Too Depressed For A Clever Title

But, all signals seem to point to the public option being gone.

There are still some good things about the health care reform bill.

And maybe what we end up with will be marginally better than a weak, opt-out public option.

And maybe this is still a stealth route to single-payer.

Who knows?

Not I, said the Colin.

But, lemme just go ahead and echo Markos on the point about fund raising and base frustration.

That Obama and the D-trip are trying to raise money on this god awful piece of legislation is really beyond words. They really must think we're all abysmally and hopelessly hopeful idiots.

And slinkerwink on, well, everything else.

A trigger means no public option. Ever.

(If you think otherwise then you also likely think Olympia Snowe would be glad to let you be Queen of the World Senator for a day and cast a vote on cloture and/or the final bill.)

No public option = no competition = no price controls.

A mandate is highly immoral and political suicide.

The administration's backroom about-face on drug importation is pure political chicanery and about the furthest thing possible from "change" and "hope" and "progressive" as one could imagine.

All in all, I'm depressed as all hell about the state of the "compromise" or whatever they're calling this wrists-to-ankles position that we're all about to take for Obama, Rahm and the insurance companies.

Le sigh.

I'm Probably Right About This

Just a thought:

But, it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel are trying to lose seats in the midterms simply because, by slimming down the overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses, there is less of a clarion call to steamroll the Republicans and pass genuinely progressive legislation with drastically reduced margins and thus it will be easier to triangulate or "compromise" or something to do with "bipartisanship" (which is Obama's natural inclination and one of Rahm's favorite past times) and kind of amble forward into the stagnation that he wants his presidency to ultimately produce.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's yet to happen when it comes to stuff like this.

Whiskey and women are different stories altogether.

Why Should I Worry? (Why Should I Care?)

This article in Today's HuffPo kind of irks me:

Asia's Dog Meat Trade: A Look Inside A Seedy World

It's basically a sob story about what happens to stray dogs in Asia.

They get eaten. (Surprise!)

It's fairly standard to acknowledge that most humans are beset by discontinuous thinking and that Americans are particularly fond of their fallacious logic, but this dog stuff really takes the cake.

Of course I'd rather the dogs not get eaten. But that's not the point.

Here's an omnivore in the comments section summing up my feelings (in bold) on the whole subject:

Since I prefer my A-1 on steak instead of legumes, I don't understand the problem. We think nothing of raising, butchering and consuming Bossy, Henny-Penny and Thumper, not to mention hunting Bambi. What's a Lassie roast, more or less. Seriously, it's simply a matter of taste. [Emphasis added.]

I find all animal products morally reprehensible.

Americans only do if they're cute and cuddly to boot.

50 Stars to Blind Your Eyes, 13 Stripes to Hypnotize

Obama sycophancy is getting out of hand.

Paul Krugman was right to warn about this nonsense during The Primary. (Sorry, can't find the link.)

There's a few highly rec'd diaries on Daily Kos today that encapsulate this disgusting, inane and counterproductive trend.

One is from a soldier about to be deployed to Kandahar who believes he is entitled (by virtue of his service, his opposition to the Iraq War and his own blind support of the president--I shit you not) to tell Obama's critics to Shut The Fuck Up (STFU) and listen to, and thus trust the president simply because he is "smart enough to make the right decisions" in Afghanistan.

This effectively means we ought to support his surge strategy and pardon him the extreme loss of blood and treasure simply because he made better grades than Bush and speaks in a booming cadence that commands respect.

Excuse me if I LOL out of desperation and reply with a hearty, "Fuck you and fuck that."

I don't care who you are or where you come from (politically, though I guess geography doesn't not make sense either...) or what you've done for this country, and I do appreciate your service, don't get me wrong, but a terrible and immoral idea stays terrible and immoral no matter who it comes from and no matter what good you've done in the past. (Or will do in the future.)

Obama's wrong on Afghanistan. We'll fail there as we've failed in Iraq.

The situation there has changed and for whatever reason he is blind to that.

He's wasting the opportunity of a lifetime. And his domestic agenda will scream as a result. Maybe even his presidency.

The Democratic base has been pissed on and now we're pissed off.

And we have a right to say so and fiercely criticize Dear Leader.

And that's that.

I'm Finished.

Apparently, people really really really like talking about the White House party crashers. Even though their attendance at a meaningless dinner is about as scandalous as the dog shit on a Secret Service guy's shoe.

