Hey Get That Frisbee, will ya?

I got the rest of this stuff.

Next Year I'm Bringing Two Beach Towels

Twenty by eight feet, one bathroom, ten people - you do the math.

Town Hall Beatdown

The conservative blogosphere are wetting their panties about jackbooted union thugs tossing a bunch of teabaggers out of a townhall meeting in Tampa. The beatee, one Mr. Arthur, is interviewed looking rather perplexed that that he tried to push his way into a meeting and got pushed back. Now I don't want to belittle the trauma that poor Mr. Arthur, who's only crime was to try to enter a public meeting and shout inanities in an effort to destroy any semblance of reasoned discourse, suffered during this horendous takedown. And I sure none of this was covered in Rush's playbook. You surely don't expect to be bullied when you're intent on bullying someone else. During the fracas Mr. Arthur lost almost all the buttons on his shirt, giving him more of a South Beach than Panhandle look, and suffered a moderate to severe Indian burn (which really stings) on his arm. I'm sorry, but this doesn't even qualify as a beatdown in Chevy Chase, let alone Tampa. The UMW organizers of my Grandaddy's day are looking down from that Tavern in the Sky and rolling their eyes at what they're calling a beating these days. They gave out way worse at their own meetings, to their own members.

So I'm urging everyone to calm down and take a step back. We're all Americans here, even the stupid ones. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Grandpa, waving your Medicare supplied cane and screaming about socialized medicine. Chill out. Cooler heads need to prevail before something far worse happens and someone ends up with a Texas Wedgie or a Purple Nurple.

Ch-ch-ch Changes

The American Psychological Association has determined that programs designed to ungay gays do not work and do not change the sexual orientation of gay men. Gayness is incurable. So is blond hair, blue eyes and strawberry allergies. It may be hard to exactly pinpoint what constitutes being gay. It seems to be a sliding scale ranging from drag queens to art handlers to megachurch pastors to orthopedic surgeons to Republican senators to the guys back in D&E to married with children to polygamists to Double Y's. Maybe the scale isn't linear but curves back on itself, kind of like, um, a circle. But I don't want to think about that.

Reaction from recently outed public figures has been swift:

"I'm so furious I could slap somebody. I took the cure and I'm one hundred per cent fabulous heterosexual man meat. I'm living proof it works."
Ted Haggard - unemployed former holy man

"See, I told you. But I'm still not gay."
Larry Craig - former Senator and current men's room attendant

But Scripto, you say: Being that you have no knowledge of genetics and even less of embryology, how can you be so sure that homosexuality is innate rather than a choice? Here's how, doofus dear reader. When I was a lad there was a pair of twin boys that lived across the street. Let's call them A and B (B really was kind of a B, if you know what I mean). A liked girls. B liked boys. Now either B made this lifestyle choice sometime in kindergarten or he really didn't have any choice in the matter. What do you think?

Public Service Announcement

Mirrored this video in hopes of preserving this moment in sports history for posterity. Evidently David Feherty wandering around the Buick Open farting on mike is copyright protected. The PGA is no doubt worried that this will increase the popularity of televised golf and attract the wrong demographic. People who appreciate a good fart joke are unlikely to need Viagra or be inclined to buy a Buick.

UPDATE: The PGA has determined that Tiger Woods was not the source of the mysterious fart as he has a caddie that does all his farting for him. David Feherty is now identified as the likely culprit, although he has neither admitted nor denied his role in this affair. We at Woo University call on David to man up and come clean regarding his involvement in this unfortunate incident.

The Govmint Won't Pay for Grampa's Sex Change

But it will pay for Granny's abortion. It ain't fair. Why should Grandpa have to live a lie? Speaking of lies. If your organization has "Family" in its name you're hanging with a bunch of douchebags. If it also contains the words "Research" and "Council" you're hanging with a bunch of lying douchebags.

Obama Hates White Culture

I don't know what it is either, Glenn. In fact, I'm not sure what you are. I didn't even know we had a culture but if it includes stuff like Happy Days, Lawrence Welk and Broadway musicals then I'm with the President.
I hate it, too. So take the poll. Let me know we got something more than square dancing and jug band music. Help me to be proud again.

Health Care Smealth Care

I don't know what kind of sausage they're grinding over in the Halls of Congress but at the end of the day, if it doesn't involve a single payer system or at least a public option, we're going to end up with the same bullshit health care system we have now. Well, maybe a little better, but the fundamentals remain the same. It's not about cost or rationing or choice of doctors or portability or black helicopters whisking the old folks off to the Soylent Green Hospice. It's the same principle that raises my life insurance rates from $260 a year to $2,600 when I turn 60. The government gets to take care of the old and sick and the young born sick and private insurance gets everyone else. Of course everyone else is where the money is made. If the government is involved at all it should be running the show. Unless all age groups are in the same pool the goverment run programs will end up continually in the red. Anything else is just more crap. Congress could start with Medicare for kids. That would even the playing field.

