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9.30.2003
Animal RightsLadies and Gentlemen, I give you-- a day in the life of our Nation's Capitol. Mayor Stalls Contract For Animal Shelter Williams Wants Bidding Process Reviewed By Arthur Santana Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 30, 2003; Page B04 D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams put on hold yesterday a contract that would have allowed a small Toronto organization to begin running the D.C. animal shelter this week, saying he wanted to make sure the bidding process was carried out properly. Williams (D) made the announcement two days before the contract awarded last week to the Humane Society of Canada was to take effect. He said he asked the D.C. Office of Contracting and Procurement to defer implementation of the contract until city lawyers could review it. That could take up to 10 days, said his spokesman said. "I want to assure that the bid process was conducted properly and that all District laws and procedures were followed," Williams said in a statement. In the meantime, Williams said that the city Health Department will continue to run the shelter at 1201 New York Ave. NE. The mayor's announcement came after dissent from several animal groups and city officials, who have questioned the qualifications of the Canadian group. The Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, which represents about 100 animal organizations across Canada, said the group is not qualified. "The Humane Society of Canada has no experience or involvement in animal control or shelter operations," Bob Van Tongerloo, chief executive of the federation, the counterpart to the Humane Society of the United States, said in an interview yesterday. "As far as we know, they don't do anything." Michael O'Sullivan, executive director of the Humane Society of Canada, could not be reached yesterday. Last week he said that he was aware of the criticism. He said he was busy last week meeting city officials, assessing the shelter and trying to make peace with local animal groups that have spoken out against his organization. Among the critics are the Washington Human Society, which had run the facility for 20 years before pulling out after a contract dispute with the city. "We don't want to get involved in the politics," O'Sullivan said. "We just want to help animals." Last week, the city's Office of Contracting and Procurement awarded O'Sullivan's group a four-month, $657,000 contract. The full contract -- one year and four successive one-year renewals at $2 million annually -- would have to be approved by the D.C. Council. The Washington Humane Society had also put in a bid for the contract. Council member Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8), chairman of the Committee on Human Services, said yesterday that she intends to hold a hearing with city officials and O'Sullivan next month to inquire about the contract. The Humane Society of Washington withdrew from the shelter Sept. 5, frustrated that the city had not offered it a long-term contract in two years. The city Health Department subsequently took over the shelter while contract negotiations with the two groups commenced. The negotiations with the local group failed chiefly on two of the city's sticking points: unilateral authority to make changes to the contract at any time and to issue short-term contract extensions after the first year, said Jacques Abadie III, the city's chief procurement officer. Abadie said yesterday that those provisions are standard but that the Washington Humane Society rejected them. He said the Canadian group was willing to concede to those points and thus was awarded the contract. Abadie said that his office investigated the qualifications of the Canadian group and that it met the city's criteria. He said he welcomed the mayor's request to review the contract. "I think it was all done in accordance with the rules and regulations," Abadie said. "But anytime anyone wants me to review it for them, I'll certainly do that." O'Sullivan said he has worked in animal protection for more than 30 years and founded his group 10 years ago. He said that although his group of 10 employees doesn't actually run a shelter, he's up to the task of running the District's facility, which impounds about 13,000 animals a year. "All of the duties that I'll be overseeing I've actually done myself with hands-on experience," O'Sullivan said. O'Sullivan, 49, said that he has no plans to bring workers from his Toronto staff to the city's shelter but that he and the new shelter manager, Alvaro Posada-Salazar, who has worked with him and lives near Bogota, Colombia, will move to the city to run the shelter's day-to-day operations. © 2003 The Washington Post Company The previous article ran in today's Washington Post [the picture is culled from other sources]. My sister was formerly employed by the Washington Humane Society. She had been a human educator, an animal control officer, and then a shift manager before being laid-off by the Society because of the lack of a contract. The DC government has a history