capacity to keep it going as long as she does.

Anyway, long story short, she made me buy a new cell phone. It was free (as part of a contract renewal), so I relented.

Still, I don't really see what the problem was with my old phone. It made calls. It received calls. The end. I've never texted in my life. In fact, just back in that last sentence was the first time I've ever used "text" as a verb. They have yet to invent the cell phone that will play 8-tracks, so they're useless to me as music players. And as for cameras, well, we all know cell phone picture taker people are the absolute worst kind of people in the whole wide world. If you ever end up in prison, tell them you're a pedophile before you tell them you a cell phone picture snapper. Sure, they'll still rape you and kill you, but at least they won't make pruno in your hollowed-out corpse afterward. Keep some dignity.

I even liked the way my old phone looked:

That's Grandpa holding it. See, no picture-phone mode, so I had to take this one myself with a whole separate apparatus. Yes, Grandpa is trying to shave with it. It's embarrassing, but it's either that or I would find him screaming into it, pleading for an airstrike against the Krauts advancing on Bastogne. Poor crazy old fucker. He just relives it over and over and over. I never should have introduced him to Call of Duty 2.

I know, it was a little bulky, but I could use it as a blunt instrument in a pinch. Or, you know, if the mood just struck me. And you're thinking "there's no way you could fit that in your pocket" to which I say you are clearly not being creative enough in your choice of pants.

By way of contrast, here's a closeup picture of the keypad/workstation-area of my new phone:

Crazy, right? The manual is not measured in pages, it's measured in feet of thickness. I'm not allowed to use it on planes, not because of the outside chance it might interfere with the instrumentation, but because it comes with the capability to actually fly the plane. And caller ID.

Here's a picture of it from a bit further back:

I'm not going to lie to you, storage and portability are challenges. Battery life is a fucking joke. And the guy we had to hire to operate it is expensive AND a condescending prick. You know how IT guys are.

I know, it's totally counter-intuitive to go bigger, but look, that's just how I roll. I won't be dictated to by fads or trends. I'm wearing velvet pants and a cape right now. That should tell you everything you need to know about me.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9

Pops

Winky

2007-03-14T09:26:00.001-07:00

After yesterday's post and the overwhelming response to it, I think it's finally time that I acknowledged what it is you people want from this blog. It isn't often in an public space that such an obvious consensus is reached, but that time has inexorably, inevitably come at last. It's time for one of the long-suffering Featured Players on this blog to move up to Full Cast Member Status.

It can be a risky thing to do, I know. Remember how good Jay Mohr was on Saturday Night Live when they would roll him out once every month or two to do his Christopher Walken impression? And then what an insufferable, intolerable hack he turned out to be once he started getting real air-time later? Now you understand my reticence: it's solid Jay Mohr reticence.

But this is a question of fairness. Most of my blog traffic is generated by my association with this particular entity, so I think it's only fair we give it a shot in the spotlight to see how well it can perform under pressure.

Enough prologue. Ladies and gentlemen, Pops' Bucket is proud to present for you, for the first time ever, because you demanded it:

Ask Brad Pitt's Dick

See, the idea is... ah fuck, you get it. Let's go:

Letter #1

Dear Brad Pitt's Dick,

My boyfriend and I have been together for several years. He's very talented and very sweet and even though the other boys think he's a bird-chested girly-voiced wuss, I just love him to pieces. Until recently, that is. It turns out that he likes younger girls with giant boobs who are also whores. I've been patient, but finally I decided that nobody cheats on my 18 times in one year and gets away with it. I have my dignity. And new hair. And a new nose. So we broke up. But still, I'm so sad, that I haven't been able to share my scary deep horsey laugh with anyone since he left. I don't think I want him back, but I can't live without him either. Tell me, Brad Pitt's Dick, what should I do?

Cameron D.
Los Angeles, CA

Brad Pitt's Dick responds (mostly to warm hands and a firm touch):

Cameron, I thank you for your question, dude. I find it very gratifying that people feel comfortable enough with me to share their most private questions of intimacy, personal growth and/or sexual deviancy with me. My only regret is that nobody ever asks me a geography question. I'm really good at it. I mean objectively good, not just good for a penis. But I never get a chance to show that side of myself. I guess I can't blame them. Who really wants to hear a penis go on and on about alluvial fans or South Pacific island-nation capital cities? Almost no one, that's who.

To your problem with your boyfriend, let me just say to you, look: I'm a penis. From my point of view, relationships boil down to simple questions of how often and with what kind of vigor I'm going to be asked to engorge myself with blood and perform my primary function. It's crude, I know, but it's procreation. For the continuation of the species. At least I got him to do it once, but the fucker keeps adopting now, which I take as a personal insult.

And with your boyfriend, hell, I don't know. All I have to say is in the interim between male companions, DON'T BUY A VIBRATOR. We find that to be personally insulting.

Letter #2

Dear Brad Pitt's Dick,

I don't have the best skin, especially on my face. I wish it were only "combination skin." It's dry, it's oily, sometimes it oozes something that smells and tastes disturbingly like maple syrup. The real stuff too, not that imitation crap. And I'm not even going to try to explain what happens in my T-zone. Nothing I've tried works. I'm at my wit's end. Please help.

Edward James O.
Los Angeles, CA

Brad Pitt's Dick responds

Hey, Ed! Well, I'm not really sure which way to go here. Suffice it to say, me and moisturizers have a very... complicated relationship. Usually when one is being applied directly to me, the point isn't generally dermatological health, if you know what I'm saying. Plus any time I hear the word "facial", I immediately start thinking of something totally different that what you're asking for. Sorry. I'm just a penis. I have limits.

Letter #3

Dear Brad Pitt's Dick,

Please come back. Please. I miss you so much. Vince Vaughn? My God, what was I thinking?

Always, always yours,

Jennifer A.'s vagina

Brad Pitt's Dick responds

Baby, just stop. It's getting embarrassing. You know I'd hit that if I could, but I'm attached here. I do what I can, but occasionally he's successful at diverting blood upstairs to his brain, which between you and me, is clearly the lesser organ. He follows that stupid thing as much as he does me, maybe more. Just move on. The TRO is still binding.

PS- Hi to your mom.

...

The End of installment #1. Wow, three times in a row. Now if you'll all keep it down for a while, our star is completely knackered.

Any questions any of you might have for Brad Pitt's Dick can be directed to me at popsbucket@hotmail.com. He has no e-mail address of his own. Typing one letter at a time is exhausting for him. I'm happy to act as his mouthpiece in this matter.

Pops

Vietnamese Hookers

2007-03-13T09:53:00.001-07:00

First of all, I'd like to ask you all a question. If you had to guess, what would you surmise is the top search result on Dutch Google for the string puma spackle martial arts? Jean-Claude Van Damme's Drywall Repair & Big Cat Predator Boarding Co.? No, sir! It's this guy! Nearly three years in to this blog thing and I continue to achieve. Way to go, me.

As search-strings go, "puma spackle martial arts" is pretty good. But is it the best ever? Is it objectively better than Paul Begala karate? Or chloroform white slavery? Or arsenio monologue hamburger?

And hmm, I know you're dying to find out, what sort of criteria makes a search string "best"? Is it the context-free non sequitur absurdity of the above choices? Or maybe it's the robust, reliable staying power of the regular strings that find me like "Brad Pitt's dick" or "Vietnamese hookers" or (frighteningly) "reasons not to kill myself".

Which is the best search string seems like an insignificant question I guess, but remember: we are Americans. We fought and died against the likes of King George III in the War of 1812 specifically to secure for ourselves the right to wallow in pop-culture minutiae and base triviality. George III was totally against that. But he was also known to hold long conversations with oak trees, run naked through public functions and piss blue. Dude was fucking crazy.

We are not crazy. We are Americans. We are sane; sane like a fox! Every year maybe we get the "March Madness" but we get it winkingly, knowingly, much in the same way "student-athletes" get homework, with no expectation of actual commitment to the idea. We're all crazy this time of year the same way we're all Irish on St. Paddy's Day and then we're all magically Mexican six weeks later on Cinco de Mayo. Like most things, we do it for the discount alcohol.

But then there are some out there among us who take a perfectly good totally useless idea like the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and find a way to make it even less consequential.

That is how you get things like this new book The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything which purports to boil any discussion down to a branching series of single-event single-elimination competitions, steadily whittling itself down until there is but one winner.

Best Movie Death! Best Marital Argument!

Ah, useless quantification of inscrutably subjective things. It's the American genius. I guess we'd be better off if the "American genius" were something like resource consumption efficiency, but look, who do you want to be? Us or the Native Americans? They had uses for all the parts of the buffalo. Big whoop. Look where they are now: operating casinos in a legal gray-area, raking in money hand-over-fist in the billions of dollars.

OK, bad example. But we make lists! Of stuff that can't be listed! If we didn't, would Entertainment Weekly even exist? I think it would not. Every line of every issue can't be about Britney Spears. Although God knows they try.

And in case you were curious which would win in my Best Bucket Google Search String, well, I think the answer has to be "Brad Pitt's dick". You can't argue with volume. From a numbers standpoint in terms of visitors mistakenly directed here, "Brad Pitt's dick" is HUGE.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0

Pops

PS- UCR vs. Arizona State. Yeah, it's chicky-ball, but it's OUR chicky-ball. And a 14 seed! And it's just down the freeway at USC's Galen Center! I'm not going. But still!

No Future

2007-03-11T21:53:00.001-07:00

You are George W. Bush. You have been president for six full years now. You have had plenty of time to establish your work habits, your political tendencies, reveal your priorities, push whatever agenda you might have, all in an attempt to cement you post-presidential legacy as it will be written by the Ivy League ivory-tower intellectual eggheads you so rightly despise.

What do we know about George Bush? Based on his record, will we remember that he could:

Keep us safe from terrorism?

Accurately identify geopolitical danger-spots in the world so as to not waste time focusing on those that are ultimately no threat?

Judiciously execute a well thought-out and practical war plan that would give us the best shot at victory?

Manage the care for those who come home damaged/wounded from the wars we commit to?

Respond with force and speed and compassion should some kind of natural disaster befall a major American city?

Speak?

Well, that's No x6. Realistically, people stop paying attention to sitting second-term presidents completely in January of an election year, so unless he can pull victory in Iraq, re-defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, social security reform, energy independence, debt reduction and an air traveler's Bill of Rights out of his ass in the next 9 months, I'd say he's in no small amount of trouble, historically speaking.

Ah, but George Bush, you are about nothing if not sass and magic of little consequence. A little soft lead polished up to look like steel for the cameras, a startling slapped-together town of Rock Ridge for Hedley Lamarr's Fourth Estate desperadoes to safely rage at while you watch from the safety of a nearby bluff.

So what if you can't do all that fancy presidentin' like you wanted to, Mr. Bush. Can any of those other "qualified" predecessors move space and time with the stroke of a pen?

That was all you, Georgie.

"Yatta, bitches!"

Horde all those snatched-away hours and then, reapply them at the end of the term to squeeze in the signing of the executive orders to make ice-cream free and for the summary arrest of Robert Novak.

