So long 2009, and take the rest of that shitty decade with ya...

If you took a look back at the last decade and were asked to give your honest opinion, I think if you were truly honest with yourself you'd have to say that it sucked. Hard. Sure there were things that happened in our own personal worlds that were all good and wonderful during that time frame, kids got born, kids graduated high school, kids went to college, yada, yada, yada, but outside of our own little existences I think you'd have to come to the conclusion that it was a pretty fucking awful ten years.

With a tidal wave of hope and enthusiasm after 8 years of a booming Clinton economy, and nary a war on the horizon, we entered the new millenium in a boozy haze of optimism and invincibility...

Then George W. Bush got selected by his father's mates on the Supreme Court and it all went to hell quicker than said cowboy boot-wearing moron could grunt 'Nukular' or 'Mission Accomplished'.

What followed next was eight excruciating years of tax gifts to the rich on the backs of the lower classes, a looting of the Treasury, a destruction of the rule of law (which had been very important when Clinton was in office but apparently less so when a republican is in office and actual crimes are being committed), the starting of two wars, one in completely the wrong country, the demise of the US's diplomatic standing in the world courtesy of the Connecticut Cowboy's creed of "you're either with us, or you're against us", and 24/7 saturation of waving computer-generated American flags on every single news station as they tried to outdo each other as to who was more patriotic than whom after the awful tragedy of September 11th, 2001.

Political discourse went straight into the shitter as well. It was now perfectly okay to state, as though it were fact, that your political opponent was in fact a traitor, or "un-American" if they were not in lock-step with the pronouncements coming from the Cheney, sorry, the Bush Whitehouse, whereas before, that sort of slanderous utterance would wind up with someone getting their ass sued, or their teeth kicked in, now it was de riguer on Fixed Noise, the Official Television Station of the Republican party.

"Liberal" became a dirty word, "Progressive" meant you were an unbathed hippy lesbian from San Francisco that cared more about the rights of the pigeons than the owners of the Mercedes Benz's they were copiously shitting on, and "Democrat" meant spineless, gutless, or more plainly, "completely fucking useless".

With a Democrat in the Whitehouse, and the Democrats "in control" of congress (although you could have fooled me most of the time this year) there may still be time to right some of the wrongs wrought by the porcine looters that were the previous occupants of the people's houses, but it will be a mighty hard battle, and one made less easy by the constant braying of the hate-mongers on the right that were so enabled during the Cheney years.

But let's push that boring political stuff aside for a moment and focus on the more important stuff, you know, like TeeVee entertainment, because as you will soon see, apparently that is what was more important in the 00's. It was a pretty dire decade for TeeVee entertainment from an educated person's standpoint. Unless you were willing to live on an island somewhere with 20 other yuppy larvae and fuck someone over for a million dollars, or eat cockroaches and boiled deer cock for fifty grand, or live in a fully-TV Camera-wired house somewhere in New York with obnoxious tattooed brain-dead wannabe pornstars, there wasn't an awful lot of talent on offer.

But what really, really sucked about the 00's was the rise of Simon Bloody Cowell. His Cheshire Cat smile simply drives me up the wall. His absolute and total bloody arrogance makes me wish to commit violence upon my beloved telly whenever his mugging visage appears, and the dreadful, pathetic and awful bunch of tone-deaf losers and posers that would crawl through a bog of rancid pig faeces to be first in line on one of his shows, make me want to stab out my eyes with a tuning fork. But I must admit that I do have to grudgingly admire him for at least one thing. Don't get me wrong, I am not going soft, he still sucks like a toothless Alabama truck-stop tart, but he does know his niche and he has exploited it to the nth degree with the inevitable consequence that he is now richer than most of Europe.

But the real reason he sucks so bad, and why the 00's sucked so utterly and completely, is because more people vote for the contestants on his fucking television shows than bother to vote in REAL elections.

Think about that for a second. I don't know about you, but that horrifies me.

I always suspected I was surrounded by empty-headed morons, but it REALLY sucks to have it proven beyond a doubt.

Oh well, maybe the next decade won't suck as bad...I sure hope so.

Happy New Year All!!!

Why Joe Lieberman is a douchebag (Part II)

Not satisfied with fucking over the poor and the uninsured with his threat to filibuster the 'Public Option' at the bidding of his owners...sorry 'campaign donors'...Holy Joe has now decided that he will also filibuster the plan to lower the eligibility age for Medicare, the Government-run healthcare plan the right-wing in this country still hasn't realized is run by, well, you know the Government, from 65 to 55.

