The Cheshire's Blog

The Morning After

2006-05-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

For years, now (5 for those of you who want to get nitpicky), I’ve been beseeching the American public to wake up in the hope that they will finally see what an imbecile we have for a president. Now, they finally are … and it’s a little creepy.

As any college student worth his weight can tell you, the party may be a lot of fun, but the day after generally sucks. Now, the political hangover is really starting to kick in and we can’t seem to find anyone with enough aspirin to fix our collective and splitting $500 billion Iraqi headaches.

Just as when anyone wakes up the morning after, we all seem to be worried about the future. We got in a fight with who? Over what, exactly? But, they didn’t have anything to do with the original fight. Aw, shit. Do you think I should go over and apologize to the guy?

We’re finally becoming disillusioned with the White House. We’re starting to realize that the lies we were told at last night’s party are pure bullshit. The lap-dancing hooker really isn’t madly in love with us, the floor really isn’t that great a place to take a nap, and Homeland Security is a complete farce.

Homeland Security. Now there’s a contradiction in terms that rivals Army Intelligence. If we were so goddamned concerned over our homeland’s security, then why did we attempt to sell off middle eastern ports that are crawling with support for terrorism? Why, for that matter, would we lessen our border protection and just stand aside while millions of illegal immigrants flood into our “protected” nation? If these throngs of people can cross over our borders unscathed, then what’s to stop Al Qaeda from going shopping at the Mall of America?

People are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that our president isn’t the patriotic fuck-all that we’ve always thought him to be. It’s no longer funny to see him bungle words, or put on that old “Aw shucks, I’m just an ignorant Texan turd with a lot of money” act. The patriotic hangover is finally starting to make us nauseous, and we now have to figure out a way to get the dead hooker out of the hotel room without causing a scene.

Bush lost any credibility as president when Katrina hit New Orleans. The images will never be forgotten – Bush on vacation playing guitar, then later, flying over the city while thousands of people were drowning. He stood by and did nothing for an entire week and just watched as people died. This was inexcusable.

The creepy part about all this sudden realization is that it’s like watching a horror movie unfold in front of our eyes. We know the killer is lurking nearby, but everyone on TV is pretending that everything is normal. We realize that the “Leader of the Free World” is a moron, it’s scares the hell out of us, and yet we continue to just watch the plot unfold. It’s more than just creepy, it’s terrifying.

I don’t know anyone who gives a rat’s ass about the Middle East – or China, or Russia – purely on a humanitarian basis. Not enough to actually do anything about it, anyway. No, what we care about is, as Mr. Bush clearly stated, “Is our children learning?”

We don’t really care about a shotgun wedding between the United States and Iraq, but we will care about the $500 billion we’ll need to fork over when the Iraqi bill comes due.

AG

Ashes to Ashes

2006-03-01T12:53:00.000-06:00

Ash Wednesday, 2006: The streets have been cleared, the classic floats have once again been stored for another year at Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World, and the controversial 2006 party is over. Six months after Katrina’s flood waters attempted to wipe the earth clean of New Orleans and its deep culture, the city officials have attempted to show that tradition is stronger than any devastation.

There have been many within the New Orleans parishes, who were hoping that the 2006 Mari Gras festivities would be cancelled in order to further accommodate the rebuilding of the city. Thousands of residents are still displaced in the wake of the destruction, and with so many who remain homeless, even some city officials claim that this is no time to party.

To party or not to party has been a matter of controversy ever since Katrina made landfall, last August. Of course, back then, people were more concerned about their survival from one day to the next without the slightest thought about beads and floats. But, don’t think for an instant that the city officials weren’t entertaining thoughts of Mardi Gras Indians dancing amidst the city’s devastation.

Mardi Gras usually generates about 4.5 million during the week prior to Fat Tuesday. And that sort of income is exactly what New Orleans (businesses and residents alike) needs in order to dig themselves out of the watery grave that the levees made it become. Let us not forget what New Orleans is really all about. Yes, the Big Easy is a major US port, and yes, the industry is a huge money-making factor that cannot be ignored. But, moreover, it is a city that exists by the grace of tourist dollars.

New Orleans’ officials knew that if they were to bring back the tourist bankrolls, and thereby allow the city to further get back on its feet, they would have to make the city appear as though the recovery rate is doing just fine. What better way to pull-off this illusion than by continuing on with the 2006 Mardi Gras plans? The tourists never go into the hardest hit areas like the 9th Ward, so to the untrained eye New Orleans looks as though nothing ever happened. What many tourists don’t realize is that the French Quarter and Uptown (Garden District area) were barely touched by the floods, which leaves many wondering where all those horrible photographs came from.

A couple of the major levees which hold back Lake Pontchartrain’s waters hover right over the lower 9th Ward. This is where most of the photos of devastation came from, and this is exactly what the city’s business officials no longer want you to see. It’s just not good for business. Go into the 9th ward today, and it looks like what it has become; a demilitarized zone. Again, the business owners know that you’re not likely to see that end of town, so it’s all about letting the good times roll. Mardi Gras revelers can safely tuck their drunken heads under the city’s wings and pretend that Katrina never happened.

Being a tourist-funded city, the majority of businesses in New Orleans heavily rely upon hospitality workers. These people almost entirely make up the residential zones of places like the 9th Ward and the French Quarter. They are horribly underpaid, and even though there is a lot of tourist tip money to be had during Mardi Gras, some bartenders and waiters in the Vieux Carre walk home from a typical eight-hour shift with less than a dollar in their pockets, during the off-season. These are also the exact people who had no money or transportation out of New Orleans when all hell began to break loose. The people who take care of us when we go there for drinks and laughs; the waiters who serve us the great gumbo; the bartenders who ironically pour our hurricane drinks; the hotel workers who make our beds and clean up after our slovenly selves were the exact same people we all saw gathered around the Superdome on TV, and a great many of them died in the floods.

Still, these are the people who represent the heart and soul of New Orleans, along with her cryptical, confutable and often controversial heritage. Most of them are the good folks who put the mints under your pillows and the extra shots in your glass. And, even though it’s in the nature of the typical New Orleanian to be extremely cordial (New Orleans has always had a reputation for offering the absolute best in the hospitality business; Southern hospitality is not completely lost amidst the city’s controversy), tourists should know by now that it all comes with a heavy price tag. It’s through these prices for outstanding hospitality that New Orleans has continued to thrive amongst a South that is otherwise made up of the poor and uneducated. Quite an accomplishment for one city, when one takes a serious look at the rest of Louisiana economy. This in itself should bear the up-by-the-bootstraps trademark of a people who care about their city and their culture.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Hell is a place where everyone has a complaint, and makes it ceaselessly.” With this quote in mind, the controversy surrounding this year’s Mardi Gras festivities should be put aside in the hopes that the tourist money will do what FEMA and other government agencies neglected to do; provide the residents of New Orleans with the necessary funding to rebuild their great city. Instead of debasing supporters of the 2006 Mardi Gras, people who truly care about New Orleans should be sinking money into the heart and soul of the city, its workers. It is through them that the city will be rebuilt to its former glory, not in the worries over political corruption and mismanaged funds.

Ash Wednesday is the polar opposite from Fat Tuesday’s decadence. It marks the beginning of Lent, which is a time of atonement. It is a time when we are to make a fearless and moral inventory of ourselves. Whether you hold faith to Catholic dogmas, or not, the 2006 season of Lent should be exactly that; a time to take a break from the self-justifications, the complaints, the blames and accusations of others, and instead take a good and hard look at ourselves. This is not an easy feat to accomplish in our contemporary accept-no-blame culture, but without self-atonement there can be no forgiveness; without forgiveness there can be no progress, without progress New Orleans may well become nothing more than a swamp with a lot of good memories.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Jesus Cartoon Sparks Angry Protest

2006-02-19T03:21:00.000-06:00

In what can only be compared to a Stryper concert gone horribly awry, thousands of angry Christians marched on Minnesota's state capital late last night. Vexed by a cartoon published by the Cheshire’s Blog (click link for sample) in a recent article (click link for article), which depicted Jesus, the Christian’s lord and savior, as a peace-loving flower child. The mob demanded an immediate apology from Alan Gray of the Cheshire’s Blog, Blogspot.com, Minnesota state representatives, and the devil himself.

When asked about publishing the cartoon, Alan Gray, author of the offending blog, only stated that the image depicted Jesus smiling and showing the peace sign (click link for sample). “I didn’t think the Christians had anything against peace,” claimed Gray, “I don’t see the problem, here.”

“We ain’t got nothing against peace, per se,” said Billy Bob McGee, self-appointed leader of the protest, “it’s just that that darned cartoon showed our loving lord and savior as a hippy with two fingers pointed toward Our Heavenly Father, per se. Everyone knows that a hand gesture like that can only mean one thing; the sign of the devil, per se.”

The Cheshire’s Blog has refused an apology, stating first amendment protection. But, as a sign of goodwill, it has agreed not to republish the offending cartoon (click link for sample). However, in an attempt to give the reader an idea of what the commotion is all about, please observe the following cartoon (click on the image for a larger view):

Singing hymns while brandishing lighter fluid and crosses, the Christian Rebellion Against Bad and Satanic Symbolism (CRABaSS) threatens that if an apology is not given by a February 19th deadline, consequences of major proportions will follow.

“We ain’t messin around, here,” read a CRABaSS statement slipped under Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s door. “We’re in this for the long haul, and if’n that ‘pology ain’t made by tomorrow night, someone’s gonna pay ... per se!”

When asked the question as to what the republican governor had to do with the offending cartoon (click link for sample), Billy Bob remarked, "Well, it's sorta like that whole 911/Iraq reason that President Bush gave for invading that god-awful country, per se. If'n that Pawlenty fella wants to keep company with the likes of obviously anti-Christian folks like Alan Gray, per se, then we're gonna ..." At which point the reporters stopped listening. Governor Pawlenty could not be reached for comment.

AG

The Jesus Cartoon

2006-02-18T09:21:00.000-06:00

Not to be outdone by anyone (least of which Danish people - are they human, or are they pastries?), we here at the Cheshire’s Blog would like to start our own little social experimentation. If the Danish can get away with pissing off millions of Muslims throughout the world, the Cheshire’s Blog would like to see just how far we can push the Christian community over the edge of sanity.

With that said, we now present the Jesus Cartoon:

FEMA's Trailer Park

2006-02-16T10:08:00.000-06:00

Ok, so if I have this correctly, General Richard Skinner, Department of Homeland Security Inspector, has advised that the 11,000 trailers, which are currently sitting empty near the Hope Municipal Airport in Hope, Arkansas, (apparently the Southerners, who lost their homes are too busy with Mardi Gras parties to have asked for housing accommodations just yet), are badly damaged. “Insofar as many of these homes fail to meet FEMA specification requirements, or FEMA has no qualified prearranged site locations to place them, they may have to be disposed of.” Said Skinner

News crews have not been allowed on the site until the other day, when John McDermott, FEMA spokesperson, finally walked camera crews through the vast landscape of metal homes and told reporters that the homes are actually in perfect condition. Of course they are sagging a bit, due to the fact that they’re sitting on Arkansas’ apparent soft soil, but FEMA brought in 6,500 jacks to fix the problem, and they seem to have done the job. Imagine that! FEMA saw a problem and actually fixed it!

FEMA site manager Jerry Hall said that there “are no damaged trailers here … none.” He also stated that the Homeland Security inspectors spent all of half an hour on the over 300 acre site, and then went back to Washington with the news that the mobile homes were falling apart at the seams, and not fit to be habitable by nutria. (Nutria: you good folks from Louisiana know what I’m talking about!)

Why not just move the trailers to their intended destination in the Gulf? Well, according to McDermott, he doesn’t know. He said, “that decision largely depends upon finding sites on which to put them.”

I have a suggestion: How about putting them anywhere the damned hurricane damaged people’s homes? I’m pretty sure that the victims of Katrina; whole families who are either living on the streets or perhaps lucky enough to still reside in state run shelters, while attempting to contend with the loss of neighbors and loved ones, would be more than happy to have a place to call their own, no matter how temporary. Perhaps the metal homes will give these poor bastards some hope, while being defrauded by their home insurance companies.

Keep in mind that with the approach of Spring, and with it tornado season in Arkansas, FEMA’s claim to Homeland Security Inspector General that the homes are in perfect condition may not last very long; jacks for the sagging homes, or not. Don’t forget that tornadoes seem to have a taste for mobile home parks, and the 300 acre mobile home park in Arkansas is no exception.

Just imagine for a moment the kind of new disaster in the making: Metal debris from 11,000 trailers flying through the air, thereby creating one of the worst tornado disasters ever. Perhaps even creating something so large as an F5 twister. Then, Homeland Security can once again make claim that FEMA’s incompetent management, and their refusal to do away with the trailers when the Inspector General specifically told them to do it, will slam the final nail in a coffin that has been meant for FEMA all along.

AG

The Most Dangerous Man in America

2006-02-14T04:24:00.000-06:00

Oh, sure. He may look cute and cuddly on the outside, but peel away that fuzzy exterior and Dick Cheney is a nothing more than blatant serial killer. The following collage just goes to show that you don't need to go hunting with Big Dick to ensure your untimely demise.

Advice for the Would-be Blogger: Say Something!

2006-02-13T06:10:00.000-06:00

The mainstream press would have us all believing that the blog world is filled with teenage morons, who would rather bore us to death with online journals, or half-witted crackpot journalist wanna-be’s, who have nothing better to do with their time than to create conspiracy theories against their particular government. While this may be the case with some blogs, it tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

It takes all of about ten minutes of cruising through the various blogs found at blog servers like Blogger.com to realize that we Bloggers have much more to say than how our day went, who’s dating who, and the typical water-cooler office chat. As for the conspiracy theories, well, I imagine that this form of communication is where the conspiracy theories might originate. By definition, a conspiracy theory is a supposition of an unexplainable event, filled with half-truths and sometimes wild guesses.

The reason these theories abound is because so much information is being withheld from the public. Whether it’s about the JFK assassination, UFOs, or perhaps even the factual grounds behind the invasion of Iraq (oil and total control of middle east trading), these conspiracy theories flourish because they provide a way for people to make sense of an otherwise nonsensical world.

In a letter dated February 2nd, 2006 and signed by its Director of Policy, the NSA revealed that it has contracts with at least two of the mainstream press wire services, Reuters and Associated Press (AP), and that the information received from these wire services could not be released to the public. In part, here is what the letter said:

“Information provided to NSA by Reuters and AP is protected against disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b)(4). The NSA contract with these companies precludes our release of this information. Violation of these contracts could prevent the government from obtaining similar information in the future.”

This in itself should go to show that the major media conglomerates cannot be trusted to provide the public with truthful information, and so it is small wonder that people will come to their own theories about the truth.

Most Bloggers hold no association with the NSA, nor any other information withholding organization. This disassociation allows Bloggers to speak the truth as they see it, and it allows the readers to get a more truthful account of what is happening in the world. This is why blogging is so vitally important to the world, and why the mainstream media would have the naive public believe that it is something entirely opposite to its nature; it’s a matter of competition through and through.

So, I suppose what I’m trying to advise here is that, if you’re entertaining the thought of creating your own blog, please do so responsibly. Don’t chit-chat the blog away by telling your readers about your day in traffic on the way to work, or waste your reader’s time with information about your particular office politics. You can keep a personal diary for such drivel that only matters to you. Say something with your blog.

Don’t make the organizations like the NSA our only source for the truth. I’m not saying that Bloggers should simply pull half-truths out of their collective asses, but instead they should really SAY something when blogging. Blog about what’s happening in the world as you see it. Blog about the information given to us, after you’re able to read between the NSA corrupted lines. If you’re able to obtain raw news before it is released to the mainstream, make that information public so that the mainstream media won’t have a chance to undermine its validity before they get their hands on it.

AG

Stop It, Cindy!

2006-02-05T04:57:00.000-06:00

A friend writes:

“Forgive me for sounding like a prude, but when Cindy does stuff like cozying up to Hugo Chavez and mumbling about running for Sen. Feinstein's seat, it makes me feel vaguely apprehensive.

She's good with her original message and should stick to it. Venturing into the world of hyperbole makes her prime meat for the Right, assisted as they are by the mainstream media.

I'm waiting for one of the Bushevik apologists to ask, "If Cindy Sheehan received bruises, let's see 'em." ”

At first, I was a bit offended by this remark. But, after a few minutes of thought, the hypocrisy behind Sheehan’s latest maneuvers really began to sink in. You may remember, back in November, Cindy tried to make a go of it in the publishing world with Not One More Mother’s Child. The ensuing book signing was a complete flop, it received horrible and scathing reviews, and this in itself should have gone to show that perhaps her fifteen minutes of fame was up then.

Then, in late January, she did make mention that she was considering vying for California Senator Feinstein’s seat, stating, “She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops.”

Not two days later, Sheehan and Hugo Chavez made photo ops. Chavez has stated, “Enough already with the imperialist aggression! … Down with the U.S. empire! It must be said, in the entire world: Down with the empire!” referring to the US intervention and occupation of places from Panama to Iraq.

This all gives me pause for thought. I wonder if Cindy, who’s original message was one of true protest and righteous, angry questioning of our president’s policies, hasn’t tasted fame and decided she wanted more?

The question that irritates me most about this is, considering her original plight, how her recent activities makes peace activists look in the eyes of the extreme right? Are we all just seeking the almighty buck and a few more minutes in the press’ limelight? This sort of carousing makes Sheehan look as though she is profiting from her son’s death, and further rubs the collective activist’s nose in her own crap!

So, after some thought on the subject, I have to say: Stop it, Cindy! You’ve had your time in the spotlight, you made an excellent point, now sit down and shut up! Continuing on with this sort of behavior is beginning to smell an awful lot like wartime profitability, and that smells an awful lot like shit.

A Small Proposal of Protest

2006-02-03T14:05:00.000-06:00

One of the things that bothers me so much about Bush is the fact that he cannot abide criticism. The arrest of Cindy Sheehan at the 2006 State of the Union Address is a prime example of what I mean, here. During his 2003 presidential campaign, his aides made sure that there were no protestors – or anyone claiming democratic leanings – attending the campaign speeches, and attendees were forced to sign waivers which claimed that they were of republican persuasion; some waivers even obliged the attendee to vote for Bush in the upcoming election. Where is the fairness in this sort of campaigning? Where is the sentience in only allowing those in your favor to be present at a national address?

Sheehan was arrested for wearing an anti-war t-shirt, which had the words “2,245 Dead. How Many More?” The number on the shirt was augmented with a line drawn diagonally through the “5” to read 2,247 in order to update the latest Iraqi car bombings, which had occurred since the shirt was created. This kind of demonstration is important. It is important because this is how America is supposed to work. We are allowed the right to protest anything we want, as long as we do so without inciting violence in our objections. It is one of the foremost reasons that despondent people immigrate to America, and find our brand of democracy so very appealing.

In taking away this form of protest, or any form for that matter, we are losing a freedom that has been granted to us by the country’s founders. Whether you happen to agree with the policies of the Bush administration, or not, I would hope that the one thing we can all agree on is that our freedoms to speak against the current political system are at stake when people are arrested for simply wearing a t-shirt that expresses facts.

I propose that we all get together and send president Bush flyers that state the latest death tolls. Most of us with computers have a word processing program like Microsoft Word, and a printer. All you need to do is type in the latest number of soldiers killed (you can find the latest count here), increase the font to it’s largest size (perhaps you can even use this bloody font for effect and color it red), print it out and mail it to:
President George W. Bush
c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

It’s not a big protest on our part, at least it shouldn’t be any big deal, but let’s make King George aware that we’ve all had enough of both his war and his feelings about the protestors, who speak out against his policies. I believe that if enough of us make this one small gesture of our disapproval, the Bush administration will be forced to act. President Bush has plainly stated that he does not pay attention to polls. I wonder if we can force him to at least pay attention to the tolls?

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln

AG

Blood on the Rainbow

2006-02-03T04:16:00.000-06:00

Good morning America! And, a very special good morning to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where police are seeking 18 year-old Jacob D. Robida, who reportedly used a hatchet and a gun to terrorize a local gay bar.

According to the bartender at New Bedford’s Puzzles Lounge, the young man came in, sat down, asked if this was a gay bar, ordered a couple of drinks, watched a friendly game of pool, and then proceeded to hack up and shoot the bar’s patrons. Yup, nothing like a couple of stiff drinks after a hard day to get relaxed.

Police have stated that they think this MAY have been a hate crime. The real question here is why these people are paid to think? If a skinhead walked into a predominately black bar and did the same thing, the hate crime question wouldn’t even be raised! Of course it’s a hate crime, you idiots! The guy comes in wearing a hooded, black sweat shirt with the hood down over his face; a fashion catastrophe in any gay establishment. Do these Sherlocks think he was simply there out of sexual curiosity?

-----------------------

In other news, King George II had his State of the Union address the other night, where he directly addressed the citizens of Iran; informing them that he respects them. Uh-huh, didn’t he do the same thing to the people of Iraq right before he commenced to bombing the living shit out of them? Bush also stated that there would be no withdrawal from Iraq, claiming that there is “no peace in retreat.” Sound familiar? Those of you who have read Orwell’s 1984 might grasp the correlation: War is Peace … Freedom is Slavery … Ignorance is Strength.

