fucking rednecks

I've never cared much for hayseeds. It's one thing for
real city dwellers to criticize hicks, they dont know
what's going on they just think Green Acres was close
to the mark. Being raised in the sticks, I have come
to know and despise the hayseeds I've seen. I've also
categorized them too. You see, there are hicks whowear
coveralls and have bad teeth, but there are also hicks
who wear three piece suits and sell insurance between
Rotary Club meetings. They are all shit of various
degrees, but hicks nonetheless. The onlly real
difference is polite society. Well fuck polite
society, let's get real god damn it. Let's break it
down. If you make queer jokes, you are a hayseed. If
you can't tell Chinese from Japanese by listening,
tasting or looking at the writing on the fucking menu,
you are a hick.

I've never been to China or Japan after all and I can
tell the differernce because I have a native
curiosity. Look at the side of a bottle of soy sauce
ad figure it out.

Hicks may or may not have teeth trouble, but they
probably have IQ troubles even if they can get along
with others of their kind.

I'm suffocating out here, man. I need to meet people
who know books and music and read and listen to
something other than fucking country music.

Colcannon, the Irish comfort food you never heard of

3 pounds potatoes, scrubbed
2 sticks butter
1 1/4 cups hot milk
Freshly ground black pepper
1 head cabbage, cored and finely shredded
1 (1-pound) piece ham or bacon, cooked the day before
4 scallions, finely chopped
Chopped parsley leaves, for garnish

Steam the potatoes in their skins for 30 minutes. Peel
them using a knife and fork. Chop with a knife before
mashing. Mash thoroughly to remove all the lumps. Add
1 stick of butter in pieces. Gradually add hot milk,
stirring all the time. Season with a few grinds of
black pepper.
Boil the cabbage in unsalted water until it turns a
darker color. Add 2 tablespoons butter to tenderize
it. Cover with lid for 2 minutes. Drain thoroughly
before returning it to the pan. Chop into small
pieces.

Put the ham in a large saucepan and cover with water.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes until
tender. Drain. Remove any fat and chop into small
pieces.

Add cabbage, scallions, and ham to mashed potatoes,
stirring them in gently.
Serve in individual soup plates. Make an indentation
on the top by swirling a wooden spoon. Put 1
tablespoon of butter into each indentation. Sprinkle
with parsley.

__________________________________________________

We are the step-children of evolution

I was just thinking about freedom, why we fight for
it, if we really can fight for it and why our leaders
alway like to tell us that we are fighting for it.
Maybe the connection between fighting for oil and
freedom isn't so ludicrous after all. It's one thing
for those of us who don't fight because we can't fight
to say that we don't want anyone fighting and dying
for oil. But we do like to sit on our asses in the
light and warmth and watch TV. We like our hot meals
and quick Internet connections. And boy oh boy do we
love our cars, baby. We drive downtown and get coffee
then drive 30 miles east to see a movie because we
like the seats at the cineplex by the mall. When we're
done, we decide to come back out tomorrow to do our
shopping because we're tired. We give not one
consideration to conservation unless bitching about
the price of gas at the pump can be called
consideration. And it can't.

It's all about resources. In Paleolithic times,
everything from good rocks to water and food animals
were resources that were not only worth fighting for,
but were worth fighting for by every member of the
tribe. No one had the luxury of being a pacifist
because the only peace was the peace of the grave.
Freedom was, and is, the freedom to continue living.
So it is not necessarily illegitimate for our soldier
to fight on our behalf for the freedom oil brings us.
And it is thus likewise a bit naive to say things like
NO BLOOD FOR OIL. Because for as long as man has been
alive, we lived and died by resources.

Now, that makes a good argument for the conservative
position, perhaps a slightly more honest conservative
position than most of us are used to hearing. NeoCons
convince themselves that they are really trying to
spread Democracy and freedom to other countries at the
end of a gun. It's a position born out of frustration,
which is why NeoCons are often former liberals who've
"seen the light."

