Lazy Sportswriter Pun Alert Countdown

Here at Bitter Old Punk Central, we're now monitoring the intartubes for the first reference to the New York Bretts.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: We have a winner.

It's Almost Football Season!

Congratulations to Birmingham native Andre Tippett for his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Also, HOF congratulations to Darrell Green, a real class act, one of my all-time favorite players, and probably still one of the fastest men on the planet.

Yay, football!

Not To Say I Told You So, But...

I started this blog as a reaction to the absurd state-mandated brainwashing I had to go through following a conviction for misdemeanor possession of marijuana. I had to go to twice-weekly piss tests and "counseling", I had to attend AA/NA meetings, I had to do 30 days in jail.

The jail I didn't mind so much. The biscuits and gravy for breakfast every Friday morning were much better than those served at Shoney's. I picked up roadside trash, lost some weight, got a tan. It was the stupid fucking counseling sessions that really got my goat. I was told, over and over, in the solemn terms usually reserved for those speaking from a pulpit, that I was a Marijuana and Alcohol Addict, and I Needed Help to Stop, because Addiction is a Disease.

Prove it, I said. The DSM-V, the manual psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, has removed "alcoholism" as a disease diagnosis. Instead, it lists "alcohol abuse" and "alcohol dependence" as different diagnoses. About marijuana addiction? Eh, not so much. In fact, it specifically states that there have been NO studies showing marijuana to be physiologically habit-forming. This didn't stop the sad-eyed hand-wringing by the counselors, who were convinced I was going to Hell doomed to die an addict.

I bitched, I moaned, I threw hissy fits and tantrums, I raged and railed against the dying of right reason in a pseudo-clinical setting.

My interrogators counselors were not pleased. I was not willing to accept Jeebus, I was not willing to kowtow to pseudoscience, I chose not to play. I followed the letter of the law in order to get through the damn thing without getting additional charges thrown at me or getting more deeply embroiled in the bureaucratic nightmare of drug court, but in our group meetings, I let my feelings be known.

I was in Denial, I was solemnly told. Doomed! Doomed! The ONLY way to solve my Addiction Problem was to Submit to a Higher Power, to go to Meetings, to Follow the Program. To Admit my Powerlessness.

Bullshit, I said. The counselors wrung their clammy hands and regarded me sadly.

Well, whaddya know. Turns out all that claptrap they were selling was just that.

Don't get me wrong -- addiction treatment is the right thing for many people: junkies, tweakers, pill-poppers, wet-brain long-term drunks. But it turns out (SPOILER!) that most people figure this stuff out on their own. Amazing! People shape up when they're sick and tired of being sick and tired! And many of them do it without state-mandated brain-washing!

Of course, the massive treatment industry consisting largely of marginally qualified sanctimonious hand-wringers will roll right over this study, because they want to keep their jobs and they're unqualified to do anything else.

But it's nice to be right once in a while.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go light a spliff, eat a baby, and sell my soul to Satan.

Troy King's Wide Stance

Well, it looks like our notoriously prudish state attorney general may be less of a prude than we had believed. Rumors are swirling that Troy King, he of the sex toy ban and the anti-gay rhetoric, has been booted out of his home after his wife found him canoodling...with another gentleman. This is still merely a rumor, and so for the moment Mr. King is assumed to be as stalwartly hetero as John Wayne and Hitler, but should it turn out to be true, then it's another data point supporting my theory that cognitive dissonance is a necessary precursor to success as a right-wing politician. I mean, this is the guy who wrote this hateful screed to the student newspaper while in law school:

The time has come for the majority to rise from its figurative slumber. The picture on the front page of Monday's issue of The Crimson White looked like the front page of Sodom and Gomorrah News the day before those cities were destroyed. I and a majority of the students were appalled not that these students would pose for this picture, for we have seen that the homosexuals in America will do anything to grab a headline but rather I am furious that this paper would sacrifice its journalistic integrity for a tabloid-esque reporting! It is indeed sad that America has fallen to the point where she will condone any type of deviant, immoral activity in which a group desires to participate. However, perhaps even more compelling evidence of the perversion of America is evidenced not only by the fact that this story was published in the newspaper but rather that it was graphically depicted on the front page.

