Sunday Bloody Sundae

Lieberman says Bush wiretapping 'outside the law'
March 26, 2006
HARTFORD, Conn. --President Bush's authorization of warrantless wiretapping as part of the war on terrorism was "outside the law," Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday.
(okay, this is a weird start for the one democrat who is more in line with the republicans than any other)
Lieberman, D-Conn., also said he opposes a move by a Democratic Senate colleague to censure Bush over accusations that the president unlawfully authorized wiretaps without obtaining court orders.
(and this is totally in line for a man who thinks democrats are either leftist or confused)
"As I read the law I think the president's tapping or surveillance without a warrant was wrong," Lieberman said on "Face the State" on WFSB-TV. "It was outside the law."
(hmmm. outside the law. that could mean illegal. if i were to speed in my car i would be outside the law. if i were to peek in my neighbor's window or steal beer from the minimart i would be outside the law...because it's illegal. so, it looks like lieberman is saying bush broke the law)
"This is an important program," said Lieberman, who is seeking a fourth term this year. "I don't find anybody in Congress who thinks we ought not to be listening to the phone conversations and reading the e-mails of people that we think are involved in and we have reason to believe are involved in terrorist groups. (nice use of the "some people" argument) But it has to be done in America in my opinion pursuant to the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. It has to be done with a court order."
(so, what bush has done is against the law. and what bush has done should not be condoned. but what bush has done should be legal and let's work to make it okay and what bush has done okay in hindsight?)
Lieberman, who has been criticized by liberals for supporting Bush's war policy, faulted a censure move against the president that was proposed last week by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
"My own opinion, and it seems to be shared by most Democratic senators, is that it would be an unproductive use of our time," Lieberman said. "Again, it's looking backward. It would be divisive. The best thing we could do about this program is to bring it under the law and I'd prefer to spend my time and the Senate's time figuring out how we can adopt a law that allows the administration to continue this program but force them to go to court to get a warrant before they do."
(lieberman is using the bush argument: "i won't spend my time looking backwards. i choose to move forward". or what mccain said [paraphrased], " mumble mumble mumble screech into the breach")
(the other argument lieberman makes is let's bring this program under the law. how about we admit that this administration knew the law before it began the program and chose to ignore it. "it" would be FISA, the court that the president goes to when he needs a wiretap or phone bug or computer trace. that court has turned down four requests since 1978 when it was created. it has passed more than 10,000. get a calculator and check that percentage. and lieberman wants to legalize it by making it conform to an existing law that the administration actively and knowingly ignored while bush renewed it in writing every 45 days since 9/11 or earlier)
A possible Republican opponent to Lieberman announced his candidacy last week. Paul Streitz, a 63-year-old Darien resident, said he will seek his party's nomination and will focus on immigration control (good pictures) as his main issue.
(when a republican takes on lieberman with his entire agenda being immigration control that basically means lieberman enjoys getting fence burn and knows he will benefit from it, because he can cover every other republican talking point andf the republican opponent is wondering how to attack one of the very people his party is trying to woo. i'll bet this guy doesn't have much support, because lieberman is being courted by every mainstream republican and some outlying weirdos who don't want to see a different democrat in his place)

thinkprogress has a good point about dickhead tom tancredo who thinks making it a federal crime to aid illegal immigrants is in keeping with the bible.
(i grew up in a liberal methodist church. we were one of the first to offer our sanctuary to el salvadoran refugees and we were one of the first to become a sanctuary for all sexualities. a reconciling congregation. very fun even though i was a teenager when it all first began so i didn't get the full experience. i was a bit preoccupied with the youth group and we were preoccupied with goofing off, flirting, making fart jokes, meeting on the weekends away from the counselors and drinking or smoking the chronic, going to campus life and disrupting the "daylight" [meaning six inches of distance between the participants] dances by actually holding each other [which got bad once when john and i went on to the dance floor together for the song "three times a lady" and began tangoing...we never got to actually tango, it was more of a hand clasp, head spin, grunt and removal from public view by the present authorities], meeting at taco bell or denny's or carl's jr to plot our next crime. i may actually have to scan photos of us for anyone to truly understand our depths...but my church rebelled against anything it saw as betraying the love of christ and the methodist church certainly did that. every organized religion does that. doctrine is the masthead. for the methodists, though, liberal is not a deathknell.).

and only florida could get pissed off at a zealous vote machine overseer who doesn't want to see another 2000 debacle and who keeps proving the newest generation of vote machines are crap. of course, florida did give its electoral votes to bush after the supreme court decided that recounting all of those stupid little ballots one by one was a dumb idea. and the governor and all of his party and katherine harris (who is running for office right now and turning absolutely kooky in her delusional qualities and she was the one who stopped the florida ballot recount before the supreme court ruled and was appointed by jeb bush and accepted money from jack abramoff, jack...off. really, a do over is in order on the name) and the cubans who didn't know that bush hated them, too. especially when it comes to refugees, detainees and baseball world classic runner up winnings. it seems that fidel promised his team's runner up winnings to the victims of hurricane katrina ("i'm walking on sunshine...we-elll..."), but major league baseball and the administration are claiming that cuba gave up all of its monetary rights in order to play in the classic. that may be true, you never know. especially with our country that can't get past the bay of pigs. unless, of course, castro truely was behind jfk's murder and none of them can admit they fucked it up so badly. but i doubt it. some knucklehead democrat would have spilled it by now. in short, no cuban geets for katrina's wet streets.
now, if only hugo chavez would get with the program and stick to making up funny new names for bush and not keep poor people alive on the east coast with his oil. what a bastard. making political hay at the expense of the poor...in someone else's country. in a very obvious manner. which the minority opposition party might try to misrepresent and take advantage of come election time. which would probably help chavez keep his job, because the masses somehow seem to keep liking democrats and liberals if only for their weak knees.

long new york times article about the Lincoln group that pays iraqi newspapers to have its articles published. if only ol' abe could have done this he would never have had to leave springfield.

oh, and in case you thought the liberals in the blogosphere were as unorganized as the democratic party or as allegedly unbiased as the printed and viewed media, oh you so totally suck. we rock. and we're smart. at least in this one case we managed to raise arguments that were actually valid. word has it that al franken was so shaken he dropped his big mac, called michael moore and complained that "the liberals ruined my gucci". not sure what that means unless one of us hit his moped or stopped him from his annual nepalese trek to sit with his yeti.

and it's even better when republicans attempt to eat their own. i've never watched great whites go after each other, but i doubt it could get nastier than fools on a sinking ship who refuse to jump first for fear of being called a coward. oh, and d'amato's "i never met him before" defense is pure bush administration. whether or not it's true.

now, there's news that there may have been a russian mole feeding military info of ours to saddam hussein. good job. the link speaks of how the mole may have been either misinformed or simply very tardy with the intel. huh. ya think one or the other? just maybe? other than forgetting to tell the palace that they needed to act like masses awaiting liberation and strew flowers at our feet and sing whatever their equivalent of hoseanah is and not steal a billion dollars worth of shit in front of everyone (even though the bulk of it was US greenbacks and gold and no one ever saw it anyway). but i'm sure the mole got it right by telling saddam, "hey, hanging out in the presidential palace might be stupic right about now. you got a bunker?". and "the people hate you. did you know that? it seems, based on our newest polls, that this feeling may have existed for some time. some drivel about gas and torture and execution and women going about bareheaded and driving cars and having jobs and flying planes. pretty weird. we're not sure how this happened, but we're going to form a panel to investigate this as soon as possible. in the meantime, you got a bunker?". what is it about the russians? they're so good at offering free or really cheap code for no better reason than they can and it always defies microsoft interventions. but governmentally there is a bit of a competence gap.

i'll stop here. not that any of you dirty little commies will have read any of this. and for that i salute you. i wouldn't either if i was a rigidly caught doctrinaire. lachaim.

lachaim, i say. damn your little commie eyes.

update:
p.s. what do you think? it's 9:20 pm and she is having one of her nightly fits. so, $25-$30 for her and her litter boxes? i will throw in the catnip bags, tennis balls, laser pointer, plastic bags, ink pens, shoelaces, chair arms, pants legs, screen doors, carpets, norway rats and friends' allergies this cat has destroyed. she's a real bitch. and warm. sleeps with me when it's too cold anywhere else. finds the first spot to knead, does that for maybe 5 minutes. then she finds another place to lie down and take a nap. so long as it's right next to me.
think i'll keep her a while longer.

