he makes a good point

Okay, Atrios trying to explain why there's not a lot of "Look! A new school!" news reporting out of Iraq:

I know this has been said by others and no matter how many times it is restated paste-eaters like Jeff Goldstein will faily to comprehend but I'll give it one more try.

Imagine if 30 people were killed every day by car bombs in US cities. Monday, 30 dead in Denver. Tuesday, 30 dead in San Francisco. Wednesday, 30 dead in Philadelphia. You get the idea.

Now scale that roughly relative to population size. Make that 300 dead per day. Every day. Would the lead story on the evening news be about all the people who weren't blown up that day? No. The country would be completely hysterical.

Thus the old saw: "If it bleeds, it leads."

it happened!

the last few days have been rather stressful. i'm a little punch drunk. a few posts down i opened with "i often sit and fret that my car will be towed", and it happened! yesterday me and des stopped at her house at like one in the morning, and when i woke up and peeped out the window five hours later, my car had been towed! i got it back in about 2 hours, but it ran me $260. if you work for North Coast Patrol in Oceanside, you are a fucking giant stinky douchenozzle, and i hope you die in a huge fucking garbage disposal. then, i drove my car to Zac's to get it fixed, and it turns out the master cylinder is fucked. that's another couple c-notes.

then this morning, carless, i hitch a ride to work with my step-dad, as I'm sleeping in his spare room waiting for escrow to close, and the fucking agent calls me up and tells me we can't do the loan, and i about fall to pieces like a scared little wombat in the big city. then, a few hours later, it works out, thanks to some intervention from down the hall. I'm really maybe probably kind of getting the condo. feh. still no car.

if you're thinking about getting an old BMW, fuckin don't do it unless a mechanic looks all over it and says he wants to have fucking sex with it, it looks so good. i've spent over $5K on a car i paid $3k for. jesus fucking christ in a blender.

my hands are hurting from typing...lord, my ears sound like there's things breaking in them, and my jaw feels like i got kicked by jackie chan. i am disassembling in front of your very eyes. hopefully on friday i'll have a house to fall apart inside of and i can get my whole life out of the storage unit it was supposed to be in for 3 weeks seven weeks ago.

woon

I was thinking that it would be good to do something totally randomly stupid, and since i'm old and fat i'd have to do it with charts and planning and shit like that, so i can minimize the danger of falling and breaking my fucking hip.

cool idea: make a stupid music video. but not just any music video, a super stupid one that combines two of my favorite things...being a jackass and breaking shit. that's why the song must be "I Am Downright Amazed At What I Can Destroy With Just a Hammer" by Atom and His Package.

Me and Jan and Brian bought a pretty little hole.
It was cheapish and we split and we're fixing it up.
So Mr. Sokol does everything rewires, fixes cracks.
I can only break walls, moves stuff, and get snacks.

And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.
And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.

Nails in drywall, paint haul, blah blah.
Move in, no sink, new broom, I think.
I bribed the garbage man!
I am a super bad boy again.

And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.
And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.

Brian, don't stay mad with us.
Come on, eat some food with us,
We own a home together.

And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.
And I am downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer.

And the video can consist of me and maybe charles and probably Desi once she gets into it then finally Marie once she gets off the couch and over the Mighty Liver Inflammation or whatever's afflicting the hell out of her ass just fucking destroying things with a variety of hammers. I like hammers as it is, I always danced with those hammers from the Pink Floyd video thing.

See, I'm dancing. And apparently shopping right after Jr. High at the Peg Your Pants Store, which is where i shopped in Jr. High.

So anyways, the smashing things with hammers would work way, way better than the "slicing glass with a metal ruler" plan I had that sounded SO GOOD in my head....like, you know, you get a metal ruler, and it's like a SWORD! and you can chop shit in half with it if you swing it fast enough! Yes, yes, I know now, trapped in the clutches of sobriety-ish, that it's a bullshit plan, of course of course. But man! That night, it seemed AWESOME. And failed so badly. Ah, lost dreams. One bent to hell ruler and a lot of annoyed, woken-up neighbors later we're back in the house wondering how it all went wrong. So this would be vindication for my poor ruler-swinging. I would be back in the saddle, as they say in westernland, where cows can talk and demand to have their testicles shorn off.

