Jen, You Ignorant Slut

After years of speaking out about her son’s autism — and against childhood immunizations — Jenny McCarthy is reversing her position.

After years of speaking publicly about her belief that MMR shots (immunization for measles, mumps, and rubella) caused her son to suffer from autism, Jenny McCarthy now faces the reality that her 7-year-old son Evan — who no longer shows any signs of autism — may likely have lived with completely different illness.

A new article in Time Magazine — which Jenny was interviewed for — suggests Evan suffers from Landau-Kleffner syndrome, “a rare childhood neurological disorder that can also result in speech impairment and possible long-term neurological damage.”...

And though her son may never have had autism, Jenny insists, “I’ll continue to be the voice” of the disease.

(http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/02/26/jenny-mccarthy-says-her-son-evan-never-had-autism/)


I cannot adequately express how much this whore pisses me off.

How many children have suffered or died because their parents listened to this piece of ass instead of their doctors? Oh yeah, there's a website for that:

http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html

The parents share the blame, of course, as do Jen's publishers, Oprah, the tabloids, and anyone else who gave her a platform to vomit up her ignorance. But Jen, who knew that she only had an opinion, and went forth as if she alone had figured it all out, bears the lyin' share of responsibility.

And what's this bullshit about "I'll continue to be the voice" of Autism? What makes you think for one goddamned minute that we - the parents of children who actually have Autism - want you to be our self-appointed spokeslut? You have already proven that you are completely unqualified to spout off about anything medical, unless it's the treatment of various STDs. What makes you think you are even remotely relevant to this issue? Your kid suffered from Landau-Kleffner syndrome and having a self-important bitch for a mother. And even when you were under the impression that he did have Autism, you chose to spout propaganda from a discredited, scientifically-unsound study, against all statistical evidence, with no medical training.

I only hope that you put forth as much effort in getting the news out about your change of heart as you did in your original swath of destruction. Try this: spread the word as much as you spread your legs; that should do it.

And for all you celebrity-worshippers: Having your vagina photographed only makes you an expert at having your vagina photographed. If you don't believe me, I refer you to the definitive study published by that Nobel-winning dream team: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton.

All I want for Christmas

In October the Marketing groups gathered ‘round.
They all needed to nail down their holiday sound
For the ads they’d be running o’er my radio
(‘cause they wanted my money to help their cash flow).

“We want all of the people to sit up and hear
All about the great offers we’re making this year.
We will need something catchy, unique, a surprise
So we’ll tempt them to enter our store for our buys.”

And they pondered and thought and they brainstormed and then
From the back came a voice (it was probably Ben).
He said “Let’s do an ad no one else has before.
We’ll just rip off that poem by Clement Clark Moore.”

Said the boss: “So creative! I love it! I do!
We will turn that old poem into something new!
We will use it to sell all the widgets in stock.
I can pay the store mortgage and get out of hock!”

But unfortunately the group wasn’t the first
To adapt the old chestnut of holiday verse.
They weren’t even the only to do it this year
Because everyone thinks that to spread the good cheer

They should hammer the listeners with holiday tropes
Irrespective of whether they all sound like dopes.
They think people will listen if they mention snow
In their ad, or have elves or a loud “Ho, ho, ho!”

It is not very clever; I hate it a lot.
And they all should be taken outside to be shot.
They contribute to cheapening these special days
And to giving we shoppers December malaise.

But they’re not only guilty of Christmas abuse.
They have also dishonored the fine work of Seuss.
Anapestic tetrameter his métier,
Which blows them out the water on all their best days.

So to all of you clever new writers for hire
If you want to be heard; if you want to inspire,
Do not meddle with carols, and Santa eschew
Or you’ll find that you get a collective “Fuck you!”


Happy holidays, everyone!

My Self-Serving Law

I think our governor, being a good little Democrat, would want to deliver on her party’s promises to improve the economy. With that in mind, I humbly suggest the following legislation:

Any business advertising an open position MUST FILL THAT POSITION, or be fined the equivalent of a year’s salary for that position.

I’m getting heartily sick of sending in résumés, only to be told during the follow-up call “Oh, we decided to hold off on hiring anyone right now; we’re just collecting applications.” What a fucking waste of time and energy. I can understand if someone else got the job; it’s an employer’s market right now. But to jerk everybody around? I hope your industry is the next domino to fall.

I’m also getting irritated by the lack of return calls. That’s not just basic business protocol, that’s good etiquette in general.

A buddy of mine got called in for two interviews at one company, and when the phone call came in, he was told they’d eliminated the slot entirely. What the fuck? You obviously have a need for someone, or you wouldn’t have started the whole process. And then you change your mind? Not only are you not going to hire anyone, you’re eliminating that space on the Org chart completely?

I’m fervently hoping that this recession will trim out a lot of the dead (read that: complacent) wood that’s been cluttering up our economic infrastructure. Maybe we’ll see a return to something resembling good customer service.

And maybe there’ll be a unicorn in my garage tomorrow morning, too.

Can You Keep a Secret?

The past couple of weeks, there’ve been rumors circulating on the internet about a major character on a popular television show that was going to commit suicide. It was going to be an out-of-the-blue shocker, and folks were putting forth their theories on who they thought it would be and why. Now, I only watch a few shows, so I was fairly sure I would miss it, and didn’t give it much thought.

As it happened, I missed all of my favorites this week while caught up in other things. I’ve been busy with some freelance work, so I haven’t even gotten a chance to peruse the web sites I usually go to. Grabbing a quick break, I went to one of the political sites I frequent to find out what people were complaining about today, and clicked on an article that caught my eye.

The fucking author had a spoiler about the suicide! And yes, it’s on one of the shows I watch.

I had been looking forward to catching up on my shows later on this week, but that’s completely ruined now. When I watch that episode, all I’ll be thinking is “When will it happen?”

I’d really like to slap that writer. You don't give away major surprises. Ever. Selfish bastard.

Grrrrrrrr.

Soylent Green and Seeing Red

I’ll go ahead and jump on the bandwagon of those lambasting the SciFi network for changing its name. Their marketing droids think “SyFy” is catchier, as the people they interviewed said that was how they texted the name of the channel.

