Unreal Time
08.01.04 (2:09 am) [edit]I just watched Real Time With Bill Maher, one of the cooler things on HBO (and therefore the planet, since no other network has one-tenth the balls or the content) hosted by one of my favorite comedians. It's taken me a long time to warm up to Maher over the years, but I've come to love him.
Observations:
One of tonight's guests was Kim Campbell, former Canadian prime minister, who I've seen on the show before. Too bad she's Canadian, I'd love to see her vote counted (then uncounted by a computer with no paper trail after it matches her name with a black not-actually-a-felon) in the upcoming US election. Smart lady. I enjoyed her comment that no one in her country would ever get elected to the top office if they said God had told them to run, and that they thought the jury was still out on evolution. Welcome to America, boys and girls. She also made some excellent comments to Ralph Nader.
Michael Moore provided some solid commentary, but I turned off the TV in disgust at one point, because he CAN'T SHUT THE FUCK UP. He was debating some senator from California, some faceless Republican whore whose name I can't remember because I DON'T CARE, and it quickly turned into standard TV political bullshit where you don't know what they're saying because they're saying it loudly AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME. Save that crap for debates with your uncle over dinner where it belongs, Mike. You've got a unique opportunity at this point in American history. You've been able to get the truth out about George W. Bush in a way nobody else has. Your energy and your relentlessness are admirable. Don't fuck it up by behaving like the other assholes, by being a paranoid over-defensive 12-year old TWIT. I know, I know. I'd like to yell at the whore-like Senator who dresses far better than me too. I feel your pain. But that doesn't mean you DO IT. Being a highly visible figure who relies more on instant emotion and gut-reaction than on being rational makes you look a bit more like the current President than it does somebody who can be taken seriously enough to help take the cocksucker out in November. I'd have a hard time keeping it together too, there's times where I probably make Lewis Black look like Charlie Brown I want to explode and kill somebody so bad, but I haven't been on TV debates before. YOU HAVE. I'd hope you'd have learned a few things by now. Yer standard guy on the street can afford to blow up and yell at Republicans on TV. THEY CAN'T HEAR US. They hear you. Use your position with some sense, and you might do even better than you already have. I say it in love, because I think you're better than these peoole. I WANT to believe that. But you look a bit too much like a paranoid freak. It doesn't have to be that way. You're smarter than that. Shaking up boring, complacent people at an awards show is one thing, acting like a kid whose dad won't let him have the car keys on a debate show is something else.
The unnamed Senator got a nice round of laughter after stating that "this president has a commitment to science." Republicans are so good at unintentional humour.
One of the finer moments in the history of television must be the moment when Maher and Moore got on their knees on either side of Ralph Nader and begged him to stop his campaign. Nader, being the pig-headed misguided shit he is (these qualities in no way removing the good work he's done, or taking away from his view of our current situation, because he's mostly right) was of course unmoved. But he did take Moore's baseball cap off for a moment, which I thought was funny. Too bad he's so fucking clueless about his place in this election. Yeah, Ralph, we DO need choices. And we're not going to have ANY choices for another four years if you help Bush win, you dope. How the fuck does winning three percent of the vote help the country, Ralph? Come on, I wanna know. I'm not the hugest Kerry fan either, but he is NOT the same thing as Bush. I mean, come on. His whole campaign until this week was pretty much about nothing but how he's NOT BUSH. Now that he's really making it clear exactly how he really isn't the same as Bush, that he's actually got a lot of his own shit to offer, maybe you could WAKE THE FUCK UP and get your ass out of the way. Serve your country well. Don't be an asshole. STOP THE MADNESS, Ralph!
Maher's final monologue was one of the finest examples I've heard of what I consider to be the goal of true comedy - speaking the truth that needs to be told right now, and making it funny. I can't do justice to it here, but the basic idea is that if you're going to be a television network that provides news, then PROVIDE it, PARTICULARLY when it's a national convention for a political party. You know, something that's kinda IMPORTANT. Don't chop it up, don't fuck with it, don't make the guy who's running for office sweat his ass off during his speech out of fear that you'll cut him off in favor of the Ashlee Simpson show if he doesn't get if over with quick. He's outlining his plan for OUR NATION'S HISTORY, not doing a commercial for low-carb tofu burgers.