There is freedom to and freedom from. What the human
race needs now is freedom from dependence on fossil
fuels. That isn't going to happen. It's the shortage
and constant struggle to find more oil that makes it
expensive and therefore profitable. Money is a another
resource, isn't it? One created by men to make them
more powerful than other men.

And that is the rub. Where we once fought directly
over limited and very real resources, we now have the
wealthy sending the children of the poor off to fight
for resources that keep them rich and our cars
rolling, but which could be replaced if we looked
around and did the research.

We are evolution's little bitches.

__________________________________

The Cult of Geek Personality

I was talking about D&D's 30th anniversary book with
the wife of a friend the other day. The new book has a
foreword by Vin Diesel, which oddly enough lends the
greatest role-playing game of all time slightly more
credence then it previuosly had. D&D is kind of a go
to geek joke. Even people who play D&D and love it
will make fun of the other people who play it that
they find REALLY geeky. I always had a particular
hatred for people who insisted on refering to D&D as
AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) just because the
new edition of the game that came out around 1980 so
named. But the ADVANCED part was really not necessary,
it was largely the only real version of the game in
existence, they just liked how it sounded. As if only
stupid people played mere D&D. NO sir, we are ADVANCED
and SUPERIOR individuals who's vorpal blades do not go
snicker snack. Whatever. Douchebags.

With that said, I've got this group of friends who
have been playing the same role playing game for 22
years. Thing is, it isn't D&D or even AD&D, it's a
game called Journey Beyond. You've never heard of it
because only they play it. You see, they made it up
because they couldn't figure out the rules to D&D. I
mean, there are a lot of books to read and if you are
starting off totally on your own, D&D is a bitch. Most
of us learned by hooking up with people who walked us
through it and then one can see that it isn't all that
hard, there are just a lot of charts to consult to see
what happens when you roll your dice. No biggie.

They managed to simplify this game down to one simple
concept. "Roll whatever I tell you that you need to
roll in order to succeed at what it is you are
attempting." The guy in charge has a minor God complex
and basically lets people he likes get away with more
stuff than people he has judged as weak. It is
something to see.

They are getting ready for their annual reunion. I go
to watch and piss on everythkng. I'm surprised they
let me. Mostly I sit nice and quiet for hours until I
spot something fucked up and then I get to call
bullshit on it. I am allowed this luxury because the
guy running the game likes me and finds my comments
amusing. This throws their little universe out of
whack. I don't have to be nice or buy chips or pizza
because I don't have a character in the game.

It's a rel fucking cult I tell you.

__________________________________________________

Bloodbath takes center stage on cable news

Why is this Atlanta shooting all over the cable news
networks? Besides the fact that CNN is based in
Atlanta (been there, took the tour, saw the gift
shop), this really isn't national news, is it? Any
time a story contains a good many quotes from one of
the hostages grandparents (who called her a hero and
said she "hit a home run for Christ"), it's a local
story.

This Brian Nichols guy shoots a judge, a reporter, a
stenographer, a deputy and a federal agent who was
off-duty and working on his house. It's sad and wrong,
but it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of
the country. Nichols was just a con; he wasn't a
terrorist. He didn't hold the area in abject terror.

The whole thing lasted about 24 hours and overshadowed
the murder of eight people in a Wisconsin church, the
Bankruptcy Bill, the Shiite/Kurd coalition formed in
Iraq and Lord knows how many other important stories.
These bastards complain all the time that they have a
24 news cycle to fill. Fine, that would explain
covering this story in this manner if nothing else was
going on in the world, but not covering this story
thusly when there are important issues that need
covered.

It's just pure salaciousness, a foul attempt to keep
people tuned in with tabloid-style luridness.

