Anthony, Anthony, Anthony

I can take a few character flaws in my heroes but feet of clay and an exposed willy is a little much. It has taken me this long to weigh in on Weinergate because I am devastated. My hero - caught with his pants down. The loudest, most effective voice for single payer and Medicare for all hoisted by his own twit-tard. What am I supposed to say when people come up to me and ask me about my Medicare for All bumper sticker? "Here's an compelling argument from Anthony Weiner - you know, Anthony Weiner - the penis guy. " No wonder Nancy dropped a stitch and Debbie's just fucking pissed. They both want him to resign. I guess I still don't. But I would like him to stop sending penis pictures over the internet. Kind of reckless, if you ask me.

Now their have been times in my life when I have been very lonely. Adrift and abandoned, desirous of the slightest human touch, a hint of a smile, a kind word, a warm hand on my weiner shoulder... But the thought of sending pictures of my willy over the internet to perfect strangers never really occurred to me. Not even with the digital zoom. I may be overreacting but I find the whole thing kind of peculiar.

So what we are dealing with here is a reckless and obsessive character flaw, refreshingly untainted by hypocrisy. At least he didn't drag his wife with him to the press conference. She's off  gallivanting around the world with Hillary. I bet they have a lot to talk about. "You know Huma it could be worse...." When Vitter got caught in the DC Madame affair he dragged his poor wife to the obligatory I've Been a Naughty Boy and I'm Sorry press conference. "C'mon hon, put on something nice and stand next to me while I humiliate both of us in public." I don't feel bad for a family values hypocrite like Vitter. I did feel bad for his wife, though. She looked beyond upset. Vitter was running a nice little K-Street fund raiser under the radar while Weiner was at the gate. These C Street clowns all have a King David complex. They consider themselves extraordinary men entitled to extraordinary vices. Fucking chimps.

Sarah Palin's America

"I know my American History."

You betcha - the real story, not the gotcha one told by the lamestream media:

 

Paul Revere - American Hero

Paul Revere's Whistle

Paul Revere's Bell

British Troops Await Paul Revere

Paul Revere Warns British that the Americans are Coming

British Surrender - Wolverines!!

Glen Beck Launches New Book Imprint

First release will be a young adult novel about a boy with Tourette’s syndrome – and superpowers.

The boy's name is Glenn and his superpower is that he can't shut the fuck up.

The Trouble With My New Blackberry Torch

All porn is midget porn

Don't Do This

I work in a windowless cloth covered box separated from the other cloth covered boxes by a door. Actually I work in a box inside another box that is off a little hallway inside a bigger box. I also spend the day staring into a box hooked to another box that is showing drawings of big boxes to park cars in. And the ones I dare not name keep our department separated from the general population because of our Tourette's like use of inappropriate obscenities and suspect hygiene.

So my buddy walks out the door and about ten minutes later, when oddly enough I am actually working, pouring over drawings with my back to the door,  the door opens and I shout out "What's up bitch!". Instead of the customary "Fuck you" I am met with dead silence. I turn around, and there, standing in the doorway, looking right at me, is the Exectutive Assistant to the President of the Company. What do you say? I thought you were the bitch I work with? I was mortified and spent the rest of the day mumbling apologies, pretty much to anyone who would listen. Didn't help that the assholes I work with couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, I didn't get fired. Yet.

First Communion

"We had practice today for First Communion."

"So, how'd it go?"

"Fine, we got to taste the wafer since they didn't make it Jesus yet. We got to taste it twice."

"I always liked it. Did it taste OK?"

"I liked it! But I think when they make it Jesus it will be more crunchy."

More Thoughts on the Royal Wedding

Gayer then Elton John's

Thoughts on the Royal Wedding

 

She could do better

I Had Big Plans

When I started this blog. Woo University was going to be a clearinghouse dedicated to the mockery of anti-science, particularly of the creationist and Intelligent Design variety. The students would be idiots and the staff even bigger idiots. My first post would feature Dr.Dr. Bill Dembski as the football coach. Invariably Woo University would lose every football game and at the following meeting Bill would cover the whiteboard with a complicated series of precise probability calculations and applications of Information Theory to prove that Woo University couldn't possibly have gotten their asses kicked the previous Saturday. Mathematically, it was impossible - hah!hah!Hah! hah!Hah!. Man, it was going to be great. I was going to sell T shirts and everything. I even had a mascot - The Wed Wooster of Woo University. I would be admired and loved across the whole wide web.