I'm glad I decided to avoid most of the convention at the time, and went back to watch the complete videos of a few of the key speeches online. I've got a few more to watch. But it made me feel better about who I'm voting for in a few months. Of course, I also caught a bit on the Daily Show showing the general media reaction to Al Sharpton's speech (which I highly enjoyed) and I wanted to start hunting down news anchors to sacrifice on a bloody altar to Satan under the moonlight while wearing nothing but a loincloth made out of Michael Moore books. Can ANYONE seriously believe "the media" is one vast cauldron of "liberalism" when they treat Al Sharpton like the crazed aunt you usually keep locked in the attic, but she escaped tonight in just enough time to get in front of a camera? No matter what you think of Sharpton (who most Republicans like to think of as a wackjob, which makes you wonder if they've looked in their own attic at Ann Coulter latley), the insistence of these people to minimize him in such a blatant and vile matter is a BIG mistake. I hope a bunch of militant black Chris Rock fans move into some of these "news" people's neighborhoods and play old Public Enemy records at top volume at 3AM. Those shallow, arrogant fucks.
I've decided that the only TV from now on (at least until November) that I'm going to get my news from is going to be Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, because those guys TELL you when they make shit up. When it comes to actual information, I'm READING the news from now on (with the occasional online video file when needed) which is more than you can get our fucking president to do. Of course, I've mostly been doing that for months now anyway. But fuck it. Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, KKK, NRA, OPEC, ABBA, and whoever the fuck else is fucking with our news can LICK me.
Jesus H. Fuck In A Basket. It's 3:09AM. I think I forgot to take my sleeping pill. FUCK.
Oh, I watched The Bourne Identity with Sheryl tonight. Excellent little flick. Now I gotta go out and see the sequel, and I usually HATE sequels. This one looks to be damn fine, though.
Love and fuckity-fuck-doodle,
Dougie
This Blog Entry Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Politics
07.28.04 (11:09 pm) [edit]I've been ignoring the Democratic Convention for the most part, only reading about it, since actually watching it requires more than I've felt like giving to these people, even as I recognize that I still have to vote for them this year.
But last night I turned on the TV and came upon MSNBC just in time to catch Barack Obama's speech. I'm very, very glad that I did. What a great alternative to the greasy smugness of so many other currently prominent politicians, Kerry included. Obama has the kind of TV-ready charisma the other guys don't, and it doesn't come off contrived, even though he's certainly extremely good at choosing his words and how he presents himself. And while little of what he said was new, it was definitely passionate and articulate. The guy has a vision, and now that the Democrats are ready for a vision (as opposed to at the beginning of the year, when they seemed more concerned with being petty bickering fuckstools) he's got a lot to offer them. I felt at the beginning of the campaign that Howard Dean had a lot to offer (and I still do) but of course, he wasn't really "one of the boys" and the other candidates tore him to shreds, enlisting the help of their media buddies to pretty much destroy the guy in a flash. But Dean didn't exactly help himself - for all his passion and strength of ideas, he was just too awkward for a political environment that cares more about appearance than substance. If you're not slick, you're fucked. Dean is about as slick as a box full of nails, and he got fucked.
Obama doesn't have that problem, he's as presentable as he is smart. He's slick, but it seems more natural than it does coming from the crew of used-car salesmen that make up most of the rest of his party. (And the other party as well, who are currently trying to sell us a car with no brakes, driven by a guy who can't read the fucking owner's manual.)
It's odd to see a state senator get this kind of attention, but he obviously has a place this year, and I hope he can draw in plenty of people to get out there and vote in November. That he'll likely appeal to many white people as well as black is encouraging. It's unfortunate that he had to play along, with his reference to John Kerry as "the man who embodies the best this country has to offer" - no sane person could possibly believe such a ludicrous statement, or we really ARE fucked as a nation - but that's politics in America, and it's certainly a far less damaging lie than any perpetrated by Bush and his crew of mongoloid death-slugs. Sometimes in the battle our nation finds itself in, you have to align yourself with unsavory people, people you don't trust, people you don't like, people you might not even invite into your own home. That's why I state my support for the Democratic Party this year.