Oh sure, change the entire brand based on how someone texts your name. That’s really fucking smart. Not to mention that it calls to mind syphilis (as a matter of fact, someone has already registered syfyl.us specifically for people to bitch about the name change).

I’m against the change for a number of reasons. SciFi stands for something, whereas SyFy means nothing. They’re also changing their tagline from the short and sweet “IF” to the grammatically horrid “Imagine Greater.” “IF” was perfect. Not only did it mirror the “FI” part of their name, but it’s the central theme of all science fiction. “Imagine Greater” is so broad it’s meaningless. And you’d think a network that wanted to be text-friendly would stick to a two-letter tag rather than increasing the length by 700%.

Not that I really expect anything different from them at this point. These are the same brilliant decision-makers that brought in Bonnie Hammer from Lifetime, who has publicly stated that she hates science-fiction.

This is also the same network that puts wrestling in a prime-time slot, finances execrable original movies instead of showing classics, and runs every B horror movie they can steal from their parent company (and not the good kind of B movies, either). And while other networks order up thirteen episodes of shows to fill out a season, SciFi shows them in runs of eight episodes, then breaks for six months.

The current president, Dave Howe, said of the backlash:

“Our core audience will use it an opportunity to question our motives, they always do."

I don’t know which South American B-school diploma mill you sent your SASE to, Dave, but if your core audience is always questioning your motives, maybe you’re…oh…I don’t know…alienating them.

Dumbass.

When cable started, the pitch was that it would be a "magazine rack" of special interest channels. The Learning Channel, The History Channel, The Golf Channel. As time goes on, though, the networks are becoming homogenized, offering the same crappy “reality” shows and low-rent makeover specials.

When was the last time you saw a music video on Music Television, something decidedly highbrow on Bravo, a movie more than twenty years old on Turner Classic Movies, or an orchestral performance on Arts & Entertainment? That’s one reason these channels are rebranding themselves, because if your name means nothing, you can show whatever you want.

It’s a damn shame. SF geeks are already proficient with using computers to find the content they want to watch; this is just giving them all the more reason to ignore the TV. SciFi could have filled an entire calendar year with all of the great (and not so great) science-fiction shows of yesteryear. Shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, Buck Rogers and Manimal, Lost in Space and Misfits of Science. How about the serials like Flash Gordon, or the movies like Them!? Is the MST3K back catalog really that expensive?

But they chose to show wrestling.

At 10:00 P.M.

On a channel for geeks.

Riiiiight.

I actually hope this is the first part of them killing the channel entirely, because it would be painful to watch it limping along after so promising a start. They’d have a hard time justifying to their advertisers why their supposed target audience is no longer there. Because remember, networks are paid by advertisers, not you. The channel sells your viewership to the advertisers.

You are not the customer.

You're the product.

Roundup

Bootlegging 2.0

On March 1st, Arkansas will institute a $0.56/pack tax on cigarettes. On April 1st, the new federal tax goes into effect, raising the price another $0.62/pack. The Arkansas Attorney General’s Office has stated that any Arkansas resident that drives across the Missouri border to purchase cigarettes is legally restricted from possessing any more than 1 carton and 1 pack (11 packs total) without an Arkansas tax stamp. If the value of the un-stamped tobacco in their possession is greater than $100, it’s a Class C felony, punishable by up to 3-10 years in prison.

The federal government punishes tobacco bootlegging of more than 300 cartons (3000 packs total) with a 5-year sentence.

These hicks are nucking futs.

***

One lump or two?

Speaking of taxation, groups in many states are recreating the Boston Tea Party on a local level to protest all both new taxes and hikes on existing taxes. Unfortunately, a group in Cedar Rapids doesn’t seem to have a clear idea about how to protest, as they asked a senior Environmental Office specialist for permission first. Turns out that tea is considered a pollutant, and discoloration is considered a violation. The Tea Party will instead water from buckets labeled “Tea” into the river. And not just any tap water, either – the group was told they’d have to let it sit out for a while first so the chlorine will evaporate, as chlorine is considered a pollutant.

“We don’t want to hurt the river,” said the group’s founder, Wussy McWuswus.

Uh…when you ask the entity you’re protesting for permission to protest, then meekly follow their guidelines on how to do it, you’re not really effecting any sort of change, you gutless cowards.

***

If I say White-Out, is that racist?

Speaking of “Change,” I guess the President “Change”d his mind on not allowing any sort of pork-barrel earmarks into the stimulus bill, as there are 9,427 of them – one of which, a $7.7 million earmark for Tribally-Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions, lists Obama as a co-sponsor. But not to worry. Rob Blumenthal of the Senate Appropriations Committee assures us that in the next draft of the bill, they will remove Obama’s name from the list of sponsors.

I am fucking gobsmacked over the chutzpah of that announcement.

***

PORN!!!

According to a report from NewScientist, so-called “Red States” consume more online porn than so-called “Blue Staes.” I don’t know if that’s weighted according to population density, or if paging through a 20-page X-rated slide show counts as one visit or twenty, but there’s a simple explanation:

They’re all doing research like the guy from yesterday’s entry.

Actually, there’s a lot that’s lacking in this study in terms of correlation/causation. I think they ran it on their site because people in all states click on links with the word “Porn” in them.

***

Get over it. And get over it.

Two things I read about this week. One, a teen-aged girl in the UK described her job as “boring” on Facebook, and was surprised to find out that her bosses knew how to use the internet. She is completely clueless as to why she was fired after posting comments such as:

'first day at work. omg!! So dull!!''all i do is shred holepunch n scan paper!!! omg!''im so totally bord!!!'

Personally, I would have fired her for not knowing how to spell “bored.”

The other incident was reported on the Huffington Post by Lane Hudson, a man who presumably took so much crap growing up over being named “Lane” that he has to spread his utter lack of humor to as many people as possible.

On a United Airlines flight, the pilot made this statement:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, if you are on the left side of the plane, you will see a spectacular view of New York City and US Airways' new runway, the Hudson River.”