My God. Like Gary Sinise said when he was playing Truman in that HBO movie: what a paradise we could make of this world.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 1.9

Pops

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #43

2007-03-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

The Ultimate Gift

starring Some Guy, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy and James Garner

directed by Michael O. Sajbel (a bunch of stuff you never heard of)

Now, look, I was all ready not to throw one of these labored, lazy, gimmicky things at you this week. I had been prepared to tell you that I was giving it a miss because there exists this week a movie I do intend to see, the ultraviolent paean to comic book homoerotica, 300. Oiled pecs and beheadings, all in front of post-production drawn-in backgrounds. Critics have said it lacks story depth, contains a lot of empty visceral thrills with little or no redeeming content, glorifies violence, has an undercurrent of eurocentric xenophobia and say it looks "too much like a video game." It's like someone has been reading the Checklist of Awesome Movie Elements (which I know they haven't because I NEVER unlock my diary)! Everyone's clearly as excited about it as I am.

Mrs. Pops clearly won't want to go, but this isn't really the kind of movie you take a girl to anyway. This is the kind of thing you and a bunch of other dudes sit through together and afterward share silent head-nods that confirm: "Bad-ass." Sure, you have to hoot a little bit louder than you normally would when the hot chick comes on screen--you know, just so there are no awkward misunderstandings in the theater restroom afterward--but that's a small price to pay to bask in the cornucopia of geek wonder that is a film adapted from a Frank Miller graphic novel.

With all my focus thus taken, I had no idea a film such as The Ultimate Gift even existed. I found it completely by mistake on the IMDb when I was out surfing for more more more 300 pre-release hype-porn.

I read the synopsis. Apparently this old dude (James Garner) dies rich. He wins, happy ending, right? No wait, there's MORE! He has this grandson played by Some Guy who stands to inherit all this money, but HANG ON! In his will, James Garner (and I had no idea he was this much of a dick) says the grandson will only inherit the money if he completes 12 tasks in a year.

OK, I'm thinking, a modern spin on the twelve labors of Hercules, right? Ooh, get it, like he'll have to face down TSA Airport Security or something and it will be like the modern-day allegorical equivalent of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of Hell, like Hercules had to defeat. Kind of lame, but not entirely, I guess. At least SOME chance of slow-motion shots of oiled up pecs, right?

WRONG!

Apparently this guy has to do shit like "find a true friend." I'm not kidding, that's one of his actual "tasks."

Then I was like, OK, I get it. Less Labors of Hercules and more Brewster's Millions. Except I know from the jump that it can't be anywhere near as good as Brewster's Millions because John Candy is dead.

Plus at the end of Brewster's Millions, at least we had the implicit suggestion that Richard Pryor was immediately going to leave that story and bang that hot overseer lady sideways.

Any chance of that here?

Christianity Today gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, and called it "lovingly crafted."

The Chicago Sun Times called The Ultimate Gift a "winner . . . could be described as a spiritual training film."

Oh God, it's Mitch Albom's Hollywood! It's PAX-TV on the big-screen! Jesus help us, this is a movie that douchebag Michael Medved would like!

I shouldn't underestimate this film's ability to challenge us in our core spiritual beliefs. As you can see, I'm in something of a spiritual conundrum here myself: odds are very good that had I never mentioned it, none of you would have ever heard of this monstrosity. And better off for it, no doubt.

On the other hand, letting these things go uncommented-upon would be an abdication of my sworn self-appointed role as Savior of Our Democracy. We just can't have shit like this floating around, inspiring people to be nice to each other at the expense of movies like 300, to which this film is clearly the counterprogrammed antithesis.

Do you have any idea how many thousands of people it takes to animate the severing of a human head? Think of the economy, if nothing else.

That's why this film gets the dreaded:

ZERO out of 3. No Hot Babysitters for you.

Pops

PS- And yeah, OK, it didn't take me long to fashion the above severed head, but come on. Would any of you pay $10 to watch that for two hours? I feel kind of bad subjecting you to it for free.

PPS- The IMDb synopsis was written by the director personally. I guess I should expect a very angry e-mail soon. And not just from Michael Medved. Who is a douchebag.

Harrumph!

2007-03-08T10:14:00.001-08:00

You ask any kid what he or she wants to do when they grow up and you get a range of answers. Fireman. Ballerina. Fireman/Ballerina. Responses vary depending on exactly how much a kid likes to get his ass kicked.

What the answers generally show is a reflection of several factors including media lionization of certain professions (entertainment, politics, whatever it is Paris Hilton does) as metabolized by a child's intellect, socio-economic factors (poor kids want to be wealthy, middle class kids want professional lives of meaning, rich kids want a reliable coke dealer and a maid with a decent rack, etc.) and sublimated psychological desires children are not yet emotionally or intellectually equipped to express (i.e. firemen are big, strong men who answer when called and lug around giant hoses, ballerinas are the epitome of grace and fluid dignity and are always eating-disorder thin).

Mostly what the responses show is that kids are stupid.

Little Billy says "fireman" because Little Johnny next to him said "policeman" and, well, it was his turn to mix it up. The next kid will pick either one of the two and so on down the line, occasionally dropping in a professional athlete. One in about every ten wants to be an interior decorator (or some other form of deviant swatch-handler), but that's about the whole scope of it. Kids say what they are expected to say because really, what ten year old boy has really got any clue what it takes to be a fireman? Or a doctor? These are undereducated, entitlement-bloated American children who cannot fathom the possibility that they are our future Mall Security or Home Depot Parking Lot Day Laborers.

As a product of American public education, I too was undereducated and entitlement-bloated. And after the high-fat meals they served me for school lunch, I was actually on my way to be actual bloated. I never really learned how to find the circumference of a circle or what the capital of South Dakota was, but it's not like I came out of my educational experience empty-handed. I proudly finished 12th grade with a diploma and Type 2 diabetes. I'm still proud, but I miss my toes.

Unlike the other kids, though, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and it wasn't any kind of goddamn service-sector helper of people. Noble dreams, but small ones.

I only ever wanted to be a hereditary member of the British House of Lords.

God, think of it. A job you hold by the nature of the blood that is in your veins, a right of superior birth and just the right amount of strategic inbreeding. A job you don't have to apply for and can never, ever lose, right?

Sure, it's possible that my desire to wear coronets and an ermine cape had something to do with the appeal, but still... apart from the hemophilia, it sounded like a pretty sweet gig to me.

And also unlike the other kids, I knew how to get it. I knew the Born To It option was off the table as I was a filthy, unclean, common American. But all I had to do was wheedle my way into one of those families somehow, either by marrying one of them or by offering myself up for the perverse ritual sexual abuse a thousand years of privilege can think up and develop in exchange for the dim hope of ending up in the old guy's will. "Entry level" indeed. But it's that or a mail-room somewhere for $7 an hour.

But now, as of today, even that dream is dead to me. Closed off by "forward thinking" kleptocrats and jumped-up slappers in the House of (aptly named) Commons. Whether or not a 700-year-old institution is a paragon of legitimizing, self-justifying tradition or a moribund house of dusty obsolescence all comes down to whom you can either pay off or blackmail. Apparently either sheep buggery has gone totally out of fashion among the Commons backbenchers or the Lords have completely abdicated their responsibility to film said acts and then wield said film like the Mace of State that God had rightfully conferred upon them.

Probably the latter.

All I can say is that after the announced withdrawal from Iraq, yet another way the UK has shown me that they truly are the filthy foreigners I always suspected them to be. Monty Python clips and the funny way you drop your Rs will only get you so far.

A whole country, dead to me.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.975

Pops

The Pops' Bucket Digest Of Books, Volume... I Lost Count

2007-03-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

When I was in college, I took a lot of shit from my friends for dating a much older woman. After a lot of long talks, she finally convinced me that they were just jealous because she was, she told me, "experienced" and beautiful and everything they're girlfriends weren't, by which I assumed she meant stretch-mark free. Then she bought me a PlayStation and a car. It got easier eventually as soon I had no friends left. I did get a pretty bracelet to celebrate the alienation of the last one, though.

She ditched me eventually as I (ironically) got too old for her tastes. Plus I don't know if ever really recovered myself in her esteem after that time I agreed to be a bottom and I cried afterward. But I was a simple boy from humble beginnings, by which I mean we didn't have cable. There was no way I could have been prepared for that. Ask any guy and he'll tell you his first receiving-end can stir up some strong, unexpected emotional stuff. Especially if you run out of lube about half way through.

All the taunts and all the tears were worth it though. We still keep in touch, which is good. I'm here with my blog desperate for material and she went on to bigger and better things. Anytime I want it now, I've got an "in" in the publishing business. You can read that however you like.

I've used it before to get exclusive first-looks at books.

Now I am proud to present for you all, for the first time ever, a sneak-preview excerpt from the not-yet-released Jenna Bush book entitled Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope.

...

It is so hot here in Panama City. So hot. It's like a swelter.

They have air conditioning here in my hotel, but it totally doesn't barely work. Plus the rooms are so small that I had to rent three of them in a row just so I could hear myself think. And I need it because I think LOUD.

You would have thought they would have considered who I was before calling this dump a "Presidential Suite." I mean, I've been in a "Presidential Suite" and this is the kind of shit we wouldn't give to the Kenyan Undersecretary of Agriculture in Charge of Soy. Dad calls him "Short Mocha Latté" and makes sure he always gets a good room.

Anyway, I was proud of myself today. Only eleven cigarettes! But I gained four pounds since last week. God, I don't know how people do this.

Also, I actually left the room! I had planned to try to get all the way down to the lobby, but when the elevator came, there was this gross old lady in it and, well, I am sure you can see why it was out of the question. I'm typing this on my laptop under my covers.

From what my assistant Stephanie is telling me though, there is a lot of good poverty and suffering happening out there.

She told me about this girl Ana, whose story I would like to relay to you in the course of this book.

Ana is a survivor. She is everything we as Americans find disgusting: she is foreign, speaks Spanish, has colored skin, is an unwed mother and has AIDS. All that and still she survives. It's like a miracle.

The sad irony is that, the way affirmative action works in America, she could have any job there she wanted. Even Supreme Court Justice. But Stephanie tells me that here in Panama, so many people look and live like Ana that affirmative action does her almost no good.

My flight leaves the so-called "airport" in about three hours, but Stephanie assures me that she will stay and see this story through to the end. She will or she'll have her funding cut off.

...

Wow. It's John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage all over again. In twenty years when Jenna is threatening her dad's record as Worst President Ever, I'm sure we'll all look back on this as Where It All Started.

Which means we still have time to stop it.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.4

Pops

You Don't Need A Quadraphonic Blaupunkt. What You Need Is A Curveball.

2007-03-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

Ah, spring. The time of year has come when a young man's fancy turns to... well, if he uses the word "fancy" very often, probably other young men.

I know, I know, we still have two weeks to go until it is officially spring, but here in Southern California, we like to justify our ridiculously unjustifiable cost of living by reminding the rest of you pale, hairless, lamp-eyed, snow-buried gnomes why it is exactly anyone in their right mind would pay $2,500/month to rent a 600 square foot one-bedroom apartment out here.

Today in Riverside: 84 degrees, light and variable winds, zero clouds, no noticeable humidity. Ha! Eat it, Everywhere Else!

Of course by the end of the week it's supposed to be over 90 out here and will remain so until about mid-November. And there will be no rain between then and now seeing as our four-week "rainy season" is now over. So we should expect a couple of 1,000+ acre forest fires to blot out the sun a couple of times. And the occasional rolling blackout. And water rationing.

But still! No snow! Again I say: Ha!