A Long Time Coming

2006-01-30T10:55:00.000-06:00

Well, it’s been exactly one month today, since I last wrote anything here. I needed a bit of a sabbatical, I think, to readjust my thoughts and to reevaluate some stuff in my life.

In any case, the Cheshire is back and ready to once again say …

Good morning America! And, a very special good morning to the guy who threw president Bush off-guard at a recent speech he gave to ranchers in Kansas, where ol’ Georgy was defending his unconstitutional spying program. How this heckler was able to get past Bush’s censorship henchmen is anyone’s guess … perhaps it was the “W” hat he reportedly wore to the conference.

Anyway, here is the video coverage.

The Fourth Amendment Blues

2005-12-30T07:25:00.000-06:00

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
-- U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment

For some time now I have been writing about the ineluctable fact that we are living within the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. Now, it looks as though this affirmation has finally come to light with the latest surveillance “scandal” coming from the White House.

Apparently His Omnipotence, George W Bush, can’t keep his nosey little self out of the lives of American citizens. This, of course, would be expected if we lived under a totalitarian regime of, say, the Saddam Hussein variety. But the last time I went to bed this was America, and even though everyone is insisting that I still live in America, I can’t seem to wake from the nightmare that I am living in a third-world country.

In 1791 the Fourth Amendment was put into place, but because of Nixon the Foreign Surveillance Act was instated in 1978. This act prescribes requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search in persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power. Requests are adjudicated by a special eleven member court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

But, because of new technology, in 2005 the defense department expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post 9/11 world. But, because the Constitution and the rule of law still exist in this post 9/11 world, Bush called the leak of the spy program “shameful”. Yeah, don’tcha just hate it when you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar?

Bush said: ''My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important (illegal) program in a time of (undeclared) war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy ."

So, if I’m to understand this correctly, the above quote assumes that the “enemy” had no clue that their communications might be monitored? OK, I guess I'm an idiot, so I'll buy that. But, keep in mind that this theory is coming from the same Einstein’s who couldn’t imagine commercial airliners being used as missiles.

The Oakland Tribune has recently requested that readers send in their old and tattered copies of 1984. Once they've gathered 537 of them, they will send them on to every member of the House of Representatives. It is the Tribune's hope that this book drive will somehow wake the nation from its apparent hypnosis and bring them to the reality that Big Brother is still in control. If you'd rather not read the above link to the Oakland Tribune's article about the request, and would just like to contribute to the drive, here is their address:
Oakland Tribune
c/o 1984
401 13th St., Oakland CA 94612

AG

The Year's Best Commercial?

2005-12-17T08:34:00.000-06:00

If you have yet to see this Anheuser-Busch Super Bowl commercial, click here.

If I've got this right, the commercial depicts what seems to be six soldiers returning home from the war. However, by the innocent and clean looks on their faces and uniforms, it seems more apparent that they're just heading out to the devastation. Where are the vacant and hopeless stares that have become the telltale trademark of the returning soldiers? So, are the people applauding the soldiers' return, or are they simply cheering them on to go off and die in an unjust war?

Then the commercial ends with a caption that reads "Thank You." That's nice. When soldiers returned from the Vietnam war, they didn't get thank yous; they got pushed to the side and spit on, and they were called baby-killers. Now, thirty-some-odd years later, it seems that the government-funded media has learned its lesson: Tell the American public how to feel about the war, and they'll stay asleep and go along with it. Clap, monkeys, we're sending your children back home to you. At least the live ones. This ad is perfect. If you like it, you may consider yourself ultra-patriotic and swig down an ice-cold Bud. If you don't like it, then you're anti-patriotic and against the soldiers. But, just in case you've forgotten, this war is not about the soldiers, its about profit. Our kids are being sent to Iraq to die in a rich-man's war, so that those rich men can get even richer. Was this ad simply a great big thank you card from the war's corporate sponsors?

What, exactly, are we thanking them for? Fighting for our freedoms? Our own government is ensuring that the PATRIOT Act is all but taking those freedoms away. The freedom of Iraq? Where is the freedom in having another country come in and tell you what to do, and how to live your life? The fact is Iraqis want the soldiers out. Many of them have clearly stated that they'd rather have Hussein back in power than to continue on with their lives in American military presence.

If this commercial truly wanted to depict the reality of this war, it would have shown soldiers returning in flag-draped coffins. It would have shown zombie-eyed soldiers walking through the airport using crutches and canes to support themselves after having a leg or two blown off from a car bomb. Instead it shows wholly intact, psychically undamaged individuals coming back from a war that has left thousands of their fellow soldiers, not to mention the even higher number of innocent Iraqi civilians - including women and children - dead.

Political, warmongering propaganda from a beer company without all that bitter aftertaste! Yummy!

Here's a commercial that won't be shown at this year's Superbowl: Click here.

AG

Let's Hear It for the Grannies!

2005-12-10T08:19:00.000-06:00

Sue Ann Martinson – one of the eleven grandmothers of 48 grandchildren, who marched into an army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota Tuesday and volunteered to enlist – said, “The idea is to make a statement about the futility of war.”

Initially, the recruiters refused to allow the grandmothers to fill out the applications, so they sat down on the floor. Martinson said they were prepared to be arrested.

Once the police arrived and spoke with the protesters, the recruiters finally agreed to allow them to fill out the applications, which they did and left without further incident.

“There’s an incredibly aggressive recruiting going on,” Martinson said. “Our children are not cannon fodder!” read one of the protesters’ signs.

“We grandmothers cannot sit quietly by and watch our youth being cajoled into the army to die or be maimed in a senseless war,” said Erica Bouza, the wife of former Minneapolis police chief Tony Bouza.

Mary Lou Ott of Edina, who said she is a grandmother of nineteen, added, “This is a bloody war, an evil war, an immoral war, and we want to find creative ways of demonstrating that.”

AG

All Those Years Ago

2005-12-08T06:10:00.000-06:00

To the left is a picture of John Lennon signing an autograph for Mark David Chapman. This was taken just a few short hours before Chapman decided to take it upon himself to rid the world of one of the leading advocators for peace, and one hell of a musician.

25 years later Lennon’s spirit remains with us and Chapman still sits in his jail cell. In a recent interview with Chapman on NBC’s Dateline, he was asked about his third denial for parole. Chapman is quoted as saying he deserved exactly what he got, “because of the pain and suffering I've caused. I deserve nothing.”

Claims of mental illness or not, Mr. Chapman, you didn't get what you deserve. "Nothing" is more than you should ever expect. Historical mythology tells us that Pandora managed to slam shut her infamous box before hope flew out. Twenty-five years ago, you reopened the box and let that escape as well.

We still miss you John.

AG

The Responsibility of Blasphemy

2005-12-05T05:32:00.000-06:00

Good morning America, and a very special good fucking morning to Hartford, Connecticut, where Hartford Public and Bulkeley schools are fining their students $103 for the use of “foul” language. If the kids can’t fork over the cash, then the schools go after the parents for the money in an effort to teach the kids and their parents what? That’s right, puritanical moral values.

I’ve got news for you, dear Connecticut, like any other enforcement of Victorian values, these fines will not teach your children anything other than creative rebellion. How are you supposed to teach your children about the First Amendment, which guarantees every American – regardless of their age – the right to free speech, when you yourselves refuse to practice this constitutional right?

Look, I have nothing against any attempt to curb hallway cussing in schools. It is my firm opinion that today’s children are pushing the envelope when it comes to crossing the line of authority. I also believe this a mainly due to two major factors of neglect: irresponsible parents and irresponsible media.

Parents need to begin with a firm hold on their children’s tongues, and they need to teach them when cussing is appropriate. Yes, there are times when it is appropriate. They also need to begin the practice with themselves by way of not using foul language around their kids. Instructing your children as to which words are appropriate, and which ones are not, could go a long way toward teaching self-restraint. Simple as that.

Then, there’s the media. Depicting professional athletes (veritable demigods to most kids), who make careers and millions of dollars while defying authority does nothing to help the situation. I’m not saying that the information media needs to stop reporting the news, I’m just saying that they need to be more responsible in what they decide to report. For instance, I can think of ten other major news items that could have been reported the day that Tyson bit Hollyfield’s ear off. Instead, those stories were either glazed over or completely ignored in favor of showing the flesh-eating Tyson at his worst. When someone mentions the name Kobe Bryant do you think of his career, or do you think rape case? When you think of OJ Simpson does the fact that he won the Heismann Trophy spring to mind, or the fact that he was one of the greatest football players to grace the gridiron come into play? No, we think of a guy who got away with murder.

Again, the real issue at stake is free speech. It’s a battle between the free speech of the average American and the free speech of the media. Granted, this amendment was instated primarily for the purpose of free media, and this has transcended into the vernacular of everyday Joes, which I happen to think is a good goddamned thing by the way. It’s one of the reasons, if not the main reason that I enjoy living in the United States. However, as with any liberty granted by the government, or any other authority for that matter, a lot of responsibility comes with this right. This responsibility here requires that you do not use this wonderful civil liberty in ways that may cause harm to yourself or others. You may think that spitting in the face of authority helps your cause, but the fact is that you end up hurting yourself in the end.

Be smart, America, and stop being the knee-jerk reactionists that papa government already assumes that you are. If you want to tell the government to fuck off, fine, do it … by all means! But, you’ve been given a brain for a reason. Be creative in how you go about your offense. Any idiot can tell an authority figure to fuck off, but it takes real brain power to make lasting change.

Failing that, just do what Dick Cheney does and tell them to go fuck themselves.

AG

Procrastinaors Unite ... Tomorrow!

2005-12-04T06:10:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, my folks used to tell me to either shit or get off the pot, when I was trying to come to a decision about something. I was so indecisive as a child that I must’ve heard this phrase at least once a day since I was twelve years old. Procrastination has always been my strong suit.

So, it came as no surprise to me recently when, in my mind’s ear, I heard my mother’s voice admonishing me to do one or the other as I was trying to decide what I was going to do about my writing career. With the folding of the River Valley Reader website, where I had a weekly humor column, I felt at land’s end and at a complete loss as to what I was going to do next. My hope was to write for this local online magazine for a while and then use the credibility to springboard into a more widely published newspaper. A pipedream, as it turned out.

In any case, I’ve finally come to a conclusion about my literary circumstance. I’m going to hit every local newspaper in Minnesota and the surrounding areas until something pans out. As the great William Tell once said, eventually something has to hit.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to use this blog for political commentary and perhaps even the occasional humor article. I know that I haven’t been writing here much, but that’s mainly due to the fact that the Bush team hasn’t been impressing me lately. Outside of Bush’s “Plan for Iraq” speech, which was completely filled with useless rhetoric and more promises of dead soldiers, he’s been keeping his head down low enough under the media radar to avoid making other stupid comments. This in itself has me a tad worried. Anytime he does this, you can pretty much guarantee that something dumb is about to come out of his mouth that usually makes the world hate the US even more than they did before.

Until then,
AG

DeLay on the Bush Writing Team?

2005-11-28T04:59:00.000-06:00

Is it possible that Tom DeLay could have been responsible for all the stupid comments made by George W Bush over the years? Did he have a hand in writing the president's speeches? You be the judge:

"So many minority youths had volunteered, that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself." --Tom DeLay, explaining at the 1988 GOP convention why he and vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle did not fight in the Vietnam War.

"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" --Tom Delay, to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept.9,2005.

"I AM the federal government." --Tom DeLay, to the owner of Ruth's Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 2003.

"We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper power." --Tom DeLay, explaining why America must topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 interview with Fox News.

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." --Tom DeLay, March 12, 2003.

"Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills." --Tom DeLay, on the causes of the Columbine High >School massacre, 1999.

"A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that... It does take a father, though." --Tom DeLay, in a radio interview, Feb. 10, 2004.

"I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church." --Tom DeLay (date unspecified)

"Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." --Tom DeLay, during a debate in Congress on increasing the minimum wage, April 23, 1996.

"I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution." --Tom DeLay, in a CNN interview,Dec. 19, 1995

Was a Study Really Necessary?

2005-11-27T04:35:00.000-06:00

And now for today's Big Duh...

"In a study sure to spark controversy, behavioural researchers have determined that sexual arousal in college males has a “striking” impact on their willingness to engage in risky or morally objectionable activity."

Read the article here.

AG

Santa Claus: No More Mister Nice Guy

2005-11-26T05:09:00.000-06:00

Santa Claus: No More Mister Nice Guy

There is no clear motive why a man was stabbed to death by an intruder dressed in Santa gear, detectives said.

Sikander Shaheen, 25, was attacked in his bed by a knifeman wearing a red and white hat and full white beard.

Officers said they found no reason for the murder of Mr. Shaheen, who was a private, hard-working, religious man, but the knifeman "intended to kill".

Neighbors called police to the house in Leyton, east London, on Saturday morning. Mr. Shaheen died in hospital.

He was stabbed several times by the killer who had gained access to the shared house in Grove Green Road.

Police said there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle and nothing had been stolen from the property. Police are baffled because Shaheen had no chimney in his house, and neighbors report that they had not heard sleigh bells on their roofs on the evening in question.

Det. Ch. Insp. Keith Garnish said "I am convinced that person went in there with the sole purpose of killing someone; he had three things on his mind: milk, cookies and bloodlust."

DCI Garnish said he wanted to speak to Mr. Shaheen's friends, colleagues and fellow worshippers to establish his lifestyle and a possible motive for the killing, as it is suspected that Shaheen must have been fairly naughty this year to provoke Santa into such a murderous rampage. “This just goes to show you,” Garnish warned, “around this time of the year, you’d better be good for goodness sake.”

Police also wanted information about Mr. Shaheen’s movements after he came home from work on Friday evening. Neighbors report witnessing small creatures scurrying about Shaheen’s property the night before the murder, but dismissed the activity as a gathering of stray cats. Police now suspect the creatures were elves, who may have been staking out Shaheen’s home and then reporting back to Santa’s headquarters at the North Pole.

The Santa hat thought to have been worn by the attacker was found nearby and is being forensically examined. So far, no other evidence has been found, other than a few pieces of coal next to Mr. Shaheen’s corpse.

As not-so-originally published from the BBC

AG

World's Ugliest Dog Dies

2005-11-25T05:59:00.000-06:00

He may not have been the prettiest thing in the world, but old Sam sure knew how to catch people’s attention. Sam, voted the World’s Ugliest Dog by the Sonoma-Marin Fair, three-years running, has exited our lives forever.

Looking like not so much a dog as a rat with a skin condition, Sam died on Friday, just short of his fifteenth birthday. His hairless body, crooked teeth, and single white tuff atop of his knobby head will be missed by those who knew him best. Sam made numerous appearances on Japanese television, and having a face specifically made for radio, he also made an appearance on an Australian broadcast. Sam once also met Donald Trump on a talk show set, where the Don promptly fired him.

You may remember Sam as the Internet icon that he became earlier this year, when thousands of people downloaded his image from a circulating e-mail. Now, it’s with a tear in our eye and a shudder down our spine that we bid Sam a fond adieu. Over the years he was a good boy, and at times he was a bad boy, but most of all he was just downright ugly.

We’ll miss you, Sam, but know that your repulsive simulacrum will live forever on our computer desktops.

AG

Lies and Other Truths

2005-11-21T05:14:00.000-06:00

Lies and Other Truths

"We believe [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Dick Cheney - March 16, 2003

"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - May 14, 2003

Sometimes it just becomes too much. Watching and reading the news is like stuffing ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag. Every time I hear the news media bleed out yet another mind-numbing article of right-wing propaganda, I feel the desperate need to take a shower. I want to stand in the hot sunlight to burn away the sins of a nation that insists upon perpetrating the same kinds of atrocities that are condemned by every other so-called intelligent society.

Where are we supposed to turn, when our own government is walking hand-in-hand with our supposed enemy? A nation and its people are much like a marriage in that it must work to gain one another's trust. Over time, that trust is built into a faith and an unshakable stronghold. America once held that sort of marriage with its people, but now I wonder if it isn’t just staying together for the sake of the kids and the house mortgage?

Our government continues to perpetrate crimes that are tantamount to those which we are supposedly fighting against, and what’s worse is that this same government is doing this in our name. How can you spread thousands of pounds of depleted uranium over two different wars, and talk about spreading liberty and democracy throughout the world? How can you then claim that this same uranium isn't the root cause of so many birth defects? How can this country serve as a beacon of human rights, as a signer of the Geneva Convention, then turn around and uphold torture policies?

How can you give tax cuts to the rich when the homeless population is growing, and more families are slipping below the poverty line from year to year? How can you continue to call this country a democracy when far too many politicians have been bought and sold to the highest bidder? Where the PATRIOT Act tramples the Constitutional rights for which so many have fought and died? Where electronic voting without a paper trail makes elections a sham? Where both political parties have forgotten who they are suppose to serve? Where the people themselves have been trained to parrot their corporate master's lies?

Sometimes it's all too much for me. Sometimes I just need to take a shower to wash clean the sins that are being carried out in my name as an American.

AG

Dark Art at its Finest

2005-11-20T05:03:00.000-06:00

GWB Lies for the Day

"I am someone who is a uniter, not a divider. I don't believe in group thought, pitting one group of people against another." -- Candidate for President George W. Bush - Nov. 22, 1999 (when he was attempting to justify his candidacy)

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." -- President George W. Bush - Sept. 13, 2001 (when he was attempting to justify his war on terror)

"I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." -- President George W. Bush -March 13, 2003 (when he was attempting to justify the unjust war on Iraq)

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." -- President George W. Bush - Oct. 13, 2004 (when he no longer feels the need to justify anything)

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Dark Art at its Finest

Chris Mars is one of those Where are They Now? situations that makes you wonder why the world hasn’t paid more attention to him. Better known as the former drummer of the famed rock band The Replacements, he now lives in Minnesota and is possibly one of the most poignant social artists in the world.

My wife and I were recently treated to his exihibit, which is currently on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and I was absolutely awestruck by its relevance in today's politically tumultuous world. Chris Mars' style is very reminiscent of Bosch and WWI artist George Grosz, and his vision could perhaps be compared to a less whimsical Tim Burton. Check out his site to see what I mean.

Movie Ratings for Idiot Parents

2005-11-18T08:12:00.000-06:00

Movie Ratings for Idiot Parents

Attorneys General from thirty-two states have now signed a letter that cited research suggesting kids who see films depicting smoking were likelier to take up the habit. What they’re hoping to accomplish with this letter is to pressure Hollywood into placing anti-smoking ads on DVDs which depict smoking within the contents of the film.

In 1990 the tobacco companies voluntarily signed an agreement to curb tobacco advertising in films, but according to this study, smoking is just as prevalent in movies today as it was before the agreement was struck. Also, according to the study’s findings, children are thirty-eight percent more likely to try smoking after seeing a film in which it’s characters are smoking.

Ok, so here’s my question: When was the last time anyone has seen a kid’s film depicting smokers?

I have a nine year old daughter, and I have taken her to a great many matinees over the years. Like me, she loves movies. Not once – NOT ONCE – have we ever seen the Rugrats light up, Clifford the Big Red Dog bum a smoke, or even the wholly demonic Bratz gang spark a Zippo.

I’m not going to sit here and be a proponent for tobacco advertising, god knows the tobacco companies have made more than enough money off me, during my lifetime. But really, if the films that depict smokers aren’t geared toward children’s G-rated films, then it seems painfully obvious that the only movies left that would promote smoking in any way are films with PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 ratings. R-rated films, obviously, aren’t meant for kids so that shouldn’t even be in question. And, if the kid is watching an NC-17 rated film, the kid has bigger problems than smoking; his parents should be brought up on charges of child neglect.

An NC-17 rating means “No one 17 and under admitted.” Got it? This means that if your kid is watching a movie with this sort of rating then it’s YOUR fault; not the kid’s, and certainly not the tobacco company’s. An R-rating attached to a film means the film is restricted: “Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.” PG and PG-13 ratings means that “Parental Guidance is suggested: some material may not be suitable for children”, and “Parents are strongly cautioned: some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.”

These ratings are in place for a purpose, people! They are there to warn you that your kids should probably not watch these films. If you do allow your children to view the film, then it means that you need to be with them to help guide them through the movie. The dictionary defines Guidance as: “Something that provides direction or advice as to a decision or course of action.” Therefore, a PG-rating (Parental Guidance) means that “something” is you!

If the film depicts smoking, and you are one of those whiny and wussy parents who believes that your children are mindless zombies who will immediately go out and smoke after watching a film character light up, then take them by the hand and GUIDE THEM out of the theater! Conversely, try actually TALKING with your kids about the dangers of smoking. Your children really aren’t as stupid as you think they are. Vocal communication goes a long way, and if you explain to them that just because the film’s hero happens to smoke, it doesn’t mean that they have to smoke to be a hero, then I swear to you that they will listen! Even if you think they aren’t listening to you, and are simply passing it off as just another bullshit parental warning, some part of what you tell them will stick. Then, when someone offers them a cigarette later, your voice will play like a broken record in their brains.