of contracting specious organizations/businesses to perform crucial infrastructure tasks. In my world, animal control is a necessary service provided to the citizens of the District of Columbia and to the natural world that has to co-exist and put up with the human world. If an organization that has no workers in the Uninted States, whose supervisor would relocate from Bogota, Columbia, and no history of performing the tasks that it would be contracted for can win out over the oldest humane organization in the world and it's local offshoot, then the process is severely fucked up. On top of that, what good does a four-month contract do in the grand scheme of things? That is enough time to maybe move in and hire accordingly. Ridiculous. I am already mourning the hundreds of animals that will almost certainly suffer needlessly due to this morass of graft and corruption. The picture above is that of a pit bull puppy recovering from being fed a firecracker. This and far worse atrocities occur daily in the city. Who is minding the store? Who will exercise our responsiblity for the animals that we subjugate? Fiscal responsiblity is one thing, moral responsilbity is quite another. If you happen to read this, and you live in DC, call your councilperson and make damn sure that the animals are cared for. • • • • • 9.26.2003
UpdateThe largest telemarketing industry group says it wants its members to abide by the national "do-not-call" list next week despite two court rulings that have thrown the program's future into legal limbo. "We are telling our members, yes indeed, we don't want you calling people who have told anyone they don't want any calls," Direct Marketing Association President H. Robert Wientzen said Friday. He said he hasn't had time to arrange agreements making that request binding, but "up to the moment I have had nobody disagree." The list of nearly 51 million phone numbers is scheduled to go into effect Wednesday, but rulings by two federal courts have made that plan unlikely. U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham in Denver issued a ruling late Thursday saying the list violates telemarketers' free speech rights. • • • • • 9.25.2003
Just For Yuks
Here is a great interview with Berkeley Breathed done by the Onion in 2001. It is the perfect hors d'oeuvre to his new strip debuting in November. Oh, and new Essential Media for you to digest. • • • • • Screwing the Little Guy Once AgainA couple of months ago, the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] created a website and 1-800 number that any fed-up American could call and have their phone numbers registered to be placed on the "no-call" list. The purpose of this list was to provide a block to all the telemarketeers out there who insist on calling you to peddle their wares and services. All of which are specious in either content or context. I mean, who is going to buy life insurance from some automaton on the end of a phone line with a good feeling about the deal? Who is going to accept that kind of substandard salemanship for something so important? It boggles my mind. Anyway, the Federal courts have, again [!] blocked the initiation of the no call list. A federal judge in Denver late today ruled that the government's plan to curb unsolicited telemarketing calls was unconstitutional, another blow to plans to implement a national do-not-call list next week. The decision by U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham was announced late today after Congress, in a rare display of speed and bipartisanship, voted to overturn another federal judge's decision this week to halt the government's plan to allow Americans to block telemarketing calls to their homes. Consumers have placed more than 50 million phone numbers on the anti-telemarketing list by using the Internet or a toll-free telephone number. Beginning Oct. 1, marketers would have risked an $11,000 fine each time they called a number on the list. That's great. Bow to the influence of the corporate lackeys and the special interest again! I mean who cares if 80 million Americans had already signed up for the service? Who cares that this actually will mean a surge in telemarketing calls to us poor bastards who just want to not have to check our caller ID [psychotic ex-girlfriends and work-related calls aside] every time we pick up the phone. It would be nice to not have the evening interrupted with the ringing of the phone crashing in on dinner, or prime-time, or for fuck's sake, bedtime. I once got a call from an asshole at 11:30 pm. That's the time of night that I pay attention, it may be an emergency or even a booty call. That's important, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna be distracted by the words "this is a courtesy call on behalf of Sears, or Liberty Mutual, or GEICO, or anyone, ever again. Jesus, I'm reduced to cheering for Congress as the underdog! I usually have to rely on the courts to make the rational descions. Tell 'em all to screw themselves and sign up for the list here! Here's a bit more food for thought: it seems that our tormentor is also our savior. [The following article is from April, 2003] When the federal government recently decided to go after unwanted telemarketing calls, it sought bids from companies to set up a nationwide "do not call" list. AT&T Corp.'s technology and low bid helped one of its subsidiaries win the 10-year, multimillion-dollar contract -- even though federal records show that AT&T has drawn the most consumer complaints for telemarketing practices in recent years. • • • • • 9.23.2003