Some people even think they need to be severely punished. Even though they're guilty of absolutely nothing except...

Well...

Nothing. At all.

I mean, they weren't invited, but then they wouldn't be party crashers, would they?

On the same note, some people are very excited that Chelsea Clinton is now engaged.

On a similar note, I'm sure there's some new information about the octo-mom out there.

What's kind of gotten me personally depressed is the fact that I've heard about the two "political" "news" "stories" from friends of mine that also graduated from UT-Austin with Communications-related degrees and who are currently working in the sphere of journalism.

Sorry, pals, but you're at least engaging in extremely idiotic behavior if you're not full-fledged idiots that I've been unable to recognize until recently due to the ole friend-blinders.

It's also personal vindication for one of my two theories regarding journamalism.

Either:
a) The moment you start working as a professional journalist you suffer some degree and form of mind-leeching myopia. (Translation: ya turn real stupid-like.) OR...
b) Most communications majors are idiots to begin with. Even the ones I chatted with on occasion and follow on Twitter.

Oh well.

At least I got the new BlackBerry Curve 8900 for 1 cent today. There was an awesome three hour Cyber Monday deal from AT&T. Which is good, because my trackball is on its second life and about to keel over again. This was my only Cyber Monday purchase.

I almost ordered a whole bunch of Bukowski novels to give as Christmas presents (insert joke here), but realized that I had a Discover gift card to redeem which would have made that purchase entirely free instead of just insanely good. So, I closed the tab at the last minute.

Edit: Go Pats.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

Not like I've ever considered the diary section of DailyKos to be some hotbed of brilliant intellectual discourse on method, tactics, strategy and all that kind of junk or anything.

But really?

This kind of vapid hyperventilation about an absolute non-issue I expect (and get) from the cable news crews, but on a website (ostensibly) dedicated to electing more and better Democrats?

That a diary bemoaning two harmless US citizens got to do what so many hundreds of thousands of people did over the last campaign (meet Barack Obama) was written at all is kind of hard to stomach, but the number of recs? The unquestioning attitude in the comments?

If anyone ever called blog content "vomit" (and I'm sure someone has) then this must have been what they meant.

I guess it's symptomatic of the strain of Dear Leaderism going on over in those parts.

Sigh.

I feel stupider for even blogging about this.

10th Avenue Dumbass

Leave it to David Brooks to devote a column to Bruce Springsteen that isn't at all about Bruce Springsteen.

Of course, Springsteen could just be the ad-lib here. Brooks is highly adept at devoting column inches to topics that have nothing to do with what he purports to be focusing on.

I guess the question is, Why Bruce? But, Balloon Juice already kinda covered that (via commenter Paris):

Bruce lives the macho stereotype many of the righties can only dream of. They’re too busy standing in airport mens rooms, indulging in fetishes, and wearing bow ties.

Though I will add that the "macho stereotype" in question is simply that. A stereotype. Anyone who's ever gone through the lyrics or listened to the last half of Nebraska knows that Springsteen is far from the distorted image that most right-wingers (and some deluded lefties) have in their minds.

The next question is, Why now?

Apropos of what, on the day after Thanksgiving, did David Brooks decide to "write about" Bruce Springsteen?

The logical answer is his daughter's recent exposure to the Rock'n'Roll behemoth that is Bruce and E Street live. That makes sense. Sure.

But, the more fun answer is that Brooks just has a bunch of these "mind-numbingly repetitive" columns lying around. And that he pawns them off on the myopic editors of the nation for the few weeks of the year when he doesn't feel the need to try and pass off his staid conservatism, rabid conventionalism and inside the beltway snobbery as some sort of common sense centrism.

That was a mouthful, but you get the point.

What's worst about this column is, that, given the scope and title, he wholly failed to capitalize on the opportunity to throw in a few lines from "No Surrender" as anyone with half a brain or the slightest amount of pop-cultural awareness might have done.

But, then, we are talking about David Brooks.

The View From My Bedside

Frankly America, We Don't Give A Damn.

The latest signals emanating from some named and some unnamed White House aides are certainly cheery:

"Obama not demanding public option"

Just keep repeating "Change" as if it were your mantra -against the ever increasing odds- and all's Chi, I guess.

(Note: fully aware I may have mixed and mangled a silly religious metaphor or two here. Note: fully not concerned about said.)

"There will be compromise. There will be legislation, and it will achieve our goals..." said perpetually dour-faced David Axelrod, the hard-nosed and gun-wielding political genius from the fightin' state of Callow Illinois on Sunday.