Truly, this whole controversy does not boil down to the big tobacco companies or Hollywood, or yet another state-mandated smoking law. What this all comes down to, and what everyone seems to be avoiding, is the parental guidance necessary to raise a child. It all comes down to responsibility for our children, and how so many of us would rather just shirk that responsibility in favor of handing it over to someone else. Blame, blame, blame. Blame it on someone else. It just couldn’t be your fault that your child smokes, could it?

I’m of the opinion that we should do away with the current ratings system altogether and instate just two film ratings. Here is my rating system:

KS-Kid Safe: Kids can safely watch this film without having to sit through foul language, violence, or scenes depicting sex or any form of drug addiction.
TR4C-Take Responsibility for your Children: Kid’s should not watch this movie because it contains scenes which depict foul language, violence, sex, or any form of drug addiction. If you allow your kids to view this film without your attendance to guide them through and explain the “dangers” involved with these scenes then you are an idiot and, quite frankly, should be forced to take some parenting classes.

AG

The Theory of Og-olution

2005-11-13T06:14:00.000-06:00

The Theory of Og-olution

Now, I don’t want to presume that I know the mind of God. I’m pretty sure that It has a big plan for the lot of us, and I’m almost positive that It knows better than the rest of us what the general outcome of the planet will be. I’m also fairly certain that It has better things to do with Its time than to worry about little old Dover, Pennsylvania, and the fact that they have chosen to oust the proponents of intelligent design from their school board. If you’re a big fan of Pat Robertson, however, you may think differently. Then again, if you’re a Robertson devotee, it’s my humble opinion that you’re one step away from chugging down the Big Cult Kool-Aid, and you’re a different sort of thinker altogether.

Pat Robertson, that cool-headed and ever-so-compassionate televangelist, who is commonly known for making such intelligent remarks as Tinky Winky is gay, and that 9/11 was caused by rampant tolerance of homosexuality in the United States; the same guy who once said that feminism causes women to leave their husbands, abandon their children and practice witchcraft, has now all but called down the wrath of God to the good citizens of the little Pennsylvanian town who finally wised up.

Robertson is quoted as saying, “If there is a disaster in [Dover], don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city.” He went on to state that “God is tolerant and loving, but we can’t keep sticking our finger in his eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call upon Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.”

Tolerant? Loving? Which god are you talking about, Pat? Is it the same god that you preach about, when you said last summer that Hugo Chavez aught to be assassinated? Kill ‘em all, and let god sort ‘em out, eh, Patty? Yeah, that must be it. According to your own wisdom, it must be the same tolerant and loving god that killed thousands of innocent people in 2001 because he has so much of that tolerance for homosexuality.

When it all comes down to it, I wonder how it is that our society can openly condemn cult leaders like Jim Jones and David Koresh, yet we are more than willing to sit around and take everything that the likes of Pat Robertson say in stride? Oh, sure, Robertson and his ilk will always pop-off with something ridiculous whenever something major hits the news. Whenever the media reports some big catastrophe, one of his kind (and usually it’s Pat, himself) will start spewing that it’s society’s fault for invoking god’s wrath, or some other such drivel. This sort of thing has been going on since the dawn of time. Historically speaking, we’re no further along on the religious fervor ladder than the cavemen, who thought that lightning struck our huts because we pissed off the gods in some way.

Personally, I’m of the staunch opinion that God did not create man, man created the gods. Why did we create the gods? Mainly it was to quell our fears of desolation, I think. Either that, or we are truly masochistic at heart. In any case, here is my theory of Og:

One fine day, after a night of partying caveman style, Og wearily stepped out of his cave, and cast one bloodshot eye up to the heavens just in time to see lighting strike a tree. The tree exploded, fire was born, and Og passed out. When Og came to, he woke to the sensation of the very first hot-foot, as his children, Ug and Li, had discovered matches while he slumbered.

As soon as his initial panic died down, Og probably had the bright idea that this was caused for a reason other than weather conditions. He probably thought that he had angered some being who was bigger than him by drinking too much and by puking on the cave chick he was trying to pick-up (by the hair).

This immediately led to the feeling of personal responsibility for his actions, which led to Paganism. He started to feel guilty about what he had done, and those feelings led to Judaism. This feeling of guilt led to feelings of inadequacy, so he then invented Catholicism so he could feel better about drinking so much if he confessed his sins to his Personal Savior. Then, having this new Personal Savior seemed to stop the feelings of inadequacy, but then he began to think that he was the only one with God on his side.

So in turn, Og began to think of himself as something of a god, and he then created Hedonism which, of course, led to Satanism. Just as Og was having the final touches placed on his Temple of Og, lightning struck and killed one of his followers. Og felt bad for the guy. He had been a loyal servant and Og started to cry. Compassion was built from this event and thus, Buddhism was born.

This little chain of events illustrates exactly how I feel about god. God is not some great being, waiting for the right opportunity to strike us down. It could probably care less what we do, and more than likely, we are merely happenstance in a chain of events that was caused by the Big Bang. In fact, if there is one identity that most accurately depicts God, it would have to be the Big Bang. All other identities that have been attributed to this being are merely that which we have placed upon Him/Her/It.

I believe in god. I believe that there is a Creator, and that is the primary reason we exist. The fact that we continue to exist today rests solely upon dumb luck. Whether or not this Creator-thing wants or is deserving of worship is another story altogether. Personally, I don’t think it cares one way or the other. I think it has a job to do in creation, a master Lego-builder, if you will, and having already accomplished that, it’s job is done. As for who this Creator is, what It is like, or what It wants from us, that is completely up to the individual culture to decide for itself. Which they do, and all too often.

It is my opinion that God is the simply birthing place of souls. It is also the place where we go after death to be reborn, whether on this planet or elsewhere. There is no Heaven, and there is certainly not a Hell. We answer for our past by our current situations; this is all part of karmic influence.

Though most of us seem to have this overwhelming need to continue worship and to believe in this Thing, I'm not all too sure that it still believes in us. Perhaps It just goes along pumping out and regenerating soul after soul, not really knowing or caring if we worship it or not.

So, I suppose my point is simply this: Tinky Winky is gay, and God just really doesn’t give a shit.

AG

Un-Intelligent Design

2005-11-10T10:35:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Nov 10, 4004 BC - Adam and Eve are driven from Paradise.

Nov 10, 1940 - Walt Disney begins serving as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, to report back information on Hollywood subversives. He was made a "Full Special Agent in Charge Contact" in 1954. We should note that Disney was atheist and thus subversive in his own little way.

Nov 10, 1997 - Seymore Hersh's book "The Dark Side of Camelot" published, includes allegations that explicit photos were taken of John F. Kennedy with various sex partners and brought by a Secret Service agent to a Washington gallery for framing. The gallery owner, Sidney Mickelson, stated that the participants included a naked Kennedy and assorted lady friends wearing masks.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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Un-Intelligent Design

Good morning America, and a very special good morning to Dover, Pennsylvania, where after raising a nation-wide ruckus about the right to teach their children a religious MYTH as an alternative to the theory of evolution, they voted a little more sanity into their council on Tuesday. Unfortunately, this sudden secular epiphany didn’t bleed over to Wichita, Kansas, where they decided it would be best to instruct their own kids on the wisdoms Neolithic man.

Yes, the flatlands of Dorothy and Toto have taken it upon themselves to further screw up our nation’s children (as though George W Bush’s campaign against educational reform hasn’t done enough already) by way of demanding that every Wichita public school make room for the theory of intelligent design; the theory in which it is suggested (nay, declared!) that humans have been created by the hand of God, rather than teaching the FACTS of evolution. This election comes only one day after a recent study concluded that giant apes lived amongst humans for a million years!

Conversely, neo-con Kansas’ flower-child next door neighbor, Denver, Colorado, passed a law that allows it’s citizens the right to possess and smoke small quantities of marijuana … for medicinal purposes, of course. Of course. Why else would anyone even want to keep that stuff around the house? Please! As though the asclepiad has any other function than aesculapian! (nice play on wording, eh? WordWeb – get yours today! Free download here). Could it be that the giant ape theory was conducted in Denver? In any case, even stoner Colorado will never bring about a bill that suggests that it’s citizens teach their children MYTHS over SCIENCE, and that just goes to show you that even brain-dead pot smokers tend to hold more rationale than neo-cons.

So, even though a recent poll conducted here at the Cheshire’s Blog revealed that ninety percent of the poll takers preferred to keep this sort of fire and brimstone out of schools in favor of a genuine education, let’s say that intelligent design meets the required criterion to have a place in American public education … which it doesn’t … and, it never will … so, calm down … but, let’s just say for the sake of this article that it did. Imagine where we would be ten years from now.

Allow me to set up a scenario for you: The kids who are currently enrolled in the sixth grade, having been taught throughout the greater part of their educational careers that Darwin was insane and that Adam and Eve were historical figures, would then be stepping into their twenties and either well into their college careers or perhaps into America’s workforce.

If you’ll pardon the pun, archeologists would go the way of the dinosaur, having been decided by voters in 2012 that dinosaur bones are merely Satan’s way of dissuading humanity from the truth about their existence. Granted, this may not be entirely accurate. If Ken Ham has his way about it American museums will have a completely different take on dinosaurs. He believes that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, and that they were commonly used by early man as a beast of burden. Which, of course, makes perfect sense, considering that farmers throughout history have repeatedly proven that the triceratops is far superior in its plowing abilities than that of the simple ox and cart.

Idiot.

Anyway, so here are all these twenty-something products of a neo-conservative American pedagogy, who are insisting to the rest of the (more well-informed) world that the theory of evolution is just a dreamy boat ride through some lunatic’s imagination; that monkey-brained Darwin was just another eccentric scientist caught up in his own maniacal world vision, and was in all likelihood a minion of Satan.

These people would then change the name of our country to the United Christians of Intelligent Design, whereupon they would then mount a giant cross on the dome of the White House and a statue of George W Bush would grace the senate floor. Each senate meeting would conclude with a prayer vigil for those who still insisted upon using common sense as a mandate toward their view of the world history, and the senators would then be provided with communion. If the senators are from Minnesota, the alcohol imbibing Blood of Christ part of the communion would preempt any other business at hand, and take place at the onset of every legislation.

With exception given to Groundhog Day (which will be preserved due to banking and postal hours), the only other holidays celebrated by the United Christians of Intelligent Design will be Christmas and Easter so as not to disrupt the economy. The celebration of Thanksgiving, of course, will be the first holiday to be illegalized and removed from its place in Hallmark greeting card shops because of its purported heathen ancestry, the politically incorrect atmosphere of dissention that it promotes amongst the populous of Native United Christians of Intelligent Design, and the fact that the holiday produces zero capital for the Mall of America. The turkey industry will suffer the most from the illegalization of Thanksgiving, but the majority of its financial ruin would have already taken place in the early 2000’s due to the avian flu virus, which all but halted the Butterball industry in the fall of 2006.

Ok, so that will be the state of affairs in 2015, should most of the states begin to adopt this ridiculous proposal accepted by Kansas. Thankfully, we have yet to debase most of our coherency, and Darwin’s theories remain as the accepted norm amongst the retinue of American school boards. On the other hand, this hasn’t stopped Bush’s No Child Left Unpunished campaign. So my advice to the American public is to be careful what you wish for; the government may just end up kneeling before it.

AG

Just a Little Bit of Horrid History for Today

2005-11-06T05:20:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Nov 6, 1988 - Beatle Ringo Starr checks into an alcohol rehabilitation center. While many consider Ringo the least talented Beatle, he has shown exceptional acting ability in his "Atouk zug zug Lana" role (Caveman, 1981).

Nov 6, 1989 - Kitty Dukakis, wife of Presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, is hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol. According to Hunter S. Thompson, "She was a really good advertisement for speed for twenty-six years."

Nov 6, 1996 - In Vicente Guererro, Mexico, the family of Eduardo Quihua Maquixtle, including four children, are stabbed by three men who accuse them of witchcraft.

Nov 6, 2002 - Actress Winona Ryder found guilty of shoplifting, after she lifted $5500 in crap from Saks Fifth Avenue on Wilshire Boulevard. Among the merchandise she stole was a $760 sweater and $600 hair decorations. And an $80 pair of socks.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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I don't really have the time to write today; the task of putting food on the table beckons me away. However, don't forget about the new Cheshire's Eye! My eventual goal is to pack the Eye with reviews from my entire (and oh, so very extensive) movie collection. If you'd like to see a particular review, write to me! The e-mail link is on the right side bar of this blog.

AG

The Grand Canyon Skywalk: nothing good can come from this

2005-11-03T18:29:00.000-06:00

Are you kidding me with this?!?

I checked with snopes.com and this is apparently true. The Grand Canyon West resort has plans to open this thing on the Hualapai Indian Reservation as of January 1st, 2006! Call me a chicken-shit if you will, but before you do check out some of these stats:

Juts about 70 feet into the canyon, 4000 ft above Colorado River

Will accommodate 120 people comfortably (comfortably?)

Built with more than a million pounds of steel beams, and includes dampeners that minimize the structure's vibration

Designed to hold 72 million pounds, withstand an 8.0 magnitude earthquake 50 miles away, and withstand winds in excess of 100 mph (yeah, until I get on the damned thing and my wife decides to be funny and push me down!)

The walkway has a glass bottom and sides ... four inches thick (yeah, they "say" it's four inches thick, but trust me on this: it's built on an Indian reservation, and I happen to know that most of them are still pretty pissed off about the white man making them LIVE on a reservation. Who's going to visit this ridiculous thing? Stupid, thrill-seeking white men, that's who.)

Three words for you: Oh - HELL - no! I've been to the Grand Canyon, and I can tell you exactly what it looks like from a safe distance, without having to stand over it on a sheet of glass with a bunch of grudge-holding Indians laughing at me from the edge.

AG

Aunt Jemima Invades New York!

2005-11-03T05:10:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Nov 3, 1755 - The colony of Massachusetts offers a 20 pound bounty for scalps of indian boys or girls under the age of 12. Warrior scalps fetch a slightly higher price, 30 pounds.

Nov 3, 1913 - Income tax law signed.

Nov 3, 1979 - Diff'rent Strokes premieres on NBC. The cast's child actors have gone on to bigger and better things: Todd Bridges (arrests: drug possession, 1983; attempted murder, 1989; knife stabbing in self defense, no arrest, 1993; assault with a deadly weapon, 1997); Dana Plato (armed robbery, 1992, then a porno centerfold; dead of a drug overdose in 1999); Gary Coleman (a short, pudgy gun nut who plays Nintendo games; 2003 gubernatorial candidate).
(thanks to rotten.com)
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Aunt Jemima Invades New York!

Why did the sweet-smelling cloud, which drifted through Manhattan last week, gain such little press attention? Here's the article that the NY Times published about it: Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers

Being as Manhattan is the business metropolis that it is, you'd think that something like this would gain huge national attention. Instead, it was swept under the rug as just a funny little thing that happened on the way to work.

Officials found nothing within the air quality that indicated foul play, but sweet and pleasant smelling, or not, this is just the sort of thing the Riddler would have pulled! The next thing you know, New Yorkers will start being nice to each other. Oh, the humanity!

AG

Idiot America

2005-11-02T11:11:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Nov 2, 1974 - The Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burns, killing 78. Six of the victims jumped six floors to their deaths. After the fire started, club officials barred the doors, suspecting a ruse by customers to avoid paying.

Nov 2, 1995 - The image of Jesus Christ appears to many people in a photo taken by the Hubble space telescope, depicting a gigantic gas plume 7000 light years from Earth. Some CNN viewers pointed out the image resembles Gene Shalit more than the Lord Saviour.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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Idiot America

Every so often, someone comes along to point out the incredible idiocy, which is so very rampant in today's America, in such a way as to bring it all into perspective. Today, I’ve found an article that does just this, and best of all it makes no apologies for telling us exactly how absolutely insane we’ve become.

This article was published in Esquire on November 1st, 2005, and written by Charles P. Pierce. It is fairly long, but it is also worth taking the time to read it in its entirety. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

AG
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GREETINGS FROM IDIOT AMERICA
As Originally published, 11/1/05, Esquire
by Charles P. Pierce

There is some undeniable art - you might even say design - in the way southern Ohio rolls itself into northern Kentucky. The hills build gently under you as you leave the interstate. The roads narrow beneath a cool and thickening canopy as they wind through the leafy outer precincts of Hebron-a small Kentucky town named, as it happens, for the place near Jerusalem where the Bible tells us that David was anointed the king of the Israelites. This resulted in great literature and no little bloodshed, which is the case with a great deal of Scripture.

At the top of the hill, just past the Idlewild Concrete plant, there is an unfinished wall with an unfinished gate in the middle of it. Happy, smiling people are trickling in through the gate this fine morning, one minivan at a time. They park in whatever shade they can find, which is not much. It's hot as hell this morning. They are almost uniformly white and almost uniformly bubbly. Their cars come from Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio and Illinois and as far away as New Brunswick, Canada. There are elderly couples in shorts, suburban families piling out of the minivans, the children all Wrinkle-Resistant and Stain-Released. There is a clutch of Mennonite women in traditional dress-small bonnets and long skirts. All of them wander off, chattering and waving and stopping every few steps for pictures, toward a low-slung building that seems from the outside to be the most finished part of the complex.

Outside, several of them stop to be interviewed by a video crew. They have come from Indiana, one woman says, two toddlers toddling at her feet, because they have been home-schooling their children and they have given them this adventure as a kind of field trip. The whole group then bustles into the lobby of the building, here they are greeted by the long neck of a huge, herbivorous dinosaur. The kids run past that and around a corner, where stands another, smaller dinosaur.

Which is wearing a saddle. It is an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently, this was a dinosaur used for dressage competitions and stakes races. Any working dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail almost certainly would wear a sturdy Western saddle.

This is very much a show dinosaur. The dinosaurs are the first things you see when you enter the Creation Museum, which is very much a work in progress and the dream child of an Australian named Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, an organization of which the museum one day will be the headquarters. The people here today are on a special tour. They have paid $149 to become "charter members" of the museum.

"Dinosaurs," Ham laughs as he poses for pictures with his visitors, "always get the kids interested." AIG is dedicated to the proposition that the biblical story of the creation of the world is inerrant in every word. Which means, in this interpretation and among other things, that dinosaurs coexisted with man (hence the saddles), that there were dinosaurs in Eden, and that Noah, who certainly had enough on his hands, had to load two brachiosaurs onto the Ark along with his wife, his sons, and their wives, to say nothing of green ally-gators and long-necked geese and humpty-backed camels and all the rest. (Faced with the obvious question of how to keep a three-hundred-by-thirty-by-fifty-cubit ark from inking under the weight of dinosaur couples, Ham's literature argues that the dinosaurs on the Ark were young ones, and thus did not weigh as much as they might have.)

"We," Ham exclaims to the assembled, "are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!" And everybody cheers. Ham then goes on to celebrate the great victory won in Oklahoma, where, in the first week of June, Tulsa park officials announced a decision (later reversed) to put up a display at the city zoo based on Genesis so as to eliminate the "discrimination" long inflicted upon sensitive Christians by a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh that decorated the elephant exhibit. This is a serious crowd. They gather in the auditorium and they listen intently, and they take copious notes as Ham draws a straight line from Adam's fall to our godless public schools, from Darwin to gay marriage. He talks about the triumph over Ganesh, and everybody cheers again.

Ultimately, the heart of the museum will be a long walkway down which patrons will be able to journey through the entire creation story. This, too, is still in the earliest stages of construction. Today, for example, one young artist is working on a scale model of the moment when Adam names all the creatures. Adam is in the delicate process of naming the saber-toothed tiger while, behind him, already named, a woolly mammoth seems to be on the verge of taking a nap. Elsewhere in the museum, another Adam figure is full-size, if unpainted, and waiting to be installed. This Adam is reclining peacefully; eventually, if the plans stay true, he will be placed in a pool under a waterfall. As the figure depicts a prelapsarian Adam, he is completely naked. He also has no penis. This would seem to be a departure from Scripture inconsistent with the biblical literalism of the rest of the museum. If you're willing to stretch Job's description of a "behemoth" to include baby brachiosaurs on Noah's Ark, as Ham does in his lectures, then surely, since we are depicting him before the fall, Adam should be out there waving unashamedly in the paradisaical breezes. For that matter, what is Eve doing there, across the room, with her hair falling just so to cover her breasts and midsection, as though she's doing a nude scene from some 1950s Swedish art-house film? After all, Genesis 2:25 clearly says that at this point in their lives, "And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed." If Adam courageously sat there unencumbered while he was naming saber-toothed tigers, then why, six thousand years later, should he be depicted as a eunuch in some family-values Eden? And if these people can take away what Scripture says was rightfully his, then why can't Charles Darwin and the accumulated science of the past 150-odd years take away all the rest of it?

These are impolite questions. Nobody asks them here by the cool pond tucked into a gentle hillside. Increasingly, nobody asks them outside the gates, either. It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn't so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own money. Dinosaurs with saddles? Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?

Welcome to your new Eden.
Welcome to Idiot America.