__________________________________________________

Please act now to save the Arctic Wildlife Refuge

Save The National Wildlife Refuge. It is 19 million
acres comprising one of the last places on earth where
an intact expanse of arctic and sub arctic lands
remains protected.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge can't make even a
small dent in meeting America's energy needs. U.S.
Geological Survey scientists estimate that there is
very likely only enough oil to supply America's
needs for six months. And oil companies admit that,
even that, won't be available for at least 10 years.
An irreplaceable natural treasure, the Arctic
Refuge is home to caribou, polar bears, grizzly
bears, wolves, golden eagles, snow geese and more.
Millions of other birds use the Arctic Refuge to
nest and as a critical staging area on their
migratory journeys.
Of course, the Arctic Refuge supports more than
wildlife. For a thousand generations, the Gwich'in
people of Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada have
depended on it and lived in harmony with it. To
them, the Arctic Coastal Plain is sacred ground.

My grocery store rocks ... like a hurricane

So I just came back from my local grocery story, SuperSaver ... that's
right, one word ... and you would not believe what I heard over the
store's speaker system. Go ahead guess. Try as you might, it's not gonna
happen, so I'll just tell you, Alex Trebec. "New Moon on Monday" by Duran
Duran. This is a DD song that I don't recall getting huge airplay back
in the day. It wasn't "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Rio," or even "Wild Boys."
I'm not complaining mind you, not at all, I think it's cool as hell, but
it's like "what the fuck?" I can't buy an 80s CD with anything but "She
Blinded Me with Science" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on it, but my
grocery store is playing a song that only I and my half a fag buddies
knew back in 1984.

And that's nothing. The other day, I heard "Sign of Fire" by The Fixx.
Now, The Fixx is a band that maybe a dozen people remember and even
then they only remember "One Thing Leads to Another" and mabye, MAYBE
"Red Skies at Night." but "Sign of Fire?" That's some seriously deep
album track shit, my nizzles.

So why is my second rate local grocery store so cool? I don't know.
The thought that scared me the most was that there was a guy too much
like me somewhere behind the scenes playing his old 80s favs for the
folks. I knew he'd have to be one pissed off and desperate loner just
waiting to snap. This made me reflect on the horror that is my own life.

Thankfully for both of us, that was not the case. Apparently this is a
service like any other store might use, just better. It comes over the
satellite and no one in the store selects it. It's like Sirius or XM
for retail. This did not get me thinking much beyond that point except
to say, cool, I guess.

And I thought I was getting old in 1990 when I heard a muzak version
of "Purple Rain" that would have made my grandmother want to waltz.

Jazz Hands!

Hillary Swank's character dies at the end of "Million Dollar Baby!"

SPOILER ALERT!

Hilary Swank pictured here
looking fat for her, but good
in the context of a more realistic
and less objectifying model of
feminine beauty. I mean, I'd do
her.

Taboos: Good rules to live by or just moral relativism bullshit?

Here's a good example of moral relativity.
In the United States, it is considered
taboo to do anything sexual with a child.
Who would argue that point? But in the
United States, we consider anyone under 18
as off limits... mostly. It varies from state
to state.

There are legal limits set by all
of the states, but what comes first, the moral
attitude or the law that reinforces the attitude?
Now, in England, the age of consent is 16.
Anyone can go out and find themselves a kid of
16 and should they ply them with alcohol,
weed or just good conversation then have
sex with them, it's all perfectly
acceptable. A kid's parents might not like
it, but legally they have no recourse.

Now check out this little bit of moral
higgledy-piggledy. It is legal in 24 states
to marry one's cousin. Sixteen of those
states have no restrictions whatsover. The
other eight say it's tickety-boo with
various provisions: no double first
cousins, genetic counseling, inability to
have kids. And there isn't some obvious
distinction between which states allow it
and which don't.

It's not a Southern thing or even a red
state thing. California, New York and
Vermont allow kissng cousins to wed and scrog
without any restricitons right alongside Alabama,
Tennessee and Georgia. At the same time,
Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas don't even
want cousins holding hands let alone balling.
They are in the company of such liberal brothels
as Minnesota, Washington and Oregon.

Morality is backed up by science here
under the assumption that it is immoral to
create mutant children just to go swimming
in the family pool. Variety is the spice
of genetics. If one person has certain
inherited recessive traits and marries another
person with the same recessive traits because
they are family, the chances increase dramatically
that any offspring will be born with those traits
in the dominant form. By marrying outside the family,
recessive traits are more likely to stay recessive.
Hence, no mutants!