Storm ChaserLast Thursday, I spent the morning running around trying to be just a bit more prepared than we currently were for Hurricane Isabel. I bought some canned dogfood, 2 large bags of ice, and more beer. We had plenty of flashlights, lanterns, batteries, bottled water, books, ponchos, tarps, etc. We're just too far inland to have had to worry about plywood or sandbags. If anything was going to get us it was going to be trees, and frankly, there's just not that much to be done when you live in a woodland ecosystem, but to cross your fingers and slam another Bud. Speaking of beer, I hate watery mass-produced swill, but it is easiest to come by here in the sticks. I have to drive nearly a half-hour to get to the nearest source of Newcastle. So, it was a Anheuser-Busch sponsored storm, and what a storm it was. In addition to all the above precautions, I also: stored away anything in the yard, or on the porches that could become airborne, filled the bathtubs with water and glued myself to the TV, straining to determine what was going to happen here. All I neglected to do was to shower. Well, my Dad works at Home Depot and he came home at 3 with stories of crazy people buying up everything they could think of to stave off the storm. He said that they got a tractor-trailer of 98 $4000 generators at 6am, all of them were gone by 10 am. One woman bought 4! 4@$4000=$16,000! She only needed one, but kept 3 other people from possibly having power because she had to be sure that one would work. Why? Do you have a relative at home on life support? You should have a generator already! I think that it's required to even bring a vegetative patient home. Why else? Desperate amounts of perishable food, husband just came back with the venison sausage to tide the family over for the winter and the freezer just can't stop? Or was it just because you can't miss your stories and Oprah? Why? Anyway, Isabel showed up with reinforcements around 6 pm, and for the next 4 hours I would toss on a slicker and walk the property checking for uprooted or broken trees. All told, there were only 3 trees on our property down, only one of which even had the potential to cause damage. It missed the DirecTV dish by 3 feet! That would have been a disaster! While I interspersed my rainy tours with continuously watching StormCenter4, or the VIPIR radar in StormCentral7, I really wanted to be out in it for the duration. It was fun! The trees were really whipping around, and I have always loved rainstorms. I like the isolation that being in the rain brings. I like the noise on my hat or hood, or car roof. I like getting soaked then going in and changing out of those wet things. So, I'm crazy, right? Sue me. We weren't supposed to get the strongest winds until around 11 pm, but at 10 pm the power went off. Right in the middle of CSI, dammit! Now, we're on a well, no power, no water. Did I mention that I hadn't showered? Thursday, the big book box closed early, also at 3pm. We weren't sure if there would be power on Friday, so we set up a system. One manager would go in around 8 am, see if there was power, if so they'd call all the employees and tell 'em, "Hey, we're working today." If not, they'd go home. Then I was to go in at noon and check the same thing. So, I bathed myself with a washcloth and a bucket tossed on a t-shirt and a pair of not too dirty shorts and went off on my merry way. There was no power at our store, but it seemed like everyone else was open. Bummer, an extra day off. So the power stayed off through Friday, and Saturday. Most of Friday consisted of talking my Mom down from her panicked aftermath state. Weird. She was really freaked out by all the damage that had occurred around her, but no to her or her property. Her cottage is on the tidal Potomac in Colonial Beach, VA. That place was devastated by storm surge and flooding. The 2 big restaurants were washed away completely and the Riverboat, which was basically a nightclub with off-track betting was really a river boat during the storm. I guess that's what really messed with her grasp on reality [which can be tenuous]. On Saturday my father and I were raking up in the morning, and when we finished, I called Jenn to see if I could beg a shower. I had reason to believe that her power was on. She said sure, so I collected my shampoo, deodorant, toothbrush and a towel and headed over there. After refreshing myself, and keeping Jenn from writing a really boring paper on "Why Egypt Qualifies as a Civilization" [bleah], and making tentative plans to go see a movie later that night, I came home to my Dad putting together a new chainsaw, "Hey, let's chop up trees." "Dad, I