LET'S TAKE A TOUR, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically-elected president of Venezuela.

The Congress of the United States intervenes to extend into a televised spectacle the prolonged death of a woman in Florida. The majority leader of the Senate, a physician, pronounces a diagnosis based on heavily edited videotape. The majority leader of the House of Representatives argues against cutting-edge research into the use of human stem cells by saying that "an embryo is a person. . . . We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth." Nobody laughs at him or points out that the same could be said of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or whoever invented the baby-back rib.

And, finally, in August, the cover of Time -for almost a century the dyspeptic voice of the American establishment-clears its throat, hems and haws and hacks like a headmaster gagging on his sherry, and asks, quite seriously: "Does God have a place in science class?"

Fights over creationism-and its faddish new camouflage, intelligent design, a pseudoscience that posits without proof or method that science is inadequate to explain existence and that supernatural causes must be considered-roil up school districts across the country.

The president of the United States announces that he believes ID ought to be taught in the public schools on an equal footing with the theory of evolution. And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these many controversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that both ends our tour and, in every real sense, sums it up: "We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

And there it is. Idiot America is not the place where people say silly things. It's not the place where people believe in silly things. It is not the place where people go to profit from the fact that people believe in silly things. Idiot America is not even those people who believe that Adam named the dinosaurs. Those people pay attention. They take notes. They take the time and the considerable mental effort to construct a worldview that is round and complete. The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents-for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power-the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine.

It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.

After all, faith is about the heart and soul and about transcendence. Anything calling itself faith-based is admitting that it is secular and profane. In the way that it relies on the Gut to determine its science, its politics, and even the way it sends its people to war, Idiot America is not a country of faith; it's a faith-based country, fashioning itself in the world, which is not the place where faith is best fashioned.

Hofstadter saw this one coming. "Intellect is pitted against feeling," he wrote, "on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical."

The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
2) Anything can be true if somebody says it on television.
3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."

A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket.

It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared.

On the front page. Of The New York Times.

Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live , in which Larry asked the following question: "All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?
This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.

This is a great country, in no small part because it is the best country ever devised in which to be a public crank. Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should its people hold nutty ideas but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right there on the mantelpiece. This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy. The right to do so is there in our founding documents.

After all, the Founders were men of the Enlightenment, fashioning a country out of new ideas-or out of old ones that they excavated from centuries of religious internment. Historian Charles Freeman points out that in Europe, "Christian thought . . . often gave irrationality the status of a universal 'truth' to the exclusion of those truths to be found through reason. So the uneducated was preferred to the educated, and the miracle to the operation of natural laws."

In America, the Founders were trying to get away from all that, to raise a nation of educated people. In pledging their faith to intellectual experimentation, however, the Founders set freedom free. They devised the best country ever in which to be completely around the bend. It's just that making a respectable living out of it used to be harder work.

THEY CALL IT THE INFINITE CORRIDOR, which is the kind of joke you tell when your day job is to throw science as far ahead as you can and hope that the rest of us can move fast enough to catch up. It is a series of connecting hallways that run north through the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The hallways are lined with cramped offices, their doors mottled thickly with old tape and yellowing handbills. The Infinite Corridor is not a straight line. It has branches and tributaries. It has backwaters and eddies. You can get lost there.

One of the offices belongs to Professor Kip Hodges, a young and energetic North Carolinian who studies how mountain ranges develop and grow. Suffice it to say that Hodges's data do not correspond to the six-thousand-year-old earth of the creationists, whereupon dinosaurs and naked folks doth gambol together. Hodges is recently returned from Nepal, where he rescued his research from encroaching Maoist rebels, who were not interested in the least in how the Himalayas became the Himalayas. They were interested in land, in guns, in power, and in other things of the Gut. Moreover, part of Hodges's duties at MIT has been to mentor incoming freshmen about making careers in science for themselves.

"Scientists are always portrayed in the literature as being above the fray intellectually," Hodges says. "I guess to a certain extent that's our fault, because scientists don't do a good enough job communicating with people who are nonscientists-that it's not a matter of brainiacs doing one thing and nonbrainiacs doing another."

Americans of a certain age grew up with science the way an earlier generation grew up with baseball and even earlier ones grew up with politics and religion. America cured diseases. It put men on the moon. It thought its way ahead in the cold war and stayed there.

"My earliest memory," Hodges recalls, "is watching John Glenn go up. It was a time that, if you were involved in science or engineering-particularly science, at that time-people greatly respected you if you said you were going into those fields. And nowadays, it's like there's no value placed by society on a lot of the observations that are made by people in science.

"It's more than a general dumbing down of America-the lack of self-motivated thinking: clear, creative thinking. It's like you're happy for other people to think for you. If you should be worried about, say, global warming, well, somebody in Washington will tell me whether or not I should be worried about global warming. So it's like this abdication of intellectual responsibility-that America now is getting to the point that more and more people would just love to let somebody else think for them."

The country was founded by people who were fundamentally curious; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to name only the most obvious examples, were inveterate tinkerers. (Before dispatching Lewis and Clark into the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson insisted that the pair categorize as many new plant and animal species as they found. Considering they were also mapping everything from Missouri to Oregon, this must have been a considerable pain in the canoe.) Further, they assumed that their posterity would feel much the same as they did; in 1815, appealing to Congress to fund the building of a national university, James Madison called for the development of "a nursery of enlightened preceptors."

It is a long way from that to the moment on February18, 2004, when sixty-two scientists, including a clutch of Nobel laureates, released a report accusing the incumbent Administration of manipulating science for political ends. It is a long way from Jefferson's observatory and Franklin's kite to George W. Bush, in an interview in 2005, suggesting that intelligent design be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the nation's science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," said the president, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

The "debate," of course, is nothing of the sort, because two sides are required for a debate. Nevertheless, the very notion of it is a measure of how scientific discourse, and the way the country educates itself, has slipped through lassitude and inattention across the border into Idiot America-where fact is merely that which enough people believe, and truth is measured only by how fervently they believe it.

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to this standard, any scientific theory is rendered mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. This is how there's a "debate" over the veryexistence of global warming, even though the preponderance of fact among those who actually have studied the phenomenon renders the "debate" quite silly. The debate is about making people feel better about driving SUVs. The debate is less about climatology than it is about guiltlessly topping off your tank and voting in tax incentives for oil companies.

The rest of the world looks on in cockeyed wonder. The America of Franklin and Edison, of Fulton and Ford, of the Manhattan project and the Apollo program, the America of which Einstein wanted to be a part, seems to be enveloping itself in a curious fog behind which it's tying itself in knots over evolution, for pity's sake, and over the relative humanity of blastocysts versus the victims of Parkinson's disease.

"Even in the developing world, where I spend lots of time doing my work," Hodges says, "if you tell them that you're from MIT and you tell them that you do science, it's a big deal. If I go to India and tell them I'm from MIT, it's a big deal. In Thailand, it's a big deal. If I go to Iowa, they could give a rat's ass. And that's a weird thing, that we're moving in that direction as a nation."

Hence, Bush was not talking about science-not in any real sense, anyway. Intelligent design is a theological construct, a faith-based attempt to gussy up creationism in a lab coat. Its fundamental tenets cannot be experimentally verified-or, most important, falsified. That it enjoys a certain public cachet is irrelevant; a higher percentage of Americans believes that a government conspiracy killed John F. Kennedy than believes in intelligent design, but there is no great effort abroad in the land to include that conspiracy theory in sixth-grade history texts. Bush wasn't talking about science. He was talking about the political utility of putting saddles on the dinosaurs and breaking Ganesh's theological monopoly over the elephant paddock.

"The reason the creationists have been so effective is that they have put a premium on communication skills," explains Hodges. "It matters to them that they can talk to the guy in the bar, and it's important to them, and they are hugely effective at it."

It is the ultimate standard of Idiot America. How does it play to Joe Six-Pack in the bar? At the end of August 2004, the Zogby people discovered that 57 percent of undecided voters would rather have a beer with George Bush than with John Kerry. Now, how many people with whom you've spent time drinking beer would you trust with the nuclear launch codes? Not only is this not a question for a nation of serious citizens, it's not even a question for a nation of serious drunkards.

If even scientific discussion is going to be dragged into politics, then the discussion there at least ought to exist on a fairly sophisticated level. Again, the Founders thought it should. They considered self-government a science that required an informed and educated and enlightened populace to make all the delicate mechanisms run. Instead, today we have the Kabuki politics and marionette debates best exemplified by cable television. Instead, the discussion of everything ends up in the bar. (It wasn't always this way. Theodore Roosevelt is reckoned to be the manliest of our manly-man presidents. He also was a lifelong science dweeb, cataloging songbirds, of all things. Of course, he shot them first, so maybe that makes all the difference.)

It is, of course, television that has allowed Idiot America to run riot within the modern politics and all forms of public discourse. It is not that there is less information on television than there once was. (That there is less news is another question entirely.) In fact, there is so much information that fact is now defined as something that so many people believe that television notices it, and truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

"You don't need to be credible on television," explains Keith Olbermann, the erudite host of his own show on MSNBC. "You don't need to be authoritative. You don't need to be informed. You don't need to be honest. All these things that we used to associate with what we do are no longer factors. "There is an entire network [the Fox News Channel] that bills itself as news that is devoted to reinforcing people's fears and saying to them, 'This is what you should be scared of, and here's whose fault it is,' " Olbermann says. "And that's what they get - two or three million frustrated paranoids who sit in front of the TV and go, 'Damn right, it's those liberals' fault.' Or, 'It's those-what's the word for it?- college graduates ' fault.' "

The reply, of course, is that Fox regularly buries Olbermann and the rest of the MSNBC lineup in breaking off a segment of a smidgen of a piece of the television audience. Truth is what moves the needle.

Fact is what sells. Idiot America is a bad place for crazy notions. Its indolent tolerance of them causes the classic American crank to drift slowly and dangerously into the mainstream, wherein the crank loses all of his charm and the country loses another piece of its mind. The best thing about American crackpots used to be that they would stand proudly aloof from a country that, by their peculiar lights, had gone mad.

Not today. Today, they all have book deals, TV shows, and cases pending in federal court. Once, it was very hard to get into the public square and very easy to fall out of it. One ill-timed word, even a whiff of public scandal, and all the hard work you did in the grange hall on all those winter nights was for nothing. No longer. You can be Bill Bennett, gambling with both fists, but if your books still sell, you can continue to scold the nation about its sins. You can be Bill O'Reilly, calling up subordinates to proposition them both luridly and comically-loofahs? falafels?-and if more people tune in to watch you than tune in to watch some other blowhard, you can keep your job lecturing America about the dangers of its secular culture.

Just don't be boring. And keep the ratings up. Idiot America wants to be entertained. Because scientific expertise was dragged into political discussion, and because political discussion is hopelessly corrupt, the distrust of scientific expertise is now as general as the distrust of politicians is.

Everyone is an expert, so nobody is. For example, Sean Hannity's knowledge of, say, stem-cell research is measured precisely b y his ratings book. His views on the subject are more well known than those of the people doing the actual research. The credibility of Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania on the subject of the cultural anthropology of the American family ought to be, well, minimal. He spent the summer promoting a book in which he propounded theories on the subject that were progressively loopier.

"For some parents," he writes, "the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home." He goes on later to compare a woman's right to choose an abortion unfavorably with the institution of slavery. Nevertheless, he's welcome in the mainstream, at least until either he's defeated for reelection or his book doesn't sell.

"Somewhere along the line, we stopped rewarding intelligence with success and stopped equating intelligence with success," Olbermann says. We're all in the bar now, where everybody's an expert, where the Gut makes everyone so very sure. All opinions are of equal worth. No voice is more authoritative than any others; some are just louder. Of course, the problem in the bar is that sooner or later, for reasons that nobody will remember in the clear light of the next morning, some noisy asshole picks a fight. And it becomes clear that the rise of Idiot America has consequences.

ON THE MORNING of September 11, 2001, nobody in the American government knew more than Richard Clarke did on the subject of a shadowy terrorist network called Al Qaeda. He had watched it grow. He had watched it strike-in New York and in Africa and in the harbor in Yemen. That morning, in the Situation Room in the White House, Clarke watched the buildings burn and fall, and he recognized the organization's signature as well as he'd recognize his own.

Instead, in the ensuing days a lot of people around him-people who didn't know enough about Al Qaeda to throw to a cat-wanted to talk about Iraq. What they believed trumped what Clarke knew, over and over again. He left the government.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, when the key issue became arms control, the traditional diplomats couldn't do the negotiating because that negotiating involved science and engineering," Clarke recalls. "Interagency decision papers were models of analysis, where assumptions were laid out and tested. "That's the world I grew up in. [The approach] still applied to issues, even terrorism. Then these people come in, and they already have the answers, how to spin it, how to get the rest of the world on board. I thought, Wait a minute. That isn't analysis. It's the important issues where we really need analysis.

"In the area of terrorism, there is a huge potential for emotional reaction. The one thing I told my team [on September 11]-they were mad and they were crying, the whole range of emotions-was that we didn't have time for emotion that day."

Nothing that the administration of George W. Bush has done has been inconsistent with the forces that twice elected it. The subtle, humming engine of its success-against John Kerry, surely, but most vividly against poor, cerebral Al Gore-was a celebration of instinct over intellect, a triumph of the Gut. No campaigns in history employed the saloon question with such devastating success or saw so clearly the path through the deliberate inexpertise of the national debate. No politician in recent times has played to the Gut so deftly. So it ought not shock anyone when the government suddenly found itself at odds with empirical science. It ought not shock anyone in the manner in which it would go to war.

Remember the beginning, when it was purely the Gut-a bone-deep call for righteous revenge for which Afghanistan was not sufficient response. In Iraq, there would be towering stacks of chemical bombs, a limitless smorgasbord of deadly bacteria, vast lagoons of exotic poisons. There would be candy and flowers greeting our troops. The war would take six months, a year, tops.

Mission Accomplished. Major combat operations are over.

"Part of the problem was that people didn't want the analytic process because they'd be shown up," Richard Clarke says. "Their assumptions would be counterfactual. One of the real areas of expertise, for example, was failed-state reconstruction. How to go into failed states and maintain security and get the economy going and defang ethnic hatred. They threw it all out.

"They ignored the experts on the Middle East. They ignored the experts who said it was the wrong target. So you ignore the experts and you go in anyway, and then you ignore all the experts on how to handle the postconflict."

One of those experts was David Phillips, a senior advisor on what was called the Future of Iraq program for the State Department. Phillips was ignored. His program was ignored. Earlier, Phillips had helped reconstruct the Balkans after the region spent a decade tearing itself apart with genocidal lunacy. Phillips knew what he knew. He just didn't believe what they believed.

"You can just as easily have a faith-based, or ideologically driven, policy," he says today. "You start with the presumption that you already know the conclusion prior to asking the question. When information surfaces that contradicts your firmly entrenched views, you dismantle the institution that brought you the information."

There was going to be candy and flowers, remember? The war was going to pay for itself. Believe.

"We went in blindfolded, and we believed our own propaganda," Phillips says. "We were going to get out in ninety days, spend $1.9 billion in the short term, and Iraqi oil would pay for the rest. Now we're deep in the hole, and people are asking questions about how we got there. "It's delusional, allowing delusion to be the basis of policy making. Once you've told the big lie, you have to substantiate it with a sequence of lies that's repeated. You can't fix a policy if you don't admit it's broken." Two thousand American lives later, remember the beginning. One commentator quite plainly made the case that every few years or so, the United States should "throw a small nation up
against the wall" to prove that it means business.

And Idiot America, which is all of us, cheered.

Goddamn right. Gimme another. And see what the superpowers in the back room will have.

AUGUST 19, 2005, was a beautiful day in Idiot America. In Washington, William Frist, a Harvard-trained physician and the majority leader of the United States Senate, endorsed the teaching of intelligent design in the country's public schools. "I think today a pluralistic society," Frist explained, "should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith."

That faith is not fact, nor should it be, and that faith is not science, nor should it be, seems to have eluded Doctor Senator Frist. It doesn't matter. He was talking to the people who believe that faith is both those things, because Bill Frist wants to be president of the United States, and because he believes those people will vote for him specifically because he talks this rot, and Idiot America will take it as an actor merely reciting his lines and let it go at that. Nonsense is a no-lose proposition.

On the same day, across town, a top aide to former secretary of state Colin Powell told CNN that Powell's pivotal presentation to the United Nations in which he described Iraq's vast array of deadly weapons was a farrago of stovepiped intelligence, wishful thinking, and utter bullshit. "It was the lowest point in my life," the aide said.

That it has proven to be an even lower point for almost two thousand American families, and God alone knows how many Iraqis, seems to have eluded this fellow. It doesn't matter.

Neither First with his pandering nor this apparatchik with the tender conscience-nor Colin Powell, for all that-will pay a substantial price for any of it because the two stories lasted one day, and, after all, it was a beautiful day in Idiot America.

Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the result of millions of decisions made and not made. It's the development of a collective Gut at the expense of a collective mind. It's what results when politicians make ridiculous statements and not merely do we abandon the right to punish them for it at the polls, but we also become too timid to punish them with ridicule on a daily basis, because the polls say they're popular anyway. It's what results when leaders are not held to account for mistakes that end up killing people.

And that's why August became a seminal month in Idiot America. In its final week, a great American city drowned and then turned irrevocably into a Hieronymus Bosch painting in real time and on television, and with complete impunity, the president of the United States wandered the landscape and talked like a blithering nitwit.

First, he compared the violence surrounding the writing of an impromptu theocratic constitution in Baghdad to the events surrounding the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Undaunted, he later compared the war he'd launched in Iraq to World War II. And then he compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt. One more public appearance and we might have learned that Custer was killed by Hezbollah. Finally, we saw the apotheosis of the end of expertise, when New Orleans was virtually obliterated as a functional habitat for human beings, and the country discovered that the primary responsibility for dealing with the calamity lay with a man who'd been dismissed as an incompetent from his previous job as the director of a luxury-show-horse organization.

And the president went on television and said that nobody could have anticipated the collapse of the unfortunate city's levees. In God's sweet name, engineers anticipated it. Politicians anticipated it. The poor bastards in the Ninth Ward certainly anticipated it. Hell, four generations of folksingers anticipated it.

And the people who hated him went crazy and the people who loved him defended him. But where were the people who heard this incredible, staggeringly stupid bafflegab, uttered with conscious forethought, and realized that whatever they thought of the man, the president had gotten behind a series of podiums and done everything but drop his drawers and dance the hootchie-koo?

They were out there, lost in Idiot America, where it was still a beautiful day. Idiot America took it as a bad actor merely bungling his lines.

Nonsense is a no-lose proposition. For Idiot America is a place where people choose to live. It is a place that is built consciously and deliberately, one choice at a time, made or (most often) unmade. A place where we're all like that statue of Adam now, reclining in a peaceful garden of our own creation, brainless and dickless, and falling down on the job of naming the monsters for what they are, dozing away in an Eden that, every day, looks less and less like paradise.

The Killing of Halloween

2005-10-31T08:18:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Oct 31, All Hallows Eve. What once served as a spooky New Years Eve tradition for the ancient Celts (which they called Samhain) was ultimately appropriated by Pope Gregory IV in 840 AD to serve as the daylong vigil preceding the Feast of All Saints. Even so, the Christians preserved the pagan festival's spooky trappings anyway. Cunning bastards.

Oct 31, 1926 - Houdini dies in room 401 of Grace Hospital in Detroit. The escape artist was killed by diffuse peritonitis, after having undergone an emergency appendectomy. Contrary to popular belief, the fatal appendicitis could not have been caused by a punch to the stomach.

Oct 31, 1993 - Actor River Phoenix dies of a drug overdose on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room in West Hollywood. Rumor has it that the lovely and intelligent Christina Applegate "stood there and watched."

Oct 31, 1997 - A Halloween "Hell House" opens in Vacaville, California for the benefit of local youths. Tableaus inside the house include a gay man dead from AIDS, a teenaged "Grunge" suicide resplendent with empty beer bottles, and a bloody mock abortion. The exhibits are operated by the Bible thumpers at Harvest Church.
(thanks to rotten.com)
---------------------------------------------------------------

The Killing of Halloween

Happy Halloween America, and a very special Halloween greeting to Deer Park, Texas, where Donald O’Brien managed to kill Halloween … and his own son. O’Brien is the reason that kids now trick-or-treat in shopping malls, which really isn’t so much about Halloween as much as it’s just another excuse to shop.

When I was a kid, if someone had told me that I had to forego trick-or-treating in my neighborhood in favor of a trip to a shopping mall, I doubt that I would love Halloween as much as I do today. Some of my fondest memories are from Halloweens past, but there was always the fear that there was some weirdo waiting in the bushes to steal your candy, or a twisted creep would be handing out apples with razor blades or poison candy. The stories were pumped down our throats much in the same way that the media shoves it down now with stories of anthrax, terrorism and the avian flu virus. But, it never happened. We were always careful, of course, but it just never happened.

In any case, I wanted to publish the following article that was originally published yesterday in the New York Daily News.