On the other hand, it is legitimate to posit that
if a marriage isn't going to produce children,
does it really matter if the spouses are related
before they get married? Two cousins might grow up
like siblings or having never met. That's
got to change the way things look.

I live in Iowa. We don't go for the
institutaionlized practice of cousin-
loving here. Our neighbors in Wisconsin
allow the practice so long as no offspring
will be produced from the union. Here comes
the shameful or at least embarrassing part.
Half of my family lives in Iowa while the
other half lives in Wisconsin. I have an
aunt in Iowa who cannot have children.
She and her cousin, from Wisconsin (see where
this is going?), decided that they got along
VERY well. They were lonely and since she couldn't
have kids, they were able to get married
in Wisconisn. Everynbody in Wisconsin
thinks this is just freaking awesome while
the Iowa side of the family (with the
exception of a few of the more toothless
hillbilly holdouts) is largely puking their
guts out.

Taboos are fascinating things designed to
prevent certain ill effects, perceived or
real. Pedophilia, bestiality, incest,
miscegination, homosexuality, masturbation.
All of these subjects are or have been listed as
no-gos either in the doing or in the talking about
them afterwards. Rape and incest have always been
wrong, but they've always been done. It used to be
considered more wrong to talk about them after the
fact.

Human beings are funny. Funny queer, not ha-ha.

Drain Bamage

I've been watching
"The Contender" on
NBC recently. It's
given me a great
admiration for
boxers. Boxers
aren't exactly rich
dudes with nothing
better to do with
their time. They are typically poor dudes
trying to make something of themselves the
only way they know how.

With that said, praying to Jesus to help
you kick someone's ass is really taking a
chance isn't it? I mean, by all rights, if
Jesus were to get involved, he should make
you lose just for pissing him off.

"Oh my Me, have you even READ the New
Testament? I don't know how many times I've
said don't kill, don't fight, love one another
and you people just keep ignoring me. Well,
this oughta teach you a lesson God damn it."

What do you expect from boxers. No disrespect,
but they aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.
Half their damn job is to take punches, many
of which land on the head causing the brain
to smack around inside the skull. This might be
fun to watch, but it doesn't do much for the
old I.Q., you know?

Colcannon

Once upon a time, Europeans came to the western
hemisphere and took potatoes home where, I have
to admit, they did some pretty inventive
things. This is one the Irish came up with back
when they were eating spuds for every meal.
Desperation makes folks creative and this
dish proves it.

3 pounds mashin' potatoes (Yukon Golds)
1 stick butter (hell yeah, real butter)
1 1/4 cups hot milk (don't scald it)
Salt and pepper to taste (kosher/fresh ground)
1 shredded cabbage, (Savoy, Napa or some dark,
crisp green, just not that squeaky rubbery stuff)
1-pound ham, bacon or any cooked, salted pork
4 chopped scallions
Garnish with parsley or more scallion, if you must

Steam the potatoes in their skins for 30 minutes.
Peel. Mash. Add 1 stick of butter in pieces.
Gradually add hot milk, stirring all the time.
Season with a few grinds of black pepper. Careful
with the salt, the pork and butter adds plenty.
Boil the cabbage in unsalted water until it turns
a darker color. Add 2 tablespoons butter to
tenderize it. Cover with lid for 2 minutes. Drain
thoroughly before returning it to the pan. Chop
into small pieces.

Put the ham in a large saucepan and cover with
water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 45
minutes until tender. Drain. Remove any fat and
chop into small pieces.

Add cabbage, scallions, and ham to mashed
potatoes, fold them in don't stir, you aren't
an animal. Top with butter, the real stuff.
This is not a dish for gravy... I can't believe
I said that.