just showered for the first time in 2 days." "What do you have to be clean for? Come on, help." So my clean period lasted 2 hours. After the chainsawing, it was another spongebath, then I did go see that movie with Jenn and Jason and Paul. I mention it in the previous post. I actually wanted to see Underworld. Am I glad I was outvoted! I also crashed at Jenn's so that I could shower before work in the morning. I hadn't slept on a convertible sofa in a long time. But it didn't bother me very much. In conclusion, because the rest of the story is really boring, our power came back Monday, September 22, at 5:30 in the evening. That was nearly 4 days with no refrigeration [we lost all the ice cream, NO!], no air conditioning, no TV and strained eyes from reading by lantern light. The only ordeal left is to put up with my co-worker, Isabel's jokes tonight about how she was the cause of this devastation, etc. Nothing more Budweiser won't take care of. I want to finish that crap, and get some decent beer anyway. • • • • • 
Oh, Happy Day!Once Upon A Time In Mexico is the best movie I have seen this year. It has surpassed X-Men 2, Finding Nemo, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp is fucking hilarious, and Robert Rodriquez is a genius. Quentin Tarantino had better watch out, 'cause it's gonna take a hell of a flick to allow Kill Bill to surpass this movie as the best black comedy/action/melodrama of the year. Hey, how's this for a crazy idea, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt in a remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Stupid? Probably. But here's the kicker, they don't die at the end, eh, eh? On to other, more important news. Later today, you will be able to buy the 10th in Lemony Snicket's magnum opus, A Series Of Unfortunate Events. The Slippery Slope. Go buy it and read it. These kids books are too damn funny to be left alone by self-respecting adults. Hmm...I'm thinking that it really can't be his magnum opus, a word which in this case means "a very big flightless waterfowl with Oedipal issues and a twisted fascination with the Vice-Presidency", he has no other opus to compare it to. It also marks the release of Neil Gaiman's new Sandman story, and a great new critical work about Neil Gaiman's Sandman work in general. Also, Neil Stephenson's Quicksilver is out later today. There are many great things alreay said about this first of 3 huge volumes, but my favorite was this: "A rollicking epic containing the best parts of pirates, puritans and Seriously, it's tremendous, in more ways than one. I have to go read some more of it now. And not by candlelight any longer. Our power is back on, which is why I am able to write this in the first place. I'll tell of my Isabel-related misfortunes tomorrow. • • • • • 9.17.2003
My apologies to Adrienne, I blogged something she sent me without her permission. The offending article has been removed. Again, I apologize, but sometimes I am so starved for material that I get grabby. Mea culpa. Que sera, sera. Bygones.
• • • • • 9.15.2003
Dork NewsI have never bid for anything on eBay before yesterday. And I only did yesterday, because I just discovered the existence of a product that I must lay my grubby little hands on. It's a bust of Boba Fett. 
Yes, one half of my name sake, and my favorite Star Wars character that anyone ever does anything with. Up until now, I have only exercized my inner geek by gathering the Jedi and Sith action figures. No Greedo, no Jango Fett, no Amidala, no Captain Needa. Jedi only. They are arranged in a tasteful display in a dusty corner of my home where no guest who hasn't already commited to a more--shall we say--intimate relationship would notice. Anyway, I'll stop there. I bid on this item because it is apparently not available through any retailer that I can find, and dammit, we wants it! Sorry, channelling a bit of Gollum there. Jesus, could this post get any dorkier? Anyway--I bid $75. The original price was $50, and the only bid had been $60, which hadn't reached the reserve level [the level at which the owner would consider selling]. so I bid a bit higher, but I could only bid once. There were only 5 hours left in the bidding and I had to go to work. When I got home, I checked the auction. I had lost by a fucking dollar. A dollar! That pisses me off. If the bidding had gone to $120 or something, I wouldn't have cared. That was more than I wanted to spend anyway. But a dollar? That's like losing. I lost on eBay. I lost the chance to spend $75 dollars on a piece of high-quality, expertly-molded plastic that would have become nothing but a dust-gathering monument to my obsession with a fictional character, from a fictional galaxy far, far away. Dammit, I hate losing... ValidationAre you an intellectual? Well done. You are an intellectual who is clearly at ease with big questions and strong coffee. Your know your Sartre from your Schopenhauer. But remember: the line between an intellectual and a pretentious bore is at best thin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next time I'm kicking ass at Trivial Pursuit, I'll keep that advice in mind. • • • • • 9.12.2003