Well, except for that one time, but that was a fluke! And it only lasted long enough to spook the homeless people. Really, they come here to live under our fancy freeway overpasses for the express reason that our ERs do not have a proper slang term for a hypothermic and/or frozen solid homeless person (see: bumsicle). If I were a homeless person living in the greater Los Angeles area that day, if I hadn't already snapped to the point that I was socially non-functioning to the point of utter helplessness, I totally would have snapped.

I know it's spring in Cali not just because of the weather (which never actually changes) but because this week we started baseball practices again for my boys.

I say "boys" because I meant to indicate the plural. Seriously, just by adding an S to the end. Language is a marvelous thing.

We have two of them in this year, one in proper pitch/hit baseball and the middle child in his first year of T-ball. Two kids in. Hooray for me. That means twice as many practices, twice as many futile sessions of catch in our pathetic backyard, twice as many ass splinters climbing the neighbor's wooden fence to fetch the ball that inevitably goes over, twice as many times I have to explain to a prepubescent boy that the hard plastic cup is there crushing his testicles in order to protect him from having a struck baseball crush his testicles.

Dad work is hard.

The good news is that since they're still young and producing their own human-growth-hormone in abundance, I don't have to spend any time or money trying to procure any on the black market, just like their professional role models might. If I were smart, I'd harvest that stuff myself and sell it. But then I can't get my son to give up where he keeps his pituitary gland. I never should have let the sneaky little ingrate know I have no medical knowledge of my own. I told his mother that Operation game would come back to bite us in the ass. Which I know is somewhere between my shoulders and my ankles.

Don't worry, I'll keep you all posted on how the seasons progress, and in true Bucket fashion. Expect lies.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.1

Pops

Euryale

2007-03-04T22:10:00.001-08:00

Far be it for me to defend Ann Coulter in any context. It seems darn near impossible that such a thing would happen. Besides, she doesn't really need my help. I think she's perfectly comfortable being perceived as a stark argument against the continuation of human beings as a species.

Sure, when she calls John Edwards a "faggot" in front of hundreds of people, your first thought is to bring up the fact that she's got hands like a dude, an Adam's apple about the size of her ball sack and is so unnaturally thin, she puts meth addicts right off their dinners of Hot Pockets and meth.

Those are obvious, hackneyed, predictable responses, shared the whole blogosphere over, time and time again, by both the left and an increasingly high percentage of the right. So I won't go there. You know, anymore.

As a die-hard left-wing terrorist-lover, I would have to say that Ann Coulter has every right under the Constitution of the United States to say whatever the fuck comes into that crusted-over syringe-tip pin she calls a head. I give her all the leeway in the world. What she said was probably a totally scripted, pre-arranged, carefully crafted totally spontaneous result of a series of screened questions that completely took her by surprise.

And now... whaaa?! People noticed?

What's the result? Now Michelle Malkin looks quaint by comparison. Shameless Harridan of the New Media Right is a coveted title with a single seat at the top. She could have taken her beating and slinked away to the cold embrace of her home coven, but no. Ann knows you got to be in it to win it. Crazy bitch is as crazy bitch does.

Just to be fair, we do have the same thing on the Left, but it generates considerably less friction and thus far fewer headlines. It's just that nobody wants to get that close to Ralph Nader.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.6

Pops

I'm Right Behind You, Charlene

2007-03-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

My kids have the day off today because, apparently, being Catholic means having a less rigorous schedule than all the heathen kids in public school. Saving our strength for the ascent into Heaven, I guess.

This means the little darlings are all up in my face, not leaving me a lot of space to use words like "f*ck" or "*ss-f*sting" because, somehow in the four hours a week they have to be in school, they've picked up on this reading business. Seriously, what am I paying those people for?

But if I can't swear in a healthy, asterisk-free way, what's the point of blogging?

Except to assign you homework. Please watch the below.

As an American, of course, I am outraged immediately and lawyers have been retained. The only thing I can't figure is what is a better pretext for emotional distress from a civil court judge's point of view:

1) Injury from an attack on the social subset of which I am a part, on behalf of all SAHD's everywhere, including the shockingly offensive exposure to a clip from the execrable Mr. Mom, the N-word of the stay-at-home-dad set or

2) My sense of entitlement questioning why, if they were going to do a piece on this subject, I was never consulted. I defy any of you to think of a better example of the species. OK, maybe they didn't want me to say "c*cksucker" on TV, but still, I would have liked to have had the opportunity to turn them down indignantly.

Please enjoy my words and the Colbert cheap video, preferably in that order.

Aloha.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.0

Pops

Are You On The List?

2007-03-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Apparently you can't take Home Ec four semesters in a row in American public high schools. I guess they figure once you've mastered apple-berry crumb cake and knit a full-body adult-size one-piece jumper, you've learned all they can teach you and it's time to move on. We didn't have a Gay Student Union to advocate for me, so out I went to be butchified. That's how I ended up in Woodshop.

Of course I would never have entered voluntarily. Ever since that one time I accidentally killed that cat with seventeen blows from a ball-peen hammer, high-pitched squealy-noises (not unlike your typical power tool) made me wet myself just a little.

Plus, the last place you want to put a cutter is in front of a table saw.

But my pleas went unhearkened and there I was, a pile of lumber at my feet, sawdusty tears on my downy, youthful cheeks, a wedgie waiting to happen.

That's when I met Mr. Stolich. He was the shop teacher. Warm, kindly, always ready with a shoulder to cry on, a comforting arm on the shoulder. We got on so well I even took to spending my lunches in the shop with him, just me and him, telling stories, practicing our back-rub techniques on each other, reporting on the 19th century erotic literature he would assign me to read. Just the kind of stuff a lonely, fatherless boy needed at the time.

For my final, he worked right alongside me, every step of the way. I was making a spice rack, which was weird, I thought. We never used spice in our house. Mom always said that fancy stuff was for "rag heads" who needed it "because camel-meat tastes like horse-shit." I never really got how or why a camel would taste like anything related to a horse, but my God, when she was drinking, the first thing to go were her metaphors.

Anyway, I worked on the spice rack and he worked on his thing, slowly, quietly, careful to keep it just out of sight.

I had to stay after class on the last day to finish it, but when I was done, I presented it proudly. A flat plank of plywood with four odd lengths of dowel-rod sticking out of it. Mr. Stolich beamed. A+.

Then he locked the classroom door and said he was going to show me what he'd been working on. Something special. Something just for me.

I was so excited, so touched, but when I saw it, I was just... confused. It was shaped kind of like a bullet, except it was about as long and as big around as his forearm.

I asked what it was for. He said he'd have to show me.

Suffice it to say that when I testified against him, I had to do it sitting on one of those little inflatable donuts. But you know, a large bowel resection (in retrospect) was a small price to pay for justice, in the end. I think he got time served, a 90 day suspension from the school (with pay) and a permanent note in his record.

The point I'm trying to make is that your heroes always let you down.

This is how I felt when I found out Dick Cheney is a total pussy.

Oh Mr. Macho, Mr. Let's Bomb Everyone, Mr. Fuck Diplomacy.

A fucking light goes out on his airplane and they immediately have to land so they can fix it.

Then somebody tries to blow his ass up, not unlike the everyday experience of the 100,000+ men and women on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and immediately it's WHOOSH! Off to the bunker and then out of the country. I heard he even shit himself.

It puts that whole 18-month period after 9/11 when he completely disappeared into his "undisclosed location" into perspective. It was probably because every time he heard a plane fly over, he swooned like poor, sickly fucking Melanie Wilkes.

147 deferments from 'Nam, but who WILL he shoot? Unsuspecting old men. Right in the face.

Being around this much of a pussy all day, I'm surprised only one of his daughters came out gay.

It's not just Dick, though.

You've also got baseball players taking steroids again/still and other ones being named in books written by whores.

Now, the Tommy Lasorda/hooker thing for me isn't so much a demerit for Tommy. I never was much of a Dodgers fan. By my opinion of whores has sure taken a knock. I mean, come on. Tommy Lasorda was 60 years old and 290 pounds the day he was born. Where are the whore standards I grew up believing in?

But then, just when you are at your lowest, a hero rises. It turns out a food-service worker at a fancy celebrity party exposed everyone there to Hepatitis A, which according to the article, is literally only transmissible if you eat an infected person's shit. Deliberate act of sabotage or overcaution in the face of what could be improper hygiene? I choose to believe the former.

I need something to hold on to.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5

Pops

I Have Met La Raza And La Raza Is Me

2007-02-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Newspapers lie. They have to. If they went around just telling people stuff that was true, we'd all be well-informed people possessed of a knowledge and perspective about the world unhindered by sensationalism or paranoia or the yellow tincture of hopelessness and fear fed to us by a cynical press. And then, if that were the case, what the hell would we need newspapers for, right? Information? Fuck that. I can get information. Between the internets and the Bible and the kid I buy weed from, there really isn't a lot about the universe that gets past me.

It is from the newspaper that I learn what I should be scared of, what parts of my everyday life are going to kill me, that it's OK to linger and linger and linger over the details of Britney Spears' vagina pictures so long as I wrap it in some bullshit argument about the effect it has on the self-esteem of young girls.

So newspapers lie. It's part of the implicit contract between service and receiver of said service. They ratchet up the melodrama of what should be rather staid reportage (multilateral negotiation sessions with North Korea! Dow Jones! Dick Cheney's plane!) and boil them all down for me into nice, easily digested headlines I can skim just enough to activate my irritable bowels.

That's why I get knocked kind of sideways when I read newspaper stories like this one.

Apparently, all of a sudden, immigrants are good for us.

Like broccoli. Anyone interested in reading about broccoli? Unless it's tainted with e coli or is the father of Anna Nicole's baby, fuck you, broccoli.

Of course any rational person already knows, deep in the heart of hearts, that immigrants are good for the overall health of our country. It sort of what we're about underneath the ridiculous facade of NASCAR and AYSO. The necessary social place of modern immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Africa and Asia is the same as the one that used to be covered by Germans or Poles or Swedes or Italians or the disgusting Irish or even freed African-Americans post-Civil War: cheap, exploitable labor.

Just as old an idea is the tacit agreement that they will do the work while we will provide the necessary function of scapegoating them as the focus of all our social ills until such a time as they (or, more likely, their grandchildren) buy houses in our neighborhoods. It's just the way it's done. The transitions are awkward and painful, I know. I've seen School Ties. But in the end, we all as a group reach an understanding. Mostly about how much we hate Matt Damon.

But now I have a newspaper telling me something that is neither sexed up nor scary. And I have to live with the idea spoken openly that immigrants actually provide a necessary complex of socio-economic benefits. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?

They cover lower-paying jobs, leaving the rest of us free to compete for higher-status ones that pay better and require at least the benefits of a US public education and a basic grasp of English. Which means I also found out: those two things are not mutually exclusive! Worst day for preconceived notions since the day that Doogie Howser guy came out as a homo.

Not only do they help fire our economy, but apparently they are by and large strongly law-abiding and make up a statistically irrelevant portion of our prison population, especially compared to American-born people of the same ethnic persuasion.

Jesus, this is depressing. I guess the only thing to be glad of is that I'm not part of that goddamn Minuteman Project. I'd have hung myself by now.

Without the Mexican immigrant bogey to blame all my troubles on, what the fuck am I, Whitey McEntitlement, supposed to irrationally villify? I mean, the article clearly shows that...