What this means is that he has managed to piss off the poor, the un-insured, and folks between the age of 55 and 65. With the exception of the poor, the other two groups usually tend to vote in large numbers when it comes time to pick between the various bullshit artists running for political office every couple of years, and if recent polling data is to be believed this stance may finally do for Joe Lieberman what Harry Reid won't, and that is, kick his ass out of power.

President Obama won in a tidal wive of "hope" and "change" last year. The man had some very big plans, but somehow they have been bogged down, diverted or diluted by an opposition party that is on the verge of splintering into tiny pieces as they try and decide which lunatic conspiracy theory they are going to voice next. Between the 'birthers', the 'tea-baggers' (I wish that those who proudly proclaim themselves to be such would bother to look up the definition of that phrase..the looks on their faces when it final dawns on them what they've been saying all this time would be priceless) and the followers of the rabid right-wing hate and fear-mongers on the radio and Fux Noizze, they have succesfully done what I thought Democrats were supposed to be famous for; organizing circular firing squads. And yet, despite all of the yelling and screaming at each other, they have also been very successful at derailing the mandate that was handed in a landslide to Barack Obama.

This either means that even as the republican party slowly disintegrates into becoming solely the party of white male Southerners, it can still be an effective opposition party, OR it means that the Democrats, whilst almost totally useless as the minority party, are in fact, completely fucking useless as the majority party.

The reality of the situation unfortunately suggests both are true.

Much though I hate the modern republican party, and I do, I have to give them grudging respect when it comes to party discipline. Whether it's authorizing wars against the wrong country, or saying, with collective straight faces, that tax breaks for the superwealthy will actually benefit the poor white folk that comprise their voting base, they do it all as a unit. The Democrats on the other hand couldn't arrange a piss-up in a brewery, even when they have the keys to the stockroom and a hand-written note from the owners saying "enjoy yourselves".

Those two facts notwithstanding, the republicans still didn't have enough by themselves to bog down Health Care Reform, they needed their ace-in-the-hole, the Senator from Aetna - Joe Lieberman, to be the large chunk of plaque to plug up the coagulated arteries of Senatorial legislation and drag everything to a screeching halt. Despite a so-called 'super-majority' in the Senate, an overwhelming majority in the House, and a Democrat behind the desk in the Oval Office, one, obstinate, petty, bitter and wrinkly-faced prostitute from CT has well and truly scuppered any chance at real healthcare reform in the US.

Saggy-Jowels had the chance to be the lynch-pin in passing major legislation that would permanently change the way people in this country get healthcare. He had a chance to be known as the man with the vote that got 45 million Americans health coverage that they would never have otherwise been able to get, but instead he decided to use that vote to prevent people from getting the care they desperately need, and once more, sold his vote to the highest bidder.

And THAT is why Joe Lieberman is a douchebag. Again.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Scrubbers

I realize that this is quite probably the least read blog on the interwebs so I feel fairly safe letting loose on a little rant here about the world's most famous golfer/shittiest husband without too much worry about lawsuits and the like.

As every human being on the planet is aware (except Sarah Palin who was too busy re-inventing her life story and quitting something else half-way through to care) , the world's number one golfist/athlete/spokesperson/all-around good-guy had a little oopsie this week after his wife found out he'd been a little less than biblically-faithful to her, and decided to use her husbands's work tools to reconfigure the air-conditioning system on his Escalade by opening up a few extra windows...

Obviously this news came as a big surprise to Mrs. Woods, although it has long been rumoured on the PGA Tour that Tiger is a big fan of the kind of rough that is not necessarily green in colour and lining the fairways of most golf courses, and she apparently went just a little bit mental about it all...

And who can blame her? When I originally started writing this entry, roughly the week after the news broke about Tiger's attempt at vehicular-hydrant-and-tree-relocation, his scorecard was only -1, maybe -2 under par. Here we are three weeks later and apparently, after completing the back nine, he is shooting something like -14 under par.

Mrs. Woods has quite justifiably decided that before it becomes obvious that he may well break the course record, she is buggering off with the kids and (eventually) half of his money.

Good for her.

I am still not sure yet whether I am pissed off at Tiger for doing this to his family, especially his young children, or if I'm pissed off at him for being a hypocritical and smug bastard "protecting" his family all these years when in fact he was screwing anything with a pulse and laughing about it behind everyone's back, or if I'm pissed off at him for trading in a smoking hot, large-breasted Swedish bikini model, for a very sorry collection of scrubbers, tarts and dodgy boilers.

On reflection I think it's a combination of all three. And that is why I hope it takes him a long time before he dares venture out of his house of shame and back onto the golf course to earn the alimony and child-support he will have to pay, and I hope that he is ready for years and years of humility and grovelling, because one thing is for sure, the next time he is on the tee and yells "FORE!" the entire gallery will be shouting back " -TEEN!"...