AG

Read on …

The Man Who Killed Halloween
BY DAVID J. KRAJICEK

Thirty-one years later, the crime still haunts Halloween.

Like millions of other American children, Timothy O'Bryan, 8, and little sister Elizabeth, 5, donned costumes and set out for trick-or-treating at dusk on Oct. 31, 1974.

The children and their parents, Ronald and Daynene O'Bryan, lived in the Houston suburb of Deer Park, but the family was spending Halloween night with friends in nearby Pasadena.

Ronald, a 30-year-old optician, volunteered to shepherd his giddy children and several friends on their candy-gathering rounds.

Later that night back at the house, the O'Bryans and their friends sat around the living room, talking and laughing. Ronald O'Bryan told his son he could eat one last piece of candy before bedtime.

The boy chose a Pixy Stix, a sweet, powdered candy in a straw-like plastic container. When Timothy complained that the candy tasted bitter, his father fetched him a glass of Kool-Aid to wash it down.

Minutes later, Timothy was doubled over with stinging pain in his gut. He threw up then passed out. His parents rushed him to a hospital as his heart raced and his body convulsed. But the boy was dead by the time he arrived.

Victim of a ghoul

The cause of death shook parents and law enforcers across the country: The Pixy Stix had been laced with toxic cyanide. Young O'Bryan had been poisoned by a depraved Halloween ghoul.

Four more of the tainted candies were found uneaten in the Halloween bags of the children who accompanied Timothy, including his sister. One boy had attempted to eat his poisoned Pixy Stix but was unable to remove the metal staple his would-be killer had used to crudely seal the plastic container after doctoring the contents.

Ronald O'Bryan recalled that the Pixy Stix had come from a darkened house. He said he knocked and someone inside opened the door a crack and handed him the five candy straws, which he gave to the children in his trick-or-treating troupe.

But O'Bryan was unable to point out the house for police, and the investigation was stymied early on.

Three days after the O'Bryans had buried their son, an insurance agent tipped police that Ronald O'Bryan had taken out twin $40,000 life insurance policies on his children not long before Halloween. The agent said O'Bryan was oddly secretive about the transaction, insisting that his wife be kept in the dark.

Detectives also learned that the O'Bryans were floundering financially. Their overwhelming debts - a hefty mortgage and installment payments for cars, furniture and appliances they bought but could not afford - had been Ronald O'Bryan's favorite water-cooler gripe with colleagues at Texas State Optical.

In the weeks before Halloween, O'Bryan had been predicting that his financial fortunes were about to change. Colleagues recalled the conversations - creepy in retrospect after Timothy's death - in interviews with investigators.

Police were dumbfounded. It seemed unfathomable that a father would sacrifice a child to catch up on debts.

Cops gave O'Bryan several more chances to find the house at which he was given the poisoned Pixy Stix. On his third try, as detectives drove him around, he finally identified the house. But the owners were investigated and quickly cleared.

Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence began to pile up against O'Bryan. A Texas State Optical customer, a chemist, recalled that O'Bryan had questioned him closely about potassium cyanide, commonly used then as a rat poison.

Where, O'Bryan had asked, can I buy it?

Detectives then searched the O'Bryan home and found incriminating physical evidence: The father's pocketknife blade bore minute specks of both plastic and Pixy Stix candy.

Overwhelming evidence

Ronald O'Bryan was arrested and charged with capital murder for poisoning his son.

He denied it, insisting that he was being railroaded by authorities desperate to solve a crime that threatened to ruin an American tradition.

But a parade of prosecution witnesses, including his wife, helped build a sturdy case against him.

For example, testimony showed that O'Bryan had encouraged Timothy to choose the Pixy Stix as his bedtime candy snack on Halloween night. When another boy at the house tried to eat his own Pixy Stix, O'Bryan dashed across the living room, vaulting a coffee table, to prevent him from doing so.

The Texas jury took just about an hour to convict O'Bryan and 90 minutes more to condemn him to death. He became known in the Houston press as "The Man Who Killed Halloween."

"We were all shocked that someone would kill their own son, their own flesh and blood, for a lousy ... $40,000 life insurance policy," Mike Hinton, the prosecutor in the case, told the Houston Chronicle.

O'Bryan spent more than nine years on Death Row in Huntsville, where fellow inmates gave him their own nickname: "Candy Man." He was known there as smart and well-read - but also as an icy control freak who, despite overwhelming evidence, steadfastly continued to deny any role in his son's murder.

His number finally was called on March 31, 1984.

O'Bryan was led to the death chamber after a final meal of T-bone steak and Boston cream pie.

His final statement did not mention Timothy by name.

O'Bryan said, "What is about to transpire in a few moments is wrong. However, we as human beings do make mistakes and errors. This execution is one of those wrongs yet doesn't mean our whole system of justice is wrong. Therefore, I would forgive all who have taken part in any way in my death. Also, to anyone I have offended in any way during my 39 years, I pray and ask your forgiveness, just as I forgive anyone who offended me in any way."

O'Bryan was then confined to a gurney and subjected to another form of mortal poisoning - a lethal injection of pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride and sodium thiopental.

Originally published on October 30, 2005

Waiting by the River

2005-10-30T05:40:00.000-06:00

Horrid History

Oct 30, 1938 - CBS radio announces that glistening, black-eyed Martians have landed at Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Luckily for the extraterrestrials, the news is announced during a Mercury Theatre program and later discounted as a work of fiction. Needless to say, the event causes widespread panic before the government manages to clamp a lid on it.

Oct 30, 1966 - The Zodiac kills his first victim, 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates, in the library parking lot of a community college in Riverside, California. Zodiac stabs her to death with a small knife, nearly decapitating Bates in the process.

Oct 30, 2002 - Jason William Mizell, aka Run-D.M.C.'s legendary DJ Jam Master Jay, is shot dead in the lounge of his Merrick Boulevard recording studio in Queens. The masked culprit, who gave Mizell a close-range .40-caliber gunshot wound behind the left ear, remains at large to this day.
(thanks to rotten.com)
---------------------------

Waiting by the River

"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way."— George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005

Good morning America, and a very special good morning to Washington, DC, where the Bush Reich is finally falling apart at the seams. Who’s next on the conviction agenda? Could it possibly be George Bush, himself? Naw, that can’t happen. You can’t pin anything on anyone in the Teflon-coated Bush family. His dad got away with all his crap years ago, so there’s no reason to believe that his little boy should be any different. But ineptitude aside, when it comes right down to brass tacks, this president is the exact paradigm of a marionette. Once the puppeteers are all gone, as seems to be happening to the Bush administration faster than Georgy-boy can say “misunderestimate”, the big W puppet in the Oval Office will simply crumple to the floor. It’s just too bad that it’s happening now, instead of a few years back before so many people had to die at the hands of those puppeteers.

I’ve been saying that the Bush administration is corrupt since its inception. Before he was even elected(?) into office, I recall saying that this guy will have us in a war within the first two years of his term, and I was right. I knew that (even though W has claimed that he patterns his administration after Reagan’s) he would be just like his dad in that he wouldn’t care how the American people felt about his domestic and foreign diplomatic policies, and I knew that he would somehow manage to put our economy in the toilet.

9/11 was a shock for everyone, but it served Bush’s purpose to take out Saddam Hussein and I still hold to the conspiratorial debate that he knew it was going to happen, he just may not have known when it would take place. That famous footage of him reading “My Pet Goat” with those school children on the morning of the attacks has been blasted over and over for his apparent inability to make any form of a decision, or to act as a president should. It shows a man who is possibly in shock, and wondering what to do next. I hold that it wasn’t his renowned ineptness showing in these eight minutes of limbo, but the expression of a man who is thinking to himself, “My God, they’ve actually gone through with it.” They, being the optimal word.

Who are They? While the entire country was up in arms about going to war with Iraq, what our public was misled to believe was that there was a difference between us and the Iraqi regime. It’s my opinion that we have been tied to that government with stronger strings than anyone even knows about. When you’re in bed with the Saudis, you’re also sleeping with all the local governments in that region. When Saddam started to get uppity from being the front man for George Bush, Sr., and then again for little Bush W, he was taken out. In order to do this effectively, W’s administration had to spin a solid reason to convince the American public that they were in the right. An attack upon the United States, such as 9/11, would have been their best bet. This is not to say that I believe our own government killed all those people on that horrible day. However, I do believe that they didn’t do anything about the warnings that it was about to happen, because it would simply serve their purpose.

There is an old Buddhist proverb that says: “If you wait by the river long enough, you’ll eventually see the body of your enemy float by.” I think this is exactly what happened with the 9/11 attacks. In the end, however, this passive-aggressive/cover-up/no-blame attitude has proven to be the administration’s undoing.

AG

A Very Happy Halloween to All

2005-10-29T04:54:00.000-05:00

To my faithful readers:
I just wanted to wish all my readers a very happy Halloween. Forgive me for not recently updating the blog , but I'm trying to concentrate on working with RVR, as I've been on a sort of hiatus for the past three weeks. I'll be updating the blog again within the next day, or so.

Happy Haunting!
AG

Bush Worried About Government Spending?

2005-10-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 25, 1913 - Birthday of Klaus Barbie, infamous Nazi War Criminal. After World War II, US Intelligence helped the "Butcher of Lyons" enter Bolivia, where he lived openly for many years in the capital, La Paz. Barbie was finally deported to France in 1987.

Oct 25, 1983 - In order to maintain an uninterrupted supply of nutmeg to satisfy global demand, the United States of America invades the Caribbean island of Grenada. The invasion is rationalized as a rescue mission for American medical school rejects stuck in a sleazy offshore diploma mill.
(thanks to rotten.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Bush Worried About Government Spending?

"Our administration is concerned about deficits, and the way they deal with deficits is you want to control spending. And I hope Congress lives up to their words. When they talk about deficits, they can join us in making sure we don't overspend. They can join us and make sure that the appropriations process is focused on those issues that -- those items that are absolutely necessary to the American people. I'm pleased that members of the Congress are talking about deficits. It means they understand their obligations not to overspend the people's money."

President Bush,
Remarks by the President in Photo Opportunity with His Cabinet
Jan. 6, 2003

If you believe that bullshit, read this.

The above linked website puts $87 billion into some perspective.

Monsters Under the Bed

2005-10-23T05:25:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 23, 4004 BC - According to calculations by 17th century biblical theologian James Ussher, God creates the heavens and the Earth.

Oct 23, 1983 - An Islamic Jihad suicide bomber drives a truck loaded with 2.5 tons of TNT into the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion kills 241 American servicemen. Simultaneously, a smaller truck bomb strikes another base in Beirut, killing 58 French soldiers. Even though the NSA has proof that the Iranians are behind the attacks, President Ronald Reagan begins delivering them weapons for hostages only 39 days later.

Oct 23, 1997 - Newborn son of The Artist Formerly Known As Prince dies of complications from a "rare skull deformity." The baby's death certificate fails to name either the father or mother.
(thanks to rotten.com)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dearest reader,
It is with great pleasure that I sit back today to play editer, in order to give you a taste of something that my wife has written.
Enjoy!
Alan
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monsters Under the Bed

by Rachel Gray

I thought to myself, “But I don’t want to die from a flesh eating virus, why does it have to be like this?” Then I thought, “Oh, it doesn’t. It’s just what is being sold to me!”

Imagine. Everything around me is being sold to me. War. Terrorism. Flesh eating viruses. Nuclear war. Evil men. I’m three years old again with scary dark monsters in my closet, and under my bed. Oh my. At least we have something over the victims of the Cold War. 9-11 gave us the privilege of fighting much more than a hallucination. Please someone explain to me, what were we afraid of during the Cold War? Communism? Are you serious?! An idea? Really? Oh sure, our government likes to tell us that it was because they had nuclear weapons. Yet I ask, what was the government busy doing behind our backs while our TV screens and news papers were perpetuating fear? The Communists knew just as well as we did what sending nuclear weapons over here would cause – Total World Annihilation. We knew it. They knew it. No one was going to do it because that is not what anyone wanted. It’s the basic principal of survival.

But now our boogey man is much, much bigger. Why? Because it had to be. We could not once again be led to believe in an Imaginary Boogeyman. We’d learned our lesson. This time the threat would have to be real. And aren’t these new monsters so much scarier! This time our monsters are willing to die for their ideals. This time The Monsters… er, Evil Doers, do not care if they send a nuclear bomb because they have 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven. Now I know that if I had 72 virgins waiting for me on the other side I just wouldn’t be able to wait to die for my cause too. But, the thing is, these men can wait. These men aren’t willing to die for a cause either. You want to know how I know that. Because they’re human just like me. And in my mind I know that no matter how strong my faith, no matter how spiritually powerful I become, there is still that little small whisper of doubt that speaks to me when I least expect it, and it says “what if I’m wrong? What if everything I believe in is wrong? What happens to me then?” The idea that I might actually have to stand before Saint Peter one day and have him condemn me to hell for my transgressions makes my skin chill just a little bit.

To continue, I guess I should explain something. I am a hedonist. Not at pagan. Not a Wiccan. Not an agnostic. Not an atheist. I am a Webster’s dictionary H-E-D-O-N-I-S-T. Hedonist. It means that I don’t acknowledge the God of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. And if you paid attention to what I said before declaring myself a hedonist, you would know that I don’t acknowledge any other gods as my god either. That is not to say that I am God-less. I do believe in a higher spiritual plane of existence. In fact my spiritual beliefs tend to stray towards the Eastern side of being. But my soul says that they haven’t got it right either. I guess you could say that I trudge along my spiritual path alone, solitary in my search for peace and enlightenment. I think many people are out there who are just like me – wanting and needing, and deeply knowing the answers we have been given just are not right. So we keep searching and waiting…

But, like I said, there are those moments in my sleep when I catch just a whisper that says “what if I’m wrong, then what happens to me?” And because the thought that my whole life I could have been wrong about something I believe in so deeply, it frightens me enough that I’m not in a hurry to find the answer. And I also think that our Evil Doers are not in a hurry to find out the answer either. As a human being, there is a small part of me that is more than ok with staying alive and living in the world that I know, just because of the “what if…” factor. What if this is all I’ve got? You know it too, its there in the back of your mind. What if ‘the worms go in, the worms go out’ is all there is at the end? Just because the shade of their skin is darker, or their Savior has a different name, does not mean that they aren’t as scared as we are to die.

But the Fear Machine is forcing us to believe that these men have become Evil Men who are not afraid to kill us. Men who want to become Martyrs for their beliefs and go away to heaven to live out eternity in the arms of 72 virgins. What if we just stopped fighting? What then? Our Government likes to say that if we stopped fighting now they’d only attack us at home. I say, what is the government doing behind our backs that they don’t want us to know about? It must be something pretty big because the monster’s they’ve created are worse then any monster that ever lived under my bed.

(Submitted by Rachel Gray)

Gramps Is Getting Pissed!

2005-10-22T04:17:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 22, 1844 - Jesus Christ fails to appear to the Seventh Day Adventists, led by Bible scientist William Miller. The Millerites were expecting the End Times to accompany the appearance of the Savior, so that didn't happen either.

Oct 22, 1934 - Notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd dies of multiple gunshot wounds in the back, after a shootout with the FBI at the Conkle Farm in East Liverpool, Ohio.

Oct 22, 1976 - Red dye #4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration, because it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. The dye is still used in Canada. The ban wreaks havoc with the M&M supply.
(thanks to rotten.com)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Watch Out! Gramps is Getting Pissed!

Well, if "A" is for Apple and Anti-war protests, it only follows that "B" must be for Burt Bacharach. Yes, Burt Bacharach, known to millions for writing such croons as Walk On By, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, I'll Never Fall in Love Again, and of course the wildly popular Turkey Lurkey Time, has gone political on his newest album release, At This Time.

The 77 year old composer is quoted as saying, "You could say 'how does a guy who has written love songs his entire life suddenly decide to rock the boat? I thought that was very important because I couldn't have somebody else write these lyrics."

He added: "I never was a political person in my life. I wrote songs during Vietnam, not about Vietnam. I was just writing love songs. Leading my own life in my own insulated world."

Some of the guests on his new album include the likes of Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, and even rap artist Dr. Dre throws in some drum loops to finish it off.

"I had to do it. This is very personal to me,"he said. And we, here at the Cheshire's Blog, bet that it is. After being an icon of the swinging sixties, winning three Oscars and six Grammys, the only thing left to do in this world of Love, Sweet Love is to start hanging out with Michael Moore and carrying signs demanding the immediate impeachment of President Bush.

Possibly the most political of all the lyrics on At This Time are from a song entitled Who Are These People? which include lyrics displaying Iraqi war disillusionment, such as: "Who are these people who keep telling us lies and how did these people get control of our lives and who'll stop the violence 'cause it's out of control? Make 'em stop!"

So, I say kudos to the old croonster for finally standing up and giving a voice to the geriatric crowd, who has been horribly screwed over by the Bush administration by way of negating their abilities to claim medical bankruptcy and all but completely doing away with Medicaid programs. Watch out Bush and Cheney, Burt Bacarach says no more Mr. Nice Guy. At This Time, grampa's gonna start kickin some ass around here, and it ain't gonna be pretty!

AG

That Nutty Saddam

2005-10-21T04:37:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 21, 1973 - J. Paul Getty Jr's ear is removed by kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome, along with a photo. It doesn't arrive until November 8.

Oct 21, 1995 - Shannon Hoon, lead singer of the pop band Blind Melon, dies of a heroin overdose in New Orleans, inside the band's tour bus.

Oct 21, 1997 - Hotel owners in the Detroit area meet to discuss suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian's practice of leaving corpses in their hotel rooms.
thanks to rotten.com
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Oh, That Nutty Saddam

Well, if he wasn't already a cheif candidate for the Looney-tunes award before now, jail time has apparently made Saddam as such. I mean, the man is obviously unfit to stand trial, and I wonder how soon it will be before the court catches on? On the other hand, I think it is more likely the case that it's all an act of apathy. He knows he's a dead man and that he doesn't stand a chance for defense, so he's acting out in court because he just doesn't have anything more to lose.

Personally, it seems obvious to me that this whole trial is just a circus side show, anyway. Does anyone (Saddam and his lawyers included) honestly believe that the man has any chance in hell of walking away from this thing with his head still attached to the rest of his body? The judge just needs to slam the gavel, pronounce him to be an extraordinary creep, and have done with it already. But, no, where's the fun in that? The courts have to show that, even though Saddam never once gave anyone a fair shake, they must rise above his tyrannical shenanigans and give him a fair trial.

It's a load of crap, if you ask me. Will his defense team somehow produce a glove that doesn't fit? Where the hell is Kato? I'm sure he's just chomping at the bit to get into that courtroom. Someone needs to get on the phone with Kato's agent and set him up with this gig.

AG

Bloggers May be in Danger

2005-10-20T07:14:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 20, 1947 - Under the direction of Richard M. Nixon, the House Unamerican Activities Committee opens an investigation of communist infiltration of Hollywood cinema. The hysteria in the film industry results in the creation of a blacklist, preventing certain individuals from working in the business for years.

Oct 20, 1977 - En route to a gig at Louisiana State University, Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines are killed when their private plane runs out of fuel and crashes into a swamp in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Their record company MCA withdraws the flame-filled cover art for their ironically-named Street Survivors album.
thanks to rotten.com

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News Bloggers May be in Danger

Good morning Saint Paul, Minnesota! And a very good morning to Tunisia, Africa, where they will holding a United Nations summit next month to debate who controls the backbone of the Internet.

The European Union wants the major control shifted away from the US to a more representative global body or forum, but the US wants to continue its tight grip on the Net and rejected EUs proposals, last month.

Leave it to Minnesota State Senator, Norm Coleman, to introduce a Senate resolution on Monday that called for the Bush administration to oppose any suggested changes to the way the Net is run at the upcoming World Summit in Tunisia. This is par for the course because the US can’t allow the just anyone to relegate how news is spread throughout the world.

As it is the only outlet that the residents in many countries have, regarding any semblance of free speech, the Internet provides the rest of the world access to real news. Bloggers, in particular, in places like the Middle East, provide us with real news; news that isn't pre-censored by the government. They give us an in depth look into what is truly happening in their countries, and how they truly feel about what is going on with them. Blogs like these are the only thing that separates the bullshit that is being hand-fed to the American public (such as flowers being thrown to the American soldiers in Iraq) by the government regulated press, and the reality of these situations (as we finally came to find out that those “flowers” are more commonly referred to as Molotov cocktails and hand grenades throughout the rest of the world).

Coleman said there was no "rational justification" for moving Net governance into any kind of UN framework. He said it would politicize and stifle the Net.

"Many aspects of running the internet have profound implications for competition and trade, democratization, and free expression," he said. "We cannot stand idly by as some governments seek to make the Internet an instrument of censorship and political suppression. We must stand fast against all attempts to alter the Internet's nature as a free and open global system," he added.

What Senator Coleman apparently fails to realize is that the "some governments" to which he refers are probably localized to his own backyard.

Granted, the countries that are being called into question are in question because of their own policies regarding freedom of speech. Places like China would, I’m sure, love nothing more than to limit the kind of information that is distributed by their country’s populace.