The existence of the Gay/Lesbian alliance on this campus is an affront to the state of Alabama, its citizenry, this diversity and its students. However, it is also an outrage to compel those students with both moral and religious objections to the activities and ideas espoused by this organization to contribute money, via student fees, to subsidize these activities.

One has but to look at the forces which the controversy has united--from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Organization of Women to the Queer Nation just to name a few--to clearly see how corrupt a cause this truly is.

The argument can often be heard that what goes on in the bedroom is private. However, it is flawed reasoning to attempt to justify the gay movement in America today on this basis, for they have taken sex from the confines of the bedroom into the streets, the evening news, and now even the front page of the newspaper.

Boy, it would suck to be so filled with denial and self-loathing. I imagine Troy King is thinking, "I'm not queer! I just like having sex with men!" If the rumor is true, that is. I have to admit to a frisson of anticipation at watching this sordid story unfold.

Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

RIP, Thomas Disch

Is Thomas Disch the Right God for You?

(An Advertisement}

Once a mortal, soon to be in Heaven, I may be
your best chance to distinguish yourself
as someone specially Blessed and bound for Glory
without going to a lot of trouble or expense.
The Scripture is out there now
[The Word of God, Tachyon Press, $14.95],
proclaiming my Divinity and promising Salvation.

So why not declare yourself a believer Now
and reap all the associated Tax Advantages?
Start with a little Tom My God shrine beside the BBQ
and before you can say Glory Be the whole back yard
and all its gardening tools are tax-deductible!
If your tax returns are challenged, show this poem
to the judge and ask him how many believers
constitute a Faith. More than a dozen?
That's what Christ started with. The Word of God
has got at least that many blurbs on its jacket.
And more keep coming in!

Then there's this: Believing on Me is a good way
to trump someone else's ace in an argument.
Suppose you come up against a McCain supporter
at a School Board meeting, who wants you to vote for
his guy while at the same time getting the Board
to buy a line of Science textbooks that show
how Darwin was no more than a know-it-all atheist
and no kind of scientist at all. You can insist
the School Board buy My book instead (there will be
a ten per cent rebate for orders of fifty or more).

Or suppose you just want to masturbate
and you're a teenager whose Mormon
(or Catholic or born-again Baptist) parents
absolutely forbid you to spill your seed
after the fashion of Onan. As one of my followers,
you are free to spill any amount of seed
(just do it in your own bedroom, alone;
otherwise somebody could be arrested).

N.B.: adoring me is not a crime,
it's your God-given right! So have yourself
the same kind of fun other believers do
by making a public nuisance of yourself
and pissing off all the officious old farts
you know. Insist that your First Amendment rights
be respected. And save Saturday night for Me!

So Be It!

-- Thomas Disch, June 24, 2008

(Shamelessly stolen in its entirety from Disch's Livejournal page. I'll take it down if he bitches from beyond, or if his earthly minions make me. Disch died by his own hand July 4. He was the author of Camp Concentration, 334, The MD, The Priest, The Businessman and several volumes of wonderful and underappreciated poetry. You may know him as the author of The Brave Little Toaster.)

Oh PayPal, How I Hate You So

So I want to send some money to a friend in Canada. It's a significant amount of money, but no more than many middle-class folks earn in a week. I figure, hey, I have that PayPal account I never use, I'll just do that and zap it'll be there instantly, right?

Oh, no. Not even close.

I start this process last Saturday, where I sign in to my PayPal account and send the money. No problem. About an hour later, I get an email from the recipient, who informs me that, uh, thanks for the cash, but I don't think you meant to send me this. I check email addresses. Damn. She's right. Her email address is one letter off from the correct one -- I have made a mistake, and I'm lucky that the person who got the payment was honest enough to notify me. I email her back, apologize for the hassle, and ask her to deny the transaction. Done. OK, now that that is straightened out, I figure I can resend the amount to the correct address.

Oh, no. This is just getting started.

I try to resend, this time to the (triple-checked) correct email address. Transaction = FAIL. I call PayPal (who do not offer their customers an 800 number -- yeah, it's a 15-minute hold on a long-distance call). The guy I talk to tells me that because the first transaction was denied, the second transaction won't be possible until the pending charge on my credit card is reversed, which makes a weird sort of sense, so I figure I'll wait until EOB and resend in the morning.