Why Joe Lieberman is a douchebag.

Joe Lieberman from the state of Connecticut has announced to his base (the health insurers and their lobbyists) that he will filibuster any bill presented in the Senate that contains the words "public option". Unfortunately for Holy Joe, his constituents heard that as well. In fact, the whole country did. And we are pissed.

A recent poll found that 72% of the population in the US is in favour of the public option. Why? Because when they get sick they want to be able to go to a doctor and without any insurance that simply isn't an option, public or otherwise. But if the government creates a public option, all of a sudden, upwards of 25 million people will, for the first time, be able to go to the doctor or the hospital without first having to check their bank balance or wonder which of their maxed-out credit cards they might be able to melt just a little bit more.

For some reason this scares the ever-loving shit out of the right-wing. For some inexplicable reason, a healthy population, one that has access to preventative medical care, vaccines and routine check-ups scares the lily-white rich folk more than an IRS audit. I have no idea why.

I know why the lily-white rich politicians hate the public option, because they've been told to feel that way by the people that own them, you know, the drug companies and the insurance industry, but deep down inside, you would hope that at least a few of them get a twinge when they realise the depth of their hypocrisy. After all, they themselves are the beneficiaries of a very nice public option in their health coverage. They just don't seem to want to share. And that makes them all a bunch of selfish bastards. It's not a new concept, the old "I'm alright Jack" mentality has always been front and centre for the well-off, but it becomes very problematic when that mentality is applied to the national healthcare debate. Simply telling people to suck it up and buy insurance, or get a job that offers health insurance is all well and good, but when the national unemployment rate is 10.2% that's easier said than done. Plus, at the end of the day it doesn't actually solve the root of the problem, sky-high premiums.

Of course, if I were a cynic I'd say that there was a bit of collusion going on between the insurance companies and the drug companies. Each agreeing to continue to hike the cost of their products to the vast unwitting population whilst claiming at the same time that a public option would force the premiums even higher. Now, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I know that sounds like a load of bollocks. When you introduce competition prices go down, not up. At least they do in the world I live in, but apparently that is not the case in the world that republicans inhabit. In that twisted plane of existence, when competition comes in to the marketplace, the old guard has to raise it's prices in order to stay competitive, rather than lowering them to, you know, compete with the new upstart. I know what you're thinking and you're right, that is definitely a load of bollocks.

I have a potential solution. Instead of accepting what Holy Joe is saying to the poor, the sick and the uninsured (that would be a hearty "Go fuck yourselves" in case you hadn't figured it out yourself), how about if we get the government to approach healthcare reform from a different angle, like, oh, I don't know, immediately banning insurance companies from sponsoring golf tournaments? Or prohibiting drug companies from advertising on the telly all-day, every-day? I bet that would save the odd billion or two over the years. That would mean that the drug companies wouldn't gouge up the price of the dick-stiffening medication everyone in the US is apparently desperate for, the insurance companies would be able to lower their premiums, and we'd all get a bit of piece and quiet all at the same time.

Sounds like win-win-win to me....plus it would mean that the saggy-faced douchebag from Connecticut could go back to doing what he does best, kissing the asses of the hosts on Fux Noize in a desperate attempt to still appear relevant...

For some the Death Penalty is too good...

As a long-time left-leaning, tree-hugging, save-the-whales/wolves/polar bears etc screaming pinko liberal I sometimes find myself conflicted when the topic turns to the Death Penalty. It seems strange for the State to say that murder is wrong, and then, murder someone that is found guilty of committing murder. There's the whole "we're supposed to be more advanced and civilized than animals" argument, which has a point I suppose, after all we can, as a species, wipe our own bottoms, and buy our food already killed and conveniently packaged. We know about hygiene and disease-avoidance, and have wonderfully useful opposing thumbs, and we can eradicate pretty much any other species on the planet should the mood so take us. But that still doesn't make the subject of the ultimate penalty a straight-forward one. I know several folks of a highly right-wing disposition that vehemently oppose the death penalty, and also a smattering of liberals that would be more than happy to string the guilty up from the nearest tree.

I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Mostly. Sometimes.

In the US, a country that executes more of it's own citizens than any other country on the planet save China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, an inauspicious club if ever there was one, there are simply too many ways to break the law and wind up getting the death penalty for it to be a) an efficient deterrent or b) a "just" punishment. Come to think of it, that's something else they all have in common too. But the one big difference between them is that only the US is a "democracy". That actually makes it worse though, when you consider that the rest of the top four are all a bunch of authoritarian loonies meting out the DP hither and yon whenever it suits their political purpose.