In any event I'm still awake, and still homeless, and the futon mattress on my mom's floor smells of bitter, bitter escrow worries. It's a daily battle to not abscond with the down payment in my bank account, run off to Vegas, and play poker for what, like 4 days. Of course I could win enough to buy a house in cash. Likely scenario: Poor, back on mom's floor, no hope of being a homo-ner.

So in the bank it sits. I remain, fat, high-cholesterol, ranting. My legs are white to the point of painful eye strain but I've lost the worry about what anyone thinks of me. I've been wearing shorts again lately, so how long can it possibly be til I"m in loud shirts with annoying novelty ties telling jokes that involve me striking a pose, head tilted just so, with a toothy open-nouthed "TA DAAA!" stance, jazz hands rampant? The taste of it is like acid on my tongue. Yet...oddly comforting. Office cut-up is so...standard. So easy a role. Of course, i laugh at, and invent, dead fetus jokes. so that kills my office cut-up possibilities.

Ah well. My foot has fallen asleep. I think this post brings navel-gazing to a higher, more pure level. Its my small contribution to the world. Suck it, world. Suck it dry.

doobie doo

I often sit and fret that my car will be towed.

i wish i hadn't quit my band. i liked being in a band.

maybe i'll make an old man band

i was watching futurama the other night. Mom (of Mom's Friendly Robot Company) was playing the part of the Wicked Witch of the West and, when one of her boys, playing flying monkeys, complained "But Mommy! You promised you'd make us monkey cakes!" She bitchslapped them all and said "By 'monkey cakes' I meant YOUR ASS!" and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And repeated it to Desi's little brother who ran away from my nerd-phermones. Nerdmones. Nice

one thing I don't follow: Chris moving to Denver. How on earth can you stand being so far from the ocean? I am about twenty minutes away and it seems too long. The idea of not being able to commune with the sea from time to time fills me with sadness.

RANDOM ATOM LYRICS (thank you Charles for introducing me to A&HP):

OK, here's what doing here, uh. We're gonna intergrate two very important things and those are intelligence and sports!

[singing]
In hockey you must score a goal
which one cannot do if between me and the net theres no hole
Most goalies are quick
react the drop of a hat
but I don't need to be quick when I got so much fat

What do you do with your 1500 pounds?
You play goalie!
[x2]

You can try the wristshot, slapshot, there's no getting through
I told you ten times you cannot fake out blubber, dude
I won't get tired, cuz I'll just lie on my side
So the other teams won't copy I'll be signed at the deadline.

Turn on channel 29 on the tele'
I've eliminated the kicksave and only block with my belly
Me and George Ezina, I'll be a new sensation
The NHL can't not let me play cuz that's discrimination!

What do you do with your 1500 pounds? (you can't spend it in England)
You play goalie.
[x2]

Hey man do you know whats up?
The Flyers could've used me in the Stanley Cup.
And I don't care if it ruins the sport of the game
cuz we're winning, Yeah we're winning!

What do you do with your 1500 pounds?
You play goalie. [repeat til end]
(and we dance like a wave of the ocean and dance. and we live and we love and we dance. and we dance and we dance and we dance)

Can you hear me Enya?

thanks johnny

Johnny Rotten cheered me up quite a bit. In response to being selected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Residuals:

Nice.

frozen feets

I took Elise out...we tried finding someplace to fish yesterday, but everything was so cold...at a beach in Oceanside we thought the sun being out would help, but the wind in our face was frigid, and the clouds soon rolled in and dumped on us. The water was choppy and gray-green and the shore break was right at our feet. All the same Elise managed two fish before we ran for it.