2 Tragedies and a TriumphThe Man in Black, Johnny Cash, is dead at 71. He died of complications due to diabetes. But I have this feeling it was more due to a broken heart. When his wife, June Carter Cash died in May, I thought: "he doesn't have long himself now." Here's a much better obituary at RollingStone.com Cash's Live at Folsom Prison is as essential an American album as Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. If you don't appreciate the man now, learn to. John Ritter is dead at 54. He died of an aortic aneurysm. That's a damn shame. He still makes me laugh. As Jack Tripper, his line "Lordy, lordy, lordy." is part of my daily vocabulary. Why, oh why, couldn't you have taken Joyce DeWitt instead?! Here's a better and more complete obit. Mr. Furley is putting on his black velvet leisure suit. But on a happier note, there's a new Batman movie in production. Christian Bale will give it a go as the other man in black, a younger Bruce Wayne just finding his way as a vigilante. Christopher Nolan [Memento, Insomnia] will direct. Sounds bad-ass. But I just can't celebrate too much right now. • • • • • Vindication At Last!So I get to work yesterday at about 1:45 pm. I sit at my desk and start answering my e-mail. Then there's a page for me. I get on the phone and the manager on duty tells me there's a call from someone named Campbell Smith who works for a TV news program based in New York. "It's about Julia Rose," she says. Dammit! I think, why are these people so late on the story. I have too much to deal with to get involved in this. Now, I have to tell you here that I'm only authorized to speak to media types off the record. Frankly, that's a phrase that I never thought I'd have to utter much less use seriously, but so goes life. I thought that maybe it was some small affiliate somewhere upstate, where my mother wants to move [that's another story] I was going to be speaking to some vapid hick who was only interested in scandal the same way that our local rag here is. And that's what got us into this trouble in the first place. Anyway, I pick up the phone. "Hello, can I help you?" "Hi, my name is Campbell Smith [it's a lady]. I'm with a TV show here in New York called the Daily Show, we're thinking about doing a piece on Julia Rose and the "chicken legs" comment. Could you speak with me for a minute?" I'm not really sure about anything after 'Daily Show', folks. I had stopped listening while my heart got going again. "Hello?" She asked while I waited for that first ka-thumpa. "Oh, yeah, the Daily." I said nonchalantly, "Yes, I'd be able to speak with you, but only off the record, is that OK?" "Sure, that would be great, we're trying to find out what happened from your point of view." Meanwhile, all I wanted to say was--YES! You're gonna skewer that bitch, right? You're gonna get Steve or Steve down there to Bawlmer and interview her wingnut-freak-hardbody ass, you're gonna do right by us, right? Damn this is cool, is Jon nearby? And by the way, you have a really sexy voice... AHEM! Let me get myself under control here and get back to the story. So I go on to tell her that this is a mere matter of a performer getting axed because the performance was poor and the audience didn't like it. I mentioned a few specifics like the fact that the cafe was empty during her show, the fact that she sang an off-color song that didn't really jibe with our all-inclusive image, and the fact that the newspaper didn't really call us and speak to us to get our side of the story. I also said that the first we heard of the particular "chicken legs" phrase was in the paper when the story came out. I said that we were as shocked as anyone. "You're going to interview her?" "Well, we're still trying to work out some details." Campbell [I feel a kinship here] seemed sympathetic and understood that the story was one-sided and that I was a fucking paragon of virtue and freedom. I offered her my corporate office number so she could call and get the official word. She said sure. Then I offered her my cell number and the url to this site. No I didn't but, SHIT I wish I had! I wish that I had done some kind of All the President's Men bullshit and totally subverted corporate policy. I want this story to happen, I want Julia Rose bound, gagged, tied to a spit and roasted. And I don't think that if she does read this, as she has visited this site previously, that it would matter one iota to her. She starving for publicity and that will be her downfall. At this point I was really nervous and wound up from the telling of the injustice, so I stuck my head out the door and screamed, "The Daily Show is on line 1! Could someone get me the number for Ann Arbor?" This was met with blank stares, open mouths, a chorus of "Who?" and one keening wail of "SWEET!"* I really hope that Campbell, Jon and the other fellows in the newsroom are kind to us, and damn well better not use my name or anything. But it would be worth it to be in trouble to see Julia Rose get whacked with sarcasm. This had better get aired. We deserve it, goddammit! 