Was the comment on poor taste? Debatable. My first reaction was that of one professional good-naturedly ribbing a fellow professional in light of the heroic efforts he made to protect his passengers and crew. It was not a disaster, so we can be a little light-hearted about it.

Apparently, Lame…I mean, Lane…can’t, and he’s asking for people to help him track down this pilot so he can get him fired.

I don't know much about art, but I know I'd like to kick your teeth down your throat.

“As we create the future of public art, we should also look to its past. The time is ripe to reconsider the most prominent piece of public art in Raleigh: the Confederate monument that guards the State Capitol.

Since it was erected in 1895, the 75-foot-high statue has been the city's signature symbol. Like the best works of public art, it long reflected the values and attitudes of the community -- of most white citizens, that is, who ruled the city through laws that disenfranchised African-Americans.

In 2009, this monument honoring the Lost Cause no longer reflects the feelings of North Carolinians. If we held a statewide referendum, I believe a majority of residents would vote to remove it from its singular place of privilege.”

Here we go again; some fucking Yankee wants to tell us “poor Southerners” how we’re doing wrong. This is happening more and more in my state. These carpetbaggers come down here and immediately start trying to reshape the communities into carbon copies of the ones they left above the Mason-Dixon line.

So this fucker’s complaint is about the War Memorial in Raleigh. It’s a monument to those that lost their lives fighting in the Civil War. And because this asshole thinks the war was all about slavery, he thinks it should be torn down. I don’t see these meddling fucks campaigning to turn the battlefields into wind farms or free-range chicken ranches, so why the hell is a collective tombstone fair game?

“It’s a monument to hate,” they always say. Fuck you. Those boys gave their lives fighting for a cause they believed in. It’s the same as with all the other War Memorials in this country. You pansy Liberals are always bitching about Viet Nam, but no one’s been stupid enough (yet) to suggest the Wall be backfilled in. Hey…how about we take a few depth charges back to Pearl Harbor and re-sink the Arizona? After all, we proved we were war-mongers when we nuked the Japanese twice. While we’re at it, someone’s gonna have to get a lot of chisels together and take down Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain (in Georgia), since the artist was a lifetime KKK member.

Oh…and we’re also going to have to remove a particular memorial in Washington, D.C., because it gives tribute to a man who said: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.”

Don’t recognize that quote? Here’s another. He also said: “Fourscore and seven years ago…”

Money, Money, Money

You an ABBA fan? Oh well.

I tried to watch the Presidential address last night; I really did. I couldn’t finish for two reasons: 1. Cub was sick to his stomach several times, whether from a virus, hairball, or bad Kitty Chow, I don’t know. (He's fine now, thanks.) 2. When Obama said “only government has the resources to fix this,” I damn near threw up myself.

First of all, only government can create a fuck-up of this magnitude. It's their fault to begin with.

Secondly, government has no resources, folks! Government gets all of its money from us. He very easily could have said “The American people have the resources to fix this.” Instead of the wealth redistribution plan, how about declare the entire country a disaster area and ramp up the no- or low-interest loans for small businesses, or cut the stimulus bill in half and offer to match state-raised funds for projects. Let the people decide what’s important to them, then have the states sell bonds to pay for priorities.

One resource I’ve found interesting/maddening is Stimulus Watch (http://www.stimuluswatch.org/), which identifies individual projects, the number of potential jobs it would create, the cost, and where it’s being spent.

One of their tabs sorts the projects by cost. Of the 50 most expensive projects, three of them (including the most expensive one) are located in Puerto Rico.

What the fuck?

I know Puerto Rico enjoys many of the rights and benefits of being a state without actually being a state, so technically should be included in the Big Prize Giveaway, but come on. $17,500,000,000 for “Energy Efficient Industrial Zones”? $500,000,000 for solar-powered water heaters? In that light, $350,000,000 for a rail system seems kind of reasonable. (Wait. You’re spending more on water heaters than a rail system?) Why are we spending more than $18 billion in tax-confiscated money in an area with less than 4 million people, most of whom don’t pay Federal income taxes? Similarly, these three projects are only estimated to create 2,142 jobs. Can I apply for one of these $8,600,000 jobs?

Just for comparative purposes, there’s a project in Alaska to expand the Anchorage port. It is ready to go immediately, will create 1500 jobs, and will only cost $75,000,000. That just seems a little more reasonable to me; almost the same number of jobs for 1/244th of the cost.

Here’s the other thing that worries me about the “only government” statement: there’s a project for Arizona under the “Most Expensive” tab which has no description and will create zero jobs, yet has $290,000,000 allocated to it. Yeah…that sounds like typical government oversight.
How does one get in on this? Is there an application online I can fill out?

I guarantee you, give me $290 million dollars, I won’t work, either.

I knew he was crazy; I didn’t know it was contagious.

“Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of ‘climate change delusion’.”

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/articles/2009/02/09/climate_change_takes_a_mental_toll/

Hardly the first case, doc. One preeminent sufferer won an Oscar.

This article goes on to point out many obvious things, such as “extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes, can lead to emotional distress” and “Such anxiety over current events is not a new phenomenon.”

In addition to the 17-year-old, “Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.”

See, this tickles me, because the author of the article points out that kids are having nightmares, then goes on to include such gems as “Over this century, the average global temperature is expected to rise between 1 degrees and 6 degrees Celsius. Glaciers will melt, seas will rise, extremes in precipitation will occur”, “Climate change is expected to create about 200 million environmental refugees by 2050”, and “climate change may eventually deplete natural resources, make it more difficult for people to live off the land, and disrupt the global food supply…That will mean declining socioeconomic status and quality of life across the world.”

Damn, people. You had the sympathetic vibe going on with the kids, then blasted them with even more doomsday prophecies. That’s like writing an article about coulrophobia, which is the fear of THE CLOWNS THAT ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!!

Jesus, it pisses me off to see crap like this getting published when I can immediately name five better writers who are unemployed.

Yes…I’m one of them.

Nigger? Please.