The next day, the transaction fails again. I need another form of payment, PayPal informs me. Though I have no way to do so, short of driving to their headquarters and standing in the parking lot with a bullhorn, I wish to inform PayPal that they will never ever ever have my bank account information, no matter how they beg and plead or cajole and demand.

So today I spend a good HOUR (at daytime long-distance rates!!!) on the phone with some lady who claims her name is Joan but, judging by her accent, is more likely named Jalbala (pretty name, means "lotus flower", I think). She is kind, compassionate, well-informed, and completely and utterly unhelpful. I speak to her supervisor, Anna. For the record, Anna is not a bot. But she may as well have been, because she is snide, cold, unhelpful, and completely unsympathetic.

Here's what I learned from Anna-Not-A-Bot:

1. My credit card is now flagged to hell and back by PayPal's ominous-sounding "Internal Security Department" and can NEVER EVER BE USED FOR A PAYPAL TRANSACTION EVER EVER AGAIN STOP ASKING.
2. I mistyped an email address and had a transaction denied. Therefore it is all my fault, nothing they can do, tough shit, so long sucker.
3. There are no humans who work in PayPal Internal Security, only Cylons who do not deign to communicate with meatbags.
4. The only way to resolve this problem is to give PayPal my bank account info.

Um, no. I use a credit card online, because I'd rather risk THEIR money than MY money, and because my card issuer has a phalanx of lawyers just quivering for the chance to sue some hacker into dust.

So I went to Western Union. With a wad of cash. Which they cheerfully accepted. And sent to my friend. Took five minutes. No problem. Even got a smile from the little cutie working the desk.

I'm going to post this, then go to Amazon.com and attempt to purchase a book using my PayPal account. If that transaction is denied, I'm closing the account with a hearty, "Fuck you, PayPal!"

Fanboy Lust

All three of my readers know that I love video games. But I've never been tempted to spend money on the collectible crap that's pushed out into the market along with them.

Until now. That's so awesomely awesome.

Free Speech, Unless You're In High School

This left me flabbergasted.

If I'm reading the story right, the precedent is now that what a teenager says FROM HOME and ON HER OWN TIME and ON HER OWN BLOG is now subject to the whims of school officials under the false flag of "ultimately causing some disruption in the school setting."

Douchebags.

A Checklist For Pastor Hagee

I figured that since Jeremiah Wright got a full week of press to demonstrate his asshattery, it would only be fair for John Hagee to get the same. Hagee, you may recall, is the jowly dough-boy who opined from the pulpit that Hitler was an instrument of God for shooing the Jews back to Israel where they belong, and that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for New Orleans holding a Gay Pride parade (then why was the gay part of town the least damaged, I wonder?) Here's a summary of his stupider statements. Oh, and did I mention that McCain went out of his way to seek this idiot's endorsement because you can't be a Republican contender until you get down with the fundies, and digging up and embracing the corpse of Falwell was deemed too aerobic an activity for a 71-year-old man? And then it took McCain three months to reject said endorsement, after Hagee's increasingly insane rants came to light? So with that in mind I've put together a series of talking points for the right reverend Hagee to use when he stops running from the press:

God digs genocide. The genocide in Rwanda was God's way of showing the power of radio and the glory of the machete: a cheap, efficient, and useful weapon, whether clearing brush or butchering the neighbors. Plus, it's just black people -- God doesn't like them much.

Indiscriminate death always benefits the faithful. The Black Plague wiped Christendom's slate by killing all the feebs and weirdos, leaving only the strong Christians to rebuild Europe: just like God wants it. AIDS almost killed off the gays until the damn demon-possessed libruls stepped in and came up with retroviral therapy.

The mind of God is an open book, which only I am privy to read. That's right, MY Bible has stuff in it yours can only dream about. With pictures. And flowcharts. And stuff.

Democrats want to eat your babies. My babies? Yes, your babies. Raw. And they'll set up government-run camps to breed babies for their awful blood orgies during which they summon the spirit of Socialized Medicine and dance around nekkid.