But, like it or not, the Internet free press will inevitably become censored anyway. Eventually the luxury that most Bloggers have, with regard to Internet free speech, will go the way of the dinosaurs; made extinct by way of a large meteor called World Government Censorship. This is why the mainstream government-controlled media is currently downplaying the validity of blogs as sources of newsworthy information.

To give the reader an idea as to the kind of free press I'm talking about, please check out Baghdad Burning, which is just one of the many blogs currently spilling out of Iraq without governmental media regulations. Reader, this is not dangerous information, this is the real news from the real people, who are right smack in the middle of the real and terrifying situation that is going on in Iraq. This, in effect, is what the government classifies as non-newsworthy because it is information they do not currently control. After the summit in Tunisia, however, the US may be one step closer to shutting the door in this sort of information forever.

For the most part, the US controlled news agencies are monitored by a government that wants its own public, as well as the rest of the world, to only know so much. The information they do grant us by way of "competing" news networks will always be relegated and purposely misconstrued by the government’s media standards. So, with this in mind, Senator Norm Coleman is obviously spinning the “freedom of speech” issue toward the US government's ascendency over alternative news sources.

We are currently involved in a Wag the Dog situation with this infringement upon free speech. While this sort of thing is going on, the media (both right and left biased) want you to be more concerned over the fact the President Bush has nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, or that his televised talk with the troops in Iraq was staged. While this is certainly interesting, it doesn't hold a candle to the probable impact of the upcoming UN summit in Tunisia that could affect the very way we communicate with each other.

AG

Survey Study Shows US Teens Reject Key Freedoms

2005-10-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 19, 1982 - Maverick carmaker John DeLorean is arrested in Los Angeles with $24M worth of cocaine in his suitcase. The case is later thrown out of court when a judge rules that the FBI sting operation constituted entrapment.

Oct 19, 1987 - The New York Stock Exchange suffers its worst crash in history, when the market suddenly loses $500B. The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 22.6%, twice the amount of the 1929 crash.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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OK, first of all, I want to make something perfectly clear: It is my firm opinion that survey polls should never ... I repeat ... NEVER! be given to high school kids. With that being duly noted, I hereby grant to you the following evidence:

US Teens 'Reject' Key Freedoms

A significant number of US high-school students regard their constitutional right to freedom of speech as excessive, according to a new survey.

Over a third of the 100,000 students questioned felt the First Amendment went "too far" in guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, worship and assembly.

Only half felt newspapers should be allowed to publish stories that did not have the government's approval.

The US government has committed itself to spreading "freedom" abroad.

In his second inaugural address, President George W Bush said the survival of liberty in the US depended on the success of liberty abroad.

Some rights groups have however attacked his administration for restricting civil liberties in measures that followed the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

'Dangerous ignorance'

The two-year, $1m survey across US schools - in which 8,000 teachers were also interviewed - suggested students held a number of misconceptions about the First Amendment, and were more censorious on some issues than their elders.

Some 83% of students polled felt people should be allowed to express unpopular views, as opposed to 97% of teachers.

Roughly half the students polled wrongly believed the US government had the right to censor the internet, while two-thirds believed it was illegal to burn the US flag - another misconception.

The president of the John S and James L Knight Foundation, which conducted the research, said: "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to this nation's future."

The survey concluded that better teaching and a bigger emphasis on student journalism could raise awareness of the First Amendment in American classrooms.

(as originally published)

Totally Useless Tuesdays

2005-10-18T04:45:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 18, 1945 - The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for America's plutonium bomb, courtesy of secret agent Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Oct 18, 1968 - A police raid nets 168 grains of dope resin in the apartment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The couple is fined UKP 150.

Oct 18, 1974 - The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, based loosely on Ed Gein's story and originally titled "Headcheese," opens in theatres. One critic describes the film as "a vile piece of sick crap," containing "unrelenting sadistic violence as extreme and hideous as a complete lack of imagination can possibly make it." The movie is later banned in Germany and the UK, yet remains as a horror cult classic today.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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Totally Useless Tuesdays

To my faithful readers:

I'm beginning something new for your Tuesday reading faire. I get a lot of forwarded e-mails, some of them providing links to really funny or really interesting stuff. So, rather than just tossing these sites into my e-mail trash can after I laugh at them, every Tuesday (or at least until I get sick of doing it) I will provide some of the more interesting and funny sites to you. But first, here's a little sump'n-sump'n for the Fundie in all of us. Enjoy!

Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
(thanks to evilbible.com)
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OK, this first link's validity will have to be decided upon for yourself. To any of you commentary-happy folks out there, who like to blast my points-of-view, please understand before clicking on the "comment" button below that this is not necessarily my opinion, I just thought it was interesting. - Was the Pentagon Struck by a Plane, or a Missel?

OK, now for some funny and just plain weird stuff:
Poke the Penguin - Just keep poking. Poke it, dammit! POKE! POKE! POKE!
Floating Woman - this one's just kinda creepy in a sadistic kind of way. You can use your mouse to catch her, and toss her around as you please.
Dancing Paul
Bunny Suicides - This one cracked me up!

I hope I brightened your day with this completely ineffectual information. We now return you to your previously scheduled alien mind probing.

AG

Burning Our Freedom

2005-10-17T05:17:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 17 1984 - The New York Times runs an article entitled "CIA Primer Tells Nicaraguan Rebels How to Kill." The story describes the secret manual Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare which the CIA furnished to the Contras in Nicaragua. The booklet instructed how to kidnap and assassinate civil officials, such as judges and police.

Oct 17 1989 - The Loma Prieta earthquake strikes the San Francisco Bay Area, killing 67 and causing billions in property damage. The 6.9 magnitude temblor manages to collapse a long section of the double-decker I-880 freeway, smushing motorists between the two layers. Part of the Bay Bridge also collapses. Worst of all, the quake postpones the third World Series game.
(thanks to rotten.com)
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Burning Our Freedom

Good morning world! And, a very good morning to Fairfield, Ohio, where they still believe in the sanctity of Old Glory, and if you don't, they’ll make sure that you learn your lesson but quick. Such was the case there with two fourteen year-old fire-happy boys, who found out for themselves that it's generally not a good idea to burn the American flag in front of a dead soldier's home, last July. (read the article here)

While I'll readily agree that these kids were palpable morons – they claimed that they were just fooling around, and they have also claimed ignorance to the fact that they were burning the flag in front of this particular home – I doubt that's the way the media may end up portraying this incident, and this is what has me worried.

According to Ohio state laws, it is illegal to burn the flag for the purposes of malicious intent or simple defacement. However, if the burning was done for reasons of protest then it is protected by the First Amendment. So, the media hounds being what they are, and the general God-fearing, flag-waving, Bush-worshipping masses being what they are, will depict and view flag burning as an illegal act.

Apart from of one's views about flag burning, the fact of the matter is that the act is still protected under the First Amendment. The irritant about this particular incident is that it may add credence to the court pleas that want to make flag burning a federal offence. So, then, it comes down to two choices: should the American public allow flag defacement, or the defacement of the fucking Constitution? Me? I'll take burning the thing that could serve as a bed sheet.

Personally, I wouldn’t burn the flag in protest. This is not to say that I don’t understand and empathize with protestors who do, but I happen to believe there are more effective ways of showing one's disgust for the country and it’s current policies. At any rate, I am much more resistant toward the changing of the Constitution. In effect, and I only write this here to reiterate the fact for my slower readers, our Constitution is the only thing that sets the US apart from any other totalitarian government. Without the Constitution, the American public retains nothing of our espoused freedoms, and we are left completely at the mercy of our government. In this particular day and age, when the government is presently doing everything in its power to overturn those rights anyway, that is a very dangerous idea.

Again, these two kids are obviously idiots, but I have to wonder if these fools have any idea as to the kind of fire they may have truly started?

AG

Why Cheshire?

2005-10-16T06:40:00.000-05:00

Dearest Reader,

OK, first things first. If you have any sense of democratic decency, then you need to donate some cash to moonthewhitehouse.com. Failing that, at least go check out the site. Remember, an act of rebellion a day keeps the totalitarians away.

In any case, hello and welcome (back?) to the Cheshire's Blog; a place where we realize that all your dreams can come true, granted that you're a white conservative faith-based Bush supporting republican neophyte.

I thought that I'd take today's blog to explain a little bit about what it is we do here at the Cheshire's Blog. First of all, "We" at the Cheshire's Blog consists mainly of myself and my cat, Voodoo. For the most part, the opinions expressed here at the Blog are the cat's, but as he remains somewhat computer illiterate, I am merely his secretary. Appropriate, then, that this blog is entitled the Cheshire's Blog, eh? Voodoo says this is to throw off the government bastards that are forever on his tail, but I think it's because he suffers from hebephrenic tendencies. Personally, I wanted to name the blog 'Mister Crankypants', but Voodoo just said, "What? That's a stupid idea! Sit down, shut up and type, slave, I have something to say about this whole Bush administration thing." Yeah, at times he can be quite the asshole.

Actually, the Cheshire's Blog came about because in July of this year I began writing a humor column for a Minnesota-based online magazine called The River Valley Reader. In keeping with the light-hearted ambiance of the magazine, RVR thought it would be a good idea for me to keep my political views to myself.

"Look, clown," said Nate, the chief editor of RVR, "you've got to stop pissing people off. You're here to do one thing and one thing only, pal: make me laugh. Now, dance little monkey, dance!"

Seriously, Nate is a great guy, and he has become a trusted fiend ... er, friend over the past few months. But, since there was no way in hell Voodoo was going to be able to keep his opinion to himself, I decided to create this blog in an attempt to further annoy conservative republican web surfers. Just doing our part to piss of the radical right.

So, what's with the obsession with the Cheshire? Well, it's really about my (unhealthy?) fixation with Lewis Carroll's Wonderland series. I am of the staunch opinion that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is, by far, the best children's story ever created and the Cheshire Cat is my favorite character. A couple of years ago, this infantile fixation was further enhanced when I played a computer game that is loosely based upon the series called American McGee's Alice, wherein a deranged and orphaned Alice is thrust back into Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat in this game is a very different sort of cat than that of Lewis Carroll's, and I thought that, being the opinionated and often wry person that I tend to be, if I were to ever transform into any fictional character, then it would have to be this grinning sardonic cat. Besides, Voodoo told me to do it.

Anyway, Voodoo and I hope that you're enjoying the Cheshire's Blog. As long as we manage to retain the freedom of speech on the Internet, we promise to keep bringing you the best in slights against our Orwellian government, paranoid commentaries about UFOs and alien conspiracies, and the occasional movie or book review (I'll write those reviews when Voodoo is sleeping). If you'd like to put a little laughter into your day, please make my editor happy and visit the Cheshire's Grin at the River Valley Reader.

Yours grinning in a tree,
Alan (the Cheshire) and Voodoo (Evil Overlord)

My cat and master, Voodoo

Another Orwellian Act

2005-10-15T05:53:00.000-05:00

I thought this article was worth noting. Do yourself a favor and check it out: the Disaster Profiteering Act. In effect, this act will do away with tax payer protection and eliminate competition for the government. Just when you thought the Bush Administration had become as Orwellian as possible, along comes this thing. This Act, combined with the ever-popular Patriot Act, effectively removes any doubt that the American public has lost all control over the government and the validity of political policy regarding our rights. We are at the mercy of Big Government and their good buddy Big Business.

AG

Fate is Ignorance

2005-10-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 14, 1959 - Actor and Nazi sympathizer Errol Flynn, dubbed "the most despicable human being yet born", dies of a heart attack in Vancouver's west end. Flynn slept with both Truman Capote and Howard Hughes.

Oct 14 1977 - During an anti-gay rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Anita Bryant gets hit in the face mid-prayer with a banana cream pie. Bryant finishes with custard dripping from her face: "Father, I want to ask that you forgive him and that we love him, and that we're praying for him to be delivered from his deviant lifestyle."

Oct 14 1977 - Crooning child abuser Bing Crosby dies on a golf course in Madrid, Spain. Since his death, two of his sons have committed suicide with a shotgun blast to the head (Lindsay in 1989, Dennis in 1991).

Oct 14 1985 - Respected Roman Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe Jr. of Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, pleads guilty to molesting 11 boys and is sentenced to 20 years. The Catholic Church had been aware of his pederast avocation since 1973, but pretended not to. In the end, the church coughs up $5.5M in out-of-court settlements.
(thanks to rotten.com)
-------------------------------------------

Anyway ... Is it just me, or is everyone else absolutely insane? If you talk with some New Age freaks out there, they'll tell you that the whole world is going nuts because we're at the crux of the world's Endgame; that, essentially, insanity is necessary for this time period. While I'll readily admit that I once fell for this line of guru bullshit, it seems painfully obvious to me now that we are bringing about our own demise by way of acting like complete idiots.

There is no fate, and the human race is not necessarily destined to blow itself up, but it is apparent that this is what we want. Even the New Agers will tell you that the reason that there are so many people on the planet now is because souls are returning to this plane of existence for the opportunity to witness the end of the world.

We are certainly at a turning point in our developmental consciousness, which is obvious by the fact that we have sped along our technological development at comparable light speed over the past forty years. Beyond this, however, many of us are still living in the caves of our ancestors. Though we may sport the latest cell phones and iPods on our Batman-like utility belts, our brains have yet to compute the fact that other people may be different from us and that they may have a different view of the world than we do.

Really, all in all, who cares? For instance, why should the majority of the world care if gay people want to get married? I once heard a comedian say "why shouldn't they be just as miserable as the rest of us?" and, in a way, that's exactly my point about all of this. Why should we be so concerned over the lifestyle choices of others, when we can barely take care of ourselves? Perhaps, if we stop poking our nosy little noses into other people's problems, we might (just maybe) take care of our own and further develop our consciousness to meet with the rest of the universe.

I'm quite sure that there is life outside our little planet. I'm also sure that the reason that these beings have yet to make their presence formally known is because they understand that as soon as they do we'll declare war on them. What if, for example, the little Grey aliens have absolutely no problems with gay people? Would we overlook the historical landmark of their arrival because their ideologies don't fit with the Christian god's plan? Would we totally negate their existence because we believe ourselves to be "God's Chosen People"? Bubble this in your head, my dear Christian: What if they are God? What if it's true that we are God's Chosen because they have created us? Too blasphemous for your little brain to wrap around? Yeah, that's why they have yet to show up at the NATO summits.

AG

And We Wonder Why?

2005-10-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

Oct 13, 54 AD - Roman Emperor Claudius I consumes a favorite mushroom dish prepared by his fourth wife, Agrippina. What he does not know is that the meal is laced with the toxin of the Amanita phalloides mushroom. Feeling ill the next morning, Claudius summons his personal physician. Unfortunately, the doctor happens to be a co-conspirator in the scheme, administering a colocynth enema which kills Claudius instantly.

Oct 13, 1972 - Due to poor visibility, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying the Montevideo Old Christians Rugby Club crashes high in the Chilean Andes. Of the 45 people aboard the flight, only 27 survive the crash, and just 16 make it to their rescue 72 days later. Their secret? Cannibalism. According to one survivor, "the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor, softer than beef but with much the same taste." In 1993, director Frank Marshal (The Sixth Sense, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future) decided to make a movie about the incident.

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And, We Wonder Why?

As some of you readers may already know, I am a collector of quotes. I believe that quotes allow us to understand the kind of person we're dealing with in any given situation. With this in mind, I think it's fair to say that George W. Bush has given us all more than ample warning. The following quotes are just a few examples:

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." - George W. Bush

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." - George W. Bush

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'." - George W. Bush

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." - George W. Bush

"The future will be better tomorrow." - George W. Bush

"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world." - George W. Bush

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." - George W. Bush

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe, we are a part of Europe." - George W. Bush

"Public speaking is very easy." - George W. Bush

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls." - George W. Bush

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur." - George W. Bush

"For NASA, space is still a high priority." - George W. Bush

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children." - George W. Bush

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." - George W. Bush

And, my all time favorite:
"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system." - George W. Bush

If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old

2005-10-12T12:19:00.000-05:00

In my younger days, one of my favorite pastimes was to attend concerts. Rock concerts. Unimaginably loud rock concerts. Preferably the type that would turn your brain to jelly, and your legs into cooked spaghetti noodles. The kind that would leave your voice hoarse for a week, your ears bleeding, and the impulsion to run right out and party for the rest of the night. All while attempting to debate with your friends about how that show was, by far, the absolute most kick-ass band you’ve ever seen in your life. Of course, they would always want to challenge that fact, and we would spend the rest of the night drinking beer and trying to talk over one another with our raspy voices. None of us could really hear what anyone was actually saying, because we couldn't raise our voices loud enough to get past the after effects of the twenty-million decibels that had been thumping through our ears an hour earlier. If someone were to have walked into our conversation, they would have sworn that we sounded just like a bunch of chipmunks squabbling over a nut.

Now that I’m forty, life is very different. I have a home and a family, and I go to work each day dressed in a suit and tie where I employ these younger concert-going types, who now call me sir (evil little bastards!). However, I daily face a mid-life conundrum: Inside this Giorgio Armani shell, lives a kid in his twenties who wants nothing more than to bang his head next to a speaker the size of a Cadillac. The kid that lives in this middle aged creaky closet of mine has been pushing from the other side of the door since 1991, when I let him out to attend the last concert he's seen. Even then, it wasn’t one of those hard-rocking, head-banging, ear-bleeding type concerts. I took him to see Depeche Mode when they were on their Violator Tour. It was a decent concert, and good music for the time, but it wasn't heavy metal, and my inner-Kid Rock has been pissed off at me ever since.

In the 90's, the music world turned its back on the dark and depressing bands like the Cure and Depeche Mode, and combined rock and roll with melodic Goth to create a new musical genre called Industrial Alternative Rock. Trent Reznor started recording under the nom de guerre of Nine Inch Nails, which prompted an entirely new set of rockers to follow. Marilyn Manson was next to take the stage, then Korn, Tool, A Perfect Circle, and post-punk bands like Green Day. These outstanding bands have been causing my inner-child to lose his little mind for the past ten years.

Well, anyhow, last night I let him out of his responsible family man suit enclosure and took him to a Nine Inch Nails concert at the Excel Center in Saint Paul, and he came home crying. You see, just because he thinks he still bang his head with the best of them, what he had failed to realize is that he currently resides in a forty year-old body that tends to get cricks in its neck and is in dire need of a good chiropractor. Oh, he knows now! But it took taking him amongst the people, whom he thought were his peers, to get it through his delusional head-banging skull.

My wife (who is quite possibly the biggest NIN fan to walk the face of the planet) and I were able to attain box seats for the concert along with my boss and his wife, and we had all been waiting for the night with bated breath. There was a possibility that the concert would be cancelled, due to the absence of his drummer, Jerome Dillon, who had been hospitalized with a recurrent heart problem following the band’s September 28th concert in Sacramento. This left Reznor scrambling for a new drummer, and his fans worrying that they may not get a chance to see the band perform. Reznor finally settled on session player and hired gun, Alex Carapetis, who has played with the likes of Groove Theory and Lenny Kravitz. Even though Carapetis only joined up with the band on October 7th, and had very little time to prepare for the rest of the tour, he rocked as though he’d been with Nine Inch Nails since its conception.

One of the best things about the concert was the light show. Now, I know that a lot of people say this about whatever concert they attend, but I've been to many concerts and this particular show was far and above anything I've seen since perhaps Pink Floyd in the Eighties. Reznor incorporated his usual front screen display of visual effects along with the spectacular lighting, which included short clips of swimming protozoa, fighting baboons, nuclear explosions and George W. Bush. This, combined with his emblematic heart-thumping back beat of new songs like Only (voted as number one alternative song by Billboard last week) and old favorites like Sin and Reptile, made for the kind of night that my sequestered demonic rocker child has been dreaming about for years.

Nails finished their two-hour performance with the old classic Head Like a Hole, which left the audience on their feet and screaming the lyrics to the song. This is what finally pushed my voice over the edge, and as I was screaming with the rest of the eighteen to forty year-old crowd, I felt the moment when it happened. “Bow down before the one you serve,” I screamed, “you’re going to get what you deser - - ” SNAP! From that moment on, my voice sounded like a bad impersonation of Harvey Fierstein with a sore throat. But, voice or no, I sustained my adrenaline rush all the way home.

Today? Well, today is a different story altogether. Perhaps it’s due to the unsympathetic vibrations from the music, maybe it's because of the fact that I was screaming along with the rest of the audience, or it could be because my poor neck can no longer endure being thrown around in ways that it was never meant to move. But, even though my inner-child is completely satiated and incessantly singing the songs he heard last night, I feel like shit. I’m wiped to the very core of my being, and all I want to do is veg-out in front of the television and sip hot chocolate.

So, today I offer thanks to Nine Inch Nails for allowing me to be twenty-one again for just one night. I thank my boss, Terry, and his wife, Megan, for landing us the box seats (it was like having a private performance because no one else was in the box with us) and head banging right along with us the whole time. And to my inner-child I can only say, “I hope you had a good time too, young man. Now, get back in your cage and shut the fuck up!”