Time to update schools' reading lists
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/394832_nword06.html

By JOHN FOLEY

GUEST COLUMNIST

John Foley of Vancouver is an English teacher at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington.

The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms. Barack Obama is president of the United States, and novels that use the "N-word" repeatedly need to go.

Oh dear god. Is there nothing more important to worry about? Try addressing the fact that your students don't know how to use their native language correctly, and possess zero comprehension skills. Are novels that use ‘myopic, self-important, censorious jackass’ still okay?

To a certain extent, this saddens me, because I love "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Of Mice and Men" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." All are American classics, and my students read them as part of approved sophomore and junior units, as do millions of students across the nation.

His students were born about 1992. Remember that.

They all must go.

I hope they go to private and public libraries and remain in high school classrooms. I would keep copies in my own classroom and encourage students to read them. But they don't belong on the curriculum. Not anymore. Those books are old, and we're ready for new.

What year would be a good cutoff date, perfesser? To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Maybe you could teach your classes from Oprah’s reading lists. They’re current.

Even if Huck Finn didn't contain the N-word and demeaning stereotypes, it would remain a tough sell to students accustomed to fast-paced everything. The novel meanders along slower than the Mississippi River and uses a Southern dialect every bit as challenging as Shakespeare's Old English.

Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English (sometimes called Elizabethan English), which has about 300 years of language evolution on Old English. What class do you teach again?

Explaining that Twain wasn't a racist -- or at least didn't hate African-Americans (he had a well-documented prejudice against Native Americans) -- is a daunting challenge. I explain that Jim, a black man, is the hero of the book. I tell them Huck eventually sees the error of his ways, apologizes to Jim and commits himself to helping him escape slavery. Yes, I tell them, he does all this while continuing to refer to Jim by the demeaning word, but Twain was merely being realistic.

Many students just hear the N-word. This is particularly true, of course, of African-American students. I have not taught Huck Finn in a predominantly black classroom, and I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so effectively. With few exceptions, all the black students in my classes over the years have appeared very uncomfortable when I've discussed these matters at the beginning of the unit. And I never want to rationalize Huck Finn to an angry African-American mom again as long as I breathe.

So sorry that it falls to you to explain how these books are actually anti-racist. Teaching can be tough. Suck it up or retire.

John Steinbeck's "Mice" and Harper Lee's "Mockingbird" don't belong on the curriculum, either. Atticus Finch, the heroic attorney in Lee's novel, tells his daughter not to use the N-word because it's "common." That might've been an enlightened attitude for a Southerner during the Great Depression, but is hopelessly dated now.

I cannot believe a teacher who is supposed to build on the foundations of literature going back thousands of years just used the expression “hopelessly dated.” And which part is hopelessly dated? The use of “common” to mean “lowborn or base”, or holding the attitude that we shouldn’t use the word?

What books should replace these classics? The easiest call is for "Mockingbird." David Guterson's fine "Snow Falling on Cedars" has similar themes and many parallels, and since the novel is set in the San Juan Islands, it would hold more interest for Washington students than the Alabama setting of Lee's novel.

Setting aside the stupidity of determining curriculum by geographic location, don’t you think the phrase “that fucking goddamn lap bitch” [page 251] might be at least as objectionable as “nigger” to some? Does Obama approve of lap dancing?

I think a good substitute for "Mice" would be Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel "Going After Cacciato."

“Nigger,” Oscar said. The boy lit up. “Nigger!” the boy said. [page 113]

Like George and Lennie in Steinbeck's novel, Cacciato dreams of peace and a better world. And the Vietnam War is a more recent -- and arguably more painful -- era in American history than the Depression, and one of more interest to teens.

What is it with Liberals and the fucking Vietnam War?

Technically, America got involved in the Vietnam conflict in 1950, ten years before To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Don’t you think that’s a little…old…perfessor? Your students weren’t even born until 17 years after the war ended. It has exactly as much relevance to them as the Great Depression.

"Huck Finn" is the toughest book to replace; it's so utterly original. The best choice, in my view, would be Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Like Huck, "Dove" involves an epic journey of discovery and loss and addresses an important social issue -- the terrible treatment of women in the Old West. That issue does not rank as high as slavery on our national list of shame, but it definitely makes the list.

“Niggers eat turtles”’ “have a nigger bring you buttermilk”, “I’ve went with a nigger”, “The news about the nigger”, “a bad nigger they ride with”, “I think I hit the nigger”, “Don’t you tie me, nigger boy”, Nigger boy, don’t you get near me”, “and this nigger boy, too”, “you’ve got a nigger for a scout”, “Leave me that nigger”, “They’re just red niggers, anyway”, “Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn’t feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent.” [Lonesome Dove]

Some might call this apostasy; I call it common sense. Obama's victory signals that Americans are ready for change. Let's follow his lead and make a change that removes the N-word from the high school curriculum.

Yeah, John. You’re off to a great start with your suggestions.

No Tools Required

Mrs. Cat and I were surfing through Deep Cable last night, idly scanning to see if anything interesting was on (I’ll save you the suspense…no), and stumbled across two more examples of why our country is completely fucked.

First, we landed on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, where a gentleman who majored in Speech and worked for Army Intelligence could not identify the preposition in a sentence, and did not know which organ produced insulin. Now, I would have assumed a Speech major would have been given at least a cursory breakdown of the parts of speech along with their Rhetoric courses, but apparently knowing the difference between a proper noun and a preposition was not given a high priority when he was matriculating. And while one could argue that only diabetics and the doctors that treat them need to know that the pancreas produces insulin, I would hope that if an order ever came down for the Army to storm the Isles of Langerhans, someone would say “Yeah…about that…”.

The second incident occurred on Tool Academy. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the show gathers together a number of men who apparently learned all they know about how to treat women by watching porn, and tries to reform them. Sort of a Guido/Playa version of My Fair Lady (for the visual learners) or Pygmalion (for the lit crowd). I would argue the mere existence of this show is another indicator of the coming collapse, but more specifically, the segment we subjected ourselves to had a female coach explaining to the guys about attitudes that women found desirable in a mate, and how this particular batch of testosterone junkies were lacking in these attributes. The exchange:

Coach: “You need to learn humility. Do you know what ‘humility’ means?”
Neanderthal: “Uh…humor?”