...wait... I think I... oh man, I think it's...

Oh! I got it! The problem? American-born people of Mexican descent!

Citizens? Sure. English speaking? Yes. But probably somewhat bilingual. You can never trust someone who speaks more than one language, especially if one of the other ones is some kind of gutter Not English.

Also, since they're speaking English and enjoying the benefits of our education system, they out there RIGHT NOW competing for jobs that would otherwise go to OTHER American citizens. They swell our schools and our welfare rolls and our health-care budgets all just because they were born in this country and enjoy all the freedoms and benefits all citizens should expect. Just because they're Us, they think they're Us.

And what do we get in return? The lame excuse to get shitfaced on Cinco de Mayo. Which, OK, is pretty sweet. Any excuse to show up drunk on a work day.

The same scam worked for the Irish with St. Patrick's Day. This is why Prohibition failed: too much pressure on a large immigrant population to ingratiate themselves to the country at large without the benefit of alcohol. What else were they going to charm us with? Corned beef and cabbage? My colon politely declines.

This whole episode has been pretty troubling. Some other undeserving famous person had better die within the next few days just so I can get my head right. I nominate Paris Hilton.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 1.7

Pops

Monday Nite: Funiculi, Funicula

2007-02-26T23:54:00.001-08:00

Bringing it to you live (on tape!) late late Monday for your Tuesday pleasure. If you're actually reading this on Tuesday, while you are sitting, relaxing, not-working, bathing yourselves with the rough tongue of wet Pops-y goodness, know that I'm out there in the world being slowly annoyed to death by various members of the retail and service industries. Keep one eye on fark.com. I'm pretty sure that's where you'll find the story about the guy who went fucking bat-shit in a sporting goods store with a hatchet and a Coleman stove, pushed one fucking errand too far. I'm not saying it will be me necessarily, I'm just saying there's a little space in the corner of my soul that will wish it were.

Meanwhile, back out in the real world of things that actually matter in a material way, I hear Martin Scorcese finally got himself an Oscar. Everyone's so happy and relieved and thank God it happened otherwise... I don't know. Something. I hear Jake LaMotta was threatening to kill a guy--Cathy Moriarty I think it was--if it didn't happen this time. Maybe that had something to do with it, maybe it didn't, but Marty won and we're all of us still alive, even Cathy Moriarty. So it wasn't all good news.

Not only that, but people don't realize that when something that is perceived as should happen finally does, something else invariably breaks loose. The longer the wait, the worse the potential karmic backlash. Think about it: Mean Streets came out in '73 and since then it's been one stellar achievement after... one unparalleled success followed by... uh... OK, so New York, New York kind of sucked. But that's not his fault, I mean, it had Liza Minelli in it. Not the good Liza like from Arrested Development either. This was the bad one that sings and dances and beats up gay men.

But almost everything else he's done has been brilliant. If you can stomach Leonardo DiCaprio (which I can't), his most recent work has been nearly up to the high standard he set for himself. The must happen just kept getting pulled tighter and tighter, storing more and more tension, more and more frustrated potential energy until everyone watching was less hoping and more praying it would snap just so we could get it over with and watch the destruction the delayed imperative fulfillment would wreak. If you need a visual, it's the same way we all feel about Joan Rivers' current face.

And it's not just that he wouldn't win, but Scorsese kept getting beat by all this hack actors playing at being directors. Redford in '80, Eastwood a couple years ago and... Jesus, I hate to even bring it up... Costner in '90 for that movie he made, whatever it was called. Race Traitor I think it was.

Then, last night (depending on when you're reading this... what up, Hawai'ian readers!) WHAP! Scorsese wins and we all hold our breath.

Big deal, Pops. You're being fucking lame again. You make all this shit up just to fill blogspace. Think we don't know, but we know. Also, you are probably fat.

Uncalled for, Reader. I have a metabolism problem, OK? I can't figure out how to get it to handle 22,000 calories a day.

Past that, you want to know what the Scorsese win could destroy?

How about the first viable female presidential candidate in US history?

Hmm, next day, magically, there are some serious questions raised about her ethics with regard to personal economics.

First of all, you can write off $5 million if you only give $1.25 million to charity if you just call it a "foundation"? Sweet. That's a 4x return on investment! Charity is better than heroin.

Secondly, a lot of the country was worried that Hillary was too much of a bleeding heart liberal to be elected president. And now look what the Washington Post of all things has caught her doing: giving money away. To poor people.

That's it. Campaign over. She's back in the green-room wrestling with Tom Vilsack over the last low-fat poppyseed in what was once a full muffin basket.

Equal and opposite reaction, people. I have the horrible feeling that this Oscar-launched Newtonian karma-whip of doom is nowhere near done with us. Everything from here on out for an indeterminate period is the fault of the released energy that's been building since Levinson won for Rain Man. Come on, one joke movie. Everyone knows retarded people are only funny for the first fifteen minutes.

Everything. Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, the Grammys, all of it stems from this.

And it will finally be true, what the Red Staters say: Hollywood will be responsible for the destruction of America.

What we can learn from this is that we must NEVER EVER EVER give Samuel L. Jackson the Oscar he so richly deserves. Not if you want to live.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.4

Pops

Everyone Would Be In Love With Me

2007-02-25T21:31:00.001-08:00

It's been ten years since we bought a new car. We've been enjoying the fact that not only do we not have a regular car payment, but every year our insurance goes down a little bit, registration is less costly and--because of the mutual distrust and suspicion that forms the base of my marriage--the less likely each of our respective rides is to be a dude and/or chick magnet for the other out there in the mean, nasty, adulterous world. It's all the same rationale we have for me telling Mrs. Pops she could stand to put on a few pounds and her insistence that back hair is not only sexy but should be the featured part of my anatomy. I have a fridge full of pudding and a closet full of tank tops if you doubt me.

Eventually there are practical considerations to... you know... consider. Like the typical life-span of your average modern internal combustion engine motor vehicle. Ten years is a long time. If our oldest care were a dog, we would have had to hand it over to that surly fucker Carlson a long time ago.

When we bought our last car, neither the future Mrs. Pops nor I were yet college graduates. She was interning and I was working off campus making minimum wage plus tips* at Sunshine Lucky Massage. The quality of said motor vehicle reflected that.

It has since proved to be a remarkably reliable vehicle, one I recommend to anyone buying a new car even though the company stopped making them about four years ago. Not a lot of people ask me for advice.

This time around, we were more established professional-type people, or at least one of us was and the other one was me. Practicality, sure, but we could afford to stretch ourselves a little. To get something we needed, but also with a little something extra that we maybe we just good ole fashion American wanted.

So we can't exactly fit it in the garage. Or any conventional parking space. Or under freeway overpasses and some lightpoles. But man, look at those lines!

Roomy. Comfortable. Seats eleven. We paid for the Neverending Steamer Full O' Weiners option, so there's always a handy snack at hand when you need one.

The downsides are the size and the 0.8 miles per gallon fuel efficiency rating and the constant crowd of children that materializes behind us whenever we slow down below 30 miles per hour.

If I were a pedophile, this would be the most practical vehicle in the world. But since I'm not, alas, it's mostly just a traffic hazard.

I'm not going to lie, I bought it mostly for the double-entendres.

It's a dick on a futon. With wheels.

You resist it. I earned it.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9

Pops

* = shafts were extra

No One's Heard From The Cat In Years

2007-02-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

I think Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney is largely misunderstood.

This, I think, is largely because of his odd and utterly unique speech impediment whereby he is only capable of communicating through a series of rudimentary squeaks and growls that, on his best days, can only approximate human speech. We've seen him on TV giving interviews and it sure sounds like he's making sense, but I think if you listened really close, you'd notice that the sounds he's making have the pacing and timbre of words but are really just a guttural collection of yips and snarls that less intelligent creatures--a gazelle, for example--would immediately recognize as danger and bound away from.

For us as humans, we're complicated beings; he's our Vice President, so we like to think--hope!--he can actually talk much in the same way some people insist their dog can say "I love you" when the rest of us really know it's simply a trained rhytmic yowl that in intent is probably closer to "I don't mind if the Humane Society puts me down, just get me away from the crazy-ass dog-talker."

Because he is misunderstood, people like to fill in the blanks and suggest that Dick is an ideological nutcase or an empty-suit Big Oil apparatchik or maybe a violent sociopath with a basement wallpapered in human skin.

Sure, all those are true. But that doesn't make Dick Cheney a bad guy. That thing about hating gays while having a gay daughter kind of takes care of that. The rest is just gravy.

The thing is, people take the surface evil scariness and sometimes allow themselves to focus on that when really something much more deeply sinister is going on. It's like the talking-dog-voice again, except instead of mordant canine pathos, think more military-industrial-complex undermining of basic human liberties and assumed American social and political freedoms.

Like for instance, he says "You better fucking watch yourself, China!" The responses are obvious. Those on the right go "Yeah, go get 'em, Dick! Fuck them kung-fu chopstick motherfuckers right in their dog-eatin' mouths!" And then those on the left are supposed to go "Oh Holy Jesus, he doesn't think Iran is big and scary enough! He's going to kill us all!"

Top-of-the-fold Friday end-of-the-cycle out-with-a-bang news is what happens when Cheney clicks and wheezes his way to "Maybe next week, we invade the billion-person country, maybe we don't..."

Meanwhile, amidst all the Doomsday noise, what gets pushed way, way down into the human-interest sidebar?

Residents of Weatherford, Texas get electricity bills in excess of a billion dollars.

We sort of notice, we all kind of laugh, those of us who can hear over the China feedback.

Meanwhile, the people in Weatherford get their names in the paper, everyone else gets a quick laugh at the rubes in Texas who can't use a fucking computer properly and it all goes away.

Until a few months later, when everyone's forgotten and we're paying attention to the buildup to a reinvasion of Vietnam or Britney Spears gets her labia pierced or something. And the people down in Weatherford are down at the power company laughing about how they still haven't quite gotten this billion-dollar electric bill thing quite figured out and, haha, why don't we go ahead and take care of that right now while we're down here?

And the nice lady behind the Plexiglass partition wants to know if that will be a cashier's check or if he'd like to talk to Mr. Smith (the one with the sunglasses on indoors) about financing options.

You've heard it before, but freedom isn't free. The burden of paying for its marchin' boots falls more heavily on some than others. Some pay in time or energy or blood. Others get a bill directly from their electric company. It was just Weatherford's time. Could have been any of us, really.

Before you get too relaxed, just think: they only asked them for money. What will they ask when its your turn?

Laugh it off if you want to, but remember, these are the same people who had Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman's blood drained and replaced with Quaker State 10w30. It seems like an extreme thing to do, but it makes some kind of logical sense when you consider that his blood was just not doing the lubricating job they wanted on the inline 4-cylinder 1.8 liter engine they replaced his heart and lungs with.

These are the connections that most people miss in the course of their daily work routines. Luckily for you I have time to think about these things. And there were no good movies to review this week.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.8

Pops

You Are Using Bonetti's Defense Against Me, Eh?!

2007-02-22T10:16:00.001-08:00

Lots of bad things can happen to you when you're masturbating.