Looosieeeee- I'm Retarded

Apparently a wise Latina can choose her words more carefully than a cracker senator from Oklahoma. You people all know Ricky Ricardo, don't you? Just Senator Coburn's way of showing he's sensitive to our Hispanic brethren and hip to their lingo. I'm a small town white boy and even I winced at this. Kind of like I wince when I hear a foreman yell to anyone who doesn't turn beet red in the sun "Hey Mexico, Get over here!".

Of course this is even worse. Courtesy of that jug eared mofo from Alabama- Sessions who wonders why Sotomayor didn't vote with the other beaner judge. I mean ya'll live in the same room, right? As my dad says. "What do you expect from Alabama?" Not much, I guess.



Bill Buckley must be spinning in his grave. And poor Colin Powell. He's off crying in a corner right now. God, I love the Republican Party.

A Serious Contestant Candidate

Before resigning

"Hi Alaska. I appreciate speaking directly to you, the people I serve, as your Governor."
Hi yourself. Thank you for speaking directly to us from your web page. I can see your picture from my computer.

"People who know me know that besides faith and family, nothing's more important to me than our beloved Alaska. Serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine. I want Alaskans to grasp what can be in store for our state."
I mean in the future. I gotta go. There's a sale at Nieman.

"Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, and oil and gas. It's enery! God gave us energy."
So God likes the Saudi's and Russians more? I wish God gave me the energy to figure out just what in the hell you're trying to say.

"People who know me...As you know me...People who know me..."
Yeah. You're practically one of the family. And in my case that ain't such a good thing.

The rest is a chaotic mess of mixed metaphors and lame sports analogies ranging from protecting states' rights by filing suit in federal court to allow private companies to fill lakes with toxic mine waste to not being a quitter by quitting in the middle of her term. Follow the link and feel free to mine your own quotes. There's gold in them thar hills.

Contrast it with:

The following op-ed by Sarah Palin in her own words as told to William Kristol.

"The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics."

Hmm. A bigger irony is that this is well phrased. Someone evidently learned to write in comprehensible English in just 10 short days. Well, the message is still garbled and God remains our biggest energy producer but still, this girl is a quick study. Watch out, Barry. She's coming for you.

Who Says We're Not the Party of Ideas

We got ideas. We got ideas about how to end it with a mistress in a sensitive and loving way:

"... I used you for my own pleasure, not letting thoughts of you, Doug, Blake, Brandon or Brittany come into my mind..." (By the way - I know you're upset so here's $96,000.00 for tissues)
Senator Ensign (Viagra-Nevada) to some other guy's wife

Before we get all holier than thou (or smarter than thou) on the Senator let's review a few mitigating factors:
1. Ensign is a Senator from Nevada
2. Ensign got advice on dealing with the fallout from this affair from Sen. Coburn, the junior and, if you can believe it, stupider* Senator from Oklahoma. Coburn advised Ensign to leave this paper trail and pay off the family, leaving another paper trail. Coburn is an OB/GYN and a deacon. Fair warning OK cowgirls - don't let this guy anywhere near your cooch.
3. Ensign is so obviously wracked by guilt that he forgot that women can be human beings, capable of independent thought and action. Seems crazy, I know. Unless Mrs X was in a coma, it takes two to tango. Sometimes the vagina is as likely to use the penis as the penis is to use the vagina. More craziness, I know.
4. Johnny's in love

Another presidential hopeful flames out. Sarah's starting to look pretty good. At least she isn't sporting a penis. I think.

*yes, I know. But I like stupider more better

Scripto Tears Lid Off Creationist Conspiracy

Well, not exactly a conspiracy, since it was only one guy and I didn't exactly rip the lid off since it wasn't any kind of secret but I did write a letter. Now I've been having trouble getting published lately, either because The Man can't handle the truth or it may be that the editor is threatened by the fluidity of my prose. But since you dropped by - here it is:

To the Editor:
A theory in science is a well tested concept that explains a set of observations and makes testable predictions. The idea that life has been on this planet for a very long time and has changed through time is as much a fact as the idea that the earth orbits the sun. The consensus is that evolution occurred by descent through modification, mainly by natural selection, and this is what should be taught in our science classes. Just as there are no coherent alternatives to atomic theory or germ theory there are no supported alternatives to evolutionary theory. So-called Scientific Creationism has been falsified and Intelligent Design remains a vague idea that shows no promise of being a testable hypothesis, let alone a scientific theory.
Here is one undisputed fact that can be taught in biology classes across the entire district: If Board President Helman believes that all species were originally created as they are now, as he has been reported as saying, then he has no idea what he is talking about. Congratulations to the rest of the board for overruling him on the purchase of the Miller/Levine text. May they continue to do so in all matters involving curriculum.