At this point, my brain ejected a goodly portion of my remaining IQ points in an effort to save enough memory to restore baseline bodily functions once the program had ended.

Hate to break it to you, Studly, but women do not want a guy that makes them laugh above all else, despite what Jessica Rabbit says. Oh, and humility does not mean humor, you ignorant troglodyte! Read a fucking book every once in a while! Your erstwhile mate might want the reassurance that you won’t be a bouncer for the rest of your life.


He makes me laugh. And he has a large…vocabulary.

I’ll admit to tapping into some residual high school nerd-rage, where the beautiful people hooked up irrespective of GPA, but I’m also decidedly Southern when it comes to how I treat women. Libbers hate it, but a sense of chivalry still exists in the South, and my mother would make a concerted effort to return from the Other Side and haunt me if I treated women the way some of these boys do.

And apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way, given the popularity of this site .

Yes, I know there are many self-esteem issues certain types of women work through (or don’t) by dating these slabs of flesh unsullied by anything resembling original thought. Mrs. Cat has a choice list of terms for those kinds of women, which I won’t repeat because of the aforementioned threat of maternal poltergeist activity.

Because I’m smarter than a fifth grader, don’cha know.

I’d like to thank the Academy

Now I have a free evening – February 22nd.

See, I won’t be tuning in to see the Oscars this year because 1) the speeches always go on way too long, 2) there are only about ten awards that the viewing public gives a rat’s ass about, so the rest of the show is annoying filler, and 3) the Academy members are all pretentious douchebags.

What’s the point of making a movie? To entertain? Nay, my innocent friend. Oh that may be the stated goal – to put a smile on the faces of all the children – but you can bet your buttered popcorn those studios are in it for the money, and only the money. They leave the happiness hokum to the PR flacks and the Marketing shills.

So Hollywood turns out huge, action-loaded special effects bonanzas in the summer to get the money they need to finance the rom-coms, period pieces, and dramas they foist on us the rest of the year, then completely ignore those popular films during Awards time.

It’s total bullshit.

Look at this year’s nominees for Best Picture:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.

How many of you have seen The Reader? How many of you have even heard of The Reader?

Taken all together, these five movies cost $247 million to make, and as of today, have only earned a combined total of $184,598,493 – a loss of $62,401,507.

By contrast, The Dark Knight cost $185 million to make, and is the second highest-grossing film of all time, earning $531,037,655 – almost a 300% return. But of course, it wasn’t an “important” film, so no Best Picture nomination was forthcoming. Oh they might give Heath Ledger Best Supporting Actor because he died, but had he lived, you know he wouldn’t have been nominated.

I checked the earnings of the Best Picture winners for the last fifteen years, and none of them lost money. If the Academy wants to continue that trend, then it’s really between Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, since they’re the only two nominees that have made a profit. It will come down to whether the Academy members feel they should pander to the gay community or the “poor Indians” this year. Since they slobbered all over Brokeback Mountain a couple of years ago, I’m betting they’ll give the statue to Slumdog. Interestingly, if you read the reviews of Slumdog at IMDB, you’ll find that Western audiences overwhelmingly love it – it “touched” them – while audiences in India and other Asian nations generally don’t like it, complaining about the stereotypes as presented by its Western director.

But people’s reactions don’t mean anything to the studios (otherwise, why would they greenlight a Karate Kid remake?) They want you to give them your money, eat your Mike & Ikes, and shut the hell up. It doesn’t matter how much you liked Death Race, they’ll tell you which movies were really important on Oscar night. I’ll save myself the time and ignore it completely. If I wanted to watch a four-hour self-congratulatory smarmy circle jerk, I’d turn on C-Span.

Momentous, Indeed

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and, appropriately enough, we are on the eve of a historic Inaugural celebration. There are so many topics these events bring to mind – the Civil Rights movement, the paths of Politics, the fact that Inaugural planners have only allocated 5,000 “Porta-Potties” for a crowd of 2-5 million, even the process by which certain days are declared to be holidays. Considering all of that, I chose today to write about badly-designed packaging.

If you eat food, you’ve probably been to a grocery store lately. You may have noticed the packages with the built-in zip-lock closures. Hot dogs, sliced cheeses, frozen foods, a lot of bulk foods that are expected to last beyond a couple of servings – they all seem to have the handy little feature on their brightly-colored plastic wrappings.

For the most part, these closures work just as they’re supposed to, keeping the food fresher than just clipping the ends of the package together, without the added expense of decanting the food into a separate bag.

However…

We make a run to the warehouse store every so often to stock up on staples. Great big jars of peanut butter, huge boxes of cereal, slabs of meat for the freezer…stuff like that. We went just before the holidays to get all of the baking ammunition Mrs. Cat was going to need and picked up, among other things, a big ol’ bag of brown sugar.

This bag of brown sugar has one of the handy-dandy zip-lock closures on it, and I’m pretty sure no one at the factory has ever used their own product. Because if they had, they would have realized that once the zippy thing has been opened, it can never be closed again. Here’s why: the closure, rather than being at the top of the bag like you’d expect, is one-third of the way down the front of the bag. What happens is that when you grab the bag at the top – as is natural when carrying larger bags – the weight of the sugar is enough to pull the zippy thing apart. Plus, whenever you try to scoop sugar out, the stiff plastic of the zippy thing keeps drawing the bag closed again, so it scrapes across your sugar transport mechanism (spoon, cup, etc.), and the concave part of the zippy thing fills with sugar crystals, which means it can’t grip the convex part securely anymore.

I don’t want to repackage all of the sugar because it would take many large zip-lock bags, which would annoy me, so I just bitch every time Mrs. Cat needs to bake something, because I know I’ll be battling the zippy thing again (it’s on an upper shelf she can’t reach).

It’s the absolutely stupidest bag design I’ve ever seen, and I’ve complained about it enough that Mrs. Cat actually threatened me with a meat thermometer if I didn’t stop. This is the last time I’ll say anything about it, Dear. You can put that back in the gadgets drawer.