Granted, some are more creative with the way they actually do the deed than others, but that's a distinction without a difference, the end result is always the same, there are always fewer breathing people leaving the room than entered it. And therin lies the problem.

The death penalty is permanent. There are no 'do-overs' if you get the wrong guy, no way to bring them back from the dead if it turns out that the eye-witness got it wrong, or the defendants' lawyer was an idiot, or the prosecutor and Mr. John Q. Fuzz lied/withheld/coerced evidence and testimony. Too bad, so sad. "Dear surviving family members of the person we accidentally killed, we're really very very sorry, we'll try better next time. Signed, The State."

Not very comforting is it?

That is one of the reasons I am against the death penalty. Statistically it is an absolute certainty that in the United States, since the re-introduction of the DP, at least one innocent person was been wrongly sent to their death. This has been further evidenced in the moratorium that still exists against the DP in the state of Illinois as at least 16 people scheduled to be put to death, have been subsequently proven innocent. That's 16 innocent people that Illinois would have murdered for being unable to prove that point. God alone knows how many innocents George W. Bush gleefully sent to their deaths during his tenure as Governor of Texass (a strange position for an allegedly "pro-life christian" but I digress) , but the mind boggles at the thought...

But then along comes a crime so despicable I would gladly join the queue lining up to make sure the DP was swiftly and accurately applied. I refer to the case unfolding in North Carolina, where it appears that a mother of a beautiful five year-old girl prostituted her out, and the little girl has now been found dead. If this turns out to be the case, that woman can never be dead enough. The thought that this woman put her own daughter through who knows what sort of hell willingly, means that she immediately and permanently loses the right to breath the same air as the rest of us. Once she's found guilty, never mind the appeals, and the rest of the inevitable legal maneuvering that will take place, take that sick bitch out the backdoor of the courthouse and put a bullet in her head.

Make that two.

Just to make sure.

"Ballon-Boy" was a hoax...No, Really?

After having been forced to watch the "drama" of a mylar balloon floating through the Colorado sky that might (or might not) have contained a small child in it, we now know that it was all manufactured bullshit from start to finish.

The parents (who appeared on a teevee show in the States called 'Wife Swap', and no, it was not the good kind of swapping) were all over the press within seconds of the over-sized silver condom having returned to the welcoming bosom of Mother Earth. That was clue number one that something was amiss. Clue number two was the way the wife just sat there meekly blinking at the cameras as her husband kept on yapping away. Clue number three was the fact that the husband just looks like a weirdo...and clue number four was when the small child that might (or might not) have been in the balloon, comprehensively and quite entertainingly, yarked all over his siblings on national telly the following morning...

Apparently there may be criminal charges in the family's future (hopefully if for nothing else than the father's hairdo which would make even Don King blanch) for 'masterminding' this hoax. Personally I think that would be a little harsh given the circumstances, just make the family pay for the emergency services' grand day out, and then attach the father's genitals to a similar balloon and release him into the atmosphere for the Air Force to use as target practice.

That seems about the right level of punishment for forcing the entire country to watch the wall-to-wall coverage of this bullshit on every single news network (and fox) for what seemed like an eternity last week.

From the "Y'all ain't gonna believe this" file...

Porcine Pill-Popper, and well known hate-monger, Rush Limbaugh, says he wants to buy the St Louis Rams.

I only have one question:

What will their new uniforms look like?

All-white no doubt, maybe with a burning cross on the side of the helmets?

Why don't Texans know how to ski?

Answer: Because God didn't make bullshit white.

That has now apparently changed.

No, the Good Lord hasn't descended upon the Lone Star State and, with a wave of His hand, turned the volumnious amount of the aforementioned bovine defecation strewn all over the place by the populace, into an Alpine Paradise. What has happened though, is that someone, or a group of someones, has come up with the brilliant idea of building an indoor ski-slope in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

Now, as someone that spent a lifetime in Dallas one month, I can tell you that if the heat don't git ya, the humididdy will...So it was with a fair amount of incredulity and a not minute amount of mirth that I read the story of this indoor ski-slope idea. They have figured out that making snow, even indoors, is a non-starter, so they will be using small plastic white chips instead. As a non-skier myself, I cannot speak as to whether this will be an acceptable or even realistic substitute, but what I can tell you is that I am greatly looking forward to the spectacle of a bunch of tobacco-chewing, 10-gallon hat wearing cow-pokes on skis, flying down a man-made mountain in the middle of Texas.

Yee-haw!