Update: Holy Shit! They printed it. Not quite as I wrote it. Instead of insulting Helman I was edited to insult other, unnamed board members.

My Brother's Phone

My brother's a stand-up guy. If he says something, he means it, if he commits to something, he does it. he's honest, thoughtful, considerate, deeply spiritual. You know, all the qualities you or I would have if we had the energy or inclination. Once he stopped a table full of ruffians in a Snohomish Washington bar from relieving me of my box of Sherman cigarettes. Just by grabbing one of the guys by the arm, looking him in the eye and saying "no". My response would've been more along the lines of asking them if they needed a light. He also walked into Manhattan from Brooklyn on 9/11, somehow found his wife and daughter and walked them back home. Like I said, a guy you can count on.
In most respects. Let's just say he's technologically "challenged". The 21st century doesn't quite fit. I get the impression he'd be perfectly content to live out his life in a moss covered hut on the coast of Ireland, writing, painting and reading Joyce until his eyes bled. No cardigan is too ugly (or fuzzy), no natural fabric is too itchy (or ugly), imagine a sartorial cross between Mr. Rogers and Grizzly Adams and you get the idea. My brother will send my kids a tofu sculpting kit in lieu of the copy of Call of Duty III that I suggested. He sends me freakin' letters, for Christ sake. He approaches the computer like it's going to burst into flames at any second. He borrows my niece's laptop and she stands behing him rolling her eyes so hard I'm afraid she's going to need corrective lenses.
Our dad has ended up in the hospital for a few days so I tried to contact my brother on his cell to give him daily updates:

ring ring ring ring ring ring...the Alltel customer you are trying to reach is unavailable, please try again later. (click).

WTF? Did you know you can get a cell phone plan without voicemail? I didn't. When I finally get ahold of him I suggest that he pay the extra 50 cents a month and get voice mail. This I think irritates him but the connection is so bad I can barely hear him. Somewhere in the static he keeps telling me there is nothing wrong with his phone. I suggest texting. No go. I suggest pulling out the antenna and hooking up the knapsack battery pack to a car battery. This irritates him further and he repeats that his Verizon service is just fine. Then it disconnects. I call back and get the Alltel message. Maybe that's the problem. My his phone doesn't know who it belongs to. We need to straighten this out. I'll send him a letter.

Heeere's Jesus!

Looks like Death knocked on Ed's door to deliver his prize for winning the Eternity Clearing House Sweepstakes. Too bad. All the late night heroes from my boyhood are fading away. Johnny, Sammy, Joey, Mike, Merv, Frank, Buddy, Milton, Sid, David (oops, still kicking)... all gone. Makes one stop, reflect on his own mortality and realize just how precious our fleeting time in this life is...Ok, enough of that, I think SpongeBob's on.

Peace Latte

Vacation in Rehoboth Beach over. Finally an end to all the crying and whining and complaining. And that was just me. Since we stay about a mile south, I like to walk up the beach to the boardwalk. Usually by myself and sometimes with one or two of the grandkids (we had three with us this time, ranging in ages from 2 to 8). It's nice. The only sounds the murmur of the sea and the voices in my head. I get to the boardwalk, meet up with the family (damn cell phones), and am informed in no uncertain terms that "we" are hungry. So here's my thinking: there are two adults, three very young kids and me. I suggest Victoria's first, a pretty classy sit down restaurant as I know she'll turn that down for logistical and financial reasons. That leaves me an excuse in case any of my much more reasonable (and cheaper) fast food places goes south. I lead everyone to 5 Guys burgers, voted #1 in something or other poll from somewhere or other. How bad can this be? Well, pretty bad, as it turns out. Imagine being trapped inside a tanning booth with a thrash metal band and a hairlipped auctioneer with a megaphone and you get an idea of the ambiance. Between "songs" and all the furniture being thrown around (tables too close together) I was informed that my significant other has not eaten red meat in a year. Now how the hell was I supposed to know that? In Five Guys defense, my burger was pretty good. Thankfully the music was blaring when she opened up her wrapper and gazed down at the sodden mass of grease and bread that was her grilled cheese. I could see lips moving, something about eating a bucket of Crisco, but there was no escaping that look. So I swore to God that something like this will never, ever happen again and ran across the street to Whole Lotta Latte and got her a quad. That helped. At least the hole I dug didn't get any deeper.