Probe your customers; it brings them back

I mentioned recently that I had cancelled the home delivery of my paper. I spoke to two people at the paper when I called, and of course they asked why I was cancelling. I told them I didn’t think I was getting my money’s worth, and they accepted that answer.

But that’s where it stopped.

If I were running the paper, I’d make sure there were some follow-up questions. Had they gone a little deeper, they would have found out:

• I didn’t care about their national and world coverage, which I get online.
• Filling the “Area” section of the paper with stories about every single high school team in the county does not constitute area news (that’s why there’s a separate “Sports” section).
• The coupons they distributed were largely useless to my family’s demographics.
• If they were going to rely on the New York Times’ wire service to provide their articles, they should have borrowed their crossword, too.
• Their editing was atrocious.

Even if they didn’t do anything about it immediately, they’d have a lot more information at their disposal when it came time to reformat. Presumably, someone could then contact all of the people who had cancelled and let them know of the changes in hopes of getting them back.

And don’t even get me started on their clunky, user-unfriendly, hey-I-took-an-online-Dreamweaver-class web site. It’s just an electronic version of the regular paper, but even more poorly edited. If they were serious about keeping readers, they should offer us tailored newsfeeds. Give us a list of the features they offer and let us select the ones we want to see. Set it up like a Google homepage. I sign in to my account, and get the real area news (no sports), the “Opinion” section, maybe some Classifieds. Set up an RSS feed for weather changes, school closings, etc. They do offer a section for people to blog, post photos, etc., so on some level, they recognize the importance of involvement from their readers. They should take it a step further and host Town Hall-style e-meetings. Get a local councilman, City Planner or business owner on to field questions; tie into the local college and have some online lectures; get with the Arts council and have an electronic gallery opening.

I’m not holding my breath.

I think the real problem may be lethargy. When you’ve been the only option for so long, you tend to coast, which leads to entrenchment, which leads to apathy. I did tech support for five years, so I know of what I speak. Plus, customers are annoying, so who cares what they want?

The accountants, that’s who.

By way of contrast, when we had our house rewired, the electrical company called to remind us of appointments, confirmed arrival times, did several walkthroughs with us during the process, and called after the job was completed for a satisfaction survey. Would I recommend them? Hell, yes. My paper? Not so much.

Oh, speaking of entrenched thinking: I ordered fish and chips for lunch today, and the waitress asked if I wanted fries with it. Huh?

Wandering Around in My Head

As I may have mentioned before, I visit several news aggregate sites every day: FreeRepublic and DemocraticUnderground for politics, FARK for general stuff, and other boards for various specific interests. What kills me is the people on these boards who show up in the comments threads to note that the story is either a duplicate of one already posted at the site, or has been posted elsewhere online.

What’s the fucking point of posting that? Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you have the time to note every single submission to the site? You need to get out more. And really? It’s been posted elsewhere online? Perhaps you don’t understand how an AGGREGATOR site works. I don’t want to visit every vaguely-related .com every day, so I rely on people with whom I share certain opinions or viewpoints to find topical stuff and post it here. Of course it’s been posted elsewhere, you moron!

Each site seems to acquire its own little group whose only contributions are these kinds of posts. I always picture them as spinsters, with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow, going “Hmmmm?” Tapping their liver-spotted fingers on the offending headline to make sure you see it. It’s the internet, bitch. It ain’t gonna get full because someone double-posted a story about a cat that can tell when someone’s going to die.

***

I’m pretty sure I witnessed a multiple homicide on Dora the Explorer the other night. I was wandering through the kids’ room, and noted that Dora & Co. had a group of bad guys tied to a ship’s mast. Our heroes proceed to reclaim whatever it was the bad guys had taken from them, and jumped over to Diego’s Rescue Center ship. As they did the “We did it!” dance, the other ship sank in the background. Even by Rocky & Bullwinkle standards, that’s pretty dark.

***

My local paper apparently has a +48 Resistance to Irony when it comes to our economy. On Page 1A, they’ll headline “County Employment at Record Low!” On page 5A, they’ll note that the county government just spent $40,000 for a new tourism campaign, a campaign developed by a company in Arkansas. On page 2B, there’s a story about the contractor from the other side of the state that’s coming in to renovate some city-owned buildings, and page 13B has the story about the number of small local construction companies that have gone out of business.

***

We took Kitten and Cub to the local pizza buffet tonight, in hopes that the carb overload might shut them down early. It’s one of those places that has a television on every wall and an arcade in the back. We had three screens in our room – two news stations and Cartoon Network (you know…for kids!). The local news was repeating CNN’s non-news story about how Obama might age while in office, while on another wall, the actual CNN was showing clips from an Obama press conference. I was really surprised that the Cartoon Network wasn’t featuring Obama, too, since he lifted his entire campaign from Bob the Builder. Can we infringe copyright? Yes we can!

***

I realize that the English language is constantly evolving, but the current use of “ginormous” irritates me. It’s a completely useless and unnecessary word, because all it does it combine two synonyms without expanding the definition of either. Similarly, the UK term “drink-driving” offends my sense of grammar. Are you steering a cocktail down the motorway? When was the last time you were drink?

***

When Frank Caliendo’s career fizzles out (4…3…2…), he should offer to do his voices for the TomTom network. It would be cheaper than getting the actual celebrities (though the John Cleese package is a lot of fun.) I’ve been disappointed in TomTom’s selection of voices, though. They don’t have an Aussie, Kiwi, or believable Irish. They need Amy Walker.

Raising My Ire

The Bush Administration reduced the country’s net worth by six trillion dollars, pushed the DOW down 4,000 points, raised unemployment by 3%, increased the deficit by over $900 billion, forced banks to lend money to the insolvent, thereby collapsing the mortgage industry, pushed through a $700 billion bailout with no oversights or conditions, and demanded that auto executives accept a $1/year salary in order to get federal money.

(Of course, when I say ‘the Bush Administration,’ I mean ‘a Democratically-controlled Congress’, which the AP has conveniently forgotten is part of this administration.)