Barred Surfperch are the primary species we target at this time of year. They're breeding near shore, or at least have bred recently, and large, aggressively feeding pregnant females are close in. They put up a tremendous fight, but you have to let them go quickly (if you don't intend to cook them) or they'll prematurely deliver their babies, often all over you or the beach. Barred surfperch give birth to live young (viviparous), and it's alarming as hell to have a bunch of baby perch start squirting onto your hand.

On our way out, we found a couple fry (baby fish) on the path and Elise ran them back to the surf. Though they swam away, they're not likely to survive. A small chance, however, is better than the no chance they'd have sitting on a path 100' away from the water. A car pulled up as we started our car and a fellow we'd spoken with who was fishing jumped out. He had a tupperware dish with a bunch of baby perch in it, and dashed down the path. Apparently he hadn't been aware of the pregnancy issue. I commend his attempt to save the fry, but possibly it was hopeless...especially if he had them in fresh water...

Fishing can be brutal.

failure

everything seems to be failing right now.

my body feels like it's failing. i can't hear out of my left ear, and my jaw is displaced in a weird way. hurts when i bit down. i've been battling sinusitis, i believe, for about ten days now. i leak snot constantly and my head feels bizarre. my cholesterol is at 230. i eat oatmeal for breakfast and don't know how to eat dinner yet. i had crackers last night.

my mortgage deal seems on the verge of collapse, the house i foolishly thought i could purchase is going to be someone else's and my loan/real estate agent won't answer my calls. i'm seeing my future plans crumble in front of me. i'm living on my mom's floor.

my culture, my society is failing as well. the friends i love are far away, and the ones close enough are aloof. the relationships i count on seem to be weakening, due in no small part to my own failures as a friend, et al.

i know that ultimately failure is our legacy, and our fate, but i cannot help but feel i'm failing too soon. don't i get a little more of the sweet illusion of life as joy before the knife slips in? i guess that's foolish to hope for. hope is stupid.

i'm not moping around and whining in life though, i'm talking and doing things. inside i feel like someone dropped a toaster in my bathtub though. like i'm falling to small pieces in a doorless room, surrounded by grinning cardboard cutouts offering nothing

haha! perhaps i'm a sad douchebag too. man that's some maudlin bullshit.

i forgot!

I have a Bachelors of Assology!

the pardon thing

I know there's some good things happening, slowly, being fought every step of the way by the entrenched corrupt GOP establishment:

Abramhoff is singing like a sweet, bribe slingin' bird.
"Scooter" Libby is on trail.
"Duke" Cunningham is in jail.
Rep. "Katherine" Harris (R-FL) is staying in her Senate race, despite already hiring a lawyer to defend herself in the Wade Mitchell/Brent Wilkes bribery scandal that already took down "Duke".
Rep. Virgil "Goode" seems to have already paid off a bribe (R-TN i believe)
As many as nine other congresscritters might be going down over MZM etc scandals alone.
Tom DeLay faces a real-live challenge in his gerrymandered district, and his former aides are being indicted by the truckload.

But all of this aside, what's to stop Bush from just pardoning all of these fucking criminals if they can't weasel their way out of the cases on their own? Clinton pardoned scumbag Marc Rich, along with a host of others. Of course, you can't talk about Bill Clinton without someone saying "B-b-b-but he got a BLOWJOB! Under his DESK!" yeah yeah, shut the hell up. Stupid fucking Clinton-haters have wrecked our national discourse to an unimaginable point. But whatever, there is literally no reason why Bush won't just pardon every single one of them. He's a lame duck, he has no shame, and he does whatever Cheney tells him to do. Libby will be pardoned, Abramhoff probably, Ralph Reed when he's convicted, Grover Norquist, and on and on.