Cyber Yard Sale

then, of course, there is the winnie the pooh night light (which i bought at a tv KVPR auction so i could talk to a certain belly dancer i was infatuated with).
and the "no exit" sign" (left with me by dillyn with whom i had THE BEST SEX OF MY LIFE for three weeks and then she disappeared).

and the clothes.
and the kitchenware.
and the candle holders.
and the rugs.
and the books.
and, oh, the baseball cards. talk about cards.
and the cat...what to do about the cat...
and my virginity, which i recently found hiding under the bed and am not sure i want to readopt, even if it works well in the bars.

Grandma's Sitting Up And Washing Herself

monthly natural gas bill: $90
monthly phone and internet bill: $55
monthly electric bill: $40
monthly trash and recycle pickup bill: $25
bi-monthly water bill: $90
monthly debt bills: $325
rent: $825
decision to return to the 'No for those and other reasons: priceless.

Not Your Normal SSM Post

my pal generik passed along a link to me today that i don't think even he could understand how much i would appreciate. there's a blogger out there writing about baseball cards in a most amusing manner. i had many minutes of enjoyment checking out this guy's posts. the one i've linked to in this post is very good. you don't even have to be a baseball card collector to appreciate it. oh, but if you are i have a collection of about 5000 mostly from 2000 up to the present that i would let go for a nominal fee. and when i say nominal, you know it's gonna be cheap.
on that note, i have to say that i'm feeling a spring cleaning mood coming on. what to do with the telescope i haven't used in over a year? 8" Celestron with a full array of lenses. hmmm. and the 24" flat screen tv still wrapped in its shipping shroud. and all of the baubles like the candle holders and dishware and kitchen appliances. or the gateleg table from the 1920's. well, i might keep that one.
then there are the futon couches that fold out into beds. and the corner pieces that will hold a tv or a computer.
the big box of music.
the bigger box of movies.
the books. oh my god, the books. by the way, Hunter Thompson's last compilation titled "Hey Rube" is a hoot. it's from his days as an ESPN sports journalist. damn funny and as wacky as ever. the dvd my sister sent me of a bunch of interviews he'd done over the years (dave letterman, conan o'brian, charlie rose and others) is fun, but it is obviously something someone duped from old vhs copies and HST is hard to understand. watching him interview keith richards is like watching a masonic handshake. you know it's important and you really want in on the joke, but they won't let you. the interview is to spoken english what shorthand is to the written. still and all, watching conan have to go to colorado, drink whiskey and shoot bigass guns to get his interview is funnier than an amoeba at a hermaphrodite's convention.
where was i?
oh yeah.
it's tough being an amateur heterosexual interior designer with ADD and commitment issues. and before you can ask the obvious joke question about whether i'm an amateur hetero or amateur designer: the answer is yes. i maintain my amateur status in all things. as it should be. forever and ever. amen.
so, back to moving things. do i take it all down to st. paul's thrift shop? some of it would just be going home again. seems a shame, but there's symmetry to it. kind of look at it as a rental. time served and on to the next lucky person. or i could do what i and a couple of friends used to do when i lived in seattle (before i moved back to the 'No). and that was to take what we could out to a garbage dump in the boonies and shoot the ever lovin' shit out of it. one of those buddies has been trying to get in touch with me. perhaps, the kitchen kabobbles need some good old-fashioned, all-american iraqification. and it would be good practice for me, because in about a year or so i expect the draft age to move up to 45 and i'll finally be eligible again for that free education i blew when i didn't study for my SAT's. so long as the PT at bootcamp is changed to the 16 ounce swig; nanosecond nachos munch; and body fat to muscle ratio is measured not in percentages, but in comfort zones. then i think i'm in and i can shoot things and spy on people and be like that really cool french guy who schmoozed all the english gits, ate all the caviar and champagne, and found the murderer in the last chapter.
god-damn it. i lost my train of thought. oh, the hyphen between god and damn it? it's so cool. have you ever watched mickey rourke? next time listen to how he says that. he always puts this pause where the hyphen goes. he makes sure it's two words and you know that he's pissed. just watched domino and he did it like three times. and then keira showed her boobies and...let's just leave it at that, shall we?
so, i got stuff to move. what to do? what...to...do? yard sale? free ads?
my neighbors keep lugging in lots of copies of newspapers. this has been going on for a week now. i don't know if they're paying 25 cents to clean out the street corner paper machines or they're taking the daily leftovers and i have no idea what they might be using them for. i do remember from when i was little and our family was very poor. my dad would wrap large bundles of newspaper in wireties and burn them in the fireplace like wood logs. the heat wasn't all that great, but it was better than shivering. and it looked neat. one thing my parents would do was buy some of that sparkly dust to throw on the fire so that it burned in different colors. so cool to a child. and it was a smart way of distracting from the harsh realities of a teacher's salary who was raising six kids. that reminds me that i never tasted real milk until i was about ten or so. all i knew until then was the powdered stuff. let me tell you, tasting 2% for the first time was like neil armstrong stepping onto the moon. life changing. history making. finally a true mustache. and i was no longer behind the curve compared to all of my friends.
i remember going over to michael's house, because he said his parents had a new tv. AND IT WAS IN COLOR!!! i had to know. it was glorious. and it filled me with shame, because he would no longer come over to my house and play. of course, his dad was a principal at one of the other schools. and michael had a ping pong table and a foosball table. none of us really liked him. we just used him for his toys. but going home to a small black and white tv was like being kicked out of saks fifth avenue and finding i could only shop at the salvation army.
but you know what? i watched martin luther king, jr give his biggest speech on that crappy tv and i remember it. we had the tv and this godawful black vinyl couch that sat about 40 and i remember him on the tv speaking and me being allowed to stay up past my bedtime even though i was all of about 4 or 5. my parents don't remember this, but i do (they remember the speech, just not me being in the room, but i do). so, that crappy tv will always have a splendored place in my heart. plus, i watched scooby doo, gilligan's island, the andy griffith show, sesame street, the flintstones, bewitched, i dream of jeannie,. oh man, just mentioning them brings back all of the pre-adolescent crushes i had. mary ann (she was a GOOD GIRL, ginger was too racy), daphne, aunt bee (okay, that one's weird, but i swear it was non-sexual maternal thing), betty...oh betty...oh mama, tabitha (yup) and, of course, jeannie with the "you can't see my belly button because that's not allowed on tv, but i bet you wish you could" and oh boy did i want to.
and, somehow, this all brings me to my grandma. like all children, i was born to two sets of grandparents. some of us knew all of them, some didn't. i knew three. my grandma on my dad's side and both on my mom's. my dad's mom died someime during my teens. she wasn't a very nice person and so it wasn't a truamatic loss to me. my mom's dad died in the 1980's and it did hit me. i was home with my sister the night the call came in. we were joking around with our parents when the call came. to watch my mother crumble while holding the phone was immediate in its cruelty and whim. without knowing what was being said we knew. my mother had lost her father. he died in his sleep, which is, i think, what we all wish for ourselves. no drawn-out, painful death. just a did not wake up moment. but it hurt me and my sister so much seeing that look on her face. and to see my dad knowing there was nothing he could do but hold my mother. inconsolable grief is the most wretched thing ever put upon humans.
after granddad died, it was down to one. my grandma. the woman who would visit with granddad every summer and i would run out to their guest room every morning and eat toast with raspberry jam and look at the stick figure pictures while they read from the good news bible. they and i had a routine and it was not to be fucked with. ever. we had fun and i learned and i loved them.
and now my grandma has collapsed. at the amazing age of 102. she just fell and they took her to the hospital and they told my aunt that she can no longer live by herself. she has to have assisted living. my grandma has always been adamant about living in rest homes. she hates them. she hates not being independent. she's legally blind (gave her license up when she was 96, voluntarily) and going deaf. she'd been fine up until now. but suddenly she falls to the floor and her cognitive powers are no longer what they were. she wants to go home. and she can't. and she doesn't understand. and my aunt can't make her understand. and my grandma is not all there anymore. she's confused and scared. and now we're waiting for her to die. because we know she's dying. because her worst fear was not being able to take care of herself. and the waiting is worse than the event itself. she is going to go out like uncle gene did. confused, unhappy, and lost. and no one will be able to console her in any manner which we would like to.
and i keep her quilt on my bed. the quilt was made of old clothes her mother cut from worn out stuff when grandama was a child. they were poor, too. they lived on a farm and they recycled clothing for as long as they could and then great grandma made it into quilts. and i have one. and it keeps me warm at night 80 years later.
they did what they had to. just as my grandma will do if she realizes she can't go home ever again. and i think she does deep within.
and i feel so bad for my aunt. she saw her husband succomb to alzheimer's disease in the last two years. she had to have him put away for his and her own safety and he died soon after. now, she has had to do the same thing to her mom. it's not fair for one person to have that much sorrow dumped on them in so short a time. there should be a limit. there should be a moment of rest in between. there should be a pause for reflection and a time of joy to celebrate each person.
and i wish i hadn't been the last child in my family. i wish i had been born sooner just so i'd have more memories of her. she taught me so much about caring and virtue and patience and loyalty and tolerance (when she met my son she took him straight to her heart) and so much of everything that it would fill 1000 lifetimes.
i didn't know this post was going to go this way. i apologize. i wanted it to be light hearted. instead, i've cried the whole time i wrote about my grandma. she's really special.
she came with my parents twice to visit me in seattle. i remember one of the the times we went to beatty's books on third avenue (a block from my apartment). mom was in a hurry to get there and grandma was lagging. i walked with her and she looked up at me at one point and said "your mother and her schedules. if she'd just slow down for once we might enjoy the day". when we got to the bookstore, grandma promptly found the right chair in front of the big street window and went to sleep. the beattys made sure that no one woke her up. and thanked me for bringing a woman of her literary taste to their shop. all i could do was laugh and thank them.



i miss my grandma.