So after all of that hard work, and in light of the burgeoning economic crisis, it seems absolutely natural that they vote themselves a pay raise. Yep, each of our hard-working, fiscally responsible elected reps will receive an extra $4,700 – or a 2.8% increase. That’s an additional $2,500,000 from the taxpayers.

How about you, dear readers? Could you use an extra $4,700 a year? Call your reps and explain that to them.

All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing Congress isn’t seated in Brighton, MI, since their City Council just approved an ordinance allowing police to ticket and fine anyone who is annoying in public "by word of mouth, sign or motions." http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081219/METRO/812190459

What kills me is the admission from a city attorney that “there could be situations where the measure would violate freedom of speech.” Yeah…like every single one of them. I’m hoping that the citizens of Brighton show up at every public council meeting and demand that the councilors be ticketed as soon as they start talking.

Some Anaesthesia Required

It’s that time of year again. Time for parents to steal away and put together the “Santa” gifts in secret so the tiny terrorists can keep the magic alive one more year. I’m convinced that toy manufacturers have a special set of instructions they include in the packages they expect to sell over Christmas. You know what I’m talking about. These are the instructions that take pains to include actual-sized illustrations of the ¾” screws, but whose diagrams for assembly require a 4,000 power microscope to read. Even then, those fun-loving engineers tend to include drawings more resembling optical illusions than any sort of true three-point perspective, as the lines showing you where to attach various accessories always look like they are zooming off into the Cartesian horizon instead of into some physical part of the toy.

And would it be too much to ask for someone to actually lay out these booklets in some sort of desktop publishing program before they’re printed? That way, you’d know beforehand if some crucial piece of information fell on the other side of the fold. I love turning the page over and seeing:

STEP 9b – Continued: Though the illustration seems to indicate otherwise, under no circumstances are the snapbaffles to be inserted onto the auxiliary flange before the flousting lever is rotated to parallel. The snapbaffles cannot be removed once they are assembled, and if you’re reading this after completing all of the other steps on the previous page, you’re just going to have to go buy a new one and start over – or explain to your child why there’s no gift from Santa for them. Ha ha HA HA HA!

They’re also misleading about the “Tools Required” section. It’s always just: Hammer. Phillips screwdriver. Yes, technically, you could assemble the entire toy with just those two items. As long as your screwdriver has a magnetic head, can adjust from 3” to 10” long, turn in right-angles, and has a built-in LED light source and jeweler’s loupe. There’s a reason Santa uses elves to do all of the toymaking – small hands. They can get into the 1 1/16” gap between the primary camshaft and the torqueguard to tighten down the friction pins. The same friction pins that the instructions reference in big bold red letters, letting you know that if they aren’t at the correct depth, the entire toy becomes one big deathtrap.

Adding to the fun is trying to do all of this in an unheated garage, where every scrape of the knuckles or pinched finger is exponentially more painful – and the fact that the garage shares a wall with the kids’ room means I can’t even cuss satisfactorily.

This is why my stocking is always full of bandages, rum and Valium.

Merry Christmas, y’all.

Denis Leary Can Keep His Money

Having a child with autism presents a number of challenges, and requires certain compromises and adjustments. You know the worst thing about it, though? Having Jenny McCarthy as your self-appointed spokeslut.

When Denis Leary recently opined:

"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a shit what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.",

the former Playmate and serious actress had this to say:

“Whoo! First of all, let me tell you, the autism community has received probably 10,000 emails [saying] ‘Go kill him!’ ‘Go yell at him!’”

Where is this community, Jen? I didn’t get an e-mail. And I certainly didn’t send one in to any central autism depot asking that you be sicced on Leary like some sort of attack stripper. Unwad your panties, put them back on, and go the fuck home. Most of us immediately recognized that the real target of his comments are the parents that lack the energy or foresight to discipline their little horrorshows, so use the autism label like a Get out of social ostracism free! card. Just because some mom at the playground tells me her kid is autistic doesn’t obligate me to treat her words as holy writ. I don’t automatically assume she took him to a specialist for an evaluation. She may know deep down that she’s a crappy parent and just doesn’t want to be called on it.

Leary claimed the standard “out of context” defense, which was probably a safe bet, and has since issued two apologies, which I think was a huge mistake. Other people’s feelings are not his responsibility. According to a recent news blurb, the advocacy group Autism United has graciously accepted his apologies, and has cancelled a planned boycott of his book. But wait…there’s a catch: Leary is expected to either delete the “offending” chapter or donate part of his proceeds to charity. I wonder if there’s any sort of charity for autistics that might want a slice of that. Fucking scavengers. I am so sick of people thinking they’re entitled to someone else’s money because they got their feelings hurt.

The spokesman for Autism United, Mark Anthony Ramirez, said that he was happy to accept Leary’s apology (thank you so fucking much, Ramirez), but figured “his claim that his comments were taken out of context is a veiled attempt to elicit more sales.” Or he may have felt that his comments were actually taken out of context, you idiot.

Ramirez goes on to say "As a parent of a child with autism, I feel he owes the autism community the money he is making for using what has quickly become an epidemic in our country as a cheap ploy to sell his book. He should donate a portion of his sales to assist children with autism."

How about this, Ramirez: As a parent of a child with autism, I feel Leary is entitled to keep every fucking dime he makes off of his book. You think he’s being mean? Write your own damned book. Having an autistic kid doesn’t entitle you to anything. Take care of your kid and ignore what other people say. That is…if your kid really does have autism.

See, I know my cub doesn’t have an agenda. He’s not working the system or taking advantage of the sympathy of strangers. He’s three. And if he starts to throw a fit while we’re out in public, I take him back to the car so no one else has to ride it out with us. I’ve left many a hot dinner behind so Mrs. Cat and Kitten (and the other patrons) could eat in peace. I even keep a book in the car to pass the time after Cub calms down so the rest of the family doesn’t feel obligated to bolt down their dinner to come relieve me. I could explain it to everyone in the restaurant and expect them to put up with it, but why? What does that do except annoy people? I think that’s how you can tell the fakers from the rest: they don’t act to improve the situation.