Gasper the Friendly Ghost

Maybe this is too soon and I have wrestled with my conscience a bit in deciding to post this but I can't let one of life's little absurdities, even the tragic ones, pass unnoticed. I would hope that if I were found dead in a hotel closet, with a rope around my neck and my pecker in my hand, someone would take the time to write a few words about me. It would be immortality of a sort and I can think of more embarrassing things that you may actually live through, like this. Besides, who knew whacking off could be so deadly?
Since I go home at lunch and have broadband access I have been tasked with the job of researching this particular behavior. Any novel masturbatory techiques invoke great interest at our company, particularly in the Drafting and Engineering department. I hope any information I share doesn't spawn a series of copy cat incidents that end up decimating the technical wing of our company. I could lose my job. Or at the very least get a stern talking to.
According to the Thai police report, David Carradine was found dead in the closet of his hotel room, with ropes around his neck, wrist and genitals. The mechanics of this tragic mishap are what fascinates me. Now the rope around the neck I can understand - that's the whole point. The rope around the wrist is more problematic. I figure he tossed the rope over the clothes bar in the closet, tied the other end to his wrist, assuming that as he lost conciousness during the act, his arm would relax and the rope would loosen around his throat and he would revive. Now I would think that to be safe you would hold the rope in one hand and as you passed out it would release, increase the odds of a non-fatal outcome for this particular bit of self gratification. Of course, it is possible that the wrist rope was also tied to the genitals. But you would need a free hand somewhere so it could have been one rope linking wrist, neck and genitals in an intricate series of pulleys, cables and sliding knots. That's some Kung Fu shit there. The whole genital rope thing bothered me, too and I'm kind of sorry I even looked into it. It may have had something to do with prolonging or preventing an erection. Take your pick. Somewhere between 250 and 1000 people in the US, mostly male, die from auto erotic asphyxiation every year. I knew one, and, take it from me, you don't want to be remembered as the guy they found hanging from a doorknob with his pants around his ankles. Then again, you may not care, but that's a subject for another post. So boys (and the occasional girl), unless you were an Eagle scout or a sailor, and have mad knot tying skills, better make this particular activity a team sport.

Shout out to the asshole at work who came up with the title. I liked "Hung Fu" but I'm sure it's been used. I said you wouldn't get any credit. And you won't

The Process

"Scripto, how do you do it? How do you take a marginally interesting idea and turn it into something almost unreadable?" It isn't easy. The words to make them come out right is hard to sometimes do. In my mind I am a great writer. I am lucid, concise, well reasoned. The narrative flows inexorably and effortlessly towards a well defined conclusion. But all that gets lost somewhere between my brain and my fingers. It's hard to lure the muse back when she left in a huff due to me sitting on my ass watching television for 50 straight years. But I keep plugging away. All the lack of talent in the world can't keep me from not doing what I am incapable of doing. So here's how I do it. It's a little secret I like to call The Process. First I take an idea that I find funny or irritating (or both), say, like, my wife swearing at me on Christmas Eve or Sarah Palin pretending to be my friend. Then I throw words at it until it kinds of sticks to the screen. That is what we authors call "fleshing it out" (a good idea if you are getting paid by the word). Now comes the hard part. Editing. Many times I will go back, reread my post, and discover that it makes no sense whatsoever. Even to me. That's where those handy little fuckers known as punctuation come in. Every blogger has their strengths and weaknesses in this area. Myself, I'm a freakin' genius when it comes to: ', I'm pretty good with: ., not so good with: , but my favorite and the ones I find most handy are these babies here: (). Oftimes (not a word I suggest you use) I'll be meandering (a nice word, don't you think - so peaceful) along, trying to make some point or another, throwing in a comma here or there, when I will think of something somewhat unrelated to the point I'm making (a fragment of a thought or a snotty aside) but I don't want to set it on its own because I'll probably forget it so I wedge it in with these: (). I also use a lot of these: - for the same reason. They are indicators of my unique style and separate me from the other bad bloggers. Proper grammar should not be a consideration. End a sentence with a preposition if you want to. Split infintives, mix declensions; so what, no one hardly cares. It's a LOL world now.
Speaking of style, I've tried a few. Minimalist: Time saver. Lacks development. Dry scientific - borrrrrinnng. So I settled on a style I like to call faux conversationist . Light, breezy, kinda now, kinda Charlie, just the ticket on a hot summer afternoon and a good way to connect me to you. Throw in a bunch of .hyperlinks and a couple of images to distract from the prose and voila!, I be blogging. And you can too.