AG

Home Remedies: Cheshire Style!

2005-10-11T05:38:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

October 11th, 1978 - Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious stabs girlfriend Nancy Spungeon to death in room 100 of New York's Chelsea Hotel. Because Sid remembers nothing about the crime, theories include robbery and an abortive suicide pact. Vicious dies of an ugly heroin overdose shortly before his trial.

-----------------------------------

Amazing Home Remedies - Cheshire Style!

I received this in an e-mail from my good friend. Thanks Bruce!

1. If you are choking on an ice cube, don't panic. Simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat and presto! The blockage will be almost instantly removed.

2. Clumsy? Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.

3. Avoid arguments with the little woman about lifting the toilet seat by simply using the sink.

4. For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.

5. A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you will be afraid to cough.

7. Have a bad toothache? Smash your thumb with a hammer and you will forget about the toothache.

And, Remember:

Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

Never pass up an opportunity to go to the bathroom.

If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You get another chance.

And finally, be really nice to your family and friends; you never know when you might need them to empty your bedpan.

Terrorism v. Rainbows

2005-10-10T05:11:00.000-05:00

Horrid History

October 10th, 1991 – Disgruntled postal worker Joseph Harris kills four people in Ridgewood, New Jersey. First he brings an Uzi, pipe bomb, and a samurai sword to his supervisor's home, where he kills her and her fiancé. Then Harris visits the post office, shooting two coworkers. When he finally surrenders to police, the gunman is wearing a ninja costume and a gas mask. Thus, incorporating the term “Going Postal” to describe any time that a person feels the need to dress up like a ninja and stab his boss.

----------------------------------------------

Some people say that I'm too cynical for my own good. I've never really understood this because I don't see being cynical as a bad thing, I see it more as a way to cope with what will probably become the inevitable. Let me give you an example:

You finally get a day off from work and you are given the choice to hang out with a) your friend that always has a smile on his face and a song in his heart, or b) your friend that seems to constantly have a dark cloud hanging over his head and hopes for global annihilation just to get the whole damned thing over with. Who would you choose?

Personally, I wouldn’t have a friend with a song in his heart. These people live in a world of their own making, filled with butterflies and rainbows. They are not to be trusted. These are the kind of people who will tell you that everything’s going to be alright when your wife has left you, your dog has been hit by a train, the IRS is about to audit your income for the past ten years, and George Bush is reelected to run our world. “It’s OK,” they’ll tell you, “being president is a hard job and he’s doing the best he can.” These people are to be smacked upside the head at every given opportunity, and then sent along on their merry way.

Now, the doom and gloom character is much more likely to gain my vote of confidence. This is the guy who will smack YOU upside the head whenever you begin to feel good about the world, in an attempt to wake you up to the stark reality of your life and the world in which we live. This person is a true friend.

The problem isn’t with the cynics of the world, it’s with the people who confuse cynicism with pessimism. The differences being that, while the optimist sees the glass as half-full and the pessimist sees the glass being half-empty, the cynic suspects that the water is tainted with anthrax and that global terrorism is probably involved. Now, once the cyanide factor comes into play, the water level no longer makes any difference does it? You may walk away thirsty, but at least you’re able to walk!

Then, there are those special people out there who will tell you that cynics are really just paranoiacs. This, too, is incorrect. Cynics aren’t paranoid as much as they just tend to weigh the odds of survival more than most people. However, there are people who can be considered paranoiac pessimists, but they can usually be avoided because they’re easy to spot in a crowd. They’re the one’s who are usually seen standing on street corners with big crosses, a bullhorn, and a sign the reads: “Repent! The End is Coming Soon!” The cynic, on the other hand, wouldn’t carry a sign. He’s more likely to walk away, while shaking his head and mumbling, “That figures.”

The ADD World

2005-10-09T05:33:00.000-05:00

Horrid History:

October 9th:

1919 - The Cincinatti Reds win the World Series, but only because the key Chicago White Sox players agreed to throw the Series for $100,000 in bribes.

1951 - RKO pictures asks Marilyn Monroe to wear panties while working.

1987 - 24 boats equipped with Lowrance X-16 sonar units detect a large object at the depth of 606 feet beneath Loch Ness.

1989 - Three aliens and their UFO visit Voronezh, USSR, according to the TASS news agency.

and finally ...

1989 - The Hebrew edition of Penthouse magazine is released. Oy vey!

--------------------------------

OK, now that that piece of useless information is out of the way, I'd like to know why it is that people don't seem to read anymore? Oh, it's not as though the great publishing houses are about to slam shut their doors, and Amazon.com is still one of the bigggest companies in the world, but people just don't like to read anymore and this bothers me. It makes me wonder if there is any hope for humanity at all?

Is it because the great masters have been all but forgotten? I dare you to mention the name of Jack London to someone. Go ahead, do it now, I'll wait. ...

Back? OK, what was the look on his or her face? Did they look as though you had just splashed cold water on their face? Good! This is a sign of an honest person, who will in all likelihood inquire into the writings of our dear Mr. London - or, they'll at least Google his name to find out more. However, if the person casually tried to pass it off as though they knew exactly who you were talking about, as though they'd published The Call of the Wild themselves - even though you know that their personal library is comprised of an extensive porn collection, then these people are just plain irritating.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now to get into the finer points of illiteracy, and how it is affecting today's society. But, I do want to end this day's blog by stating that perhaps the reason our world seems so wrapped up in ADD is because the publishing world is so wrapped up in making money instead of doing their job: to encourage reading. Cutting off one's nose to spite their face is a lesson that the publishing monkeys must eventually learn, if they are to have any hope of staying in business.

AG

Can Human Beings and Fish Coexist Peacefully?

2005-10-07T05:55:00.000-05:00

Click here to find out.

AG

Blame Bush?

2005-10-05T17:35:00.000-05:00

So, OK, I know I said that I was going to take a couple weeks off, but I just have to comment on something that’s been bothering me. I know, I know, I was as surprised as you are that I felt the need to “suddenly” become opinionated, but here it is.

I want to comment on the fact that the media seems to be whining about the fact that everything is being blamed on George Bush. Did he just say “whining”? Yes, yes I did. The networks and the newspapers all seem to be pointing and laughing at the American public, who maintain the belief that Bush is still a goddamned idiot. Why, the news nitwits ask, does every bad thing in the world have to be immediately blamed on Bush?

Well, my dear CNN, Fox, MSNBC, brothers in arms et al, I’ll tell you: Because he IS to blame! And, by the way, Fox News may be right-wing biased, but at least they’re up front about it. CNN (formerly known as the Clinton News Network), on the other hand, just seems to be in denial of the fact that they’re just as bad.

Anyway, I’d really like to know the exact date that the current Bush supporters (if they were proponents of Dick Cheney, would they be called Dick Supporters? … sorry, it had to be said) will begin to awaken to the fact that Bush is really (are you guys ready for this?) not a very good president. There, I said it! It’s on my blog now, and I won’t take it back. You can’t make me! I won’t do it, and the CIA can just kiss my Bush-Blaming Butt! You CIA freaks wouldn’t even be in business today, if it weren’t for Bush and his Patriot Act.

Anyway ...

This one single man is responsible for so much hardship and catastrophe in the world that it’s hard not to blame him for everything from 9/11 to Katrina. But, with this in mind, can anyone of these Bush supporters tell me what (if any) good this president has done for the Untied States? For a guy who stands on a “What’s Good for America” platform, it seems to me that his only real concern is What’s Good for Oil.

Let me see if I can run down a short list, here:

An all but completely ruined economy that will take decades to truly overcome.

An illegal war spawned by lies he told the American people, the world and NATO.

An entirely fucked up educational system instated by him and his cronies that will ensure the dilapidation of the American society for longer than you or I will be alive.

And, now, he’s made sure that the current Supreme Court will make him more of a despotic totalitarian regime leader than a president of democracy – isn’t that the very reason that he sent our kids over to Iraq to die in the first place? To get rid of this sort of leadership? Or, was that his weapons of mass destruction excuse? I always forget.

I’m leaving out quite a few other little “faux pas” on this list, but you get my point: this guy has to be the worst president we’ve ever been stupid enough to elect … TWICE! Twice? Yes, twice, puddin' head.

Anyhow, so along with the media monkeys screaming unfairness about how Bush has been made the scapegoat for All That Is Bad, many Americans are following right along with the media masters by parroting the news broadcast bullshit.

“Bush didn’t send hurricane Katrina to kill poor black New Orleanians,” they say, which is invariably followed by a moment of silence. This silence, I believe, is in anticipation that the sane person may pop off with a great big “Yes, he did!” Which, of course, doesn’t happen because, well … we are sane. That doesn’t mean that we’re not thinking it, but we won’t usually say it because speaking this way to a Bush supporter only gives them more ammunition and everyone knows that imbeciles shouldn’t be allowed to play with guns, not to mention bullets.

“But, if you look closely enough, you’ll see that Bush really does care about the American people.” I love this one. In fact, I love it so much that ever time I hear one of these special cretins speaking this way, it makes me want to throw up on their shoes. The thing that blows my mind about these idiots is that many of them are poor people. Poor, redneck, sister-fucking idiots who believe that the right thing to do is to always stand for patriotism. Ok, I’ll buy that, but when your own government stands against that very patriotism, then the ONLY way to remain a patriot is to stand against your very un-patriotic government.

Did he just say “revolution”? Why, yes, I believe he did. But isn’t that exactly what the beat generation and the hippies of the Sixties kept going on about, when they weren’t stoned out of their minds? Why yes, yes they did. Did anyone listen back then? Nope, and that’s why we have people like George Bush in office today, and Malcolm X type revolutionaries are still considered uppity assholes by White House Right-wing Bush Regime standards.

"PATRIOT: The person who hollers the loudest but knows the least of what he's hollering about." -- Mark Twain

AG

On Hiatus

2005-10-02T06:28:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to my readers:

I will be taking the next couple of weeks off. The job that tends to pay my bills is calling for more attention than usual, and all my free time will be used up for a while.

In the meantime, please cruise through the Cheshire's Blog archives to keep yourself busy, or alternatively, check out my weekly humor column at the River Valley Reader.

See you soon!
AG

Caption This! Contest Winner!

2005-10-02T05:42:00.000-05:00

Congratulations Dave!
Dave is the lucky winner of this week's Caption This! Photo Contest! I can only guess at the depraved experience from which Dave drew to create this caption - perhaps he has a lot of experience with SBD's (silent but deadlies).
In any case, here is your winning Caption This! photo:

More to come in the next couple of weeks!

AG

Prozac is Expensive, Blogs Are Free

2005-09-27T06:22:00.000-05:00

A reader asks: “Why can’t your blog be funny, like your humor column?”

Well, let me see if I can’t put this as plainly as possible. The Cheshire’s Grin (my weekly humor column) is only one side of me, while my blog is quite a different side. If I’ve disappointed my readers in some way, I only ask that you look to yourselves to find the answers to questions such as these. Thankfully, I can still laugh at the world around me, but there are times (and these times are becoming more and more frequent with the way the world seems to be turning out) when I just cannot ignore the political and social upheaval around us all. Being that I am what I am, I feel compelled to write about whatever it is that happens to be plaguing my mind on any particular day, whether that happens to be something funny that has happened to me, or the fact that George Bush is still a goddamned idiot. Sometimes it’s hard for me to differentiate the two, but then I realize that, in the case of W, it’s just a scary fucking world. My blog is my way of dealing with the same fear that most of you feel out there. The Cheshire’s Grin is my way of dealing with the silly and stupid stuff that seems to continually happen in my life.

On the other hand, perhaps I’m just your typical paranoid schizophrenic. I suppose I wouldn’t be the first writer in history to suffer from such an affliction. Writers – as well as all artists, I think – have the uncanny ability to put that which they are feeling on display. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we feel more deeply than other people, but we do have a sense of obligation to share these feelings with the world. Hence the existence of the critic; he tells us if our thoughts and feelings are good or bad according to modern social standards. Any artist worth his salt won’t give two shits about what critics think about our feelings, but that’s neither here nor there.

I guess my point is this: Prozac’s expensive, blogs are free.

AG

Caption This! Contest V

2005-09-25T04:39:00.000-05:00

OK, folks, here's your Caption This photo of the week. Remember, all you have to do is think up a caption for this photo and send it to me at Xcheshire333@msn.com (don't forget to remove the "X" from the e-mail address!). I particularly like this photo because, with the laughing kitten aside, the cat in the background seems as though he just doesn't get the joke. Have fun! The winning caption will be posted this Friday.

Random Thoughts of Happiness: What Color is Your Towel?

2005-09-24T09:29:00.000-05:00

It really doesn’t matter, you know. All the advice and good sense and hope and happiness that still somehow remains in the world; it just doesn’t matter, when it comes right down to it. In the end, we’ll just blow ourselves up, and that will be that. We can laugh and we can cry, and we can dance if we want to (we can leave our friends behind), and we can bitch to our heart’s content. At day’s end, it’s truly a miracle that we’ve managed to survive into the night. All the coffee shops and poetry readings and SUV driving ex-hippies in the world mean nothing to the Prozac Robots (cleverly disguised with felicity by way of mass sedation) who have infiltrated our collective consciousness with their politically correct speech and HR Department approved mannerisms. Ours – we must face the facts – is to become worm food, or try like hell to succeed in life, die and become fine dirt cuisine anyway. Them be the choices, folks! Dreadful as they may first appear, once accepted, we can march toward our grave destiny with a modicum of pride in the knowledge that we can at least become as cynical as humanly possible.

That’s my towel; my bullet-proof shield, as it were, and it’s color is black. When the bombs drop – as they eventually will, don’t blind yourself to fact – I’ll have only one thing to say as I witness the Great Mushroom of Doom explode in our complacent faces:

“Next!”

THIS JUST IN:
The dolphins are missing.

AG

Caption This! Winner 9/23/05

2005-09-23T07:25:00.000-05:00

Congratulations Chris!

"Harry could never get the whole counting sheep concept, but he sure had fun trying.
1, 2, 3, WHEEE! 4, um, 6, 7 ..."

Be sure to come back on Sunday for the next Caption This photo contest!
AG

Caption This! Contest IV

2005-09-18T05:07:00.000-05:00

Here is this week's Caption This! photo.

Remember, all you have to do to enter the contest is think of a funny caption for this photo and e-mail it to me at xcheshire333@msn.com

When you send in your caption, don't forget to omit the "x" from my e-mail address (it's there to throw off the spam-bots that hit this site).

Good luck!

AG

Caption This! Winner 9/16/05

2005-09-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

Congratulations Marlene!
(I assume Marlene is a soccer mom, herself)

Here is the winning caption for this week's Caption This! contest:

Tune in Sunday for the next Caption This! contest photo.
AG

Politics Explained

2005-09-16T13:35:00.000-05:00

I thought this was hilarious!
AG

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

(Original source unknown)

A Tough Night After the Speech?

2005-09-16T09:27:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does Bush look as though he's had a hard night on Bourbon Street in this picture? I've heard that Johnny White's Sports Bar never shut down throughout this entire ordeal. Maybe old Georgy-boy wanted to find out if that was true, or not, after delivering last night's speech.

Here's my caption for this picture:
"The levees have been blown up, my ratings are at an all-time low, and tens of thousands of people have been left homeless. Yup, it's Miller Time!"

And then there's this ...

2005-09-15T13:54:00.000-05:00

New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes

Is this even legal? I understand the security risks involved, but what about the Second Amendment? Exactly where do we draw the line, when it comes to sacrificing our civil rights for the sake of Homeland Security measures? Can anyone say Animal Farm?! How about 1984?

Take away the First and Second Amendments, and where does that leave us? Slaves to a totalitarian regime, that's where. Wasn't this one of Bush's excuses for the war in Iraq; to rid the world of this sort of government? Perhaps what he meant was that he couldn't stand the competition. Call it a corporate takeover of mass proportions.

AG

More on that Pesky Bullet

2005-09-15T13:23:00.000-05:00

As an addendum to my last entry, I found a quote from Jimmy Reiss (head of the New Orleans Business Council) to be of some significance. He told the Wall Street Journal:

"The new city must be something very different," Mr. Reiss says, "with better services and fewer poor people. Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Hmm ... the gumbo thickens.

AG

Magic Bullet Theory Suggests Levee was Blown

2005-09-15T12:10:00.000-05:00

In a recent ABC news report, correspondent David Muir interviewed New Orleans' Ninth Ward resident, Joe Edwards, Jr. Edwards swears that the breached levee was purposely blown in an effort to save the richer New Orleans areas, such as the Garden District and the French Quarter. Is this true? Watch the video footage and decide for yourself.

Personally, I could feasibly see how this may have happened, but there is also the high probability that people are simply grasping at any offered explanation for the disaster. I'd like to think this story is fabricated in an attempt to make sense of what has happened; people will do this kind of thing, when their consciousness can't cope with the overwhelming. But who knows for sure, and we probably never will. Louis Farrakhan claims that it's true, but I suppose that's to be expected, and everyone knows how "rational" he can be (sit down, my son, and let papa explain something called sarcasm).

But, the fact remains that during the last major flood to hit New Orleans, back in 1927, a decision was made at the height of that flood to dynamite the levees in places that would spare New Orleans, yet destroy St. Bernard's Parish. This is exactly what seems to have happened now.

I don't know. I suppose my guess is as good as any other magic bullet theory.

AG

Funny Ha-ha

2005-09-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

Buddha’s first lesson to his disciples is that life sucks, so either you get used to it sucking, or you attempt – often in vain – to overcome life’s suckiness. Ordinarily, there isn’t a Boddhi Tree around when you need one, under which to crawl and to contemplate the many mysteries of Nirvana, so instead we are forced to live with the cold, wet blanket of life.

I guess that’s my complaint of the day: Why does my life have to suck just to appease God’s insatiably twisted funny side? Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not a God-hater in any way. In fact, I think God is pretty cool. And I’m pretty sure that when It’s not too preoccupied with thinking up new practical jokes, It actually has a sensitive and compassionate side. Unfortunately for the human race, this caring and loving side tends to be overridden by It’s laughter.

You know, it’s the sort of laughter that you can’t seem to help when a chair is slid out from under a person who’s about to sit down. It’s the kind of funny that you’ll try to stifle for the sake of ethical decency, but will eventually bring tears to your eyes and cause you to wonder at the shear debauchery of your mentality. By the way, the next time you happen to be a witness to this sort of untoward event, and some indignant moron decides that it’s his position in life to teach you right from wrong by way of glaring at your laughter, just tell the idiot that God made you do it. Then, throw a cold, wet blanket on his face and laugh even harder.

"Adults are obsolete children." - Dr. Seuss

America the Tiny

2005-09-14T04:20:00.000-05:00

Odd, how it’s the little things in life that seem to make the biggest differences. An old adage to be sure, but one that bears the dignity of becoming something of a mantra in these days of over-consumerism. Certainly in my life, anyway. I’m dreadfully guilty of unnecessary consumerism; from too many DVD purchases to those absolutely ridiculous Mini Life Savers. What’s the point to Mini Life Savers, anyhow? When did regular-sized Life Savers become too burdensome for our mouths?

“Life Saver?” someone might offer.

“Oh, gads, no!” you’ll reply, “I’ve just finished dinner! Do you want me to explode?!”

But I’m just as guilty because, while standing in a checkout line to purchase another equally preposterous item of luxury, I’ll see something like Mini Life Savers and think, “Hey, that’s pretty cool! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this sooner? I gotta get me some of them!” Only to chastise myself later for my blatant disregard for mass consumerism, and falling victim to yet another sleazy ad campaign disguised in innovative packaging.

Besides, Mini Life Savers are just stupid.

I think the reason that we (and apparently I’m not the only one, here, folks … they wouldn’t continue to market Mini Life Savers if I were the only idiot buying them) pay money for these ludicrous tokens of opulence is because we live in an age when we are attempting to replace the important things in life because, as a rule, we’re just too goddamned lazy to seek out the goodness that surrounds us every minute of everyday. And, if that theory doesn’t grab you, then how about this:

We’re Americans.

Americans have become the world’s fat and lazy uncle that no one wants to have over for dinner anymore because they’re sick and tired of our piggish ways, and the fact that we eat all the mashed potatoes before anyone else can get some. Then, we invariably make rude comments about everyone else at the table, right before we have the shear audacity to ask what’s for dessert. Let’s face it, we’re swine, and yet we don’t give a damn. All we care about is that we continue to have the ability to purchase our Mini Life Savers, and to unabashedly disregard the inviolable fact that the money we spend on the fucking stuff could have helped a child from starving to death in Somalia.

So, what then? Are we to starve right along with the Third World countries just to show our support? Of course not. Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is historically naïve, and has never done anyone any good. Van Gogh comes to mind, by way of example … but I guess that was an ear. You get my point. But, we can start by openly denouncing the Mini Life Saver ad campaigns of the world. We can stop purchasing the things in life that we really don’t need and calling the advertising execs bluff. We can show the world that we really are worthy of an invitation to dinner by giving a shit about what others think of our manners and political conduct. We can … we can …

Ah, hell, what’s the point? People don’t give a shit about anything except who Brittany happens to be banging this week, and where they can find some more of those tasty, little Life Savers.