Having someone walk in on you when you're trying to have a nice, discreet Party For One in your place of employment is always a threat. Then there's this old chestnut, but that's only relevant if the thought of dead kittens doesn't get you hot. The range of consequences is all over the human sociological and metaphysical map from shame, guilt, ostracization, lube shortage and the associated danger of friction burns, carpal tunnel syndrome and (for some of you males out there) penile electrocution. Always be aware of your surroundings is all I have to say about that one.

Of all the potential hazards of autoerotic massage, I have to say that "attacked by a scimitar-wielding stranger" would not have immediately leapt to mind. And again, this is only a negative if the idea of a big, strong man you don't know kicking down your front door while swinging cutlass is not on your list of things that clench the ole prostate. I read Savage Love, so I know that some of you are out there and that you probably have your own usenet group.

This is what happened to a guy in Wisconsin: sitting around in his apartment enjoying some nice healthy patriarchal misogyny in the form of some good ole fashioned American porn, pants presumably at half-mast, he is startled by one of his neighbors smashing through his locked front door, pointing an antique saber at him and demanding to know where the woman is whom he heard being raped in that apartment.

There was no woman there, clearly, but I guess we can be thankful that the guy was more of a saber guy and less of a shotgun enthusiast lest this story end with a more tragic, Cheney-esque ending.

The first lesson I think I would take from this is: know your neighbors. When you're looking to rent an apartment, take a walk around the building(s), see what you can find out. The sad thing is for this poor sap is that had he taken the time, he would have known better than to move in where he was. 999 times out of 1,000 you can spot the saber-wielders straight away. Late thirties, lives with mom, handle-bar mustache, lots of curious cuts and nicks about his person. If that weren't enough, usually the scabbard is a dead give-away.

Secondly and more prudently: keep the porn volume level DOWN. Especially if you're living in an apartment. And especially especially if your thing is rape-fantasy high drama that includes dialogue of women calling for help. Most people would piece together what it was by the combination of the wocka-wocka guitar soundtrack in the background, but you never know when you'll get the attention of your average chivalrous swordsman. Or if your tastes are even more extreme, between the burnt-leather smell and the bleating sheep, you could draw the ire of PETA and find your apartment invaded by a bunch of naked chicks behind a banner (which would be a sad, ironic, total waste of nudity on a sheep-fucker). Why take the chance? Headphones are optimal, but I know, kind of a mojo killer. Sound down, people. It's safer for everyone. Especially in the public library.

Lastly now, this guy who was nearly hacked to death can now never, ever bring anyone home to his apartment for the purposes of rape. Never. Talk about living under a microscope. Captain Swashbuckle and his Epée of Death looks like a first-rate asshat and will be just waiting for an actual damsel in distress to rescue and thus save face. It's not that I condone rape or any kind of sexual malfeasance that involves the harm or coersion of another human being but man, to not even have the option...

He lives in Wisconsin though, so I guess lawbreaking isn't really on the table anyway. Remember this is the place where police arrest themselves. Can't get away with nothin' there, I tell you.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.0

Pops

Sever And Ambulate

2007-02-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

I know my God is better than your God. I tell that to myself, yes, partly to get me through the day--Ash Wednesday today--where we Catholics deprive ourselves of food just about all day in order to fashion... something, I don't know what. But we're supposed to, so we do.

It sounds stupid and short-sighted and maybe more than a little masochistic, but that's how we roll. Have you seen our church services? They're all based around the idea of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of another human being. What's a little masochism and self-denial in the face of so much cannibalism? Hell, it almost seems quaint.

Not only that, but we get to do the fasting thing again six weeks from now on the ironically named "Good Friday", one of the holiest days of the Catholic liturgical year where we celebrate--celebrate--the violent torturing-to-death of our primary associative theological-foundational avatar. We are not a people to be trifled with. We do that in the name of our Lord, just think of what we'd do to our enemies. Or, well, I guess, have done, past and present. Yes, I mean the Jews.

As tough as self-deprivation makes us, I know my God is better than yours because even though he likes us to suffer a little bit, the Muslim God makes His people fast for a whole month during Ramadan. At rates like that, you have to start wondering if their God wants them to sharpen their awareness of faith and His divine presence in all things with a little delayed gratification or if He's just got some kind of anorexia voyeur fetish. You know, kind of in the same way the Greek gods were into bestiality.

Sure, my God likes a good snuff film narrative, but He knows those people are going to die anyway. It's not like HE kills them.

In addition to the two days of voluntary fasting, we now enter the long period of Lent, where we are also asked to give up something meaningful so that we may demonstrate our fidelity, breaking our routines in order to allow a bit more room for the love of Christ in our lives. For six weeks. Then it's back to the boozin' and the whorin' and we just hope God remembers that we gave it all up for Him way back in the early springtime. Or at least gave the ole college try. I tend to think it's OK as long as you set a personal record. I once gave up whorin' for a whole 11 hours! Man, I thought that vasectomy would never heal.

Some people give up alcohol or caffeine or red meat or whatever. The quality of the sacrifice depends entirely on the subjective context. I could "give up" cigarettes every year, but since I don't smoke, it wouldn't mean much. Which is why this year, I'm giving up cigarettes. Again! You are welcome, Jesus.

The gestures don't have to be entirely personal. Any collective--family, community, even a whole nation--can decide it wants to give up something as a whole, to show both their faith and their unity.

For instance, this year, apparently, the government of the United Kingdom has decided to give up freedom. And manliness. And reliability. And the trust of its partners. Basically they've decided to become French, as far as I can tell.

Look, this Lent is a personal thing and you're not supposed to judge others for what they choose to give up, but come on. One story about sending one of your horsey-faced royals to Iraq and you're suddenly out? Don't you remember that Falklands thing when you sent Prince Andrew in on a helicopter and he killed all them awful Argies all by himself? To this day all those Malvinas sheep still bleat in English. Remember how it made you all seem so butch?

I'm not going to pretend I didn't see this coming though. This is what happens to a national character when you make the collective decision to allow yourself to be ruled by chicks. It's a mistake we've yet to make. And I think the results are clear.

We Americans are a paragon of rugged individualism. What kind of a pussy knows his neighbors' names? So we don't make any collective decisions on anything, let alone delayed gratification like your typical British person might for Lent. But if we were going to give something up as a whole, I like to think it would be something kind of gay like American Idol or fondue.

But not ass sex. No. That's not actually gay. Highway rest-stops are dark at night. For all you know, it could be a chick.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.1

Pops

Fighters Gotta Fight!

2007-02-20T09:14:00.001-08:00

Please, for the love of all that is holy, brace yourselves:

AAAGH!

I apologize. It's probably even early in the morning for some of you, but the subject has to be broached and I couldn't do it without the proper context.

See, I am faced with a puzzle. A riddle. A conundrum. An unfathomable question, posed by a sphinx and spun by a publicist.

There are actually two, one direct and one implied.

The implied one is obvious: holy fuck, what happened to Sylvester Stallone?

That's not hard if we look at the picture. This is what I was talking about in terms of context: just looking at the picture, the answer to that one is clearly that he died in 1978. Since then his public appearances have been strictly a Weekend at Bernie's type of a situation. Which goes a long way toward explaining Judge Dredd. Or Avenging Angelo. Or Assassins. Or fuck, everything he's ever done really except the first Rocky and maybe Tango and Cash and that one only because it's so awful that it had to be some kind of intentional parody. A parody of what, I don't know yet. Kurt Russell movies maybe.

No, the real question to me stems from this:

Stallone's hotel, plane searched in Sydney

Now, the problem isn't that the Australian authorities detained him as soon as his plane touched down. I mean, a living corpse reanimated by the eldritch ass-magic of Jackie Stallone shows up at your doorstep, you want to know about it. Basic self-defense reflex. Like kicking hobos as you walk by them. Natural as breathing, assuming you breathe with steel-toe boots.

The problem is that the Aussie cops (I'm picturing khaki shorts, no shirts, pooka-shell necklaces, flip-flops, can of Foster's) were intrigued enough during the initial inquiries to launch a further investigation into Mr. Stallone and the shit he was into. They searched him, his luggage, his plane, his hotel room and yet nobody will say what they were looking for. Keep in mind this was something obscene and transgressive enough to trouble the Australian police. I can't even imagine what it is you have to do to distract them from their regular schedule of surfing, Aussie-rules football on the telly, kangaroo wrestling and Aborigine-oppressing. The place Dutch people look at as frivolous and licentious was troubled enough by whatever Sly was carrying to finally stop and say "Whoa, that's a step too far, mate."

Or more accurately "Whoa, thit's eh stip tayoo faaah, mite." And then probably whacked him over the head with a boomerang or a didgeridoo or possibly a wombat.

Now it's keeping me up at nights. I mean, what the fuck did Sylvester Stallone have in his luggage?

I try to let it go, but then he says shit like "To (customs) it's major, but it's really minor stuff. I just made a mistake."

Holy fuck, right? Something really bad happened.

What was in his bag? Was it...

non-Australia-certified drugs?

child porn and/or a Dakota Fanning movie?

peanut butter (very protective of their Vegemite monopoly down there)?

a new kidney for Osama bin Laden?

a lagomorph?

rushes for the new Rambo movie?

Burgess Meredith?

The world may never know... but this is/are the internet(s). We are, all of us, ruled by what has become known as "Noonan's Law" which says Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The only logical answer is that the Australian police, upon cursory inspection, found in Sylvester Stallone's luggage a whole pile of perspective and a sense of age-appropriate good taste. The only assumption they could have made in that instance, judging by his body of work, is that he must have killed someone and stolen it.

The good news is that they can be reasonably sure that they can return it to the family of the deceased completely unusued.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.2

Pops

Sugar, We're Going Down Swingin'

2007-02-18T19:12:00.001-08:00

It's been a trying couple of weeks and it's all YouTube's fault. First of all, we've had all kinds of unprecedented violence against civilians in Iraq, coupled with a brash new emboldened-enemy push against American troops, shooting down helicopters, swarming American positions and then bragging about it all on viral video.

And why are these terrorists so emboldened? Because we have Democrats. And for at least two years, they're going to be passing terrorist-emboldening legislation willy-nilly with no one except the entire executive and judicial branches standing between them and their pro-terror agenda.

So that nightmare has no end in sight.

Plus figure in the very public downfall of one of America's last real heroes and my God, there's almost nothing clearly to keep living for.

We need something to hold on to, a rallying cry around which we can... you know... rally. Strong though the American spirit is when focused on a task, when left in the doldrums of a Carterian malaise, we can get a bit wayward, a bit lost, a bit choking to death on our own vomit at the tail end of a 20 year drug bender.

What's a people to do?

The question before us as a people is clear: How do we avoid going out like that Anna Nicole Smith?

This is a rhetorical question for us to answer collectively, using the pathetic demise of a quasi-starlet awarded more attention than any human--even a worthy one--could have legitimately earned to spur a self-examination, hopefully allowing us to break--or at least interrupt--the cycle of celebrity worship that occasionally grips the United States. These intense periods are part of who we are as a nation, always ending with the death of a fake blonde with giant tits: Jayne Mansfield gets decapitated in a car crash, Marilyn Monroe strangled in her sleep by Robert Kennedy and today Anna Nicole finds out for us what can really happen if you live for four years on a diet of Worcestershire sauce and Costco-brand methadone.

Unfortunately, some of us take these calls to self-examination a little bit literally.

Look at Britney Spears. I think the Anna Nicole thing has pushed her to try and find out what it is exactly that will keep her specifically from ending up like Anna Nicole Smith.