Bloodbath takes center stage on cable news

Why is this Atlanta shooting all over the cable news
networks? Besides the fact that CNN is based in
Atlanta (been there, took the tour, saw the gift
shop), this really isn't national news, is it? Any
time a story contains a good many quotes from one of
the hostages grandparents (who called her a hero and
said she "hit a home run for Christ"), it's a local
story.

This Brian Nichols guy shoots a judge, a reporter, a
stenographer, a deputy and a federal agent who was
off-duty and working on his house. It's sad and wrong,
but it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of
the country. Nichols was just a con; he wasn't a
terrorist. He didn't hold the area in abject terror.

The whole thing lasted about 24 hours and overshadowed
the murder of eight people in a Wisconsin church, the
Bankruptcy Bill, the Shiite/Kurd coalition formed in
Iraq and Lord knows how many other important stories.
These bastards complain all the time that they have a
24 news cycle to fill. Fine, that would explain
covering this story in this manner if nothing else was
going on in the world, but not covering this story
thusly when there are important issues that need
covered.

It's just pure salaciousness, a foul attempt to keep
people tuned in with tabloid-style luridness.

Happy Birfday!

I cannot imagine what it must be like to have
something come out of you that is personally
repellent. Sure, I've blown me nose, tossed my cookies
and exploded from any number of orifices only to find
myself shocked at the contents. But I can honestly say
that no matter how disgusting the results, I could at
least take a bit of pride in the knowledge that that
thing came from inside me and while disgusting is
still a fascinating product of the wierd, wild world
of biology.

No, I think I'll have to ask my mother about this one.

Everybody's free... to feel good... or not

I was just thinking about freedom, why we fight
for it, if we really can fight for it and why our
leaders always like to tell us that we are fighting
for it. Maybe the connection between fighting for
oil and freedom isn't so ludicrous after all. It's
one thing for those of us who don't fight because
we can't fight to say that we don't want anyone
fighting and dying for oil. But we do like to sit
on our asses in the light and warmth and watch TV.
We like our hot meals and quick Internet connections.
And boy oh boy do we love our cars, baby. We drive
downtown and get coffee then drive 30 miles east to
see a movie because we like the seats at the cineplex
by the mall. When we're done, we decide to come back
out tomorrow to do our shopping because we're tired.
We give not one consideration to conservation unless
bitching about the price of gas at the pump can be
called consideration. And it can't.

It's all about resources. In Paleolithic times, everything
from good rocks to water and food animals were resources
that were not only worth fighting for, but were worth
fighting for by every member of the tribe. No one had
the luxury of being a pacifist because the only peace
was the peace of the grave. Freedom was, and is, the
freedom to continue living. So it is not necessarily
illegitimate for our soldier to fight on our behalf
for the freedom oil brings us. And it is thus likewise
a bit naive to say things like NO BLOOD FOR OIL.
Because for as long as man has been alive, we lived
and died by resources.

Now, that makes a good argument for the conservative
position, perhaps a slightly more honest conservative
position than most of us are used to hearing. NeoCons
convince themselves that they are really trying to
spread Democracy and freedom to other countries at
the end of a gun. It's a position born out of frustration,
which is why NeoCons are often former liberals who've
"seen the light."

There is freedom to and freedom from. What the human
race needs now is freedom from dependence on fossil
fuels. That isn't going to happen. It's the shortage
and constant struggle to find more oil that makes it
expensive and therefore profitable. Money is a another
resource, isn't it? One created by men to make them
more powerful than other men.

And that is the rub. Where we once fought directly
over limited and very real resources, we now have
the wealthy sending the children of the poor off
to fight for resources that keep them rich and our
cars rolling, but which could be replaced if we
looked around and did the research.

We are evolution's little bitches.

This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time

We need to be more comfortable and more accepting
of chaos, and things that we see as disastrous.
Because it is only through those things we can be
redeemed and change. We should welcome disaster,
we should welcome things that we generally run away
from. There is a redemption available in those
things that is available nowhere else."
- Chuck Palahniuk

Don't want to be an American Idiot

According to a CNN story today, most Americans
don't know the lyrics to our national anthem,
the "Star-Spangled Banner."