Absolution, thy name is The Daily! *That would be Jenn. • • • • • 9.11.2003
9/11, Part 3I don't know abut you, but I've got my flag out on my porch today. There it flutters in the breeze, those stars and stripes stirring my emotions into a big, swell ol' pot of American stew. I flipped on CNN this morning to see if there were any tasteful remembrances going on today. I thought it was a rerun of last year's show. There they were again, all those people filing in and out of Ground Zero while the names of the victims were read, except the effect has worn a bit already. There were these 2 kids: a girl about 10, and a boy nearly 18 reading through the bottom half of the 'M's. When they had finished the folks that they didn't know, they got to read the names of their respective relatives who had perished. Well, the boy went first, "And my uncle, so-and-so!" Let me give some stage direction on that line. He read it like he was introducing the starting quarterback who everyone expected would miss the season with that ligament he tore in the car wreck that his girlfriend died in [But it was only just, since he was breaking up with her at the time, and she told him, she gave him plenty of warning, she said that "if you don't take it back, I'm going to drive us into the river!" He didn't take it back.]. With inflection learned from the Chicago Bulls announcer who used to introduce Michael Jordan. It went more like this, "And--my Uncle, SO-AND-SOOOO!!" I was freaked out, man. And the sweet little girl, dressed in her white confirmation dress with ribbons in her hair had to follow this smarmy, attention-starved post modern lout of a teenager, who thought he was on TRL introducing a video by Good Charlotte, with her small, little grief-ridden voice saying--and Jesus, I think I actually teared up, not entirely out of sympathy and my own 3-year old completely detatched trauma, but also in anger--saying "And my Dad." She added his name, but who cares. She was genuine, she was bereaved. That other kid may have well been some idiot that Howard Stern got to worm his way into the proceedings. But ain't that America? By the way, Blooger, er Blogger now has spellcheck! I'm a happy boy. And that truly is America. • • • • • 9.10.2003
Tribute and RebuttalThe following obituary was written by Alan Riding of the New York Times found on the Salt Lake Tribune website. I don't know exactly why, but whenever I search for news articles the SLC papers pop up an awful lot. I thought that I should have an impartial view of the woman as well as Adrienne's passionately worded rant below. And frankly, I was embarassed at my lack of knowledge regarding the deceased. Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker whose innovative documentaries about a Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1934 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 earned her both acclaim as a cinematic genius and contempt as a propagandist for Hitler, died on Monday night at her home in Pocking, south of Munich. She was 101. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, she was pronounced a Nazi sympathizer by the Allies and never again found work as a movie director. But her revolutionary film techniques influenced later generations of documentary makers and television commercial makers. She insisted that she was never a Nazi and that "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" were inspired only by her desire to create works of art. While her documentaries continue to be studied in some film schools, her repeated attempts to find financing for a new film always ended in failure, while public screenings of her movies and exhibitions of her photographs prompted protests. After the war she spent 20 years in relative isolation, living in her mother's apartment in Munich. Then, in the late 1960s, she reinvented herself as a photographer. She next took up scuba diving, claiming to be only 51, when she was 20 years older, to obtain a diving license. Two collections of her underwater photographs, "Coral Gardens" and "Wonders Under Water," were published in the United States. Last year, to coincide with her 100th birthday, she released her first movie in almost half a century, a 45-minute documentary of marine life called "Impressions