Our whore-puppet president must be brought down, and must be made to answer for his deeds. At one time I thought that the Republican Party represented the "freedom" that you hear Un-Curious George talk about so much (when he isn't using the word "resolve", which I swear that motherfucker says 497 times per speech) but it's clear that freedom in Bush's America extends only to those who sorta smell like him. While an Arab-American who has never shown any hint of criminal behavior can be "interrogated" under the horribly-named "Patriot Act" for merely LOOKING like a terrorist (And what exactly does a terrorist look like? Well, an Arab of course. Any good white American knows that.) the true criminals who infest our government and our major corporations are rewarded for their sins with more, more, more. A CEO can spend 15 grand on a fucking umbrella stand with company money, but a black guy sitting on Vine Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio can't spend shit on shit. And don't give me that "those bums are just bullshitting you, don't give them any money" crap, because I KNOW half of them are full of shit. But when you see these people often enough, when you step out of your white little world (and make no mistake, *I* live in a very comfortable white-person existance, and I feel no guilt about it at all) and OBSERVE things, it's painfully obvious that something is really wrong with this country's priorities. Blowing the fuck out of a nation halfway across the world, for no good reason, and spending TONS of money doing it while people right here in America can't pay rent on a one-room doghouse, well, you figure it out.
A couple weeks ago, I had dinner with some friends in Dayton. Driving home, I decided to take a quick trip to the Dayton library, since I hadn't been there before and mostly wanted to see what kind of local history/genealogy collection they had. When I came off the exit and stopped at the red light, a man on a bicycle came seemingly out of nowhere and raced up to my window. I'll confess to being a bit weirded out by it, but the guy was obviously desparate for something. I rolled down my window and he told me that his son had just been born and...I don't remember what he said after that. The story didn't matter, the fact that I saw or heard nothing to make me believe this guy was lying to me was really all I needed to know. I've said "no" to people asking for money on the street, I say it all the time. Of course, half the time I don't have any money EITHER, but that's not the point. I gave him the little bit of cash I had, not even enough to buy a fucking combo meal at a fast-food joint, but it was what I had, and I figured that no matter what the guy's situation was, he probably needed it more than I did.
What particularly troubled me, and why I'm bothering to write this, is the one other thing I remember him saying, because it stuck out so much, and sounded so genuine. In the middle of rambling about whatever it was he needed cash for, I heard "All black people aren't bad, you know that." I DO know that, and he said it as if to say that he could tell I did know it, but he felt he needed to say it anyway. The fact that he felt this way, that he needed to say this, really bothers me. Not because of him, but because of what it says about America that any black person should ever have to remind any white person that their race shouldn't be regarded as some kind of criterion for whether or not you're going to help them out. Plenty of "bums" certainly are just that (though few whites want to admit that many "bums" are white guys) but that's ultimately not what matters. The people in this country who DO need help, people of all colors and ethnicity, are not served by leaving our focus on a few assholes. Merely giving a couple bucks to black guy isn't going to do much either (though it might make the guilty white liberals among us feel really good about themselves as they drive off in their SUVs to another low-carb meal) but a spirit of generosity is always preferable to a spirit of greed, and the tunnel-vision of those who paint all poor people on the street as "bums", who say such inane things as "why should MY tax money go to some damn welfare family?", and who remain unmoved by stories of violence against political prisoners because, well, that's on the other side of the world, and besides, they're not me, THAT attitude is what is going to bring this country down and turn us ALL into bums pissing on dumpsters if we don't get our shit together now. If we can't see that our actions have consequences, that the misfortune of another is the concern of us all, because it DOES affect us all, if we can't see that, we are fucked. Right in our stupid asses. If that guy on his bike in Dayton, Ohio suffers, we ALL suffer in some way.
Assfucking whore-monkeys who call themselves "conservatives" will call us "liberals" for believing this, but don't let the simple-minded fuckmongers fool you with corrupted language and corrupted pseudo-ideals. Ideals based on "us against them", rooted as they are in this case by a depraved perversion of a once-noble religion whose core message ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") bears absolutely no relation to the doings of these people, these ideals have no place in a society that truly wants to be free, and wants to be safe. Our failure in the past few years to treat the rest of the world with respect should come as no surprise. We can't treat our OWN people right, why the fuck do those damn foreigners think we might actually be good to THEM? Jeez, some fuckin' people.
So the fuck-mongers and shit-bastards will crawl their slimy path, but we CAN slow them down, and possibly some day put them in their place. I don't believe in a world that has no assholes, or that does everything as it should be done. That's a fairy tale. But I DO believe that there is no need for our stupid world to be the way it is now, and that we can make it much more tolerable. The current Democratic opposition to the Bushfuckers won't accomplish this, they're too mired in their own brand of whore-ism. But they certainly can make a small start, even if only in spite of themselves. And maybe a few of their number can do better. If Barack Obama is more than just words (and I really want to believe he is) then there is some hope. This isn't about agreeing on certain issues, it's about an entire way of approaching what it means to be an American and a citizen of this planet. Let's hope a few of us can bring that approach to the forefront of the nation and build on it.