I'd be willing to bet that most Americans can't
remember the name of "that song that starts 'oh say
can you see'" either, but one harsh reality at a time,
please. As jingoistic and nationalistic as many
Americans are, it should surprise someone that they
cannot remember the lyrics to a song that is taught
in many schools (not as many as when music was taught
in schools) as well as sung before EVERY SPORTING EVENT
IN THE UNITED STATES from little league games to
the Superbowl.

And yet Americans just can't find the time or brain
power to remember the lyrics to the single most
patriotic song in our nation's history? Oh sure, they
are opposed to gay marriage and in favor of letting
the president do whatever he wants to because, after all,
they are patriots, but don't expect them to remember 50
words ... IN A ROW.

Conclusion: Americans are a bunch of fucking idiots.

No surprise there, I reckon. I do not discount my own
stupidity. I'm sure I'd fail any number of tests that
could be given testing my knowledge of American government
and history, but I'd do a damn sight better than the average
Big-Mouthed Joe Six-Pack who thinks Canada is not a country,
but a continent, that newspapers are publicly funded, that
conservatives conserve things, that voting doesn't matter,
and that Britney Spears was a virgin the first time they
heard of her.

Fight Club revisited

I was watching "Fight Club" on F/X the other night. This film has really held up well over the last few years giving me the impression that it will always hold up.

When Fight Club came out, I was stoked. This movie really spoke to me. I've been high coming out of movies before, usually action pics when I was a kid where the good guy beats the bad guy with explosions going off in the background. But nothing relly jazzed me as an adult like "Fight Club."

Like most people, I didn't realize it was based on a book until I saw it so I didn't read the book until much later. When I did, I read it twice in the same summer. I don't do that. I NEVER do that. "1984" and "Brave New World" are two books I've reread every few years because they inform my ideology and have so much that is worth revisiting. But the language and the message of "Fight Club," book and film, make it a real man's film in a unique and liberating sense.

A lot of women I knew at the time hated it largely because of one line. "We are a generation of men raised by women, somehow I don't think another woman is the answer we need." I didn't take this to be any more sexist than when women wears shirts that read "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." Probably less sexist if anything because they weren't hateful of women, they just didn't think that getting married would make them men.

To me, this was just stating the obvious. Men today aren't men the way men used to be. We are waiters and office boys. Mechanics and telemarketers. That's not what we should be.

I was raised by my mother and sister alone after my parents got divorced. So were many of my friends. It didn't really help me become a man. Far too often, women think they will make a better man than the society of men can and they inevitably end up making men who are boys. In many ways, I am just a boy who doesn't have a clue. I can't fix a car; I'm not particulary tough; I'm not good around the house; I can't fix jack shit, and I'm sensitive like a chick. I'm more sensitive than a lot of women I know. I think spitting is disgusting. I have no game. I've actually missed good opportunities to get laid because the women I was with didn't pull my pants right off of me.

Is it any surprise that in the midst of life, men find themselves grasping at their lost youth and opportunities? I want to be civilized, but not at the cost of my soul. I don't want to give up all control of my life to other, lesser men who's only skills are kissing the ass of some jacked up tool who's only skill is kissing someone else's ass and so on.

The little man gets littler

Every day, someone in America files for bankruptcy
after suffering a major illness or because they lost
their job. Soon, thanks to "our" legitimately elected
Congress, anyone who tries to file for bankruptcy will
be screwed. Unless "they" are a huge corporation, of course.
We aren't talking about criminals, well, they are talking
about us as if we were criminals, we are talking about
hard working Americans who need a break once in a while.
Lose your job or get sick and you can lose everything,
but soon you won't be able to start over again. The
next thing you know, corporate whores will lobby for
the return of debtors prisons.

Being an American who doesn't have shit, but suffered
a major illness that, luckily, laid me out just enough,
I can relate. According to a Harvard University study,
the above scenario happens more than once a day, it
happens about once every 30 seconds. We are talking
about people who were otherwise financially solvent
going about their business when an act of God laid
them flat. Many of them do indeed have insurance, but
because medical bills are too big for even insurance
to cover properly, they were screwed any way.