Look…all kids are different, and most kids are weird, but so-called “Autis” are differently weird. You just have to learn your child’s rhythms and patterns, and work within the framework they give you. One thing you learn real fast with an autistic child is to keep a sense of humor, because they will try your patience. They’re like every other child that way, just more intense about it. I saw a t-shirt that I think nicely sums up the proper parental attitude:

Autism rocks! And flaps, and spins, and hoots, and…

Dumpster Diving Etiquette

To all you modern-day gleaners out there:

There's not a whole lot I can do to stop you from rooting through the boxes I put out for the trash pickup, short of sitting on my porch with a shotgun full of rock salt, which I ain't gonna do. I would request that you fucking clean up after yourself, though. I've already packed those boxes once, okay? I don't want to do it again and again. Don't leave the shit spread all over the yard; you're like a fucking dog going after a bone.

And here's another tip: those electronic items sitting out there? Yeah...those are broken, you dumb fuck. I would think that if you knew how to repair a modem, you wouldn't have to resort to digging through other people's trash. And I noticed you ignored the books. God forbid you might accidentally be exposed to some sort of educational materials and end up with some unwanted self-reflection. You might even become embarrassed! Can't have that.

I sure hope I remember to disconnect the car battery from the next shiny metallic object I put next to the curb. You're lucky I'm not using the boxes as bait, asshole, or you'd be on a hook in my garage while I headed to the store to get the other ingredients for my barbecue.

Keep your fucking paws to yourself.

Bull-tiot

I saw recently where a Dr. Ken Smith, a criminology professor at Bucks New University in the UK, is tired of seeing rampant misspellings in his students’ coursework. Rather than insist the University raise its standards for admission, or generally decry the poor educational methods used to teach these students before they reached University, Dr. Smith (who has a ridiculously easy name to spell) has proposed that his fellow professors just ignore the misspellings, and classify them not as wrong, but as acceptable variants.

I’ve actually seen two separate articles about this idiot, and surprisingly, the second one didn’t relate the tale of the English professors at the same university attempting to give him a semi-colon with a letter opener.

Dr. Smythe provided a list of some of his students most commonly-misspelled words. Among them are February and Wednesday. How the fuck do you make it to college without knowing how to spell these? Smeth suggests that we accept ‘Febuary’ and ‘Wensday’ as perfectly fine alternatives. Never mind that February takes its name from a Roman rite of purification called februum, which was held at that time of year. Similarly, Wednesday is Woden’s day, not the day of the cebaceous cyst.

I think Dr. Smiff is just being lazy. He gives an example of a question he gets from his moronic students: “Why is there no ‘e’ in ‘truly’?” His answer? “Well, I don't know. ... You've just got to drop it because people do.” Thanks, asshole. I’m wondering if you would accept “just because” as a legitimate answer on your quizzes.

Here are the rules for appending endings to words with a final “e”, as a three-second Google search could have found for the good Docter:

When adding an ending to a word that ends with a silent e, drop the final e if the ending begins with a vowel – A E I O U:
• advance/advancing judge/judging distribute/distribution

However, if the ending begins with a consonant, keep the final e:
• advance/advancement involve/involvement

If the silent e is preceded by another vowel, drop the e when adding any ending.
• argue/argument argue/argued true/truly

Speaking to Smittttth’s comments, Jack Bovill, chairman of the British-based Spelling Society said “People who have trouble with spelling are punished when it comes to applying for jobs or even filling out forms.” Oh boo-fuckin’-hoo. Sorry, Jack, I just can’t work up a whole lot of sympathy. Next you’ll be telling us that the whole written form of communication is harsh to the illiterate, so all applications should be given orally, with a stenographer on hand to transcribe the answers onto the appropriate line. Or maybe we should dispense with the written word altogether. I’ll meet you in Alexandria; you bring the gas can, and I’ll bring the matches.

I tend to agree with Barbara Wallraff, who writes the Wordcourt column for the Atlantic and King Features Syndicate. "People who spell a lot of words incorrectly either aren't paying attention or don't care. Why change our language to accommodate them?"

And of course, Doktore Tsmithe trots out the new standard cop-out for the intellectually lazy: "In the 21st century, why learn by heart rote spelling when you can just type it into a computer and spell-check?" To which I offer the standard rejoinder: “Because spell-check will knot catch homophones.” God! Can you imagine the bleating this fucker would give out over the bad grammar he’d encounter when all of his students only used spell-check? (And apparently, they’re too lazy to use it even now, since he’s finding so many mistakes.)

Every time there’s an article like this, spelling reformists crawl out of the bookshelves to propose unnecessary schemes and plans to “make English easier.” English is the international business language, and most ‘furriners’ speak it. If it were so difficult, why isn’t Esperanto the international business language? Why not Chinese? Or Basque?

And what scheme should we use? Phonetic? Whose phonemes should take precedence? Is that famous highway Root 66 or Rout 66? Did the three wise men travel a great distance, or were they fighting a conflagration? Because my family in the mountains pronounce them both the same way – afar.

I know that someone who thinks they’re clever will post that fucking ‘ghoti’ crap again. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s supposedly an alternative spelling of “fish,” using the “gh” from “enough,” the “o” from “women,” and the “ti” from “nation.” Let me address this now.

There is no word in English beginning with “gh” where “gh” is pronounced as an “f;” it is always a hard “g.”

Vowels are pronounced long before an intervocalic consonant – that is, a consonant between two vowels. The fact that the “o” in “women” is pronounced as a short “i” is a leftover from Old English, when the word was actually spelled “wimmen.”

Pronouncing “ti” as “sh” only happens when the “ti” is followed by a vowel, as in “action.”

Therefore, “ghoti” can only be pronounced as “goatee.”

I notice that the same proponents of “ghoti” never mention that, by their logic, we could also have "ghoughpteighbteau," where:

P hiccough
O though
T ptomaine
A neigh
T debt
O bureau

Makes English seem a little more elegant when you follow the damn rules, now, doesn’t it?