Got that?

There will be compromise so that one Republican and 5-7 conservative Democratic senators are pleased as punch that they got to beat back the 52 or so fucking god damned hippies liberals (and Arlen Specter) in the caucus and reward their diligent campaign contributors corporate masters in the Health Care Industry. (And spouses if their last names happen to be Bayh or Lieberman.)

There will be legislation. Well, duh. At this point it's pretty obvious that something just shy of god-awful will pass and be signed, sealed, delivered. Caveat emptor.

In the numbers game and messaging war the Obama White House has not only weathered the ugly storm of August, but managed to sustain some forward momentum. People want this thing passed. Democrats definitely want this thing passed. And the business interests that haven't been bought off (with our tax dollars and sweetheart proprietary laws) are not on their A-game and have been reduced to lobbing last minute volleys of fact-free vitriol and fear that have only emboldened the President and his allies.

Proponents are bullish and the opponents are scrambling as the public is getting increasingly antsy, weary and pissed off at moneyed interests and the status quo. Once again, after a fantastic presidential speech beat down of Tea Party lies and some ugly and untoward missteps by Big Business, we're back to trusting the man from Kenya/Hawaii/Chicago to get something done and done soon.

Why?

Well, not for the merits of the plan. The average yob still hasn't got a clue about what's going to ultimately pass. And, if they were fully aware of the prospect of mandates and penalties without the prospect of a public option we would likely see support for the PO increase exponentially while overall support for reform would plummet. (Yeah. Anyone who calls Americans rational actors capable of making knowledge-based decisions on behalf of their own good deserves to practice journalism in Eritrea for a few years.) And, that's hardly the average person's fault.

Between our shitty, if any, jobs, our declining wages and slipping standard of living against a general maelstrom of American Angst and Malaise, you'll have to excuse the average person for not being able to, for want of passion or time or both, to delve too deeply into the minutiae of a health care reform reform effort that even Congress and the President scarcely understand.

The take away point here is that when it comes down to the details the President does. Not. Care.

Instructively, Axelrod has shown the White House's hand, though it'll likely be glossed over for various reasons, but largely because there's been so much to unpack in this entire debate and the deadline/end zone looming closer and closer doesn't make that task any easier for the average American, journalist or politician with even half a clue or Scooby Snack.

(Note: I'm certainly being far too generous to the average American journalist. But hey, it's Sunday.)

What's the White House's hand exactly? Same as it ever was. Same as Rahm articulated months ago: the White House wants to win. They don't want to go 13-1. They're the motherfucking Patriots in 2007 and they'll bag the fucking Super Bowl, too.

They want legislation. They want a bill to sign. They want to pass "health care reform" for the sake of saying they did it and so they can mark it off of their checklist.

Trust me, it'll look great emblazoned across campaign commercials in 2012.

Again, here's Axelrod (read slow if it helps):

"There will be legislation, and it will achieve our goals..."

There it is. Plain. Black. White.

The goal: legislation.

At this point, a fact.

The shape that fact takes? Tangential.

RAHM, whispering, through clenched teeth, into the ears of a member of the JournoList: "Somebody tell the motherFUCKING bloggers that a win's a GOD damned win."

And, whatever makes that fact come quickest and easiest is what the White House will push for.

Nothing more.

I Don't Respect Bill Safire

In this dangerous year to be a celebrity, we've lost yet another: William Safire.

Safire was one of Nixon's speechwriters and the New York Times' resident conservative for, like, ever.

He was a smart guy. Not the worst of the worst. He made Republicanism seem smart and sound. And, was a consummate insider.

And, for that reason, he is generally considered to be beyond reproach.

As with all forms of idolatry, I must register my dissent.

Bill Safire may not have been a Sarah Palin Republican. He was classy, refined, gentlemanly and made lots of friends. He even made the occasional breaks with orthodoxy--and was wont to trumpet these breaks at any given chance for a shot at street cred. (See: criticism of Bush administration over detainee policy once torture was no longer in vogue.)

But, this is precisely the reason I have zero respect for the man and could care less that he's passed on.

Another beltway conservative has died and we're all supposed to be respectful and pretend he didn't harm journalism with his typical access-oriented approach and America with his harshly regressive, selfish, unburdened-by-fact opinions of man and god and law.