Helen, We Hardly Knew Ye

so, everyone know who helen thomas is? no? okay. helen is the stanchion of of white house press corps ethics. she has had a front row seat at every press conference and daily briefing for a few decades. she has always been the first reporter allowed a question and all other reporters defered to her. until about 4 years ago when the bush cartel decided it din't like her queations anymore (i.e. the questions were tough, insightful and well prepared). since then she has literally been relegated to a back row seat and has not been called on once by either bush or mcclellan. she has since then called bush the worst president she has ever covered and the most dangerous to our country well-being. not because she's bitter, but because she can see through all of the smoke, lies and disingenuousness thrown out by this administration. and bush was right to shunt her aside if only to maintain any measure of credibility.
today, however, bush called on her. her question? "why did we go to war with iraq?". this question has not been asked once since the actual incident. and she has made no secret of what she would ask if allowed to. bush's response was...um...not really a response (surprise, surprise) so much as it was an attempt at more smoke and lies. she didn't let him escape, but continued to force him to address the actual question. the result was predictably depressing in light of what bush said or, rather, wouldn't say. in short, his answer was no answer at all. it was evasion and ducking, because he knows he has no viable reason for attacking iraq. only armchair quarterbacking and revision. remember the weapons of mass destruction that anyone with half a brain could tell was pure crap? niger yellowcake? the reasons why valerie plame was outed? or saddam hussein wouldn't let UN inspectors back into the country when it was us who booted them out right before we began bombing? then on to saddam being a brutal dictator who gassed his own people with our weapons of mass destruction some ten years earlier? engaged in brutal executions of enemies? was a bad, bad man and we were liberating the iraqi populace? if you don't, helen does. she is the grand dame of political reporters and brooks no bullshit.
if you were bush you wouldn't call on her either.
also, bush is saying once again that he never tried to link saddam to 9/11.
oy vey.
on a lighter note, i tried out the new cafe a couple of blocks away. very cool. their condiment bar is the backside of a VW bus with its back door flipped up. there is a Woodstock poster on the wall. while i was there today, they were trying to decide where to hang an old fender stratocaster. someone in the family has been collecting thermoses for a loooong time and these decorate the upper book shelf running the length of about half the place.very hippy dippy and happy. the license plate frame on the bus actually proclaims washington as the liquid sunshine state. ahem. my latte was good and the food smelled terrific. evidently, the family is a local legend. they had some kind of cafe or store something downtown, but decided to get out of there. i only had 30 minutes to soak in the ambience, because i was getting my first haircut since last summer next door from the liberal activist woman. good haircut, great conversation. one of her stickers said "beef: it's what's destroying your colon". a poem next to her mirror spoke of mothers distracting military recruiters until their sons and daughters could head for the hills and until there was no more need for recruiting. she found me a good radio station while i was there. she named her son after john lydon. she partied with sha na na and the who on a boat and got really puking sick. she's into new music, but loves todd rundgren, the ramones, the sex pistols (duh!). i just love getting professional haircuts from independents. you never know where the conversation is going to go.
so, i found a sliver of culture two blocks from my house. man, that's depressing. this town has almost nothing. but it IS two blocks from me.
it's raining today and feeling like it's still winter. we had some great sunshine yesterday and teases of it today, but the water is settling in for the evening.
have a great night, ya hear?

Nasty Nymphos Need My Nachos

On CBS News' "Face the Nation," Mr. Cheney sought to place the war in a broader context. "It's not just about Iraq, it's not about just today's situation in Iraq," he said. "It's about where we're going to be 10 years from now in the Middle East and whether or not there's going to be hope and the development of the governments that are responsive to the will of the people, that are not a threat to anyone, that are not safe havens for terror or manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction."

who's "we" exactly? we the people or we americans or we republicans or we adminstration historical figures or we the world or we not the threat or we the safe haven?
vietnam, at least, had something of a civil war going on...sort of. the ruling faction was being attacked by the rival faction who found foreign military support. and we had signed a really ill-advised treaty with them. so had france and another country. the french went in first...sort of. they got the shit knocked out of the forefathers. we took over for whatever reason besides the treaty. we've never admitted getting our ass kicked by the vietnemese, but something or ours was hit up. hard.
in iraq, we had nothing. saddam hussein ruled with an iron fist. the shi'ites could attend their mosques and practice their religion very quietly. but they could not disagree with any of hussein's decisions. otherwise, he would have to hurt them. and what they did bad, he did back twice. not pretty at all.
but we put him in place. we kept him in place. we watched his children grow up. we watched them frolic and gambol and then try to flee the country with something like a billion dollars in lots of different denominations (cash, gold, statues, bullion, jewelry, bonds, ancient figurines, literary works, land titles, biblical artifacts, blackmail of enemies, medals, pictures, antique furniture, rare animals...these boys had it all and, when push came to shove, they grabbed as much as they could in the time they had...and they loved their father for all he was worth...saddam is still doing what he likes to do, which is act the revolutionary and upset the proceedings with vehement rhetoric. this is his poison. he gets off on being pissed). then we saw them ripped to shreds by bullets. benny and clyde. it makes me think of o brother where art thou? when they're in the barn loft and clooney keeps saying "damn, we're in a tight spot". but, of course, the boys fuck it up. and die.
a fitting epitaph, maybe, to an entire family as it now must accept entry to the lowest echelon of the ruling class. these are the remnants of war. not just ours, but decades of internecine fighting. we just happened to be the latest foreigner to make a try.

forgot where i was going. nice night, y'all.

Jack...Off. Why Wouldn't You Ask For A Do-Over?

i have bad news and good news. the bad news is that the nasty burning sensation in your crotch is hereditary and not related to your habit of dry humping store mannequins. the good news is i just saved a shitload of cash by switching to allstate!
...seriously.
out of boredom the other night, i filled out an online auto insurance quote form. five different outfits emailed me quotes that would be laughable if i was a person into laughing. which i'm not, because i am a curmudgeon (not a title i chose; it was given me by some very...dear...friends). ergo, no laugh at joke.
but the local allstate office called me today. yes, called. at work. and offered me the same coverage i have with geico fo a buttload less plus renter's insurance (which i was supposed to get 4 months ago according to my lease). this group actually believed me when i said that i drive my car less than a thousand miles a year (unless, of course, i drive down to the 'No).
and renter's insurance? $21,000 worth. anyone got a match? no, really. i'd never do something like that on purpose. really. but it does remind me...where DID i put that lit cigarette? what's cool about the renter's is that i don't have to take pictures of every damn thing. so long as i know the make and model of stuff like the tv, telescope, computer, and whatnot it's cool. the only bad is that my baseball card collection falls under the "limited" category. no individual card is covered for more than $250. fortunately, i have only 5 or 6 that exceed that value. but the entire collection is worth only $1500 should catastrophe strike. of course, most people i know would say that catastrophe DID strike when i bought my first pack of cards and pulled out an autograph. what they don't understand is that this is my retirement fund. these things appreciate more than some bonds. buy a pack, pull the right card (which i have a habit of doing) and profit is guaranteed. oh sure, the purist collector would say "no, no. you can't put a price on these". to him/her i say," plplplplplpl!!!". yes i can. and now i have. so, shove off.