OK, I'm done. Did I use the word "motherfucker" anywhere in there? Gotta use that word. Motherfucker! Motherfucker! There, now I've put things back into balance. Save our country, and motherfucker. Two sides of my stupid coin, boys and girls.
Love and stuff,
Dougie
Dio Fa (AKA A Little Ugly On The Side)
07.20.04 (10:36 pm) [edit]For those who care, a preview of my next Obscenity Of The Day:
Assbaggus Stupidicus Fuck
These are the things I think about while dumbasses parallel park badly and hold up traffic.
Notes on this week's array of stupid shit:
When Gov. Arnold, Whoopi Goldberg, and Linda Ronstadt can all offend a nation in the space of a week or so, you know we're fucked. As far as I'm concerned, Michael Moore is cool, Bush is a cunt, and people who hate fags are girlie-men. Does that cover it well enough? Next topic.
I was going to write some amazingly long head-in-ass essay about the shit going around in my head in recent days regarding my own sorry self and my place in the universe, but I'll keep it short.
I've been reading a lot lately, which went from general history, to the discovery and exploration of America and the Pacific, to early Christianity and Gnosticism. Last night I finished reading The Most Over-Seriously-Taken Book Of The Year, yes, you guessed it, The Da Vinci Code. I loved it. I don't care if all "the facts" are straight, it's a goddamn novel. And a goddamn good one at that. Kept me glued down and completely sucked in, even while I suffered from three days of horrific ADD and averaged maybe 20 pages an hour. It's just excellent writing and a cool story, which just so happens to raise some fascinating questions about Christianity. Who gives a fuck if it's "right" or not? It makes you think. (AHHH! Not THAT!!) People looking for historical accuracy or absolute spiritual truth should turn instead to The Bible, which is neither, and is another great work of fiction that people take too fucking seriously. And isn't as fun to read as Dan Brown novels. But it makes you think too. Well, it should, but I guess one has to have a BRAIN first. Minor detail.
I was getting interested in the Gnostics just before reading The Da Vinci Code, though some of that stems from recent TV programs (on the History Channel) that probably exist because of the popularity of that book. But I've heard whispers of these things for years, more so recently, and I found myself greatly impressed that I've been circulating in my head some ideas about God that include the general Gnostic concept of him - a rotten fucking asshole that created a stupid, fucked-up world, who is not the "True God",but a half-God that exists apart from the true source of us all (who we should be aiming for instead of the "creator God"), and whose story in the Old Testament (particularly in the first chapters of Genesis, including the story of Adam & Eve) has been told very differently from the way shit actually went down.
I had part of this in my head, I've read about the rest. It's not that I necessarily believe it, I just think it's interesting and makes for a far better way of fucking up your children's lives than telling them that God loves them dearly but will kick the shit right out of their ass if they don't do exactly as they're told.
And I did some research on the Masons today, which turned up any number of lunatic-fringe Christian webpages about how the Masons are Satan-loving evil-doers, seemingly all because THEY BELIEVE IN RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE. God forbid! How dare they allow people to think for themselves! Evil! Evil! Praise be to our very own Blind Idiot God for showing us that HE is the only truth and WE are the only ones going to heaven, while those fucking Shriners rot in Hell! Halle-fuckin'-lujah!
Humans are entertaining creatures. Dumber than a box of shit, but entertaining.
That WAS the short version. If it wasn't, you'd be maybe a fifth of the way done reading right now. But I'm tired. Have a lovely evening.
Love,
Dougie
The Very Definition Of Bullshit Rhetoric
07.14.04 (1:47 pm) [edit]Here is the most amazingly bizarre thing I've read so far during this ludicrous debate over same-sex marriage:
"I would argue that the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance. Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?" - Sen. Rick Santorum
My humble message to Senator Santorum - May your shit come to life, and kiss you.
Love,
Dougie
Voyage Of The Infernal Poopiehead
07.08.04 (7:32 pm) [edit]OK, that's probably not the real title. But here's something I just did:
Sail across your dreams
To claim Magellan's prize
The world, your world
It's not so small as you think
But also not very much larger
I claim this blame
In the name of again
And I can't remember how I got here
Only that it took days upon days
That turned magically before my ears
Into clumps of wasted years
Shitfucky! I cried
But not even the drakes did listen
They were too busy, you see
To look down upon me
They had new lands before them
And those looked better
Find the courage to thrill
Yourself at your own will
It's not always good to rhyme
So I won't attempt it now
Sail on
Groove on
You funkless white duck matron
Go forward now
Love,
Dougie