Now, I am a secular humanist and proudly so. But I
do have a spiritual side. I'm kind of the opposite
of the guy born and raised Catholic who is an agnostic,
doesn't know if he believes in God or not, but is
still culturally a Catholic. I used to be an atheist,
but the more I learn about the nature of the universe,
the more I believe in certain governing moral concepts.
The universe is a hard place, an infinite place and
we are small, infinitesimally small ... and soft.

Our business isn't making money, our business is
humanity, it is life. Some 98 percent of us believe
in God, but most of us don't live like it. It is one
thing to see the suffering of our brothers far away
and not know what to do about it. One could argue some
problems are too big to solve or too far away to seem
real. We are short-sighted. It is quite another thing
to live in a wealthy country that is the envy of the
world and see that avarice and greed can't live hand
in hand with basic middle class survival. Americans
are so greedy, they will kill off the middle class
even, a group that most Americans belong to.

I am working class and have always seen the middle
class as my enemy, frankly. They are comfortable enough
to not give a damn about anyone living below their level,
but smart enough, rich enough and influential enough
to get things done when need be. They use this ability
to enlist the lower classes to their causes occasionally
then go right back to helping the upper classes exploit
the working class when they are done. Revolutions are
always about the middle class getting the lower classes
to go to war for them. The American Revolution, the French
Revolution and even the overthrow of the Czars in Russia
were led by people somewhere above the working class
who wanted power.

But Americans are about as big a bunch of spanked asses
as you could meet, whipped into obedience by any number
of factors: poor education, wage slavery, media-induced
zombification. We gave up trying to make things better
for anyone a long time ago because "that's what commies
do."

You would think that for our efforts to maintain the
statues quo, that the powers that be wouldn't let us all
rot on our feet from health problems and poverty. But if
Orwell taught us anything it's that those in charge will
put their boots on our throats and grind and grind and
grind. It isn't about how much is enough, it's about how
much is possible. The more you let people take from you,
the more they will want to take from you, the more they
will try to convince you it's necessary.

Go to Moveon.org to find lots of ways to get involved
easily and quickly.

Uh-Oh Spaghetti-Os indeed

I don't know about you, but I think Spaghetti-Os
are fucking disgusting. I mean, look at this
picture of this runny pink shit. This was taken
by someone who LIKES the stuff. You can't make
it look good let alone taste good. Who would
feed this to a kid?

Not liking Spaghetti-Ohs isn't something I decided
once reaching adulthood, I've always hated the stuff.
Even when I was the target age for this shit in a
can, I thought they tasted like ass, but more
importantly that they had the texture of something
soft and rank.

This standard of mine wasn't particularly high
because my mother only made the best of all possible
pasta dishes at home. Because she didn't. My mom
would be the first person to admit that cooking
takes a certain ... oh what's the word ... desire,
I suppose. One has to have love in one's heart to
cook for family, even more to cook for friends. We
are talking about keeping people happy and healthy
and that kind of nurturing just was never in my
mother that I can recall. I didn't know what a
green vegetable was until I was 16. Even then, I
didn't get it at home. Starch and fried meat was
usually dinner. Hamburger in shells (goulash), pork
chops and potatoes in cream of mushroom soup, chicken
and rice in Liption's onion and cream of chicken,
Martha Gooch spaghetti (so starchy I once thought
someone blew their nose in my pasta ... true story),
and Swiss steak with mashed potatoes.

To be honest, Spaghetti-Os were kind of ABOVE us. We
didn't go in for fancy, over-priced items like that.
Chips were store brand, bread was store brand, cheese
was sliced American singles on everything. To this day,
I still get the craving for tacos with a single on top.

I used to want things like Spaghetti-Os, Ruffles and
Wonder Bread just because that's what other kids ate.
That's just the stuff you THINK you want when you
don't know any better.