but enough about that. let's move on to politics, that animal i so love to dangler shiny objects in front of.
Finding inspiration from God, The Last of the Mohicans and The Lord of Rings, Katherine Harris told hundreds of conservative Christians Saturday that she is "a work in progress."
remember that this is the person who shut down recounting of the ballots in 2000 in florida. she, also, accepted money from jack abramoff ( i swear, how can anyone have a name that starts with jack and ends with off) and won't donate it or give it back. her own staff has asked her to drop out of this race. but when God calls...and i can understand that one. but lord of the rings? what, does she think she's running against trollocs or that dark lord himself? and then there's this little gem:
"...redirected my life to the Lord when I was only in the third grade..."
wow. to be that precocious. to be that enlightened. to be that full of shit.
third grade. no gum balls, paperwad spitting, pulling braids for her. nooooo. walking in the Light Of Jeeee-sus. bowing before the Almighty when every other child in the universe is playing sick on a Monday and counting marbles against the next playground matchup. she is truly unique. and full of shit. how desperate do you have to be to get up in front of an audience and claim rightiousness at the age of 8? does she truly believe the fundies can carry her to victory? then, there's this addendum:
"...blessed to be raised in a godly family..."
i keep hearing this country song at work, because i'm such a nice guy i let my lab bitch play his favorite station. the song starts off by telling us how this poor little girl was being raised without religion. both her parents were godless. and they drank. and they fought. and they were basically junkies with no moral compass. and every time i hear it i want to shoot the radio, because it's so morally self-rightious. if this poor little girl had only had God in her life, then everything else would have worked out. bullshit. and then i read about politicians raising the religion flag. even though they accept money from immoral assholes and won't give it back. even thought they shut down vote recounts when they knew it would screw their chosen one. even though their own backers tell them they suck at what they do. even though they suck up to fringe associates who fill their ears with what they want to hear and they don't stop to wonder if they aren't just giving a free ride to trollocs. but they're "blessed" to be raised in a godly family. by the way, republicans (of which harris is one) have a higher rate of divorce than democrats. coincidence?

and that is my rant for this evening. please stay tuned for your regularly scheduled program of insults should i decide to post another.

by the way, got to watch the new harry potter movie last night. oh yeah. it just keeps getting darker and darker. such a fun series. and hermione got her boobies. that's so cute. and harry is now, like, the shortest guy at the school. neville towers over him. great stuff from brendan gleeson. and michael gambon is doing a heckuva job standing for the late Richard Harris. the other stalwarts (maggie and alan and gary and robbie) just keep on having fun. and a nice touch having hagrid try to grab his girlfriend's ass at the dance.
anyway, we were talking politics or what passes for it nowadays. i think that most people are, by now, scandaled out. what with the spying and torturing and vote rigging and lobbyist payola and record deficit and lying about why we're in Iraq and shooting our friends in the face and stabbing them in the back and outing CIA agents and obstructing justice and flying prisoners to other countries to be tortured and opting India out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (but not pakistan) and forging documents to bolster the Iraq invasion and completely fucking up hurricane katrina (i'm walking on sunshine, we-ell...) and medicare and social security and gutting the treasury and ignoring global warming and trying to open alaska to oil drilling and defending the NRA and intimating that abortion should be outlawed in toto (why is it that being pro-choice means i want all women to have an abortion each and every, let alone any, time?) and granting faith-based nonprofit groups lots of money while giving almost none to outreach programs that won't adhere to very strict moralist rules and cozying up to the likes of pat robertson, ralph reed, bill o'reilly, rush limbaugh, ann coulter, jesse helms, rick "man on dog" santorum, randy cunningham, jack abramoff (again, jack...off), the Saudis, Dubai. it gets to be too much after a while. we can't keep track of the numbers. clinton had a blowjob. that was easy. carter lusted in his heart and let a bunch of spies, i mean embassy workers, get hijacked in iran. also easy. but isolated. this group has a new scandal just about every day and eventually we throw up our hands and say "fuck it".

you know what else sucks? i used to be able to change the time of my post. now, i can't. it's 7:16 on the left coast. adjust your wrist clocks as needed.

Tom Cruise Is Not Gay And Neither Is Chef

man, do i love yahoo news. it has a way of skewering the topic while providing information. the latest is the so-called controversy over South park having an episode yanked at the behest of Tom Cruise. Cruise denies it (well, one of his flaks does) and, according to yahoo, is an "avowed heterosexual". what the hell does that mean? professing one's love for women in public? while jumping on a couch? and telling talking heads that they know nothing about the history chemical imbalances? while he does (i'll bet he does)?
i don't think i've seen anyone in the public eye work harder to convince the world at large that he is NOT GAY than mr Cruise. you'd think after failed marriages to mimi rogers and nicole kidman, a supposed romance with penelope cruz and what ever this thing is with katie holmes (all sans biological children) that we would just admit and accept that he MUST BE NOT GAY. how many times must he change babes before we will give up on our demonic crusade to OUT HIM? i personally feel sorry for the man and all the energy he has been forced to expend defending his sexuality when it could have going toward making more award winning movies. like the mission impossible series. or collateral where he put white stuff in his hair. or that one where he plays the shallow guy who is forced to look within himself and realize he is better than that. oh wait, that's pretty much all of them. god, i love him. if only he weren't so STRAIGHT.

Thinking Of Renaming My Blog "Bowel Movement". It Feels That Good

oopsie. got a little excited there at the battle front for the hearts and minds of indecisive voters who might think that we're getting nothing accomplished over in Iraq. which we are. just yesterday or so, we did an air assault...the largest since 2003. and we captured like 50 insurgents and weapons caches and other stuff. it's just that, well, oh hell, read the Time article. effed it up or just needed a photo op. most likely the latter. bush's and cheney's popularity goes into the toilet and they see the water swirling, what do they do? go and terrorize an area that has needed "cleansing" 4 or 5 times in the past couple of years. and invite all of the embedded reporters. one, at least, of whom reported the truth of the mission. so pathetic. but then, my lab bitch at work still thinks that iraq must have been involved with the 9/11 bombings because bin Laden is an Arab. he and i were listening to the country music station (he listens, i tune out) and a song came on and the singer was crying about if you like your freedom thank the soldiers over in Iraq revenging us for 9/11. i had to stop what i was doing and yell at the radio.

Him (lab bitch): what the fuck are you yelling at?

Me: i can't believe they're still selling this type of bullshit to us. does anyone believe it anymore?

Him: what?

i explain to him that fact that Iraq was not involved in the attacks.

Him: well, it was the bin laden guy.

Me: yeah, it was. bin laden.

Him: well, he's from there. he's Arab. isn't he an Arab? It's the middle east?

Me: yes, he is. but that's a damn big area. and he's from saudi arabia and was hiding in afghanistan when we went after him. not in iraq.

Him: oh...um...that's fucked up. are you sure?

Me: yeah, it is, i am...what is?

Him: fuck, i don't know. you wanna change the station?

Me: nah, that's okay. i like this song.

(what i yelled was "oh shut the fuck up you stupid fucking redneck sister fucking cocksucker asshole liar shitforbrains dumbfuck")

what i meant was "being the spineless liberal that i am i must beg to differ with your assessment even though i recognize you as an informed, pro-america, patriotic, non-terrorist sympathizing, red-blooded, true blue, anti-choice, anti-feminist, jesse helms and roy moore backing, rush limbaugh and bill o'reilley and sean hannity listening, UN basher who thinks all towelheads are inscrutable and look alike and we as United States white citizens are the new supreme beings on the block and have been since God created the world 6 or 7000 years ago and began painting Jesus as a petite-nosed Caucasian who never seemed to get a sunburn even though he lived in a desert region."

that's what i meant to say. because i don't want to offend anyone. it's not politic or in anyone's best interest to offend or point out logical anomalies concerning our country's history over the past 30 years or so or ask why the president is mistruthing or why the press daily trots out whatever it is the white house is spewing for breakfast or whether any of us have a grip on the realities of our global territorial rights (notice that i am not using the words hegemony, imperialism and xenophobia, because those are words that have no place in the lexicon of civilised discourse). all i mean to say is that perhaps, just perhaps, kinky friedman had it right when he sang "they ain't making jews like jesus anymore".

and, by the way, the kinkster is running for governor of texas and any help you can give him would be greatly appreciated. he's all for shutting down the border for a while, but he's just as in favor of gay mariage, because he truly believes that "gays should have the same right to be just as miserable as the rest of us". a sentiment i couldn't agree with more.

Mea Culpa? Try Mea Assa!