Try #1: Rehab. Detox in the hope that there is still time for your poor, poor liver. But man, they make you clean toilets in rehab. Fuck that. She was married to K-Fed and she'll be goddamned if she's going to wallow in someone else's shit. Plus, you know what they give you in rehab? Fucking methadone, man.

Total duration: One day.

Try #2: You know what Anna Nicole Smith totally had? Hair. A full head of it. Sure, it was as fake as her ta-tas, but it was all totally there. See, if you shave your head, the logic goes, you can't BE Anna Nicole Smith because she, like, had all this hair when her body finally threw up its hands and then asphyxiated on them.

I don't know what Try #3 will be, but I bet it involves keeping a well-stocked fridge. It's the new "make sure you're wearing clean underwear in case you get in a car accident" among the celebrity set. At least the fridge thing Britney can do. We know how she feels about underwear.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: [I will have to let you know once Narcissus stops weeping...]

Pops

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #42

2007-02-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Ghost Rider

starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda(!)

directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil, Simon Birch)

My kids have the day off school today, which means I don't have a lot of time to do all the lengthy background work I usually put into one of these MIHNIoS dealios. That's why I chose Ghost Rider to feature, not because of any particular interest, but because, since the studio declined to have it screened by critics, I don't have to read any reviews!

Not that I ever really do anyway, but just not having to take the time to opt not to read them is really handy on a day like today.

See, I could have talked about the far more intriguing-looking spy movie Breach, a great premise with a cast of fantastic actors like Chris Cooper, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert, Gary Cole, etc. But see, with a movie like that, a studio will get the stupid-ass idea in their heads that people will want to know what it's about in advance, to prime them for the machinations and complications of the plot, introduce the base elements of the dramatic tension so they come into the theater ready to take a complicated narrative journey.

Ghost Rider you have to sort of more understand what it is on a gut level, like right around about the same level that people like Bill O'Reilly "know" things without having read, seen or heard anything about them. Information travels directly through whatever sensory organ it happens to hit first and travels straight to the gut which, when it is not processing the nutritional elements out of food, also dispenses immediately gratifying emotional conclusions without the messy and tiresome need for input and/or reason.

Reviews? Reviews are for pussies. Everything you need to know about Ghost Rider you can learn right here.

Go ahead, I'll wait. It'll only take you a second to decide.

Did you see that? Fuckin' motorcycle, man. Bad-ass. And it was fuckin' on fuckin' fire, bitches. Holy fuck. And that bitch with him? Can't really see what kind of shape she's in, but just from her face, yeah, I'd fuck her. And the dude walking up in the middle? Head is on fuckin' fire too, man. And Nic Cage. Goddamn, dude from The fuckin' Rock dude. And Con fuckin' Air.

My gut has processed. My gut fuckin' likes. Skull dude, motorcycle, devil, swings a chain. I'm in. Here's my $10. Hey, is there any way I could pay more for a ticket? My gut demands it.

If we were to examine it any further (already a mistake!), we could see that it was directed by the same dude who directed the messy, messy and still slightly--but only slightly--underrated Daredevil movie. Yeah, it wasn't overall what you'd call "good", but it did get something of an undeserved beating for being associated with Gigli-era Affleck.

That said, it did deserve something of a beating.

This "Mark Steven Johnson" has clearly decided he's a comic-book adaptation director after Daredevil and now this. Apparently his initial foray into the exciting genre of midget snuff films didn't have the legs he'd hoped and he's gone conventional since, which is unfortunate. Warwick Davis needs the work.

Everything else you need to know about Ghost Rider can be found in the IMDb trivia section for the film.

Nicolas Cage's hairpiece required three hours to apply every day.

Nicolas Cage wrote sections of the script.

Was originally planned for a summer 2006 release.

The first two are kind of funny, but the last one... not available for review by critics AND moved from a central summer release to the bleak movie wasteland that is February. You expect schmaltzy pap for Valentine's Day, but anything else this time of year, when two-thirds of the country is under a collective 3,000 miles of snow, well...

No reviews, retreat to February, the lead actor doing personal rewrites... Sony wants you to know: they know this movie sucks. They know we know they know this movie sucks.

But did you see the fuckin' motorcycle? It's on fuckin' fire!

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

Pops

Fine Corinthian Leather Placeholder Post

2007-02-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

I have a doctor's appointment this morning. To the couple who redeemed their coupons yesterday, I'm a little embarrassed. Should have thought of this doctor thing before hand, I know. Good luck with the burning sensation. Sorry about that. Luckily for me the waiver included keeps me out of a legally actionable position.

Until tomorrow, for the rest of you, to keep you all in the sticky, sticky mood, I leave you in the capable hands of Mr. Ricardo Montalban.

Try to resist humping your computer monitors. At least until I get back.

Pops

The Commerce Of Love

2007-02-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

All the caveats and exceptions I had to print on the back, but since this is the 20th century-invented 2D internet, I'll have to just tell you what they are since you can't simply turn it over and see for yourselves. Stupid limited technology.

All holders are eligible for redemption and receipt of promised services regardless of ethnic or national origin PROVIDED s/he meets some basic hygiene standards as commonly held within the contiguous 48 United States. Yes, I'm talking to you, Alaska. Being snowed on is NOT the same as bathing for the purposes of this offer.

Offer has no expiration date. However, considering the total number of people in the whole wide world, the obvious appeal of the offer and the limits of one man's physical endurance over the course of a day, you may not be able to IMMEDIATELY claim your goods/services upon presentation of the above coupon given the relative state of knackered-ness of the providee. Providee promises to get to you just as soon as he can rehydrate.

All redeemers must be 18 or over. Or at least a convincing 16 with a valid fake ID. Please consult the local laws concerning sexual age-of-consent for further information.

Mr. Korvath Ganymede Macleish Horrington III (hereafter referred to as "Pops") assumes no culpability, responsibility or liability for injuries or laws broken in the course of the redemption of this coupon. Given the volume of expected redeemers, it is a good bet he won't remember you anyway. This should be construed as a formal basis for his standard defense in court that he can honestly say he doesn't know if he's ever even met you, let alone buggered you with a whiffle-ball bat, for example.

Void where prohibited. Not valid in combination with any other offer, including previous offered Coupon promotion offering "Mustache Rides, 5¢"

* = While the services promised are themselves free, a number of expenses are implied including: travel, lodging, prophylactic(s), customs duties and fees, passports (where applicable), de-lousing, medical blood tests (MANDATORY) and lube.

** = Providee is willing to indulge in any kind of activity desired provided they do not violate the laws of more than seven US states regulating sexual practice between consenting adults. Also, no contact with human fecal matter outside of incidental side-effect of anal will be tolerated or entertained. That's just gross. Also, as expressly stated, no strings. They cut. If bondage is desired, leather straps (NOT INCLUDED) should be provided.

*** = The picture at left does not necessarily represent Providee in his present condition of physical fitness or hairlessness. Or facial structure. Or body type. Or smoldery foreign hotness in general. Your results may vary.

The Scrutinies

2007-02-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

Sonnet #2

an Poem

by Pops

I think I can understand why a nation would be angry at George Bush putting them on his "Axis of Evil". It just generates an insane amount of work. It's like making the Dean's List in college. You were humming along, eating dorm food, being ignored by sorority girls, losing the better parts of whole months with the industrial-grade Pakistani hash you were scoring from Adnan over at the International Residence Hall, not realizing that all you really had to do to score a B average in college is to show up to class on a semi-regular, semi-conscious basis and remember to ask for extensions when you inevitably forget to hand in your papers.

But then you're on the list and mom and dad are all proud and they start paying for your cellphone again and they call grandma and she puts you back in the will and fuck, now you have to make sure you stay on the List with a conscious effort, which everyone knows is the total ruination of any college experience. It's not that you actually have to try, grade-inflation being what it is, it's just that the acknowledgement of expectation is exactly the thing you were trying to avoid when you started drinking a quart of engine-degreaser a day since you got there.

Same thing with Iran, Iraq and North Korea. A nation goes about its business of oppressing its own people, not cooperating with international nuclear inspectors, maybe funding the occasional suicide bombing spree as nations will. And then one day, POW! Accident a the explosives lab ironically wipes out a whole fresh crop of human bomb mules. And then later, less literally, POW! George Bush puts you on his goddamn list.

Now everyone's watching. Now there is expectation. How the hell is a nation of people supposed to live up to that? I mean, come on: evil? That's a joke in an Austin Powers movie, man. Short of a national initiative to have all people grow thick mustaches for flamboyant twirling and a program of Maniacal Cackling instituted at the elementary-school level, I don't know how they can ever really live up to the billing.

I can see what the current trend is, though: get off the list as fast as possible. It's hard to be actually evil with everyone watching. Starve a million people to death because you diverted food-aid money to build a 90-foot tall solid-gold statue of your penis and they're all "Ooh, ooh, you can't do that! Evil, we call Evil!" Next thing you know, bing-bang-boom, nuclear exchange on your own soil. Downer.

There are different strategies for getting off the list. Iraq went with the standard keep-pushing-this-shit-out-until-they-invade-and-all-this-mess-becomes-THEIR-goddamn-problem scenario. It turned out to be something of a miscalculation for Saddam personally, but the overall strategic effect has been pretty much what they envisioned. Iraq is now our goddamn problem and, if we're there, it can't be all Axis-y by default because we're America and God is on our side and and aren't we doing them some real good by raining on them the cluster-bomblets of goodness.

The lessons learned from Iraq has split the last two remaining Axisers.

North Korea has decided that while the idea of America making sure the trains to Pyongyang run on time is tempting, the whole tribunal-made-up-of-those-formerly-oppressed thing does not really appeal to Kim Jong Il, so he makes nice, or at least pretends to.

Iran, on the other hand, is more cagey. They see we've got our hands kind of tied with this Iraq stuff, so they keep daring us and daring us to do something knowing that, between the logistical difficulties of a second invasion and the presence of homo commie pacifists in Congress now, they can go ahead and do some real pioneering Evil work without worrying too much about the scrutiny and our president will have to waste time promising not to kill them right away.

Probably a long-term miscalculation, but look, this is not the Axis of Measured Consideration, is it?

The scary thing is that with Iraq relegated to Auxiliary Member status, there's a slot open. Bad people in bad places like Syria or... well, basically just Syria are staring at the ground, trying not to make eye contact so they don't get picked next. They're hoping we get impatient and move along to lesser but no less worthy targets like Sudan or Barack Obama.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.3

Pops

PS- I blew up the sonnet form. The whole thing is in iambic pentameter, though. Go back and check.

Thin Line

2007-02-11T21:48:00.001-08:00

Because this is the season of love, this week's Bucket will feature a special surprise for all of you: poetry.

I know what you're thinking, poetry, Valentine's Day, my God, how cliché. Why can't you just show your love for us by sodomizing us all individually?

Truthfully, I did think about that. Over and over and over again, I thought about that. But then I figured between the plane fare and the lube, there was no way to make that cost-effective.

And before the idea of poetry (aided by the sodomy!) makes you all retch, consider: I do not write poetry here out of any kind of love. In fact, the effort put forth is being made in specific contravention to the saccharine falseness of Valentine's Day and other pre-scripted, laborious declarations of non-love love. I realize that to subject you all to poetry is an act of malicious violence. In fact, I'm counting on it. What I do I do deliberately to spite St. Valentine and his fascism of tenderness.