Global warming is either a lie perpetuated by the liberal elite or God's wrath on the liberal elite, I haven't decided which yet. But when I do decide, I'll be sure and let you know what God thinks about it.

In Which I Watch C-SPAN, And Am Disgusted

OK, it's late. I'm drunk.

But C-SPAN flipped my shit tonight.

It's the prototypical Senate subcommittee hearing: the Government Affairs Subcommittee on Government Information, in fact, chaired by Tom Carper (D - Somewhere). Testifying before the committee committee committee (sorry, it's just somehow fun to type that word committee committee committee), the Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, was blase and reflective about Lockheed-Martin's software that the Nation Archives was using to store all government documents.

Wait, what?

Lockheed-Martin?

Really? Rilly? O RLY? 4RL?

Lockheed-Fucking-Martin?

Don't they make airplanes? And land mines, and super-secret-Navy-Seal-tell-you-hafta-kill-you stuff?

Do we really want Lockheed-Martin in charge of the PROGRAM FOR PRESERVING OUR NATIONAL HISTORY?

Worst part of it: the Inspector-General of the National Archives and Records Administration, Paul Brachfeld, quotes a Dave Matthews Bland lyric, and the subcommittee subcommittee subcommittee chairman winks at the motherfucker.

Salient quote: "People would be shocked at the kind of records we hold." Good thing that's all classified, then. Oh, wait, no it isn't.

It's the NATIONAL ARCHIVES.

I Wonder How Many Sermons On The Evil Of Homosexuality He's Preached?

Megachurch minister arrested in Texas for planning to have sex with 13-year-old.

Of course, it isn't the church's fault. I mean, they have 26,000 members and 40 ministers, who can keep up with all of them?

And I'm waiting for the tearful "we have all sinned" court appearance where he'll inevitably ask for forgiveness and seek compassion from his invisible sky wizard, and by extension, the jury.

It must be nice to go through life convinced that not only are you irreparably flawed, but that forgiveness is just a genuflection away. How that must relieve one of responsibility.

I'll bet money this guy will "minister" to other inmates while he's in.

Because he's a man of God.

*barf*

Cory Maye: A ReasonTV Recap

I've blogged about this before, and now ReasonTV is covering the story, based on the admirable reporting of Radley Balko.

This story is a tragic example of how the Drug War ruins lives, for both the cops and the people they are supposed to be protecting.

Click the title for the link.

Plot of GTA V Revealed!

Not really.

This is just what one rabid fanboy (me) think it should be. With a title designed to draw suckers into reading my blog.

OK, Rockstar always ups the ante with every iteration, right? And having built the game systems they can now squeeze out another one (a GTA IV.5, so to speak) like they did with III. So next year, I want to see a GTA game starring....

....Dwayne Forge's lesbian ex-girlfriend.

Think about it. Unless you haven't played the game, in which case you are excused and you should probably go here instead. Dwayne, the surly, chronically depressed ex-con who is crippled with self-loathing rivaled only by his disdain for the system that chewed him up and spat him out, is one of the best characters ever written into a video game. But he shouldn't be the main character -- that would be too close to CJ from GTA:SA. Dwayne is the Greek chorus of the game, and he should be on the sidelines in the next one. And by making the character a lesbian, Rockstar gets to mess with the heads of the player base, while addressing issues of sexism and gender and sexual freedom in a visceral way (rocket-propelled grenades = visceral).

So, here's my idea. Dwayne gets framed and jailed. Maybe he's sitting on Death Row. It's up to his ex, who has accepted herself and changed her life while Dwayne was inside, to free him. She follows a trail that leads from gangbangers to crooked cops to a conspiracy involving the highest levels of government. Remember, this game will take a couple of years to make, at which time we'll be deep into the corruption and treason trials of several key former Bush administration officials (a man can dream, can't he?).

I think it could work.

Sexist Radiohead T-Shirts

At the Radiohead show in Atlanta Thursday night I was standing at the T-shirt booth and wondering just what kind of idiot would pay $40 for a t-shirt. Then my phone rang, and it was my friend Terry asking me to buy him a t-shirt.

"They're 40 bucks, dude," I said.
"I don't care. I want a Radiohead t-shirt."
"They're not all that great. They have slogans written on them. They don't even say they're Radiohead tour t-shirts."
"What do they say?"