'Whatever' is the most annoying word in the world...

...So says the Daily Telegraph, in what could be quite possibly the most obvious headline of all time.

Whilst it is true that language evolves much the same as the planet does (sorry creationists but that's just the way it is, you get to keep the fish and loaves story, and we'll keep the evolution one, m'kay?) there could be a very good argument made that the current iteration of the English language is actually devolving, rather than evolving.

In England there is the 'development' of "Estuaryese" which is a very bizarre and alarmingly guttural collection of grunts and "innits" that apparently demand that the speaker miss every single consonant present in any given sentence.

In the States there is "Ebonics", a method by which pasty-faced white-folk get to make fun of the way black people talk, without actually having to don their white robes or set fire to any crosses thereby confirming beyond any shadow of doubt, that they are indeed a bunch of cracker-ass racists.

In both instances the English language has been co-opted, adapted (for better or worse) and popped out the other end as something distinctly different. There are different intonations, different words, different phrases, but they are all English at their root.

Except one. Teenage-Speak.

Teenage-Speak is actually the most insidious of all of the new varieties of English. It is not only designed to enable those that speak it to think that no-one really understands what they're saying, but it is SPECIFICALLY designed to drive the adults that hear it completely out of their minds. Whilst the nasal tonality required in the delivery of this obnoxious verbal assault on the ears is nearly enough just by itself to make you want to gouge out your own eyes, it is the attendant body language that really is the icing on the cake. The lolling of the head from one side to the other, the hands on the hips, the rolling of the eyes, the impatient sighs as if they were speaking to Rain-man's dumber brother, are all part and parcel of this despicable perversion of the Mother Tongue.

It is therefore no real surprise that one of the most over-used words in the Teenage-Speak English language is named as the most annoying word in the world. It was a very close call though, second place runner-up was "like", which, as any teen's parent can verify, is frequently used as verbal punctuation in teenage sentences, or as a way to fill in the embarrassing gap that occurs when the teenage mouth has accidentally over-run the teenage brain, leaving the teenage mouth waiting there for the next inane phrase to come to mind.

So there you have it, 'whatever' is the most annoying word in the world.

Well, like, Duh dude!

Grandpa gets some wood..

Is it just me or is anyone else sick to death of the 'erectile dysfunction' ads that permeate the airwaves 24/7 nowadays?

Those little blue pills may claim to be 'wonder' drugs, but wouldn't cures for other diseases, like, oh, I don't know, cancer or aids be equally as 'wonderful'? In fact, wouldn't eradicating any number of serious diseases be exponentially much more 'wonderful' than giving Grandpa some wood? Seriously, what were the priorities when Big Pharma was working out what to focus on next? Was it boiled down to just two choices, keep people alive, or keep people shagging?

Don't get me wrong, I realize that enabling the septuagenarian set to get jiggy with it has it's up side, after all it keeps a fair number of them off the road, resulting in a significantly reduced number of white-wall tyred 1970 Buick LeSabres to dodge as they wander aimlessly between lanes on the expressway with their left-turn signals permanently blinking, but for Heaven's sake, won't someone think of the rest of us? Just think of the awful visuals it conjures up.

It used to be that the glint in Grandpa's eye as he looked at Grandma at the other end of the dinner table was, "I'm gonna have a double helping of ice cream tonight and there's not a damned thing you can do about it you old goat"...now it means, "if only the family knew what we did on this table right before they showed up today.."

The fact that Grandma just giggles nervously and blushes only makes it worse...

Makes you throw up a little bit in your mouth doesn't it?

Plus, you know things are horribly wrong with the world when it turns out that it was Grandma that ordered the Victoria's Secret catalogue, not Grandpa.

Look, I am all in favour of more folks making love, not war, but Mother Nature slows the whole shagging mechanisms down for a reason. If you've done it right, you already have kids that have grown up, and if you got knocked-up past your 60th birthday, who would raise the resultant offspring? See? Mother Nature is smart that way...But nooooooooooo...Big Pharma decided all by itself to make it possible for the post-mature crowd to bump uglies well past the "Best if used by" date, and the rest of us now have to suffer through these damned ads on the idiot-box at all hours of the day.

I just have one question though, will someone explain to me how bathing in separate tubs in the great outdoors is supposed to make you horny?

Hello, good evening, and welcome!

No idea if anyone outside of my world of close friends, lunatics and relatives (some are both - a few are all three) will read, or even care that I've done this, but what the hell...

I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope that some of it amuses you, some makes you think, and some just makes you shake your head and wonder what in the wide world of sports is going on in my ever-cramped cranial cavity...

Here goes!!!