AG

1463

2005-09-13T06:15:00.000-05:00

1463? What’s 1463? I will tell you what 1463 is, but first, I’d like to share with you where I believe we would be had Bush not been allowed to steal the presidency in 2000.

I was never a big proponent for Gore. I know that I write a lot of articles that deal with the “left wing agenda”, but the fact is that I had no intention of voting for Al Gore. My reasoning for this was simple: he seemed, with the aide of Tipper, to have the first amendment in his crosshairs. Being a writer, the ultimate reason that I enjoy living in these United States is for the fact that I can write whatever the hell I want about whatever, or whomever the hell I want. Al and Tipper Gore, however, found this freedom to be detrimental to society at large, and so I would have sooner reelected Nixon.

So, with that having been said, I want the reader to understand that I also had no intention of helping to seat Bush in the White House either. It was my politically staunch opinion that George Bush, Sr. was, in fact, Satan incarnate. If this was the case, why on earth would I want his demonic child to run the house in his absence?

But, if Gore had somehow been able to beat the cheating system that landed Bush the presidential chair, I am sure of one thing: Osama bin Laden would now be in our custody. Beyond this, he would be in our custody and either in the midst of trial, or would have already been found guilty for the deaths of 2,700 people on September 11th, 2001.

So, what’s 1,463 then? 1,463 are the amount of days since September 11th, 2001, and yet the man who claimed this tragedy as his own is still at large. America incurred Germany’s surrender in 1,243 days. Japan’s in 1,365. Even the third Punic War, in which Carthage was burned to the ground and emptied of citizens, who were then taken en masse into Roman slavery, lasted around 1,100 days (and it took a lot longer to get troops into position, back in 149 BC).

Yet, after 1,463 days, the question remains: where is Osama?

I’ll bet that the majority of you reading this article didn’t know the exact amount of days since Osama has been at large. But you can sure bet that, had Gore won the presidency, you would have known. You would have known because his opponents would have made sure you knew.

AG

A Lesser Impact

2005-09-12T06:20:00.000-05:00

You know, it just occurred to me that September 11th came and went, and I didn’t make even one comment about it. How strange that this horrible incident, which had so much to do with the way I currently view the world in which we live, can simply lose its effect. Waves of despair didn’t flow through my thoughts throughout the day for the first time since 9/11, 2001. I suppose with the recent Katrina events in the south, my mind must have been preoccupied.

Still (even with all the media hype that permeated the websites, television and radio stations, which all do their very best to make damned sure that we will never be able to put the whole thing behind us), I hardly took notice that yesterday marked the four-year anniversary of the single worst tragedy to hit the United States.

Perhaps with everything that has transpired since those assholes decided to take it upon themselves to change world consciousness – the war in Iraq, the probable nuclear threat from Korea, Katrina, etc., etc., etc. – we have (much to the chagrin of the government-controlled media) become desensitized toward the disaster that claimed so many innocent lives … On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly what they want.

I doubt that anyone will ever truly forget 9/11, and I know that I certainly never will. But, the impact will probably fade as we pass through time, and in a way, this saddens me.

Caption This! III

2005-09-11T04:42:00.000-05:00

OK, folks, here's this week's Caption This! photo:

Remember, all you have to do is send your idea for a caption to this picture to:
xcheshire333@msn.com
(don't forget to omit the "x" from the e-mail address!)

The winning caption will be posted this coming Friday, so start thinkin'!
AG

Both Sides of the Fence

2005-09-10T08:19:00.000-05:00

Just as an addendum to yesterday's blog:
Christians, please stop trying to convince the world that the devistation of New Orleans happened because God hates sin, corruption and voodoo. If that was the case, then He would have put an end to the Bush Machine long ago. We no longer live amongst the scourge of the Old Testament, we live in an age of reason that does not allow superstitious nonsense to supplant common sense.

Oh, wait, what was I thinking? You're the reasonless people who put Bush into office in the first place.

On the other side of the fence I really wish that people, who are supposed to carry a little more of that treasured common sense, would stop claiming that disasters like Katrina and the recent tsunami are happening because the earth is attempting to shake human beings off the planet, like so many unwanted fleas. The idea that the earth is simply doing away it's "human cancer" (Kurt Vonnegut - Real Time with Bill Maher, Sept. 9th, 2005) is absolutely ludicrous. Yes, I agree that we all need to start taking better care of the planet, but only because it's where we live. Not because we need to appease it, like some god that demands annual sacrifices. Really! The people who are touting this belief are no better than the superstitious Christians, yet they claim that they're basing this idea upon logical and scientific thought. There is absolutely nothing logical about bending over to a god (new or old) that you create out of fear and confusion.

C'mon, Kurt, I expected more from a writer of your caliber and intellect!

AG

Hurricane W: How the Bush Administration Destroyed New Orleans

2005-09-09T18:25:00.000-05:00

Some people have been asking me why it is that I have yet to write anything about Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation she left in her wake throughout the south and in New Orleans. To these people I would just like to say that, up until now, I have been left without the adequate vernacular to describe exactly how I feel about everything that has happened there. I guess I was in shock that our government could be so completely heartless as to leave all those innocent people there to starve, die and rot in the streets.

All the questions that have been presented to the government have been met with feeble excuses. The foremost of which was why the people of New Orleans were forced to wait so goddamned long before any semblance of aid took place?

The governments excuse? Inability to access the people in need. No access? Even singer/actor/New Orleans district attorney’s son Harry Connick, Jr. seemed to find a way in, along with anyone else from the media press who so desired.

Where was the National Guard and why weren’t they brought in sooner to help control the situation?

The government’s excuse?

Well, from what I’ve gathered, they still have yet to answer that question. The fact of the matter is, however, that even though there were military personnel in the right areas with the ability to help at a moment’s notice, they were not ordered into action until three days after the flood waters had infiltrated 80% of the Big Easy. Perhaps, and please keep in mind that this is just my opinion about the situation, most of the National Guard’s equipment (including high-water vehicles for some weird reason; they are in a desert, after all) is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Louisiana Guard officer was recently quoted as saying, “The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission.” Hmm, no shit?

Another question that people have been asking is why wasn’t more preventative action taken to reduce this disaster in waiting?

In order to answer to that question, you have to look at several factors. In 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers all but stopped its work on flood control, including the levies in New Orleans. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, this slow down was due to the war in Iraq and federal tax cuts. In 2002, the corps’ chief engineer resigned (perhaps before being fired?) after he criticized the administration’s proposed cuts in the corps’ budget, including flood control spending. In mot so many words, the administration essentially told the residents of New Orleans to go fuck themselves.

Last week, Bush made the claim that “nobody expected the breach of the levees.” This is unreservedly false, as a measure to fix the sinking levees has been brought forth for years, yet nothing was ever done about the situation. It wasn’t as though no one understood the sort of catastrophe that was in the making for New Orleans; this flooding has been predicted for years by FEMA, let alone the Louisiana government. In 2000, FEMA reported that the three most likely catastrophic occurrences that could happen inside the Untied States were: a terrorist attack on New York, another major earthquake to hit San Francisco, and a hurricane to hit New Orleans. The Houston Chronicle wrote in 2001 that “the hurricane scenario in New Orleans may be the deadliest of all.” This prediction may prove to be true, as with the receding flood waters, the death toll is expected to rise to ten thousand … let me repeat that: TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE DEAD, DUE TO GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE!

Get it?

I find it wholly appalling that, according to a recent Harper’s Index Poll, 38% of those polled believed that no one is to blame for this disaster; that it was simply an act of nature, and that there was nothing anyone could have done about it. This attitude is a direct result of Bush informing the nation that now isn’t the time to be pointing fingers of blame. Which brings me to another question:

Why is it that Bush has taken it upon himself to lead up an investigative committee to get to the bottom of the ineptitude concerning this disaster? This is like allowing Osama bin Laden to head up the 9/11 investigative commission! It’s Bush’s administration that screwed up, and does anyone truly believe that he will do anything about this commission’s findings? Hell no. He could start right now by way of firing the director of FEMA, Mike Brown, for his gross mismanagement and refusing to do anything about the situation once he learned about it four days after the fact! But, Bush has claimed that nothing of the sort will happen. Does this lend to some overwhelming confidence in America that the investigative committee will do the right thing? Again no, and just like the 9/11 investigations, it will become a mockery of the intelligence of the American people.

We need to start calling the entire debacle for what it really is: This natural disaster was used as an aide to purge the south of one of the worst crime-ridden cities in the nation. The Bush administration knew this hurricane was eventually going to happen, they got lucky in that it happened during their term, and it served to help rid the nation of poor black people. They aren’t part of Bush’s wealthy “base” so what’s the point in having them around at all? Once the rest of the nation wakes up to this fact, perhaps they’ll begin to understand that America is filled with the apparently ineffectual poor, and they could ever-so-easily be next on the Bush administration’s cleansing agenda.

Bush’s presidential popularity rating is currently at an historical low. Most people (yes, Republicans included) are sickened by what has happened with the way this administration has handled (and is continuing to handle) the Iraq situation. One must win the lottery to afford to fill one’s gas tank; the economy is such that people cannot afford to continue to get to work, granting that they have a job in the first place. And, now, this disaster in the south and the way it has been mismanaged. If there was ever a time to pressure W and his entire administration out of office, now is that time. Impeachment is at hand, and it’s about time. What will it take for the American public to finally understand that this “person” sitting in the White House is not, in fact, a democratic president. He is a totalitarian in the making, and that fact is as foreseeable as Hurricane Katrina and the entire ruin of New Orleans.

Caption This! Winner 9/9/2005

2005-09-09T12:52:00.000-05:00

The trophy for last Sunday's Caption This! photo contest goes to:
Chris!
Yes, Chris, you win an all-expense paid trip* to exotic and beautiful New Orleans!

(*plane tickets, gas money, food, lodging, airboats and scuba gear not included. Vacation must be taken by September 10th, 2005 and is subject to National Guard and FEMA approval.)

Now, without further transgressions against God, nature, or good and common sense, here is your Caption This! winning photo:

Be sure to tune in this Sunday for the next Caption This! photo contest!

Caption This! II

2005-09-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

OK, let's keep this moving right along, shall we?

Here is this week's Caption This! photo.

Remember to send in your caption ideas to:

xcheshire333@msn.com
However, don't forget to remove the "x" from the e-mail address.

AG

Caption This! Winner 9/2/2005

2005-09-02T13:13:00.000-05:00

The winner for this week's Caption This! Photo Contest is Azryha.
Congratulations, Azryha!
The next Caption This! photo will be posted on Sunday, September 4th, so be sure to come back.
And now, without further rant nor rave, here is the winning photo:

If you'd like to save this picture as your desktop wallpaper simply right click on picture, then click on "set as wallpaper".

The runner-up for this Caption This! photo was submitted by Chris:
Be sure to check back here on Sunday for the new weekly picture!
AG

A Percentage of Stench

2005-09-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

It may very well frighten some people that I’m a regularly surveyed member of the Harris Poll Online. You know the Harris Poll, don’t you? They’re the fine folks who keep everyone else informed as to the inner heartbeat of America by way of showing how we should all think, based upon my opinions. Don’t worry, I’m on your side … as long as you continue to think the way I do.

Anyhow, I took a recent Harris Poll to indicate how I felt about the astronomical gas prices. Now, the first thing you should know is that at the end of these little polls the website always offers up-to-the-moment statistics. This way, you can see how your opinions compare to those of the rest of America. I imagine they do this in an attempt to make you feel better about your own idiotic answers; a form of cheap consolation, as it were.

Generally, I don’t care about this page of the Poll. Being the opinionated bastard that I am, I believe that the only vox populi that matters is my own. One day, I’m sure that Mr. Harris will come to me to say that he has decided to allow mine to be the only opinion, thereby eliminating the need to ask the rest of the nation, because they’re mostly idiots anyway.

Let me give you an example of this stupidity, so you’ll know that I’m not just campaigning for god status on a lark. Let me show you why I have valid reasons as to why I should be your next Ruler and God, Lord Cheshire :::thunderclaps in the near distance::: nice effect, eh?

After I took this most recent survey, the stats page came up and loudly proclaimed that there are indeed some people in America that are under the influence of idiocy. For instance, even though 90% of the poll takers indicated that they car pool to work because of the recent gas hikes, an astounding 13% say that gas prices are “very inexpensive”.

Let me repeat this for those of you reading, who may have been part of that 13%: 90% say that they carpool because they can’t afford gas in their own cars. 13% (which bleeds three whole percentage points into that ninety percentile) say that they could care less about the price of gasoline; that they have no idea what everyone seems to be bitching about. This means, given that 10 of that 13% feel that gas prices are not an issue, there is still another three percent of the population who carpool (and there simply cannot be any other explanation for this) just because they enjoy the after-work stench of other people!

A Fun Idea for Alan's Obsessive Readers

2005-08-30T15:57:00.000-05:00

OK, so I was sitting around the other day, obsessing over how to generate a little more fun into this blog of mine. After no less than two whole grueling seconds of brain storming, I came up with this: Caption This!

Here’s the plan: Every Sunday afternoon, I’m going to post a picture that I happen to think speaks volumes. Then you - yes, you! – get to caption the picture. Just send me your caption idea by copying and pasting the following address into an e-mail: xcheshire333@msn.com (please note: you must remove the “x” from the beginning of the e-mail address before sending. I have placed it there in an attempt to reduce the amount of spam generated by web bots).
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Now, you may ask, what’s in it for me? Is there prize money involved? If I win, do I get an all-expense paid trip to Disneyworld? Will my healthcare insurance provider suddenly reduce my premiums? The answer to these, and many other dumb questions, is no. However, if you submit the winning caption, you’ll get your name in print along with a great big THANK YOU!

So, let’s get started, shall we? Here is your first picture:

I'll be posting the winning caption for this picture on Friday, so don't hesitate.

Have fun!
AG
(xcheshire333@msn.com) – don’t forget to remove the “x”!

God, save me from your followers

2005-08-29T11:42:00.000-05:00

Leave it to good old Pat Robertson to start a crusade. His latest verbal faux pas about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez must certainly go into the annals of political mispeak along with his other gems, like:

"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

I wonder if this guy is a staff member for the Bush speech writing team?

AG

The Lost Art of Spitting Blood

2005-08-15T06:27:00.000-05:00

Can someone please tell me what the hell has happened to rock and roll? I’m not talking about the music itself, that’s another story entirely. I’m talking about stage productions that brought you to your knees. What ever happened to groups like KISS? These guys gave you a show you’d remember for the rest of your life. Sure, it’s likely you’ve forgotten most of their music, but how could you ever forget Gene Simmons bleeding from his mouth, or spitting fire? If you’re a woman, you’re probably more likely to remember his tongue. Again, that’s another story entirely.

These days, it seems that bands are apathetic towards their audience. It’s as if they just want to do the show as fast as possible, get paid, and get out. They don’t seem to recall the meaning behind the show. Take Smashing Pumpkins, for example. Watching them perform is like watching a fashion show for the living dead. Just once, I’d like to see one of it’s members vomit up a little blood. If they did this (and this is the irony of it all) their devoted fans would think they were the coolest, most original rock band ever. Why? Because their fans are too young to remember groups like KISS.

Along with many Gen Xers, I grew up in adoration of KISS. Not so much for their music, as for their stage antics. KISS came from a long line of rock and roll showmen. For instance, take Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Take Liberace, for that matter. These were showmen! They understood that you were spending your hard-earned cash for a show, and a show is what they gave you! Jerry Lee set his piano on fire. The Who smashed up their expensive guitars. Elton John… well, who knew what Elton would do at his next performance?

Bands today just don’t seem to have that cutting edge they did when I was dreaming of my first car. I once attended a Primus concert, for which I had waited three hours in line in order to purchase tickets. I paid seventy shells for the opportunity and was treated to not ten, but a full twenty minutes of seeing them on stage. What the hell is that all about? Don’t get me wrong, I loved Primus. I thought they had the potential to actually put on a show, but they didn’t bother with quality entertainment because the fans no longer demanded it of them.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting old. I remember my folks saying, ‘you kids don’t know what real music is,’ and now I’m starting to sound like them. I’m beginning to understand what they meant. But, this was never about the music, it was about putting on a show where you thought you wouldn’t survive the adrenaline rush. I mean, sure, Peter Chris’ "Beth" was a beautiful song to his wife (?), but it paled in comparison to witnessing him and the rest of the band, in outlandish make-up and costumes, give a performance to stop your heart. Then again, all this was way back when it was called Show Business, and not the Music Industry.

AG

Hitler was a Nonsmoker

2005-08-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

"I have no attitude without a cigarette." - Lou Reed

I want to rant for a moment about this new – altogether ridiculous – price increase on cigarettes. Look, I’m a smoker. Yes, I know it’s bad for me and, yes, I know that I’m not doing anyone any favors by smoking in public. So please stop infuriating me with all your damned medical particulars and government imposed propaganda as though I’ve never heard it all before. You nonsmoking folks out there, who do this sort of thing, sound like mechanized parrots. It’s not as though I can claim that I was one of the millions of duped folks from the Fifties, who were under the impression that cigarettes were good for us. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble never hawked Lucky Strikes to me as a child, so I have no excuse for my addiction and I can’t exactly bring about litigations against Hanna-Barbara ... Even though Yogi Bear and The Jetsons seriously screwed me up for life.

In the government’s newest battle against the Evil Tobacco Companies®, they have decided to hike the price of cigarettes up at least another seventy-five cents per pack. Some places have had the shear audacity to charge an additional dollar a pack. My god! Don’t these people realize that we smokers have life and health insurance policies to pay? Coffins are expensive these days, damn it, and funeral arrangements are out of this world!

Seriously, though, everyone knows that smoking is bad for us. But, lest we forget that it is an addiction, it tends to be a habit more difficult to break than alcohol. Seventy-four percent of all smokers who quit eventually return to the drug. If alcoholism is to be clinically categorized as a disease, and alcoholics aren’t made to take swigs in back alleys and designated drinking areas, then why have cigarette smokers been ostracized by today’s society? Why blackball the smoker, when it’s the tobacco companies that are perpetrating the original sin?

Smokers have been completely demonized and have almost no rights in this country, and worldwide. The few rights smokers do retain are being lost on a minute-to-minute basis. There are risks in almost every aspect of life, and I realize that the antismoking campaign (read: socio-political propaganda akin to that of Hitler’s Nazi regime) has been designed to make people think that we are doing away with those risks by way of drowning out the people’s right to smoke. However, bear in mind that in 2004 automobiles killed approximately 42,000 people in the US, whether those people happened to be driving or not. Should we take away cars then? Yeah, that’ll happen as soon as we finally get fed up with paying these prices at the gas stations. By the looks of it, we’re not even close to that extreme. And if you think that alcoholics are only a danger to themselves, and that they’re only ruining their own health because it’s not an airborne contamination, think of those 42,000 auto fatalities again. Almost 17,000 of them were alcohol related.

Also in 2004, the first anti-smoking treaty – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – was ratified. This is yet another shining example of how the United Nations intends to control every aspect of the lives of everyone on earth. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH, appropriately enough) is the lead organization in America and it has promised to “concentrate on enforcement efforts.”

Now, it’s 2005, and the ASH has plans for all of us – evil smokers and angelic nonsmokers alike. It plans to “take advantage of a new ruling which now makes it possible for sensitive nonsmokers to sue states which do not provide them with reasonable protection from tobacco smoking pollution.” These suits will eventually cost taxpayers millions, draining vital resources from other more serious needs, such as infrastructure improvements. In California, where these improvements are so very necessary to earthquake preparedness, laws have been enacted to prevent people from smoking on the damned beaches!

Planning on purchasing a condo or moving into an apartment soon? You’d better not be a smoker. ASH intends to encourage and assist lawsuits by apartment and privately owned condominium dwellers who object to neighbors smoking IN THEIR OWN HOMES! This is pure fascism, using the power of the state to prevent people from endangering themselves and others. While I agree that smoking around other people isn’t a very nice thing to do, why impose this law upon me as I sit alone in my apartment? And, all this is happening in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Public Prosecutor. Brought to you by the same fine folks who gave you the McDonald’s Hot Coffee lawsuit of 1994, where an 81 year-old woman was awarded $2.9 million because she spilled coffee on herself – her claim? McDonald’s neglected to place a “Caution: Hot Contents” warning on the cup. Go to any MickeyD’s in the world, now, order a cup of mud and look at the lid. That’s the power of the United States Prosecutor’s office.

OK, I’m done for the moment. You may now resume your daily intake of non-taxed cholesterol and high fructose corn syrup.

AG

The Cheshire's New Clothes

2005-08-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

Greetings all you RVR Cheshire's Grin fans out there in Internetland!
It may come as a surprise to most of you that someone would actually hire me for a real job, but it's true. I have a full-time gig aside from annoying nice people like yourself, and so I don't have a lot of time in which to care for a daily blog.

However, I promise to attempt to update this thing at least a couple times a week. I further promise to keep everyone laughing, and I'll try to keep the ritual sacrifices to a minimum as well.

AG