The Versailles press corps will trumpet out maudlin biography after maudlin biography and gloss over the bad and uncomfortable things he did while they offer effusive praise for his writing abilities and pristine acumen for communication. There will be laudatory things said across the aisle, perhaps even commenting on how he crossed the aisle every once in awhile himself. Barf bags will not be provided.

Bill Safire's greatest hit? His completely-divorced-from-reality assessment of the situation in Iraq and his resulting cheerleading for the Bush administration's illegal, stupid and murderous invasion.

Mr. Safire found intellectual solace and moral comfort in that war, ascribing to the redder than rosy scenario wherein American troops were to be greeted as liberators with leis tossed around their bulging, burly and freedom-fed (rough) necks, so much the image of a ring-toss game in someone's vision of a baseball-mitt-Americana worth saving, preserving and sending, stamped by the US Postal Service through rain, sleet and snow into the heart of Mesopotamia, opened by a hitherto-wayward child with chocolate in his eyes and a smile in his heart, the penetrating glow of liberty finding common cause with the sandy and mysterious ether of Iraq so hungry; aching to be nourished, so thirsty; crying out to be quenched with the blood of the unfortunate, yet chosen as collateral, Arabs and assorted brown folk therein, innocuous in their own right, but human sprinklers for this New Lawn of Liberty as the white phosphorous and shrapnel fell, giving the Cradle of Civilization exactly what it craved as that paltry and righteous blood mixed with the ever-correct and never faltering, always right and wholly courageous blood of so very few crackers, blacks and mestizos, resulting in an uber-blood, a super-fuel, a democratizing Agent Crimson that would spill across the land in torrential waves of Justice and Democracy and All That Is Right And Good and flower the sandy expanse with a never ending yield of McDonalds, Starbucks and Banks of America ready to dole out the greenbacks at ATMs on the corners of streets and avenues and boulevards named in honor of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and most of all, George W. Bush.

But then. Well. We all know the next chapter.

William Safire made a career not only out of being professionally wrong, but more than that, he made a career out of espousing a doctrine, conservatism, that has utterly and shamelessly failed as an intellectual idea with any sort of rigor and that in practice has resulted in nothing but petty and mean action directed towards, always towards, the people who have needed help the most, ever at their expense, ever at their detriment for the sake of higher profits, freer markets, and policed morality. Despite any occasional pangs of guilt that translated into friction with party elders and his friends in the halls of power.

He was a writer and as a writer I am expected, nay demanded by Civility's grinning mouth and always blind eyes to respect him on some level. But, as a human being I cannot. No, I can. I choose not to.

Maybe when we stop giving undue respect to elite, beltway blowhards who have spent their entire lives enthralled by the allure of the status quo, genuflected to power brokers at any given chance and only ever worked to undo progress and rights...maybe then journalism will improve and maybe, just maybe, America will be a little bit better...a little worse for wear, but also wise in this knowledge of real pain inflicted and suffered.

Honoring or respecting or celebrating William Safire in any way shape or form does not lead us down this path. It's just more of the same: Bullshit on the dungpile that is the collective American body politic and intellect.

Star Wars Metaphors (Are The Domain Of Actual Nerds)

So, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, one of the leading anti-healthcare reform groups, has touted this ad as their "death star" strategy to kill the public option once and for all:



Umm.

Okay, guys, any reader of this blog will know that organizations like CPR (cute) are simply slush funds for the brain trust of movement conservatives and whatever corporate teats they've latched onto for any given issue (healthcare in this case.) So, I'll spare the usual lines about how CPR and their ilk are simply greedy fucks completely unconcerned with actual humanity and that anyone willing to work for, much less run, such an organization is little more than human debris. That's all quite evident.

What I'm concerned with is the use of the term "death star" in regards to the strategy that this silly, conventional, tired, unimpressive ad is supposed to encapsulate.

Okay, so, that's neat that you've likened the public option to the Death Star. It always makes sense for ultra-diffuse conservative power brokers and their billionaire corporate brethren to take up common cause with the Rebel Alliance and paint the hodgepodge of unions, underfunded liberal advocacy groups, bloggers and the few Congressional progressives with spines intact as the formidable Empire. Brilliant. I guess Anthony Weiner's our Emperor Palpatine. Or something. Who's Darth Vader, Nancy Pelosi?


(Note: I hope I'm not being prescient with this sarcasm. Pelosi is stunningly brilliant at folding like an Origami duck.)