"You can call George Clooney an Oscar winner. You can call him a liberal. Just don't call him a blogger.The celebrity-populated Huffington Post has removed the actor's riff on lily-livered Democrats after the star complained the site misrepresented him as one of its bloggers.According to a statement Wednesday, Clooney said Arianna Huffington, the site's namesake and political pundit, cobbled together sound bites from Larry King Live and quotes from London's Guardian for an entry, "George Clooney: I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It!," that was published Monday."These are not my writings. They are answers to questions, and there is a huge difference," Clooney said.To the New York Daily News, Clooney was blunt: "I feel abused," he said.The Clooney entry made headlines for its frank assessment of ostensive opposition party leadership in the run-up to theIraq war: "We knew the link betweenSaddam Hussein andOsama bin Laden was bulls--t. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.' It makes me want to shout, 'F--k you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.' "Clooney hasn't disavowed the sentiment, but he did demand Huffington publish a disclaimer, he told the Daily News."She told me that it's a big no-no in the blogosphere, where people are supposed to write their own pieces," Clooney said in the newspaper.For her part, Huffington insists the blog imbroglio was the result of "an honest misunderstanding" among those in Clooney's camp.In a post Wednesday, Huffington wrote that the Clooney entry went live "only after we received written approval from his representative to do so."Huffington admitted that, yes, her team pieced together the item from old interviews. But before the so-called "sample blog" was published, she wrote, it was reviewed and okayed by a publicist for Clooney's Oscar-nominated Best Picture entry, Good Night, and Good Luck."Any misunderstanding that occurred, occurred between Clooney and the publicist," Huffington wrote. "We based our decision to post on the unambiguous approval we received in writing."In another Huffington Post entry, movie producer Jane Hamsher wrote that she was with Huffington the night her Web host recruited Clooney to join the blogging world. "And the conversation went down as she describes it today," she wrote.Hamsher openly wondered if Clooney distanced himself from his byline because he "got spooked [by] Fox News" or because "he just doesn't know his office bungled the communique."In the Daily News, Clooney spoke of being studied--not skittish. "I stand by what I do," he said in the newspaper. "But I'm very cautious not to take giant steps onto soapboxes, because I think they're polarizing."Huffington seemed sensitive to the target that is the Hollywood star on a soapbox, telling the Los Angeles Times she held off on posting the Clooney item until after theAcademy Awards.Clooney, who was up for threeOscars claimed the Best Supporting Actor trophy for the political thriller Syriana.The Huffington Post launched last year. While the likes ofGwyneth Paltrow and Warren Beatty haven't blogged there yet, as advance publicity buzzed they would, the likes of John Cusack, Larry David, Al Franken, director Nora Ephron andBillMaher have.If you're awaiting the next contribution from George Clooney, don't hold your breath.Telling the Daily News that Huffington had all but threatened him over their fracas, Clooney retorted: "Well, screw you!"

i'd like to start by saying that clooney is a big poopie head. i take back everything i said about he and i being almost exactly alike (i.e. the good looks, the schwing and all that). and i will not, repeat will not, be erasing his blog from my blog just because he didn't actually say the stuff yet. i will not participate in revisionist history even if the initial piece was made from cloth as of now. that doesn't matter. what does matter is that he might have said it at some point in the future, which further in the future would be the past, which would then mean that he indeed would have been going to say it already and had. just because he didn't say it then doesn't make it any less future true.there. i feel vindicated for the things that may happen without my knowing them yet.

Back To Politics

"...a mistake experts say most law students wouldn't make..."
my goodness. our government can't even win a slam-dunk case against an admitted terrorist. they convict him and blow the penalty phase, because they can't play by the rules (which are set up to favor the prosecution). oh boy. i have such trust in this group of yahoos that i'm thinking of trading for euros.

"...It's starting to come from Republicans, and they are the ones who must rescue the country from themselves..."
garrison keillor has something to say over at the chicago tribune about the woes of our current world. i like the poetic irony of republicans being the ones who need to save us from what they created, because the democrats most likely can't.

"...Our goal is to improve the quality of customer service and phone support in the US. This free website is run by volunteers and is powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use..."
this might be cool. a website that teaches you how to get through all of the phone crap and talk to a real live person. how many of us have spent 10 minutes navigating the maze of push-this-button in order to find out that they're closed or you should have called this number when you could have bypassed it all and found someone? i haven't tried it yet, but one of you might.

Heh. They Said "Crapo"

so, what the fuck does an Idaho politician have to do with the Virgin Islands? and what does his spokesperson mean by saying that states should have the right to determine states' business? the Virgin Islands aren't a state, never were and most likely never will be...though it would be cool to be able to fly there without a passport. oh, and it's always great to see Crapo's name in the news. now, if he would only run for president. "elect me and i promise you'll get what you deserve".

Crapo donations questioned
Related stories
Idaho government and politics
Associated Press
March 15, 2006
BOISE –
U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, received more than twice as much money in donations from people in the U.S. Virgin Islands than from his home state last year, according to the Federal Elections Commission.
That prompted the Senate Majority Project, a Democratic interest group, to question Crapo's involvement in the islands, which have a population of 110,000 people.
Crapo had received $39,000 from Virgin Islands residents by the end of the 2005-06 election cycle, compared with just under $20,000 from Idaho residents.
Lobbyists for the islands are trying to reduce the number of days a person must remain on the islands to be considered a resident, an issue that could have tax benefits.
Currently, under a 2004 act of Congress, individuals must spend at least half the year in the Virgin Islands to be considered a resident for tax purposes. Lobbyists would like to see that reduced to an average of 122 days per year over a three-year period.
Crapo, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into the issue.
"He's very much involved in the philosophy states should be able to determine states' business," Crapo spokeswoman Susan Wheeler told the Idaho State Journal. "And in the same vein, territories should be able to determine the tax benefits that bolster business and the economy."
Wheeler said that encouraging economic development in the islands would help reduce an illegal drug and slave trade.
"It's in the United States' best interest to have the Virgin Islands prosper," she said.

Ramblin' Rogue, Part Deux

Airplanejane has her best line from the Rogue: "draw me a map and i'll go down on you". not bad, not bad at all, though needing a map implies that the asker is a bit on the, shall we say, ignorant side. Now, my favorite lines from the Rogue (and I can hear all of you panting and drooling in antici...pation) are:
It isn't gay if it's done in the Rogue (Nile Seguin)

and

Prison Sex doesn't count as cheating (mustang)

and

Let's sell baby sized tee shirts that say "Spawn of the Rogue" (kamotion and Jen)

and

"All of the box office goes to the performers, the other half goes to my bar tab" (either Laaz or me, not too sure which. the party was that good)

I like solitaire's changing errogenous to erroguenous on APJ's blog commment section. And thanks again to all of you who made my stay a wonderful time. Mustang, Lecram, Kamotion, Jade Ed Gypsy (by the way jade, i got an email from someone who would like to "borrow" your play), Jen, Blake, Kien, Laaz, APJ, um, the rest of you know who you are. rock on.

By the way, I am making a dvd for Kamotion of her wedding last year and the party afterwards as well as one for me and Lecram. Let me or Lecram know if you're interested. It will be much cheaper to try and dupe it ourselves as the people doing it for me want $10 a pop. The tape is raw and unedited with lots of me talking behind the camera (sorry). it includes the wedding, the awards, and the party. lots of band and crowd shots. some interview type things and walking around. the wedding alone is worth it...a real tear in the eye moment. let me know and i'll see what i can do.

Ramblin' Rogue

and what was up with mike smooching on dr. o? and the ass grabbing going on between mike, mustang, john and dr. o? and who did laaz lock tongues with? and why was steph entertaining a group of young men? and should someone ask sara's friend if it's true what they say about rwandan-canadians? and if kamotion's happily married, why was she mashing with the most virile stud in the crowd? and how did the bartender get so drunk? and why was she asking us to get mike drunker than her so he wouldn't realize how drunk she was? and when did blake start yelling at the audience as part of his act? and, finally, did anyone see lecram get in a fight with a bush this year?