I Used to Like Dick

Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words in this post title. I hope it doesn't result in unwanted attention. Hell, who am I kidding? Any attention is welcome. I'm dyin' here. What I meant was that I used to like Dick Cheney. Wait! Don't go! Hear me out. Follow these here thought processes: I didn't so much like Cheney himself as I liked his calm, reasoned manner. It stemmed from his debate performance against the two colorless (and no doubt odorless) Democratic VP candidates. Cheney's well modulated avuncular manner gave me some hope that he could tether Bush to reality if the Republicans were unfortunately elected or re-elected. Maybe keep George from doing something really stupid like accidently sitting on the big red button and launching a nuclear strike on Canada. Little did I know that, underneath Cheney's calm, reasoned avuncularity, lay a bottomless well of incompetence.
I can understand the tough guy stuff from Dick, George and Rummy. George had that whole boola boola thing to live down so he went off to fly fighter jets and maybe tap Laura after a day of manly ranching. Dick was another story given that I'm fairly certain that his doctor told him he was not healthy enough for sexual activity. Given that Viagra was out I imagine the whole process was somewhat difficult for him. His pacemaker beeping wildly as his doughy thighs slap ineffectually against his leather chaps, straining to climax as beads of sweat run down his bald head, thinking of reports of enhanced interrogation ; a tear runs down Lynn's face as she turns her head away, her sobs muffled by the water soaked cloth covering her face, and prepares to accept a dribble of his poisoned seed. I don't even like to think about it. Well, I like to think I don't like to think about it.
But it's not the macho stuff or even the evil as much as the incompetence that gets to me. Now I'm sure there will be entire libraries dedicated to Bush's uncanny propensity to appoint the wrong people to the wrong jobs at the wrong time but since Cheney went to all that trouble to set up a shadow government , mirroring the real government in most executive functions, is it too much to ask that one of them was actually able to govern or maybe even keep a secret? The reaction to Joe Biden spilling the beans about Cheney's secret bunker where he was transfused with the blood of virgins to keep his vitality is symptomatic. Now I'm no terrorist mastermind but given that the neighbors surrounding the Naval Observatory were complaining about the noise and the blurring the image on Google Earth...

Sweet Ida

Not really knowing my ass-bone from a hole in the ground I got nothing intelligent to say about this exciting early primate find. You can access the original paper through the above link and some of the controversy here. The great thing is that the authors of the paper published the research on an open forum that anyone can access. This took some big stones considering all the hits they knew they'd take from the other science guys by teaming up with the History Channel for the big unveiling. I don't blame them. It took a lot of bones to buy that specimen and someone has to pay for the research.
It is a fascinating look at how real science operates, complete with egos aflame, backbiting, and conflict. Just like any other human endeavor. Only better because it eventually arrives at a consensus based on evidence. You can take a couple things away from this find. One; you can see the absurdity of the idea that there is some sort of monolithic Darwinist conspiracy to suppress the truth among biologists. It's obvious the knives are always out and you better have your shit together before you publish. And two; contrast this with the approach taken by the Creation Scientists and Intelligent Design crowd. You can see the reason they don't poke their heads out of their hidey-holes very often. They got nothing.

* Attention bloggers - Urgent Update!: This is not a transitional between humans and mammals. We are mammals. Your mom had tits, didn't she?

The World's Worst Catholic Explains Blood Sacrifice

If the above graphic totally creeps you out - you are an atheist, agnostic or possibly a Jew and you are headed for eternal damnation. If the above graphic moderately creeps you out and you view it as a symbolic representation of the sacrifice Christ made to save us all - you are some sort of Protestant and you also are going to take a nice long dip in the lake of fire. If the above graphic makes you wince a little and you feel that it is an accurate (but too graphic for the kiddies) representation of Christ's blood sacrifice - you are some sort of Cafeteria Catholic and you better take a doggie bag and book your room by the century at the Motel 6th Level in Purgatory because it's going to take a while to burn the heresy out of you. If the above graphic seems like some sort of cartoon fit for Nickelodeon and you are disappointed the image lacks accurate blood splatter patterns and photo-realistic depictions of crucifixion wounds - you are true OG RC so grab your best hair shirt and strap on your cilice and join me as Sister Mary Joseph breaks it down old school for the rest of these clowns:

During the mass the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Real blood and real flesh?
Yes.
It doesn't look any different.
It is.
It doesn't taste like blood.
It's a miracle. You have to have faith.
But...
Now, be quiet.
Yes, Sister.