But, that ad is like Luke Skywalker turning off his targeting computer and using the Force to help steady his nerves and/or guide his proton torpedoes into a teeny-tiny target area thus penetrating the Death Star's exhaust port and setting off a chain reaction that blows the motherfucker into so much fiber optic dust?

Puh-leeze.

That ad, which CPR is dropping a cool half-million on to air for a week on CNN and Fox (great targeting, btw) is supposed to be the linchpin of a lobbying strategy aimed at wiping out the Rockefeller amendment that inserts a robust public option into the Senate Finance Committee bill?

How, exactly?

With it's recycled scare-mongering, piss-poor production, cheesy faux-horror movie music and a storyline not befitting an issue of Marvel's "What If...?" written exclusively for the most illiterate and paranoid retarded peasants on the face of the planet?

Guys, shills, CPR fuck-holes: It's obvious you have actually seen Star Wars. Maybe even the whole trilogy. (Probably not the prequels, though.) But, you're not nerds. You don't appreciate the films on the level that children do. You saw them because they were popular movies. Everybody else was talking about how great they were and you felt left out. You thought you might be able to fuck (over) some broad after the flick. You might have even liked them. At least until Die Hard came out. But, guys, your attempt to sound cool and scary fails on so many levels--especially the one you know best, the surface.

You're not nerds. You're douchebags.

You have no fucking idea.

You have no fucking clue.

Death Star strategy, my ass.

This latest salvo in the battle to protect insurance company profits and continue the process of murder-by-spreadsheet is little more than a less dramatic re-telling of Greedo shooting first.

Pretty Sure I Won't Regret This

A few random musings on the Kanye West-Taylor Swift-Beyonce-VMA kerfluffle*:

• Kanye was wrong to say that Beyonce's video for "Single Ladies" is "one of the best videos of all time." It's a perfectly fine video. There's nothing wrong with it. And, it's certainly better than the pedestrian attempts at mise-en-scène in Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" (even though Taylor Swift knows how to fill out a pair of fake eyeglasses better than Jor-El Kal-El.) But, it's not one of the best ever.
• Beyonce's video is marked by a stark and haunting minimalism, the throwaway attitude used in the production process (the video was an afterthought and the song wasn't even supposed to be a hit), the wryly clever/obscure/absurd use of a robotic hand, an air of nostalgia for the first class of MTV videos ("Don't call it a throwback!") and, of course, hips that don't lie. But, it still fails to wow in an iconoclastic kind of way that makes "Addicted To Love" or "Bastards of Young" or "Take On Me" absolutely timeless.
• Kanye was not wrong to interrupt Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. The very premise of award shows is essentially bogus. They're self-congratulatory and masturbatory insider events (full of excess, free stuff for people who need it the least, boring, staid, cautious and timid to the hilt, blah, blah, blah) that the average person has no business giving one fuck about. Kanye gave us a reason to care.
• Kanye West is awesome and hilarious. And America owes him a debt of gratitude. A debt only surpassed by the one owed to him by the producers of the VMAs.
• I'm not sure Taylor Swift really does sing country music.
  
• Obama's cool, and painfully normal, for calling Kanye a "jackass." And, he's probably right. But, hey, without Kanye's liquor-fueled stunt (unfortunately it looks like he was indulging in the cracker's delight: bourbon. Gross.) the VMAs would have been entirely shitty yet another year in a row. There's something Chuck Klosterman once said about not always wanting to be right. How sometimes you've just got to roll the bones and see what happens. If you fuck up, you learn. And, life's way more fun for it.
• (Note: I think this was Klosterman. And, I obviously can't find the actual quote. I could very well be mixing up one Thompson and Christgau loving influenced rock critic for the one that looks most like me. Any help on this would be much obliged.)
• Also, stupidly enough, saying what he said about Kanye probably helps Obama politically. But, I guess that's how it goes in American political theatre: stupidly.
• I can't wait for the inevitable Taylor Swift-Kanye West collaborations. Seriously. That Nelly-Tim McGraw song was pretty awesome. Only good things can come from the intersection of mainstream hip-hop and country rockstars. Can. Not. Wait.

*Apparently Firefox doesn't recognize "kerfluffle" as being a word. FAIL.

Domestic Terrorism

Disney just bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion.

A friend of mine remarked that this deal was essentially domestic terrorism. And, he's right.

This synergistic acquisition is a few other things as well:

It's more money for most parties involved. At creativity's expense.

It's likely the end of adult-themed and mature titles. Adios, Punisher, Carnage, Marvel Max.