Then halfway thourgh the first post as the fundamental disconnect between my brain and my fingers started to assert itself, I began to realize that the whole concept was kind of a one trick pony. A lame one at that and that the joke was an inside one. So far inside that it was barely perceptible as humor, even to me. So I began to regret the choice of Woo University almost right off the bat and if I didn't think it would throw my readers (Thanks, hon) off I would change the title to something like this:

The True Unbeliever

Almost There

Hey - Over Here!

Random Access

Surely Uncertain

Sit Down and Shut Up

In No Way Shape or Form

Somewhat Intelligible

Almost English

I Wonder

Passing through Gettysburg after picking up one of the grandkids :

"That's the town Grampy Scrip used to live in"

"He died"

"Yeah, I showed you where he was buried a little bit ago."

"He's with God, in Outer Space."

"Uh, yeah, I guess so"

That's the problem with bringing up your kids in the "Shit, I Don't Know School of Theology - you never know where anyone stands these days. Used to be we all grew up with one or the other consistently absurd explanations for why we are and what we will be. I have no idea what to say - I get in enough trouble with The Mother over snacks and fucking up the kid's hair. I was playing with Estella and hiding one of her Burger King...uh... toys. She told me that if I didn't give her back her Egg Snapper, God would surely kill me. In a dream. (Hah, I'd like to see him try - although my Uncle Jack did go that way. In his sleep, anyway). We got all sorts of grandkids but this is the only one that seems to live in some sort of weird dream time and the only one that seems to think about God. I'm gonna miss lil' Estella when she moves to California.

"We went Outer Spacing in school and we found God."

"That's nice."

"We also saw the moon - there's poop on the moon!"

"Don't be silly. There's no poop on the moon."

But...I wonder. There were people on the moon. And where there are people poop cannot be far behind. Did we just leave a flag, some footprints and a golf ball behind? Or did someone leave a little something something to mark some territory and to show future spacefarers that, yes, WE WERE HERE?

Foodies

On the ride back after picking up one of the grandkids -(italics are, of course, sub-vocal) :

"My Mommy is a vegetarian."

"Really?"

"I'm a vegetarian, too."

"That's nice"

"I'm hungry"

"Wanna stop at McDonalds?"

"I'm not allowed to eat at McDonalds. Mommy won't let me."

(oh, Christ ) "Well, what do you want to eat?"

"I want a hot dog."

(what the hell? do they even make vegetarian hot dogs? If they do I bet they suck)

"I don't think any of these places have hot dogs. How about a sandwich from Quiznos?"

(from my co pilot and lovely wife) "She won't find anything in there that she likes"

(Hey, I'd like you to be quiet )

"Mommy lets me eat at Wendy's"

(Jesus fucking Christ - that's where I was headed in the first place and really, what's the difference? I suppose the snack bar at Target was totally out of the question)

"Okey-dokey, Wendy's it is"

I've since discovered that, once she dispensed with the obligatory initial protestations, this kid will eat anything that remotely resembles food. Now, I've raised enough kids to know that I don't really know anything about anything and I won't presume to tell The Mom how to raise her kid but I can't remember making a big deal about diet with any of the kids and none of them turned out to be sickly fatties. Nothing wrong with moderating sugar and fat to a point but when you get right down to it a calorie is a calorie. And kids are kids. And the more you tell them they can't have it, the more they'll go looking for it.

A Few Modest Proposals

"Over the last two years since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs and if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it,"

                                                                                             John Boehner (R-I hate my job)

We need to slash government spending (i.e. Government jobs) and put people out of work and on unemployment now so that at some time, somehow, somewhere the "job creators" will create jobs because....uh.....THE MARKET!. It's not the lack of demand that is holding our "job creators" back it's the...uh... UNCERTAINTY! Mainly the uncertainty of having to pay people a living wage.

"If we act now, we can avoid disruptions for current seniors while advancing patient-centered reforms so Medicare will be strengthened for future beneficiaries. The alternative is the European-style death spiral of the welfare state: kick the can down the road as our debt explodes. Under an ever-expansive, all-consuming central government, costs will be contained with Washington's heavy hand imposing price controls, slashing benefits and arbitrarily rationing seniors' care. "
                                                                                  Paul Ryan (R-full of shit)

The Destroy the Village to Save the Village Bill to save Medicare. We can't afford it. Grandma can just as easily die in the street as in a nursing home and it's cheaper. If it weren't for Medicare spoiling everything the insurance industry would be lining up to offer old sick people affordable health insurance at reasonable rates. Not only that but by enriching these insurers who provide no actual health care we would ultimately lower health care costs for everyone because...uh...COMPETITION!.