I read a few of them to him. They were the kind of cryptic dyspeptic grumbling beloved by Radiohead fans. One, though, stood out. On a plain black t-shirt, in a font that mimicked the electronic CRT displays of the 80s, was printed: "I am trapped in my body and cannot escape."

"That's the one I want," Terry said. I should mention at this point that Terry is trapped in his body and cannot escape. He has inherited spastic paraparesis which has locked his muscles, stiffened his jaw, and left him nearly blind. For him to wear that t-shirt would be a truly blackly humorous form of performance art.

So I told the woman running the kiosk that that was the shirt I wanted.

"It's a baby tee," she said. "A girl's shirt."

"There's not one with that slogan on it in a men's size?"

"Nope. That one's for women," she said.

Wow. So the assumption there is that only women are trapped in their bodies. I understand that body image is a problem that disproportionately affects young women, but still. Also, it's a baby tee. One size: curvy and small. No fat chicks need apply. BBW who are trapped in their bodies will hafta choose a different shirt.

That's kinda sexist, Radiohead.

So I got Terry one that read: "You used to be all right. What happened?"

A Second-Hand Anecdote

A friend of mine is a project manager for a software design firm, and regaled me with this story. This is as told, with only identifying details changed to protect corporate and individual identities:

So we're taking a tour of the data center at a financial institution that's contracted us to do some coding. As we're walking through their server room, the guy giving the tour gestures to a tall black box along one wall. "That's Big Bertha," he said. "We're not sure what it does or why it's here. And the last guy who knew the password died three years ago." We all laughed, but the guy was serious. "It was installed in the late 1980s, we know that much. And we kinda know what it does, because we've checked the data going in against the data coming out. But we're not sure that that's ALL it does, or even how it's doing it. We've lost all the documentation, and there's no one here left who was around when it was installed. Every bit of our data runs through it. When that box goes down, we're fucked. We keep a full bottle of whiskey in the break room so that when that box dies, we can all get drunk before they fire us."

Boy, talk about your "legacy systems". Did I mention that this is a financial institution whose job is keeping track of millions of transactions, all of which seem to get routed through the Mystery Box? I hope it runs for a while longer, because eventually people will start lighting candles before it and worshipping it like a god.

Cognitive Dissonance In The Snack Food Aisle

The other day I went grocery shopping and my head exploded.

One of the first things you see on walking into my neighborhood Publix, right after you pass the seasonal display in the front, is a row of two-for-one bins. Crackers, mayonnaise, canned soups, and, today, chocolate chip cookies. Buy one, get one free. There's a variety available: chewy, white chocolate chunk, peanut butter, original. I examined a package more closely.

"REAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!" it declares.

Well, yeah. I don't see why that's worth stating, much less bragging about. Of course the package contains real chocolate chip cookies. If it were full of mousetraps, or geraniums, or something, it would probably state as such, too. But the implication is -- there are FAKE chocolate chip cookies out there, just waiting to tempt the witless, innocent cookie consumer. These are REAL, much better than those FAKE ones.

In the right hand corner of the package is a smiling chocolate chip cookie, replete with eyes and chocolatey eyebrows.

That cookie is obviously a fake.

So to advertise the realness of their chocolate chip cookies, the manufacturers have chosen a fake cookie. And they then thought it necessary to reassure them that the cookies were, in fact, real.

I think I may have drooled a bit, then.

I stood there stunned as an ox for a couple of beats.

And yes, then I bought the goddamned cookies. Two packages. They aren't very good, but they are indisputably real.

Planning A Long Trip?

Google can help!

Watch Idiocy Unfolding In Real Time!

Skipping the 20th century entirely, the Birmingham City Council will begin live online streaming video of their meetings next Tuesday.

Watch the sausage getting made here.

Sufferers, Rejoice! A Cure For Depression!

...47...48...49...50...51...

Oh Larry, We're Shocked, Shocked

So now John Katapodis has stated in sworn testimony that money from a computer charity (Computer Help For Kids) he ran with Langford went to pay a gay porn star.

Read it and weep. Tears of laughter and hot, hot shame.