Bucketeers, I give you the hateful act of poetry in three forms. A sonnet, a limerick, a haiku.

Sonnet #1

an Poem

by Pops

My love, what shall I dare compare thee to
that hasn't been said a thousand times so
or more in the songs I hear coming through
Adult Contemporary radio?

My great fear, my love, is that if I were
to try at all I just may be compared
(oh just mentioning, my stomach bestir)
to girly half-men like that John Mayer

What sort of retard would I have to be
to lay out the red all of what I feel
not in reflection of what I might see
but with some help from Captain and Tenille?

My poesy I manage to keep part-time;
it's too fucking hard to think up the rhyme

Yes! Nailed it!

You'll see I went English instead of Petrarchan, I think for obvious reasons. Mostly because I don't speak filthy Italian.

Had enough? Still capable of feeling love? Here, feel this, you heart-having queers:

Limerick

an Poem

by Pops

I think homeless people are yucky
they smell and their beards are all stucky
with vomit and scabies
--and that's just he ladies!--
But oh! the toothless sucky-sucky

Ha! Take that, Hallmark! Score one more for anti-sentiment.

Here's where I drive the stake home, with some devastating Oriental minimalism. Hold on to your shit.

Haiku

an Poem

by Pops

My summer home in
St. Barts has a swimming pool
filled with afterbirth

If you can still feel anything distantly warm, well, then you deserve whatever Valentine's Day can do to you. But don't worry. If this weren't enough, I plan on keeping up the poetry onslaught all week. I am but one man fighting the fight on behalf of six billion.

Tomorrow I'm thinking maybe a sestina, an ode and a Chinese Jintishi. The theme will be Forced Penetration With A Foreign Object. I've already got the beginnings of "Ode to Razor-Wire-Wrapped Rebar" echoing around in my cranium. I know you can't wait.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0 (a must for all poetry, despite the public service)

Pops

Our Lady Of The Onion Rings

2007-02-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

Wow. Anna Nicole Smith is dead. I'm completely shocked. Mostly by the level of shock I don't feel.

I bet we find out she died of some rare congenital heart condition she was not aware of, sparking a national debate on the issue leading to a revolutionary screening process, saving thousands of lives every year with the research funded by the charitable organization founded in her name.

That or enough ketamine to kill a bull elephant.

Heart thing... ketamine... LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

Ha, I don't know why that leapt into my head. That song is wholly inappropriate here. End of the world? Only if by "the world" we mean "the current climate of fear and distrust spearheading a general geopolitical cooling wherein disparate interests resolve to settle disputes with assymetrical, non-conventional paramilitary violence and nuclear proliferation as a first resort" then yes, the death of Anna Nicole Smith appears to truly be the "end of the world as we know it."

What did she do for us while she was alive? Very little. Past taking a few very high quality nude pictures fifteen or so years ago, it seemed like her life was dedicated to humanity the same way plantar fasciitis is dedicated to your foot.

But get her away from the airbrush and within 150 feet of a plate of cheese-fries and, well... the rest of her life in a nutshell.

Then she died. And since then... since... my God. Talk about learning not to judge a book by the giant fake tits on its cover.

Anna Nicole Smith dies and what do we have?

Agreement between Hamas and Fatah.

A chastened, negotiating North Korea talking about total unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Oversight of the financial abuses and war profiteering in Iraq.

She hasn't even been dead a full day and look what she's done already. It only makes sense that the total vacuity of the life she led would result in a robust, intense period of human improvement on a grand scale when she died. It's basic Newtonian physics. Or, in this case, Popsian karmic bullshit metaphysics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The rubber band has snapped back. That twang and sting of joy you feel is there for the whole world to enjoy.

The hole she cut in the world, the expanding and contracting absence of usefulness, the summary human negative, has been removed. Nature abhors a vacuum, so what rushes to fill it up? Good results in things that matter.

I admit it, I was talking out of my ass when I started typing this. But now the power of my own persuasiveness has persuasived me. When Hitler died, didn't World War II end? That can't have been a coincidence.

I'm going to stop now because I'm scaring myself. This is how religions get started.

Well, that and soliciting funds.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go set up a dedicated PayPal account.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.4

Pops

24601

2007-02-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

I have tried to be an honest man, but now it appears to be all for naught. A man can only do so much to make up for his lifetime of treachery and deceit. It's time for me to be honest, to come clean, to perform the public enema of confession using the sweet honeysuckle-scented water of clarity thrust forward by the mighty bulb syringe of that is this blog-space.

Yes, there was a time in my youth, before you knew me, when I went by a different name. I remember in that time I was walking along a street, without a home, without a family, with no place to go... for that next hour or so during my lunch break between classes at the boarding school my parents had sent me to. I remember standing there, looking through a window, with nothing but a thin pane of glass between myself and survival. So I smashed it. It took me another minute or so to get the thing hotwired, but you can be sure I drove out of there like a bat out of hell. By that I mean whoever it was had a Meatloaf CD in the stereo. They didn't deserve that car. It was more a liberation than theft.

I've spent all my time since then running, taking what work I could: street mime, Tilt-a-Whirl operator, phone-sex-line worker. My high-pitched woman's voice was finally put to some use. And once, at my lowest, in my street-mime days, a kindly old bishop walked up to me and offered me $50 so that he might "ransom my soul from fear and hatred and give it back to God, right after the handjob."

That was the turning point for me. No, not into full-time prostitution. To this. Where I am now. With this blog, meant to be an outlet for me to be truthful on a massive public stage for potentially the whole world to see.

But I've been neglectful. I have fallen into old habits. This whole blog, as I've said in the past, is all lies. Upwards of 90% at least. I don't even know which parts of it are true anymore.

And now my inability to reform--to truly reform--has come back to haunt me at last. The jig is up, my lovelies. The hounds have been re-unleashed.

The Police are getting back together.

Did you think that name was some kind of ironic joke? Gordon Sumner, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland... terriers, all of them. And they tolerate criminality the way my digestive system tolerates lactic acid. Which is to say: not bloody well.

I had it free and clear over the last twenty years when Sumner took that little hiatus to go off and make elevator jazz. In the interim, they passed the job on to the Texas Rangers, which... I mean, come on. Let's just say I haven't been too worried what with their most high profile guy not exactly Sherlock Holmes when it comes to finding things he's charged with finding and the other complication of the whole organization locked in the cellar of the American League Western Division for the better part of... forever.

The free ride is over. I don't have to put on the red light. The red light is coming for me. The only thing I can hope is to appeal to their sense of mercy. But I've seen what they do to whole audiences full of people: they rock without pity. Therefore I am doomed.

Faced With The Dodo's Conundrum

2007-02-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

Responsibility is a real problem. Not that any of you would know because instead of doing the jobs for which you are being paid or watching the children you are charged with caring for or completing assignments given to you in the furtherance of your education, you--yes, you--are sitting around, staring at the computer screen, waiting for Clown Boy over here to tickle your funny-sphincters with the soft point of the Feather of Obvious Jokes.

Your dad was right about you. You'll never amount to anything.

There are people out there right now experiencing, doing, leading, putting themselves out there for the betterment of mankind.

Are you? You could be doing something. Anything. You can't, say, find out how to make regular human urine into a viable source of hydration in places where water is scarce? What, you don't have pots, a stove, maybe about four cups of sugar and a sieve in your house? Too busy waiting around for your political overlords at Daily Kos to give you your YouTube-watching marching orders to save all the people of Africa with the magical rejuvenating power of their own whizz?

Look, you don't have to take me literally. It doesn't have to be that exactly. And really, once I get the patent paperwork all squared away, you legally can't do that anyway. My lawyers will be in touch.

Even the normal bullshit reasons people give for being idle, like novel-writing or music or art; nobody thinks your sci-fi story about the invasion of "aliens" led by the evil space-overlord Beorge G. Wush will ever go anywhere and putting a drumbeat behind "Your Body Is A Wonderland", well, people just laugh at that, Timbaland. But bullshit effort is still effort.

Some people are out there making real sacrifices, doing real things to help real people in real ways.

What have you done, for instance, to help find a cure for the gay?

Nothing, right? Some odd pictures on the internet here and there, maybe making out with Timmy Barnes behind the handball wall during 7th grade gym class, but we've all done that. Normal part of growing up. What have you done to understand the gayness, to really lube it up so you can get as deep inside it as you can and release the seed of healing within?

We know, for instance, that methamphetamine is NOT the cure for homosexuality. We know it. People like Ted Haggard have gone the extra mile to prove it. He felt some gay coming on and decided, hey, I can fix this. I wonder if some meth will help?

Turns out not so much. But he was trying.

Then he decided that maybe the best way to cure gayness would be to actually participate in homosexual sex acts. Over and over and over again. Not in a personal way, like in a relationship, but in a clinical, scientific way with a man-whore, someone with the requisite experience to give gay sex in all its deliriously pleasurable forms without the complications of emotional attachments. Plus he totally knew where to score the meth.

But alas, that didn't work to cure the gay out of him either.

So he tried something else: public humiliation followed by secluded Jesus counseling. Turns out that that's EXACTLY the combination to cure the gay. Which is just in time for him because the next step was Scientology. And not everyone comes back from that.

Now that he's put himself out there, now that he knows the Path to Straightness, he is planning on moving out of Colorado to spread the gay-free message of Christ to new communities, possibly in Iowa or Missouri. Because ideally what you want is to go directly to the places where the meth is produced. You know, to warn the people cooking it up in their trailers in that vast empty space between St. Louis and Kansas City that it isn't going to cure gayness like they thought. And then maybe take some samples to a few of the neighborhoods in the larger cities, show the meth around, make sure the gays there know what to avoid. And then maybe start to work some of the gay out of them with a nice backrub.

Ted's working. He's contributing.

What will you do? What would Jesus do? You know, if he were gay. And a tweaker.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.6

Pops

In Vino, Veritaserum

2007-02-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

The character flaw of moderation has held me back a lot more than I'd like to admit. I remember in high school, all the cool guys were out there having loads and loads of unprotected sex with scads of slutty girls, which means they got all the really awesome STDs first. Monday mornings were the worst. While all the guys were giving each other the gonorrhea high-fives, the genital warts head-nods, the knowing chlamydia winks, the slower-moving social tortoises were left with slim pickings at the end, at home alone with our silent shame of friction burns and a yeast infection.

I survived in that social wasteland with the help of my good friends Cinemax and Vagisil, but I learned a lesson that I swore never to forget: overindulge.

The philosophy seemed to work for me in college. I recognized it was a problem once I hit 400 lbs. for the first time, but in the interim, I made a lot of friends on the fraternity row freak-show circuit. There's always a market for a guy who can eat eight whole chickens in one sitting. I had to quit when my heart stopped that one time, but I miss my comrades-in-arms: Ping-Pong Ball Debbie, Fire-Butt Ron, that guy who would eat sand and a special shout-out to my boy/girl Shortie the Hermaphrodite Dwarf. Man, for the life of me I can't remember Sand Eater's name. There was some tension there as our specialties kind of overlapped, but my God, you have to respect a guy who will eat sand. He claimed he could shit glass, but I never really felt like my stomach could withstand the verification process there.

Now that I'm older, wiser, I see things with the perspective of a grown-person and I realize how foolish I had been in the past. Overindulgence in any form is harmful and sinful and selfish, and looking back I realize: yeah, still should do more of it.