When Bush leaves office his pardon-list will look like a freaking phone book. Did you know? President Bush has never vetoed a single piece of legislation. Seriously. The "fiscal conservative" has not vetoed a spending bill, a social policy bill, or tax bill (of course, he has only seen tax bills that cut taxes for people exactly like him (sorry if it's old news, I just can't say it enough: Bush hates poor people unless they're mowing his lawn). But guess what! He has said he will veto any bill (possibly stemming from the vote in committee today) that threatens the takeover of US ports by a foreign state-owned company. Funny huh! And NOW, he wants congress to grant him line-item veto authority. For what?

But back to my point. Bush will pardon anyone who falls on their sword for him. He has to. See if I'm wrong.

on the radio

Not much of a post, but on NPR they were talking to a kollege kid with "6 blogs"! who feels people have a stick up their ass about privacy. I just thought I'd post about the question they asked him about posting about the interview, where he previewed his post.

But they said his "blog" is on myspace? my ass. myspace is News Corp. bullshit. Avoid at all costs.

Of course, I have a myspace account too. But it's a kitten with one eye.

In other news, xenophobia sucks. these congresscritters are all up in arms over the Dubai Ports deal, which I agree deserves consideration, but not for the reasons they gave...which seem to amount to "b-b-b-b-ut they's A-rabs!" Not so good. How about the fact that it's a state-owned company, and that state is known for money laundering for terrorists? That's a lot better reason if you ask me.

B-b-b-but they's A-rabs!

stats n fun

This is how people got here:

25 Feb, Sat, 00:04:26 Google: james hong booger
25 Feb, Sat, 02:40:34 Google: stupid songs with baby faces
25 Feb, Sat, 16:01:52 Google: jeebus
25 Feb, Sat, 16:43:23 Yahoo: www fuck .com
27 Feb, Mon, 10:29:16 Google: Booger And Snotty
28 Feb, Tue, 10:16:07 Google: poopty peupty pants
01 Mar, Wed, 04:52:00 Google: mc chris tussin shirt
01 Mar, Wed, 09:09:35 Google: stupidest fights
01 Mar, Wed, 22:35:54 Google: useless piece of shit
02 Mar, Thu, 09:33:56 Google: baby fight
02 Mar, Thu, 23:42:47 Google: peupty
03 Mar, Fri, 20:18:44 Google: Randy "Duke" Cunningham
04 Mar, Sat, 11:06:47 Google: lake chapalla mexico
04 Mar, Sat, 16:38:02 Google: what the bleep bullshit
06 Mar, Mon, 00:11:46 Google: I wanna rock your body (til the break of dawn)
06 Mar, Mon, 18:23:48 Google: fighting baby
07 Mar, Tue, 18:53:48 Google: peupty peupty pants
07 Mar, Tue, 21:19:34 Google: stroker and hoop critical interpretation
07 Mar, Tue, 23:41:52 Google: babyfight.com
08 Mar, Wed, 12:42:24 Google: baby fight

The second to last one doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, why search for "babyfight.com"? Why not just enter it?

I had a visitor from Iran, which is weird, I don't know anyone there, and one from Korea. Koreans have cool names.

Okay, I'm going to live under a bus forever.

More stuff

I stop in at Eschaton every morning to see what's what in the world. It's a handy jumpin-off point to lots of fun stuff. Or rage-inducing stuff, I'm trying to keep myself from exploding in rage once in a while.
I hadn't visited Oliver Willis' site in a while, and it's worth stopping in. If only for one of the best taglines ever put under a blog headline.
A poll yesterday had Bush's approval ratings in the 20's. That's pretty much where it should be. I've been saying for a long time the Bush clan has a natural constituency of the super-rich and those who live off the super-rich of a little less than 10% of the country, so his approval ratings should reflect that, don't you think?
Let's see...what has Bush done to help the poor? Nothing. He's slashed every social program he could get near. He's feeding their fear while trying to push through sweetheart deals for his terrorist-supporting Arab state-owned companies. He's aggressively pursuing every safeguard that the lower class has for equitable treatment under government: "tort reform", "health savings accounts", regressive taxation, and on and on.

so why is a 29% approval rating surprising? It should be lower.