The Rogue Minus Photos

well now, kiddies. let's talk Amtrak. there's something i'm never going to do again! i spent more time coming and going than i did visiting. 30 hours down (6 hours worth of delays like snow on the tracks, broken switches, freight trains whose cargo was more important than me) and 27 hours back. 50 hours in the 'no. add to that the drunk sitting behind me on the way down whose breath was, shall we say, redolent (hard alcohol and ginger ale) and who spent the entire trip hitting on the 16 year old girl next to him; the old couple veteran travelling couple across from me who chose to act as tour guides to everything ("oh, look at those mobile homes", "no, those are, um, modular homes", "oh, well those modular homes are in a very odd place. still, they're quite nice" and "how many times is that girl going to walk up and down the aisle? no one can get any sleep" "oh, i know, this is her third time in 10 minutes", "no, it's her fourth", "what?", "her fourth!", "whatever. why isn't the conductor doing anything about this?") which never ended; the schizophrenic woman who told her entire relationship story at least 3 ("no, it's her fourth", "what?") or 4 times in a dry, cottonmouthed sort of way; and the entire train crew who decided they'd had enough of our complaining halfway through the first trip. yum.
on the way back, it was better except for the businessman who cussed in his sleep when he wasn't snoring loudly. at one point, a train crewperson tried to prod him awake, but left without success saying "at least we know he's still alive". i was chastised by the snack car guy for wandering around in my socks. where does it say that i have to wear shoes at all times? of course, one hour later there was an announcement that i had to. probably didn't help that i stared the guy down and ordered my coffee anyway. $2.50 for a cup of bad coffee. $7.50 for a half-heated sandwich and small bottle of water. i heard the "burgers" were $6. i guess this is what happens when the government keeps cutting your funding.
let's see, there was the overfilled trashbag that tipped and cascaded down a flight of stairs. then there was the occasional scent of really, really potent ganja (some smelling burnt, some not). many more smokers than usual were riding both ways, so the official smoking stops were a cause for universal celebration. at one point, we had been stuck inside the train for over 5 hours in oregon. when the track switch finally got fixed, the conductor announced that the next stop would become a smoking stop. i think he knew that mutiny was close at hand and wisely chose to avert it.
the chairs on amtrak are not as comfortable as i remembered. my ass was so sore within the first 5 hours that finding an easy position to sit in became impossible. sleeping was a series of 10 minute naps. i probably shouldv'e eaten the vicodin.
the weather was another factor. it snowed in washington. it dumped in oregon. it rained, hailed and thundered in california. i was blamed repeatedly for bringing the foul weather with me to the festival. fortunately, kamotion was there from new jersey and i made sure to point her out. every time.
but enough about that. what about the festival. i arrived in fresno at 6pm and cabbed it over to veni vidi vici's just in time to grab a beer and settle in for blake jones's "ill advised solo show". great stuff. a liberal christian talking (well, singing) smack back at the right wing fundies who are attempting to hijack our country's morality. and he did so in very charming, sweet, innocent, vodka swilling fashion. okay, so he wasn't drinking that night due to a cold. but he coulda been. great songs and set-up. whatta way to start the rogue (plus, he's one of my bestest friends, so i had one obligation show out of the way). the rest of the evening was spent traipsing around with lecram and kamotion, visiting venues, saying hi to everyone and drinking to stay awake. along the way, i was able to pay homage to mustang and surprise airplanejane and give a long awaited hug to jade ed gypsy and trade riffs with kien(none of whom know how to blog responsibly, i.e. with any regularity). eventually, the hard core (some of it anyway) wound up at VVV's for shoptalk, dirtdishing, egostrokes and tippling...just like old times.
the next morning was slow wakeup at lecram's pad. of course, the first stop was at javawava for some eye opener. then, the festival madness for me began. i met my son and we hit two shows. the first was "it's okay to like porn". and, it turns out, it is okay. this show had been touted as offensive. cool. i'm a tough sell on the offensive and the you'll-laugh-out-loud. i did laugh out loud. but i wasn't offended. if anything, i came away instructed. i didn't know you could buy a vibrating cockring. food for thought. a good show that is about 3 or 4 months of serious development away from being a great show. blow-up dolls, average-sized dildos (well, to me anyway), a hardcore movie playing in the background, a dirty little sock puppet, stories of finding his parents' toys and playing with them (and his parents came to one of the shows. i think they were in the front row at the one i saw, mom was in hysterics). a jesus joke that had me in stitches. a running joke about the taste of semen. a dead baby joke that i was sure would make someone get up and leave. but no one did. very fun and totally rogue.
after that came one of my other obligation shows (not that lecram would have cared one way or the other): "lies my father told me" by, of course, lecram. i have to say i was a bit let down. he didn't bother to memorize his script. but it was really good writing. no, seriously (he hates it when people tell him his writing is good after seeing one of his shows), his stories are wonderful. i had heard all but one before, but it was great to hear them again in a staged setting with 50 other patrons hanging on every word. his style is very low-key, but in your face at the same time. he compels you into the story and dares you to look away. and his last line is a challenge laced equally with arrogance and invitation. "these are my stories. what have you got?". all in all, very well done. a little loose, but that's what happens when you're running the whole damn show and trying to perform. trust me on this. it's why i started dropping lines and whole pages the last two years. it becomes one or the other at some point. unless, of course, you're jaguar bennett.
then, it was on to the 7 pm show for jade ed gypsy's "here and now". the third of my obligation shows. and i have to warn you: obligation doesn't necessarily mean "oh man, i don't wanna, but i hafta". what it can mean is "i wanna AND i hafta". this was jade's first show which she had written. she has directed a show in every rogue festival since way back in...aught'2 (that's 2002 to you young'uns). but this year she had taken the next step and written her first feature piece, which i was supposed to star in. i came away very gratified and satisfied. the two actors did a more than reasonable job and i found myself at times not gnashing my teeth over spots i knew i could have done better. you see, i don't go to see plays, because no one likes to sit with me. evidently, i mutter. and what i mutter tends to be less than supportive of what i see happening on stage. evidently, i think i'm the best goddam actor in the world...well, fresno. and i can't be impressed. hell, i've been known to want to school actresses on how to give their lines. sad, really. anyway, the actors did well with the material and i was pleasantly impressed with jade's writing abilities for her first time. perhaps, the arcs weren't as high as they could be and some of the jokes were in-jokes, but she did in her first attempt better than i will ever be able to. and my hat's off to her until next year when i expect to be impressed yet once again.
now, it's 8 pm and time for dinner with my son. we supped at livingstone's. he had the new orleans burger. i had the mushroom and jack. he had the curly fries. i had the steak fries. we used both ketchup and ranch dressing. he drank copious amounts of coffee. i never got a refill on my iced tea. the conversation was great and i learned a lot about his current life and i saw again how much i miss him. he's grown into an intelligent, thoughtful, conflicted young man. and he's too young for all of that crap. he should be testing his immortality and celebrating his immunity. maybe i moved from there too soon.
anyhoo, then it was time for the closing night party. which is part of the reason we started the rogue in the first place. one, as an excuse to have a big fucker of a party, and two, to get our own shit on stage for really cheap. who knew other people would want in? who knew they would accept lollipops for awards? who knew they would balk at the entry price and then wonder why they didn't get into the rogue before when they saw the money they'd made? who knew that canada could be so effing funny at our expense (okay, well i did)? who knew that last year and this year would mark a turning point in the rogue and establish it as THE party of the year? last year, no one left the party. it rocked and rocked and rocked all night long. all night. all night. all night long. lollipops really were handed out as awards and they were a hit. at any other festival it's certificates or whatnot that celebrate the eliteness of the event. not here. and this year we didn't bother to hand anything out. just the mention of your name and your award was enough (though i really think they should be given an excuse to approach the stage). and this year, lecram and jaguar got a bit sassy in their speeches to the masses. not just thank you and keep it up. no, this time it was we rock and the world had better take notice, because it ain't gonna stop and if everyone doesn't get on the love train then we're going to screw them prison-style. or something like that. i remember being invited up on stage as one of the has-beens and nodding like crazy until lecram mentioned his ass.
the party was insane. once again, no one left. once again, the band rocked and everyone danced and drank copious amounts of alcohol. everyone hugged and laughed and capered and reveled in the moment of an event so important to this town and to themselves. as for the core members who make this work each year, the party is the first and only chance to relax and celebrate another job well done. in a month next year's festival will get underway with meetings and chores. but the smiles on the performers' faces is almost better than getting paid for this crap.
oh, and being an alumnus has its benefits. i didn't pay for a single drink. if i didn't have a beer in my hand someone was buying me one. and i didn't have a damn thing to do with this year's gig. man, i have to quit shit more often.
i did, however, manage to spend almost $200 at the festival. some of it was on music cd's from the performers (my local music list is quite extensive), tickets to shows, dinner for me and the son, the cab, outrageous tips to the wonderful bartenders (katie and lief and hillary), a tee shirt that i should NOT have been required to pay for being the awesome support group that i am for lecram, coffee at javawava, and sundry. and this is the other thing that we have done for the community. 7000 tickets (give or take) get sold and a lot of money gets spent in the Tower District. people who want nothing to do with us make money. those who support us make lots of money, because we in turn push their services. it's a win-win situation. the performers walk off with all of the box office and the local restrauteurs and caffeine pushers make out as well. and we the poor roguesters continue to beg. that's anarchy at its finest, because it sleeps well at night nestled up against capitalism. knowing that its ends are being met and who knows what the next gig will hold in store for it.
sunday was the Brunch. food scarfing time and general relaxation and don't talk shop for two hours. the core meets and eats. the afterglow continues, but is not mentioned too often. food is the important focus. as is the thought that we all like each other still and are probably willing to continue working together. we ate at the Tang Dynasty, a chinese buffet place. lots of food, too many choices, and all you can eat. i made three trips myself. however, no matter how hard i looked i could find anything except...Tang. so, i had sprite, because izabella was drinking it. and i know not to differ too much from bella. she's my girlfriend, you see. and a very demanding one at that. what she wants to do or say or play i go along. it doesn't help that she's in kindergarten or something like that. you can't reason with a kindergartner. actually, you can't reason with any female. seriously, when's the last time you were able to use NASCAR as an arguing point? she was a trendsetter, though. she got soft ice cream in a very small cone. i saw that and followed. then came a few others in our party. it became a running theme. the, hugegargantuanmustang walked back with a cone cradled between one finger and it was on. even laaz got one and he doesn't like ice cream.
so, lunch ended. we all hugged and made promises of undying love and getting together and visiting and trading dna and leaving spouses. and it was just me and lecram and kien and kamotion and bella and APJ and jag and devon and nile seguin ("fear of a brown planet". didn't see it, because i'd seen it twice last year at the san francisco fringe festival and figured he'd earned all of the money he was going to get out of me and now was the encore i never got before) at javawava, drinking caffeinated beverages and riffing. kien got his rock star moment when another rogue musician bought a cd and asked him to autograph it. seguin got in a good riff on refusing to autograph and calling for security. seguin continued to make us laugh, because he is a master at riffing on the conversaqtion at hand. he never stepped out of it and he never tried to dominate. but when he had a chance he could shut us up for 5 minutes at a time. other than the laughter. we closed down javawava, a theme in keeping with the rest of the weekend and parted ways. i went with lecram and we hung at his pad until it was time to catch the train.
and the rest is misery.
and if you were expecting pictures from me from the wekend...call marcel. he downloaded them, my computer fucking fucked them. i downloaded them, too. then, i couldn't access them. now, they no longer exist. all i have left of the weekend is this:

my computer and blogspot not wanting to cooperate in any fashion whatsoever.

Me and Georgio Down By The Schoolyard

George Clooney is to many merely a pretty face and a Hollywood elitist out of touch with whatever reality is supposed to look like nowadays. But take away the looks, the fame, the power, the I.Q. and the money, and what do you have? Me.
The following is a recent article he wrote for the Huffington post:

"I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it.
Too many people run away from the label. They whisper it like you'd whisper "I'm a Nazi." Like it's dirty word. But turn away from saying "I'm a liberal" and it's like you're turning away from saying that blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, that women should be able to vote and get paid the same as a man, that McCarthy was wrong, that Vietnam was a mistake. And that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11.
This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?). But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we're all allowed to question authority. We have to agree that it's not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to speak out.
That's one of the things that drew me to making a film about Murrow. When you hear Murrow say, "We mustn't confuse dissent with disloyalty" and "We can't defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home," it's like he's commenting on today's headlines.
The fear of been criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled." It makes me want to shout, "Fuck you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic."
Bottom line: it's not merely our right to question our government, it's our duty. Whatever the consequences. We can't demand freedom of speech then turn around and say, But please don't say bad things about us. You gotta be a grown up and take your hits.
I am a liberal. Fire away."

just got back from the Rogue festival. will be posting tomorrow (well, later today) on my experiences with photos!

A Rogue HNT From Washington

i discovered this picture recently. unearthed is more like it. and this is not my normal start to an HNT. but i thought i had lost this picture a long time ago and it is one of my favorites from a high school long covered in the dust of history. this picture is of five soccer players for the Sanger High School varsity team. This is the only year in the history of the school (to this day) that a soccer team won the league championship (and did it undefeated). from the left is Mitch (my defensive wingman who actually scored a goal once from the 50 yard line), Sean (nasty midfielder with a penchant for being in front of the opposing goal in order to score the "garbage" goals and punched out an opposing player the year after i graduated), Matti (my Finnish exchange brother who had talent we'd never dreamed of and never hesitated to show it to us while laughing...i got a lot of free beer and pot from the other players for having him live at my house once we won the championship), Ed (um, he sat a lot waiting for the game to get out of reach before being put into the scrum), and me (short skinny fullback stopper whose favorite past-time was knocking people down for no better reason than they were closer to the ball than me and checking my hair to make sure it was winging out properly). but the true beauty of this picture is threefold. one: you can see we're all happy as can be. we're having so much fun succeeding and hanging. two: the innocence. three: the hat. what a hat. mitch finally did get sent home from school for the hat (like i did for a sex wax shirt, a hussong's cantina shirt and a sleeveless shirt that i had worn in the honor choir's year end public medley. and all of mine happened in one day). what a fucking hat. almost as good as my Campus Life football jersey with the number 69 on it. almost no one got it. um, Campus Life was the come to god social group at the time. most of us used it to meet chicks from other schools. school pregnancy could probably have been cut by 1/3 if that group had been banned.

let's move on, shall we?

also in this group of pictures i found was this little gem. now, most of you are used to seeing my ass or some other provocative piece of my physical ensemble, but i looked at this photo and realized that this is about as naked as half-nekkid can get. i mean, this is probably the most nekkid i can get. this is Dork personified. it was the sadie hawkins dance and the girl with the 200 i.q. asked me to go (no figuring there). i'm wearing tie pants for crying out loud. and, yes, the bow ties are real. and she did try to use the key on my pants later on. now, why did i go to a dance with a genius nerd? i don't know other than i was involved with all of the school groups (i.e. geniuses, jocks, greasers, gang members, geeks, losers and misfits). i was a renaissance man who didn't care who you were so long as we could hang and have fun. and this chick (we'll call her...sharon) was fun. until we got on the dance floor. i had never to this point been exposed to modern dance. at the time, i was rather embarassed by her technique. in hindsight, she was madonna in a cow town.
and we're moving on.
if you can't read it, it says "not afraid". it is a website created in response to the 9/11 attacks. my friend lecram came over, shot this and then "fixed" it on photoshop. this is the quintessential me living in the 'No. back yard, plants and flowers everywhere. a beer, a smoke, The Hat, the hair, and nothing but time. and fading beauty. i truly am the bette davis of the flabby, single heteros.

and i just love this negative of my favorite tattoo. and that's all i got to say about that. Happy HNT and go Rogue, you magnificent bastards!

No Title Really, Just A Long Post That Goes Nowhere

“reject confrontation in favor of accommodation”
what the fu...? it's better to accomodate criminal activity than to confront it? and, yes, this is criminal activity. flagrantly so. congress created a law to stop presidents and spy agencies from doing exactly what the president and one of his spy agencies are doing right now. so, the word on the street is that the republicans are going to try and pass a new law that loopholes the last law, because it's their guy in the oval office. and what's the loophole? simply creating a subcommitee that bush has to report to about his illegal spying. and the makeup of this subcommitee? 4 republicans, 3 democrats. someone should tell them to beware abusing power in this manner. the next election just might put a democrat in and he or she would have all of these neat, new ways of endrunning laws. and the republicans would have only themselves to kick in the ass. not that they could it in the first place if there wasn't a lobbyist around to point it out. not that a lobbyist would be that stupid...unless, of course, he's under indictment and hoping to shave years off of his sentence.
if y'all been reading my blog for some time, then you might remember me talking about the possibility of vote machine rigging in florida and a man who exposed a congressman who attempted to buy software that would change vote counts. here is an interesting essay (complete with lots-o-links) that speaks to the national scandal no one wants to touch.
wow. this is not what i would have thought to find: the majority of americans believe god created adam just as described in the bible. no news, however, if eve came out as expected. now, before y'all go off on a rant about how atheistic i am, let me just tell you that this is not a religion bashing note. i like god. i like the idea of a supreme being fucking with the petri dish. i just don't buy into organized religion and i definately do not get on with literalists. i have my church and my sanctuary and my place to go for confession and meditation. and none of those are within a square light year of people who think tithing and sunday church are the golden ticket into heaven. they have their place in the stucture of normal society, but they are balms for the soul, not guarantors of redemption. but anyway, to read that more than 50% of us think adam was made from clay in a day astounds me. perhaps, though, the real truth is that most people just don't want to think...or add...or go to a museum.

have you ever noticed that when waterloo by abba comes on the radio you just want to stop what you are doing and groove to the music? or is it just me? i think muriel's wedding corrupted me. but, man, do i get my groove on. sometimes i think i'm a gay dancer in a hairy hetero body.