" We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls people to lives of complacenc

­ies and dependenci­es, into a permanent condition where they never get on their feet,"

                                                                                        Paul Ryan (R-still full of shit)

The Really, Ricketts Weren't So Bad bill to save Medicaid. Block grants to the states. Really, the states are best able to determine minimum standards of care just like they are best able to determine minimum wages. You can vote with your feet - it's simple - if you need a transplant don't live in Arizona. If your baby gets hookworm, just put some shoes on her and walk her out of Mississippi. If a tsunami hits Malibu, wipes out the water supply and our stars and starlets come down with the bloody flux, well, too bad. When the money for toilet paper and Immodium runs out...uh...STATE'S RIGHTS! 

Ryan's Express to Dystopia

It's Assholes All the Way Down

So some asshole burns  a book and, in turn, another group of assholes incites a third larger group of assholes to kill 12 people who more than likely weren't assholes. All this publicized by our home grown media assholes. Wait a second...you don't think posting this makes me an asshole, do you? There really is no hope.

Odorless, Colorless... but Something Still Stinks

Charles Zogby, Corbett's budget Secretary was shilling for the new Republican budget proposals on Radio Smart Talk. Evidently we have to tighten our belts, cut state spending to get this budget shortfall under control in order to get this economy moving and put Pennsylvanians back to work. But first we have to put a lot of people out of work. You know, teachers, police, firefighters, EPA inspectors, those sorts of people. It's not like they're really working anyway.

      Some guy calls in and says - "Say, instead of laying off teachers and cutting state funding to education why don't we tax the companies extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation like every other state does." This elicits the response that the Governor intends to make Pennsylvania the "Texas of Natural Gas Production" (and the Mississippi of education). After all, if the gas companies aren't able to tear up the roads, pollute the water, overload the water treatment plants, take the gas, make a bunch of money and leave, without the inconvenience of taxes or adequate inspections,  they might just go drill somewhere else. Where are they gonna go? Some no tax state where there isn't any gas? I suppose we are idiots. We voted those clowns in.

Marriage - It's More Serious Than We Thought

 Recuse this, bitch!

From a piece in the New York Times Magazine, a profile of Robby George (D.Phil, Oxford University; JD, Harvard University; AB, Swarthmore College),  America's foremost homophobic deep thinker. Of course the following analysis by yours truly (Mt. Lebanon High School '71) is based on what some guy said about what another guy thinks. That's hardly fair to Guy #2. But, then again, I'm hardly a researcher:

"He admits the argument for marriage between a man and a woman can require “somewhat technical philosophical analysis.”

Go for it.

 It is a two-step case that starts with marriage and works its way back to sex.

I think he's got it backward.

 First, he contends that marriage is a uniquely “comprehensive” union, meaning that it is shared at several different levels at once — emotional, spiritual and bodily. “And the really interesting evidence that it is comprehensive is that it is anchored in bodily sharing,” he says.

Like a tapeworm.

“Ordinary friendships wouldn’t be friendships anymore if they involved bodily sharing,” he explained to me.

No, they would be conjoined twins.

 “If I, despite being a married man, had this female friend of mine and I said, ‘Well, gosh, why don’t we do some bodily sharing,’

Gee willikers, can I bone you?

 and we had straightforward sexual intercourse, well, that wouldn’t be friendship or marriage

How about if it was straightbackward sexual intercourse?

." It is bodily, O.K...."

OK

 "...but it is not part of a comprehensive sharing of life."

OK

"My comprehensive sharing of life is with my wife, which I just now violated.”

OK, you're a pig. So what?

 "But just as friendships with sex are not friendships, marriage without sex is not marriage."

I'm free!

" Sex, George said, is the key to this 'comprehensive unity.'He then imagined himself as a man with no interest in sex who proposed to seal a romance by committing to play tennis only with his beloved. Breaking that promise, he said, would not be adultery."

Tennis anyone?

"The second step is more complicated, and more graphic."

Now you caught my interest

 "George argues that only vaginal intercourse — “procreative-type” sex acts, as George puts it — can consummate this “multilevel” mind-body union."

Yay for the va jay jays.

" Only in reproduction, unlike digestion, circulation, respiration or any other bodily function, do two individuals perform a single function and thus become, in effect, 'one organism.'

Um, I think that would be 3 organisms in one orgasm. One - three, whats the dif? It's a Trinitarian view of the "Act".