Under Water." She made several trips to southern Sudan to photograph the Nuba tribes. Her first book, Last of the Nuba, published in the United States in 1974, to some extent rehabilitated her as an artist. She worked alone at first, then later with Horst Kettner, 42 years her junior, who lived with her until her death. She has no other survivors. When Riefenstahl was over 90, she again found herself at the center of heated debate when she was the subject of a three-hour documentary, "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" (1993), by the German filmmaker Ray Muller. At about the same time, she also published her own 669-page autobiography, Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir. In the documentary, Muller questioned her claim to have had few dealings with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. At the end of the documentary, Muller also tried to provoke her into admitting guilt for her past. "What do you mean by that?" she asked. "Where is my guilt? I can regret. I can regret that I made the party film, 'Triumph of the Will,' in 1934. But I cannot regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. So where then is my guilt? " • • • • • Bringing the Good NewsFirst of all let me apologize for my previous post. It was below my standards and I'm sure I disappointed many of you with it's disjointed and somewhat out of character dissing of Bush43 for doing something stupid. I usually laud the bastard for participating in the stupid crap that's going to lead to his single term ass being booted out of the Oval office next year. Sorry. More importantly, and here's to Adrienne for giving me the heads up first! I have some glorifying to do. Please allow me a moment to catch my breath and limber up my fingers. These words have been building up for 24 hours. The Washington Post reports that: MY FAVORITE COMIC STRIP CREATOR OF ALL TIME NO NOT CHARLES M. SCHULTZ HE'S DEAD, BUT WOULDNT THAT BE A TRICK, IS TRIUMPHANTLY RETURNING TO THE SUNDAY FUNNY PAGES WITH A NEW LARGE-FORMAT STRIP STARRING HIS MOST POPULAR CHARACTER NO NOT BILL THE CAT! OPUS, A NEW COMIC FEATURING EVERYONE'S FAVORITE PENGUIN OPURT WILL BE HITTING THE NEWSSTANDS AT THE END OF NOVEMBER. BERKLEY BREATHED, THE RENEGADE RECLUSE WHO PENS THE STRIP HAS BEEN OUT OF CIRCULATION [GET IT?] SINCE 1989 WHEN HE FOLDED HIS OUTLAND TENT AND WALKED AWAY AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME JUST LIKE MICHAEL JORDAN DID THE FIRST AND SECOND TIME HE RETIRED. AT THE TIME BERKELEY HAD ALREADY BEEN OVERSHADOWED BY BILL WATERSON'S CALVIN AND HOBBES AND, FRANKLY, HE WAS BURNT OUT. OUTLAND WAS A PALE SHADOW OF THE LUSH RIPE ENVIROMENTS AND FERTILE FIELDS OF BLOOM COUNTY WHERE BERKE PLAIN RULED THE POLITICAL COMIC LANDSCAPE AFTER DOONESBURY FOUUND A NEW HOME WITH A MUCH SMALLER CIRCULATION PAPER AND ITS SYNDICATE. WELL, AFTER OUTLAND DISAPPEARED I REMEMBER CRYING AND READING MY BLOOM COUNTY COLLECTIONS UNTIL THE BINDINGS WORE OUT MAYBE THEY'LL BE PUT BACK IN PRINT NOW SO I CAN REPLACE THEM. ANYWAY, BERKE HAS GONE ON TO WRITE A HALF-DOZEN BOOKS FOR KIDS WHICH I LOVE FO COURSE, SOME FEATURING OPUS AND OTHER CHARACTERS FROM BLOOM COUNTY: ROSEBUD, THE BASSELOPE FOR EXAMPLE. BUT WHILE THEY HAVE ALL BEEN CHARMING AND WELL ILLUSTRATED NONE HAVE STAISFIED MY SOUL LIKE THE ADVENTURES OF THOSE GUYS BACK IN A SMALL PRECINCT OF A UNNAMED STATE WHERE ANYTHING CAN AND DID HAPPEN OFTEN REFLECTING ON THE STATE OF AMERICA IN THE 80'S WHICH WAS ABYSSMAL DUE TO REAGAN'S SHENANIGANS WITH THE CONTRAS, IRAN, IRAQ, AND THE LAST GASPS OF THE COLD WAR. BERKE DEFTLY COMMENTED ON THE STATE OF THE CULTURE AS WELL. I MISSED ALL THAT DESPERATELY, WHILE CALVIN AND HOBBES WAS CHARMING AND FUNNY AND GARY LARSON PROVIDED SOME LONG NEEDED SURREALITY AND IRONY TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THE COMIC PAGES CONTINUED--AND STILL TO THIS DAY--TO BE DOMINATED BY CUTE FEEL GOOD STRIPS WITH NO REAL MESSAGE OTHER THAN LIFE SURE IS GOOD, HUH? WELL, BULLSHIT, GODDAMMIT! LIFE ISN'T GOOD AND ITS TAKEN AARON MACGRUDER'S BOONDOCKS AND A HOST OF UNDERGROUND STRIPS: TOM TOMORROW'S MODERN LIFE, RED MEAT, AND MATT GROENING'S LIFE IN HELL TO KEEP THE COMEDY ON AN EVEN KEEL. I LIKE MUTTS, DON'T GET ME WRONG, AND GET FUZZY APPEALS TO THE PET OWNER IN