It's evidence that copyright legislation stifles creativity.

It's not detailed and loaded with the kinds of promises that no one should trust a company like Disney to keep.

It's getting rave reviews from the same insiders who are poised to benefit. Go figure! Let's ask Sarah Palin's family how they feel about the crazy shit she says while we're at it. Let's ask a white supremacist how they feel about Obama!

It's a particularly sad day for Howard the Duck, Steve Gerber, et, al. Disney was the very same company lampooned by Howard. They couldn't take the heat. And they threatened legal action that forced Marvel to redesign the duck who was trapped in a world he never made. Well, Howard certainly never made a world wherein he'd be owned by the pansy corporate jackals at Disney. Steve Gerber turns in his grave.

It's like the lamer, weaker part of my childhood somehow just raped the better, stronger part. Up the ass. With a giant dildo. Then quickly took the dildo out, filled in the gaping asshole with Quikrete, extracted the dried inner-ass-sculpture and copy-righted it in perpetuity.

Count Me In

Whole Foods boycott?

Yup.

After CEO and co-founder John Mackey's intellectually bankrupt and right-wing screed in the WSJ (are there any other kind they'd print?) yesterday, I'd be derelict and remiss not to join.

Boycotts are tricky things and they incur a lot of mindless wrath and followers, so, here are the realistic goals/tenets of the burgeoning action/boycott/movement/facebook group via tremayne over at DailyKos:

"1) Pretty much the only way to get the attention of corporate fat cats and the Senators and House members they own is to hit them in the pocket book. Remember when Sinclair Broadcasting was planning to air the anti-John Kerry "documentary" in 2004? The "sell Sinclair stock" meme was born and spread through the tubes and the stock started going down. Soon, plans for airing the documentary "changed." If a boycott of Whole Foods plan spreads, even if it is targeted for, say, the rest of August, they will notice. Similarly, a sell Whole Foods stock (WFMI) might also be effective.

2. My impression is that the customers of Whole Foods are left-leaning. If true, a boycott by even a quarter of Democratic customers would have a major impact.

3. While Whole Foods used to be a regional operation, it has now spread to 39 states. There are 3 locations in DC, 8 in Maryland and many more in Virginia. Congress members know of it and probably shop there.

4. If such a plan works, if the stock falls for example, the press will pick up on it and it will spread.

5. If the plan works it will be another example to corporate America that people want change. You would think nearly 70 million votes for Obama would have sent that message but I guess that's yesterday's news. We need to send a reminder and this could be a really good one.

6. It's a good opportunity to seek out local alternative sources for the stuff you might normally buy at Whole Foods. Farmers markets, etc. If you go to Whole Foods and stock up on essentials in anticipation of the boycott, it's not really going to hurt them is it?"

Seems like all the necessary angles are addressed in tremayne's diary, though I've yet to read the comments, but I'd implore everyone to at least read the diary itself. It really distills this issue and this could very well be one of the microcosmic forces necessary to get progressives off their asses and work as hard (or harder, inshallah) as the tea-baggers, birthers, deathers, et, al. at these town halls have been working. We definitely need some momentum.

Let's all thank John Mackey for opening up his stupid mouth and hit him and his shareholders in their pocketbooks.

I've known about their, ahem, skepticism at unionization for about as long as I could remember, but I let that slide due to decent worker benefits and their pretty decent selection of vegan stuff.

No more.

Hackneyed as it may sound, now is a very important time for change in America and an even more important time for health care reform.

I'm not going to let my convenience get in the way of principles. Not this time. Not now.

Boycott Whole Foods.

Can I avoid sounding preachy and sanctimonious by calling Mackey a total fucking retard?

Yesterday or How Much Do I Suck?

Note: Yes, like the Beatles song.

Remember when I blogged about things that mattered?

That's so five months ago.

What ever the spark or flame or cold-fusion related technology that allowed me to self-righteously pontificate on life, the universe and everything packed up and moved to Fort Worth, Texas.

And, even though I packed up and moved to Fort Worth, Texas as well, we don't really talk anymore. I don't know. Maybe we'll work it out.

If this were Frasier then I guess there would have been a card that read "Malaise" preceding everything. Whatever.

I swear I'm not on anti-depressants or anything. I'm just selling them to buy booze and prostitutes and collectibles.

Who knows where I can buy some Howard The Duck memorabilia?

Preferably a large glass that I can pour whiskey in and then drink.

Umm. [Joke about hookers.]

Waugh!