Each opposite-sex partner is incomplete for the task; yet together they create a “one-flesh union,” in the language of Scripture. “Their bodies become one (they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together) in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one’s heart, lungs and other organs form a unity by coordinating for the biological good of the whole,” George writes in a draft of his latest essay on the subject.

I'm sorry, but this porn does not work for me. Neither does the analogy. I wonder how long he keeps Mrs. George waiting while he thinks this whole thing through?

" Unloving sex between married partners does not perform the same multilevel function, he argues, nor does oral or anal sex — even between loving spouses."

Maybe not multilevel but definitely multitasking.

Infertile couples, too, are performing this uniquely shared reproductive function, George says, even if they know their sperm and ovum cannot complete it. Marriage is designed in part for procreation in the way a baseball team is designed for winning games, he says, but “people who can practice baseball can be teammates without victories on the field.”

Kind of like the Pirates. Well, I know he's trying to dumb it down for guys like me with the baseball analogy but he fucking well lost me. Sex is "designed" for procreation. Marriage is about property rights.

"George argues that reason alone shows that heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sex are morally wrong, just as the Catholic Church, classical philosophers and other religious traditions have historically taught."

But not practiced.

"Unlike marital union in his special sense, he contends, such acts treat the body as an instrument of the mind’s pleasure."

Invasion of the meat robots.

" As both a practical and a philosophical matter, he argues, the law should not necessarily police such things."

I agree.

" But the need for the state to establish a proper definition of marriage is a different matter, he says, because the law has always regulated it in the interest of parenthood and community. “Marriage in principle is a public institution,” he said. “I don’t think it can be like bar mitzvahs or baptisms or the Elks Club.”"

And there is no evidence at all that allowing gays to marry injures children or communities. And if there is a nugget of a premise buried under that big pile of bullshit, I certainly can't find it. Strange that all the countries that have legalized gay marriage have not collapsed in utter social disarray and that people in those countries are still having babies. Another big picture guy so worried about who's sticking what where that he feels compelled to leave behind this little worm casing of reason. And he hangs with Scalia - that's probably all you need to know.

What I Don't Know Won't Help Me

It was right after If You Give a Pig a Party (which is along the same lines of If You Take a Mouse to the Movies - mice and pigs are both very needy) and I was tired and trying to delay reading Mr. Peabody's Apples for the 500th time (the child requires at least two books at night). So I asked her how her day went and she told me that her teacher got the incubator and an egg for everyone and that they were going to hatch some chicks.

How long does that take - 21 days?

No, Miss Hockensmith said April.

Oh, did you know that chickens are dinosaurs?

Chickens aren't dinosaurs. That's silly.

Yes, some people think that the dinosaurs never died out and one type evolved into birds - there were feathered dinosaurs, you know.

Oh, were there puppies then, too? (to Jasmine puppies are not only cute, they are eternal)

No, I think dogs have only been around about 10,000 years. They came from wolves.

No, I said puppies, not wolves. Was that before God walked the Earth?

(Uh, oh) You mean Jesus, yeah, I think so. Some wolves hung around where people lived and they got used to people and people got used to them and after a while they became dogs.

And had puppies?

Yeah, they also warned people when there were dangerous animals around. (Not to mention the fact that puppies were probably handy for snacking on - but I didn't say that). You know life has been around for a long, long time, like 3 and a half billion years and first there was bacteria, then something like worms, and fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

And puppies? What are bacteria?

Well, ahem...ah... well they're tiny little bugs too small to see all around us and they live in us and help digest our food and live on our skin and....

Fortunately she nodded off before I went on to embarrass myself further. Nothing tests the limits of what you think you know better than having to explain it to an 8 year old. I would give my right nutball for a certain clarity of thought.  One good thing - even my second grade granddaughter is too smart to ask "If we came from bacteria, how come there are still bacteria?"

Dim Bulbs

This shall not stand. Reps. Bachmann and Barton (R-combined IQ 74) have sponsored bills to repeal the mandated federal standards for allowable light bulb wattage. Barton, if you will remember, is the Congressman who felt the need to apologize to BP for the Obama Administration forcing them to put up the money to clean up their own mess and Bachmann is the Congresswoman who is terminally, irretrievably batshit crazy.  These regulations are just another example of federal overreach leading to socialist enslavement. Why have any kind of standards? The Founders would be aghast at the world we live in, full of federally mandated energy efficiency standards. Far better to split a couple of atoms or shave the top off a mountain or kill a few brown people than to rob us of our God given choice to be stupidly energy inefficient. Sen. Paul (R - Kenfucky) agrees. Not only do the light bulbs piss him off but he's been having problems with his toilet. Evidently it doesn't flush well enough to dispose of his "business". After seeing John Steward gently deconstruct  Paul's inane political philosophy I get the feeling the problem is not with the toilet.