ME, BUT CHRIST FOLKS IF DILBERT AND DOONESBURY AND THE AFORMENTIOND BOONDOCKS WEREN'T THERE, WHAT WOULD THE COMICS CONSIST OF? I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, THE SAME SHIT THAT TV CONSISTED OF UNTIL 1997, FAMILY-BASED SITCOM PABLUM AND OLD FAVORITES THAT HAVE LOST THEIR LUSTER! I MEAN JESUS, THE KING OF ID, CROCK, FAMILY-FUCKING-CIRCUS?! FOR BETTER FOR WORSE HAS BECOME MORE LIKE MARY WORTH THAN MARY WORTH IS AND ALL THE SINGLE PANEL PUNCHLINE COMICS THAT PURPORT TO REPLACE THE FAR SIDE ARE COMPLETE CRAP AND THOSE THAT MAKE UP FOR SOME OF THE DEARTH OF ACTUAL HUMOR ARE HORRIBLY ILLUSTRATED [PEARLS BEFORE SWINE BEING A GOOD EXAMPLE] OH, I CANNOT WAIT FOR THOSE CHILL LATE AUTUMN DAYS OF 2003 WHEN BERKELEY AGAIN PUTS PEN TO PAPER AND BRINGS ME BACK TO THE GOOD TIMES I HAD DURING THE WORST TIME OF MY LIFE, ADOLESCENCE SPICED WITH DIVORCE, PAINFUL INTROVERSION AND TRYING TO GROW UP IN A WORLD WHERE THE BERLIN WALL WAS COMING DOWN AND BATMAN WAS PREMIERING AT THE CINEPLEX--THOSE HEADY DAYS OF RAW SUBURBIA, MY YOUTH, THE 80'S. Can you tell that I'm excited? Also, Leni Reifenstahl died. Too bad. • • • • • 9.05.2003
Hail to the Redskins--er, Chief!Football season is upon us. And in true dork fashion, I have signed up for fantasy football hosted by Yahoo! and commissioneered by J. This season I chose a team name that is evocotive of the famous Orange Crush defense of the Denver Broncos, but with my own ironic twist. I am the Yellow Press! For 2 reasons, one: because I am a member of that august and reactionary body, albeit an extremely fringe member out here on my island in the data stream. And second: as a commentary on the actuality of newsgathering at the beginning of the 21st century. I have occasion to watch the news once in a while, and more occasions to actually read the papers. The only bits of "news" that are reliable are the uncut or live video feeds [which are mostly pretty boring shots of pretty boring people taking about pretty boring things, and the Daily Show. Has anyone seen that footage of Bush43 dropping his dog? Canines are pretty good judges of character. And that dog wanted gone real bad. And more on the Prez. I watched the inaugural game in the NFL last night. My Washington Redskins vs. the New York J-E-T-S. The Redskins won on a field goal. Good, but not exciting. But I digress...Before the game in the spot usually reserved for some poor celebrity recruited to say, "Are you ready for some football?" ABC instead got Bush43 to give a little pep talk to the troops about the strenght of America and so on. And then he spoke the above line and Hank Williams started singing. Isn't that tripe really beneath the office? He continues to embarass this country and me. And I don't even like him. • • • • • 9.02.2003
YES! YES! YES!• • • • • PropsWelcome to the world of the button-heads, Jason. You'll see your link has been upgraded with your rather bland graphic. Make it flash or something, then it'll be interesting. • • • • • this site is copyright © 2002 no one [except where acknowledged] at least ¼ of this page's content isn't original, and all the images are taken from wonderfully ignorant sources who haven't sued...yet. |
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Banzai!'s Blog Of Fantastic Terror!      
Occasionally, I must write. I use my fingers to type and words come out. Occasionally, I must poop. I sit on the toilet, allow my bowels to contract and my sphincter to relax, then poop comes out. Occasionally, I get confused. This is the result.Silliness is the last refuge of the doomed. - Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.-the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America jeremiad (n) origin: French, Late Latin : a prolonged lamentation or complaint; also : a cautionary or angry harangue
ESSENTIAL MEDIA: books: films: music: tv: TEAM VENTURE QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "What am I, hearing things?! Am I all alone out here?! "Didn't you just feel the the wind of freedom whipping through your sweater vest? Can't you hear the wind callin', 'Little Miss, Little Miss Can't Be Wrong? "We're free! "We are the future! You're still thinkin' like the old Dean!" -Hank Venture
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