Now I realize a lot of that stuff was crap. Wonder
Bread is the nastiest high carb, stick to the roof of
your mouth shit I ever had. Give me some whole wheat,
dammit. I want seeds stuck in my teeth when I'm done
with that peanut butter sandwich.

Ruffles aren't the best chips I've ever eaten. They
are too salty for one and the ridges don't do anything
for me. Give me wavy chips any day. We are trained to
want things from a young age. Two and three year olds
learn to point to things on TV and in the store and cry.
It's effective. Effective and evil.

Cops and other deviants

Serial killers are often fascinated by law enforcement. In my experience, so are former high school wrestlers. This is no coincidence. Both groups tend to be sadists suffering from sexual confusion stemming from various levels of physical and sexual abuse. I challenge you to compare the personal history of most wrestlers to that of the typical serial killer. You will find incidents of vandalism, animal abuse and anti-social behavior in the early years escalating throughout adolescence.

Pepperoni Trio? How about just one GOOD kind

Good pizza, like good sex, is a rare and beautiful thing
that costs a lot of money. I see that Pizza Slut has a new
kind of pizza to wrangle folks into their corporate death
pizzareia, The Pepperoni Trio, featuring "classic pepperoni,
"Southwestern" pepperoni and hickory-smoked "flavor" pepperoni.

This sounds like an absolute abortion to me. First of all,
there are dozens of ACTUAL varieties of pepperoni and for
practical purposes, a hundred or more legitimate types of
Italian meats and sausages like pepperoni which is just a
time of salumi, which is the category of sausages that includes
salami, a kind of meat most Americans would act like SHOULDN'T
be on a pizza.

Toppings are not what makes for good pizza, the crust is
what does it. You can put all the "good" toppings you want
on a pizza, but if the crust is shit, the pizza is done for.
If you have a great crust, you don't need tons of toppings
to make it palatable, in fact, one topping is actually
prefereable.

My favorite local pizza joint, Pizza Counter, is actually
pretty damn good. They don't do anything remotely fancy,
but they make a really good crust. I used to get their combo
until they had a special on a single topping pizza. I was
blown away. And they are no more expensive than the Slut.
Now all I need is a pepperoni pie (large is $9) and I got
two meals. Which IS good because like I said, they don't
get adventurous. DaVinci's in Ames Iowa makes a great smoked
turkey alfredo with tomatoes, red onions and bacon that
kicks ass. Again, their crust rocks so they could put an
old shoe on their and it would rock.

This just goes back to the fact that Americans eat shit
and wouldn't know good food if it crawled up their ass.
FRESH people! Fresh! Is it so hard to do things right?
And if Americans demanded fresh and spent a dollar more
for good local products, they'd eat better, healthier fare,
keep money in their community and have something they could
be proud of. Who the hell is proud of their local Pizza
Hut? When friends come into town, I don't say, "Oh you
have to try our best local Pizza Hut, it's exactly like
yours you know."

Anyway, Pizza Counter and DaVinci's (Ames and Lincoln, NE),
try them if you are ever in the sticks.

And speaking of multi-talented ...

I'll be the first one to step up and
say that Halle Berry is a fine looking
woman. I'll even go so far as to say
she isn't the worst actress I've ever
seen. She's no Meryl Streep, but she
does crying, scared and having sex
about as well as any other "starlet"
I've seen. Her best actress Oscar was
a gift, but then so are all the other
Oscars out there. They tend to go to
the actor who hasn't gotten it in years
past more often than they seem to go
to the actor who most deserves it year
after year. I saw "Monster's Ball" and
it was a pretty good movie. But she
wasn't best actress good.

Now what's really funny is to listen
to amateur Oscars experts go on as
though some crime had been committed.
"She only got it because she's hot."
Big surprise if she did, but the truth
is that a lot of people LIKE Halle
Berry and wanted to give it to her.
And that is how the Oscars are given
out. It's a popularity contest among
actors. If you thought the elections
in your high school were all about
popularity, what do you think it would
have been like if everyone in your high
school had been an actor? It would have
been like the Academy Awards.