Here Come De Judge

Attempts by the Church and its apologists to make sense of human sexuality reminds me  of a great scene in Pillars of the Earth. The witchy woman consort of one protagonist and mother of another is captured, bound and brought before the evil Bishop and his toadies. Not only has the Bishop betrayed her trust as her confessor and tortured and killed the father of her son but he continues to persecute her current lover and her son. Well, she's had it. She cuts her bonds with a hidden knife and the monks shrink back, murmuring of witchcraft. She strides along a long table toward the Bishop, seated at the end of the table, and when she reaches him she hikes up her skirt launches a stream of piss right at him. The clerics shrink back in horror as she contemptuously turns and stalks out of the dining hall.

And so it is with the Church, looking too hard into the mystery of our beginnings and ending up with a face full of piss. Using a blinded interpretation of natural processes to underpin scriptural precepts and make sense of the chaotic complications of human sexuality. The idea that all right thinking cultures will come to the same basic concepts of good and evil because they all share a sense of the moral order built in to the framework of the universe. The idea being that certain behaviors are intrinsically wrong because they are unnatural. Behaviors such as homosexuality, abortion, contraception, pre-marital and extra -marital sex, polygamy, etc all contravene some sort of Natural Law, that they are counter to our god given natures. How this squares with the Christian idea that we are born fatally flawed, I do not know but all Catholic theology seems based on ignoring the contradictions. Even a cursory examination of nature and human history proves the Natural Law argument bullshit. Your dog humps your leg, Jacob had 4 wives, the new king of the pride kills his predecessor's cubs, nobody was too anxious to tell Alexander that he couldn't have a boyfriend...Jeez, just a look at our plumbing gives the lie to some sort of natural monogamy in the human species. I suppose Natural Inclinations sounds a little too weak on which to build a whole moral code. But there is no such thing as Natural Law, not even a Law of Replication. Natural Inclinations, maybe.  Well, there is one Natural Law - Everything Dies. I don't need a Cathedral to remind me of that.

Criticism for the Common Man

Ah, Oscar night. Another award show I did not care to watch full of films I do not care to see. The King's Whatever was the big winner. Another period drama for those who have periods. Like I'm supposed to give a shit about some royal twit's stuttering problem? And why the American obsession with English royalty? Do we really need to concern ourselves with the romantic entanglements of a marginalized group of inbred dweebs? Next years Oscar contender -

The King's Enema

Can an impudent Page of the Back Stairs ease His Majesty's impaction before the annual royal fox hunt on St. Swithen's Day?  

"Is the water too cold, your majesty?"

"Do you dare to sit on the King's Throne!" 

Now I'm sure the King's Whatever was quite inspiring and I'm sure the costumes were correct down to the last button and the accents were spot on but this stuff is really not my cup of tea. It's not even about the interesting  King George. I probably won't bother with it unless forced into it by my life partner. Inception was pretty good and I'll definitely catch True Grit but a film about fighting brothers and their over bearing mother. Nah. I know all about that. I'm a simple man with simple tastes. Toy Story 3 made me cry. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. And it wasn't just because of  Randy Newman's music.

Wherein Scripto Feels the Need to Explain the Joke

Sometimes I feel as though my attempts at whimsy fall on deaf eyes. The following exchange was posted in the comment section of Ironicus Maximus:

"Good question your Pradaness, but here's a better one: If all humanity wasn't present to clamor for appletinis when Eve ate the apple, how come we all have to pay for original sin?

scripto said:
All humanity was present. All both of them. Read your Bible you apostate. 

6:19 PM

Anonymous said...

"All both".....priceless!

7:55 PM

Now you may not be able to tell by my literary efforts that my mother was an English teacher so I am well aware that the elites consider "all both" to be bad form. Now, in my defense, I did give that comment careful thought and boiled it down to two questions:

1. Did I think Ironicus would get the joke?

and

2. Did I care if I looked stupid?

My answers were yes and no. Now it is possible Anonymous did get the joke and thought that my comment was priceless in a brilliantly humorous way. In that case I look even more stupid. And yes, that is possible. And no, I still don't care.