so, tomorrow my vacation begins. i catch the train at 10:30. 6 glorious days of not being at work and getting to hang out with some old friends. but not so fast. i had to make the decision to go into to work at 6 in the morning tomorrow so as to calibrate a new hydraulic compression machine so that my lab bitch can run it while i'm gone. fuck me with a swizzle stick. we just bought out two labs and my lab got some neat toys. that's the upside. the downside is that through poor planning my boss waited until the day before i go on vacation to actually go get the equipment. so, i get to find the proper speeds by which we break concrete and grout cylinders of various sizes when i should be sleeping in. trust me, though, i will not be charged a day's vacation for coming in (gotta love being on salary, i walk in for five minutes, sneeze and go home sick and i'm paid for the entire day and tomorrow will be one of those days).
also, i now have an oven that goes to 1500 degrees faranheit (yours only goes to eleven) and will burn oil out of asphalt, tell me how much organic material exists in a sample of dirt and calculate pi to the nearest parsec. ain't that cool.
two amazing toys. if i could bring them home and make love to them i would. and never leave the house again. reminds me of an alteration to a cat stevens song i once heard:
and if i could ever suck my dick
awayyyyyy ayyyy
i'd never leave the house.
but tomorrow i get on the train for a 24 hour trip. and i will need to find the porter who smokes and keep an eye on him. some stops are long enough to get off and have a puff. and the porter knows every one. amtrak no longer allows smoking in the beer car. understandable for the most part, but overnighters like me should have a safe area in which to do our nasty deed. otherwise we tend to fire weapons indiscriminately. and if i had my compression machine with me i just might put the conductor's head in it to check his skull's ultimate psi. anyhoo.
so, this is it. in a day i'm in californighaye and hanging with the heathens.

Rogue At The Piggly Wiggly

wanna see some cool ad space for the Rogue? aughra over at bad news blonde did a collage for the festival at my request. check it out. she totally rocks.

oops. dick cheney is less popular than o.j. simpson and michael jackson. the good news is that he's still slightly more popular than paris hilton (huh? she could be my veep anyday).

now, you know i looooove anonymous commenters. especially the ones i can identify through my magical powers. so, i'm down with someone not wanting to post a real name (hey, none of us do!) for reasons of security. in new jersey, however, a politician is attempting to force anyone on the internet to include their legal name if they wish to make noise of any kind. "bringing civility back into the discussion" or some such nonsense is how he puts it. check it out.

ooh, bad moon rising. don't piss off the scientists on their own turfizzle. some of the pencil necked geeks are taking it to da man (that would be bush and his (cough) appointees).

and again. gay penguins cannot be trusted. do not open the door for them, even if they are holding morman pamphlets. turn off the porch light, hide the eggs and call 9-1-1. you people don't seem to realize just how serious this is. if gay penguins are allowed to adopt and have books written about them, then no human child is safe from their "turn all human children into sissies" agenda. and this is evidently what the gay penguins have in mind. it's not enough that they've convinced male pandas to not have sex ever again (repeat after me: eucalyptus leaves yummy, female pandas fat and stupidly inscrutable). it's not enough that gay penguins are the reason for the dodo bird's demise (little known fact: penguins and dodos once fought for breeding territory. you do the math). some scientists will try to convince you that penguins are not gay, they're just extremely nearsighted. which is a fact. and some anthrpologists will tell you that when two male penguins are kept in captivity since birth and have no females around they may feel the need for a little good-ol-boy fun. but i'm here to tell you that the gay penguin agenda is also a fact. and they're everywhere. did you know there are penguins in australia? a country that doesn't know snow. a country that touts its manliness 24/7 with movies like crocodile dundee and rugged actors like russel crowe, guy pearce and hugo weaving. a continent of great white sharks, poison spitting lizards and really big beer. you might be saying right now, "no. penguins in the outback? totally nuts. how can this be?". yet, they are there. and some of them have to be gay and looking to adopt. look at the numbers: if, on the average, one out of ten humans is gay and we outnumber the penguins by like a lot (many researchers put the ratio at 10:1), then it just proves that one out of every penguin must be gay. makes you think twice before visiting the zoo.
and don't get me started on puffins and sea otters.


-does this need anything said that's not said already? just look at the coifs. clinton's all over that. not to mention the chino eyes. clinton had the humboldt, bush mistook ecstasy for aspirin. boooooring. plus, he gets no pie!

"We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other". this was said in defense of a committee vote to not investigate illegal eavesdropping. remember, there is a law in place since 1978 ( i believe ) that orders a president to ask the court for permission to eavesdrop. the court has turned down 4 ( i believe ) requests in a lot of years. this can be asked for almost three days after surveillance starts. if it's turned down, then no one is allowed to talk about what they saw. not too shabby. but some congress people are thinking that even that much intrusion into the administration's machinations is an invasion of policy. i mean privacy. and what i think is that government privacy should be held to the same standards as piracy on the high seas.

and "the poopdeck is closed" means the poopdeck is closed. don't know why i wrote that, but poopdeck is a really funny word. what the hell goes on on a poopdeck? or in? or near? is pop really poop? is poop slang? i know it's on a ship, so deck must be accurate, right? whatever poop is it's happening on one of the decks.

The Oscars In Dyerama-vision

hey, what the heck? enough politics for one week. let's take a break and watch the Oscars! of course, i can't watch without commenting:
1. gay jokes STILL don't get much mileage from the politically correct (great western montage).
1a. guessing on george clooney for best supporting actor. don't know why. just feels right.
2. reese witherspoon continues to prove that midgets are not only a viable social minority, but sometimes really hot. it's good to have hope. keep looking up!
3. dolly parton got collagen shots? she's almost got mick jagger lips!..speaking of which , that would have made a good theme drink for tonight's festivities: collagen shots.
4. george clooney...good acceptance speech. nice poke in the eye of right wing blowhards. but did he HAVE to bring up the sexiest man thing? most of us are still hating him on that.
5. ben stiller needs to get laid...or a job. notice how he and owen wilson aren't doing much together anymore? and owen is en fuego.
6. i hate cartoon nominee announcers. and, no, i'm not rehashing #5.
7. russell crowe has a nice hairdo. looks unkempt and handswept. cost $1000. hand sweep extra. lock on the forehead looked like a big C. or a curly L.
(by the way, 40 Year Old Virgin is the funniest movie from last year)
8. rachel weiscz for best supporting actress. that's just my guess. but, eventually, catherine keener must be attended. amazing actress. amazing improver.
9. taking a guess on narnia for makeup.
10. stewart's pulling down Oscar and starting democracy in hollywood was right on...and not really gotten by the crowd.
11. morgan freeman is the epitome of coooool...
12. lauren bacall's moment on stage reminded me of frank langella in Dave when he starts out with a room full of supporters and ends up alone with a limp banner in his hand. sorry, lauren. get back into acting.
13. have i mentioned yet how hot keira knightly is? no?
14. keira's hothothot!
15. the quickest way to fuck up an Oscar nominated song is to choreograph it for the show. ooh, burned out car and fog. um, what was the song about?
16. cool. sandra bullock and keanu reeves finishing the Speed trilogy as nominators. he embraces an Eastern philosophy that doesn't fuck with making millions of dollars from two dimensional characters ans she marries somebody not me. i think i'm going to miss this segment if you don't mind.
17. sandra is goooooooorgeous. and the winner of art direction stepped on her dress. keanu..well, he looks good in a tux, but what gay penguin doesn't?
18. samuel jackson epitomized himself in Sphere. other than the pulp fiction cheeseburger moment, what's he got?
19. wow. the Oscars just went full tilt boogie on politics. left coast style. a little pissed off about being represented as "left coast" when it wasn't doing much to earn it? a bit miffed about being branded "out of it" and "not in the mainstream" and "typically liberal"? go get 'em, bitches!
20. the Oscar president is talking about sharing a movie experience in a cinema with complete strangers. he hasn't been to a cineplex lately, has he? if i want to experience people eating with their mouths open, talking on their cell phones, shushing their children, rolling their empty beer bottles down the aisle, complaining about how they wanted to see the other film, kicking the back of my seat, or needing to pee every fifteen minutes, i will pay $9. if i don't want all or any of that, i will wait until it's on netflix or the local second market movie theater. and, guess what?, very few cities and towns have second market theaters. ed emmanuel had the right idea: save up your money until you can build a private theater and pay for first-run movie reviews.
21. selma hayak is hot. even when she had no vagina in Dogma. very good movie.
22. jessica alba is hot. and Sin City is too. watch this movie. it's not nominated for anything. jessica made me think of it. hot hot movie.
23. lily tomlin and meryl streep talking about the altman montage. wow. look for the clip. not here, but somewhere. either so well rehearsed that lecram would cry or such inspired improv that...well, lecram would cry.
24. robert altman's acceptance speech is good and ends with a gotcha.
25. then a house party broke out. then it won an Oscar. woof.
gotta go. the cat needs grooming.