I'm especially thinking about drinking more. I really really should.

I feel so limited by the bounds of my actual personality. Reckless and compulsive consumption of alcohol, I think, would really let me chip free and polish up the facets of myself that have been hidden under the cloudy, hard-edged layers of reasonability and self-awareness.

Plus, my God! Think of the shit I could get away with!

Just a couple of drinks and I could be a Mel Gibson anti-Semite or an Michael Richards racist or a Mark Foley predator or an Isaiah Washington homophobe or a Lindsay Lohan... well, a Lindsay Lohan or even--and this might be most helpful to me in the short term--a Gavin Newsom other-person's-wife fucker. To finally catch up on my STDs, well... a high school dream come true.

Drinking makes everything better. You can be the person you really are underneath--the ugly, ugly person you are--once you are free of the fetters of inhibition, embarrassment, tact, conscience, social awareness, any awareness, urinary continence and (in the most specialest of circumstances) control of the esophageal sphincters that keep chewed and partially digested food from backing out the way it came in.

The magic, though is the Rehab. This is all Martin Luther's fault. Used to be that if a person, say, accidentally ordered some of his people to go kill the Archbishop of Canterbury who would then become a saint, since we were all Catholic, you'd have to go to Church and confess. The Church, then, would mete out a reasonable penance, in this case poor Peter O'Toole got flogged in front of people. And he was the king!

Protestantism ruined all of that. "No, no!" they said, "Don't go to confession! Confess directly to God in the privacy of your own soul!"

Yeah... problem with that approach? Not at all telegenic. Unless you can get a voice-over to speak out the internal monologue for you, but in order to get anyone to pay attention to it, you'd have to get a Zach Braff or at least the guy who does all those movie trailers to help you out and, trust me, you can't afford that.

In order for the Get Out Of Jail Free aspect of wanton consumption of alcohol to work, you need the power of a stay in a double-blind, completely discreet, totally anonymous detox resort tastefully announced by your newly-hired army of publicists.

A guest shot on Leno wouldn't hurt either.

I'm going to be working on this. Not sure how I get on the Tonight Show, but first thing's first. To the box of wine!

If I don't have an englarged liver, a scorching case of herpes and a press release by the end of the week, you will know I have failed.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 5.1

Pops

Post-Game Show

2007-02-04T21:15:00.001-08:00

I guess my reflections on yet another passing of another Super Bowl, our annual mid-winter rites to Bacchus, can be reduced to two simple points:

1) If you are invited to a Super Bowl party that is advertised as "BYOB", it would behoove you to find out in advance whether or not the last B actually stands for "ball-gag". Let me tell you that once you arrive, it is already too late. They will, of course, be very happy to see the bottle, but you don't want to know what they end up doing with it. That's why I always prefer containers made of safety plastic. Glass is like asking for a lacerated colon.

2) With the win this year, Indianapolis has now vaulted to the top of the list of Least Interesting Cities To Win Major American Sports Championships, shockingly dethroning the long-reigning 1977 Portland Trail Blazers. If we expand it to include hockey champions, this list includes Edmonton, so this achievement is not to be sneezed at.

And now there is nothing left to say except to remind any readers who might be Portlanders, Edmontonians or Indianapolis... ites? I don't know. Anyway, I want them all to direct their hate-mail to popsbucket@hotmail.com . Go on, you know you want to. Help me fight the lonely.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: IV.IX

Pops

1 vs. 100

2007-02-02T08:25:00.000-08:00

The weekend is upon us. Finally, we can put aside all the hype and nonsense we've had to endure in these last few weeks of posturing and wheel-spinning and finally get down to settling things where they should be settled, down on the ground, in the trenches, nose to nose, man on man.

Some of you won't care. Some of you will indulge your inner communist and eschew the Big Game altogether, nimbly sidestepping the colossal battle for world supremacy in your penny loafers and lace-fringed socks so you can go to see a movie about the triumph of the goddamn human spirit, probably starring Diane Keaton or possibly Drew Barrymore.

You enjoy that, Nancy. Meanwhile, I've been assured that a few of you who don't care will be tuning if only for the commercials. That I don't understand at all. I mean, it's C-SPAN2. What kind of commercials do they run? Supplementary life insurance and those ones with Wilford Brimley about "diabeetis"? I don't understand the attraction.

Come this Sunday, I will be planted in front of my TV to watch the Showdown. It's been six years in the making: Executive vs. Legislative. And this time it's personal.

One lone (former puppet figurehead owner of the Texas professional baseball team nicknamed the) Ranger(s) against one hundred men with designs on tearing him to shreds in order to buck up reputations ravaged by what has been now the better part of the decade kissing his ass so that they can run away from him, giving them a sliver of credibility when they try to replace him in his job in '08. Never have the lines of battle been drawn more clearly.

Well, most of them are men. White men, in point of fact. But there are a few non-white faces, more than I ever thought I'd see in one Senate. Hell, there is even a smattering of prominent Vagina-Americans in the mix. And they're SPEAKING! This is the kind of lawlessness your local Daughters of the American Revolution auxilliary warned us about.

We've officially entered Bizarro World. Not three months ago the entire Legislative Branch of the United States was heading down the path so artfully blazed for it by the sober and now-self-abnegated legislature of the great nation of Venezuela. You know. Venezuela? Come on, they have the drug cartels and the... wait, that's Colombia. They had that Japanese dude for president back in the... no, that was Peru. OK, it's the one that sometimes sends us baseball players, but is NEITHER Cuba nor Mexico. That one. Ah, fuck it, CNN will clue you in after we invade.

Now, out of the blue, someone has collectively tapped the entire Congress on the shoulder and slipped them a copy of the US Constitution that hasn't had Article I, Section 8 Sharpie'd over by military censors.

Seriously, read it. It will blow your mind. They actually can do something besides fuck pages or call emergency sessions to save individual people in vegetative states or vote themselves pay raises. Turns out all we had to do was get rid of both Tom Daschle and Bill Frist and, what do you know, the gears start spinning. Dissent is so faddishly catchy, even Republicans are doing it, and you know they're the last ones to latch on to a trend, much to the delight of your local wingtip retailer.

I don't know what will actually happen, but I do know I'm tired of the build-up and I'm ready to go. No more pre-game show--and that means you, Wolf Blitzer. There are no more Cheneys left to bait with your subtle challenges to Supreme Executive Power in your sneaky pinko questions. The pump, she is primed. Somebody cue Hank Williams, Jr. I am ready for some strongly-worded non-binding resolution(s)!

Soap Flakes

2007-02-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

I don't know a lot about advertising. The only thing I know for sure is that if the logo on your soft drink or dish soap or whatever suddenly steps off the label and becomes a fully realized three-dimensional sentient thing, you fucking do what it fucking tells you. Buy more syrup? Yes, yes, please, just don't hurt my family, Mrs. Butterworth. May the voodoo hand that wakened you show us all mercy as well. You could try to fight back, but how do you kill something that was never actually alive?

I don't need to know a lot about advertising to know I should take my cues from it in all aspects of my life, personal, professional... OK, just personal in my case, but if I did have a job and I needed something vaguely to do with work done, you know I'd totally go with that company with the "Easy Button" ads... Office Depot? Or was that one Staples? I don't know, but now I'm nervous again. They have a magic button that can accomplish any task the presser wishes done. And yet still we have an Iraq war and Larry the Cable Guy roams free, unpunished. You know they're saving that shit for something serious, something personal. I'm not waiting around for that "something personal" to be me personally. I'm running out right now to buy some brads and tacks to appease them.

What I do know about advertising is that it's OK to scare the motherfucking piss out of your target audience. Nothing builds name recognition as being the company that makes people wet themselves. If you're a grown person and not currently Tara Reid, the loss of urinary continence moments tend to stand out. That's some strong brand identity right there.

There are limits, apparently. For instance, it is best to freak people the fuck out about things they have already done to harm themselves. Like smoke or drink or shop or eat or breathe. These are the kinds of things I'm being warned about as of today--it's February sweeps, everybody!--in promos for my local news. It's Something-You're-Doing-Right-Now-Could-Kill-You season again. People seem to tolerate this OK. There's something comfortable about the feeling of retroactive outrage that makes people capable of sitting through a half-hour of god-awful local evening news. They might make an angry phone call or write a sternly worded letter, but in the end, they go back to that now-quite-affordable rat-infested restaurant or the grocery store with the cockroaches in the Cocoa Puffs because, well, it's just so close to my house! Plus, in the end, if you live in California, you just get to blame the Mexicans anyway, so everyone wins. Except the Mexicans.

What you can't do in any circumstance is terrify people in the present tense apparently. Turner Broadcasting's promotional push for their Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force program did just that yesterday in Boston. And now Bostonians are wicked pissed.

On the upside, the visibility of Turner Broadcasting and their product is the through the roof. I, for instance, have now heard of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The downside is the whole blinking-boxes-left-randomly-along-major-transportation-arteries in retrospect might have been a slight miscalculation in a post 9/11 world.

First of all, Boston didn't get hit on 9/11. But New York did. You know what that means? That Bostonians are positive that they must be top of the list to get hit next. Because, from their perspective, why would a terrorist target New York and not have designs on Boston as well, seeing as the two cities are totally equal in every way in terms of prominence and stature? So they're a little on edge, because logically, they know--they know--it has to be coming soon. Also: fuck the Yankees.

Secondly, you can push someone to the point of wetting themselves in the comfort of their own homes in order to advertise a product or program (through which products can be sold). But what you don't do, what is absolutely never, ever, ever done is fucking with people's commute times. Corporate suicide.

No one is immune. We all remember how mighty Coca-Cola almost went out of business after their ill-conceived laser-engraved "Drink Coke!" Li'l Caltrops On The Highways Of America campaign went predictably wrong. Between that and the New Coke fiasco, it's a miracle we're not all stuck drinking Pepsi.

If you want to know how to market something, I suggest looking at the people who put out those Harry Potter books.

1) Have a global phenomenon.
2) Mention it.

Works like a charm. The frenzy has already begun. And nobody is late for work because of it. There's your lesson.

This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.5

Pops

PS- One of you naughty monkeys went out and nominated ole Pops for some kind of goddamn award. I am humbled as I do not seek these sort of things out. But now if I don't win, it will be hell to pay for you. For all of you. Mark my fucking words.

Buster Poindexter

2007-01-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

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.

Omnivorous

2007-01-30T09:39:00.001-08:00

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

When Everything's Made To Be Broken, I Just Want You To Know Who I Am

2007-01-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

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

Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #41

2007-01-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

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!

Macaca

2007-01-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

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

Dickblog

2007-01-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

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.

Femaglobin

2007-01-23T10:12:00.000-08:00

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

Throw Me The Idol, I Throw You The Whip

2007-01-21T21:28:00.000-08:00

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

Origin Of The Species

2007-01-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

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

Après Moi, Le Déluge

2007-01-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Just Hangin' With My Pals Dante And Virgil

2007-01-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

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

It's OK, I Can Walk

2007-01-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

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.

Premeditated Caniside

2007-01-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Since We've No Place To Go...

2007-01-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

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

Erratica

2007-01-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

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.

El Placeholdero

2007-01-09T23:16:00.000-08:00

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!

I've Seen The Promised Land

2007-01-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

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