Just Some lOLz

-A hilarious post script to the octuplet story- the mother already has six kids. And all fourteen (that's 14) of her children were conceived using sperm from the same donor. And she's single and still lives with her parents. LOL

-Rush Limbaugh is being touted as the "new" voice of the "new" Republican Party. I'm sorry, is this 1993? Speaking of the Republican Party, they elected Michael Steele as the new head of the RNC. Cause what better way to counter the popularity of Barack Obama than to elect a senatorial loser like Michael Steele? But hey, at least he's black! And he was lieutenant governor of Maryland! Way to go Republicans! Way to not make empty gestures of conciliation to ethnic minorities, who are abandoning your party in droves!

-The "recession" is going to get worse and when recovery does come, it will be "slow and weak." Thanks, MSN!

-I have a migraine and I think my head is going to split open! Yay! Have a great fuckin' weekend, y'all! I certainly will!!!!!!!!111

Fear and Loathing in Bumfuck

"Z is for Zillah, who drank too much gin." - Edward Gorey.

Preface: I'm bored and uninspired at the moment. I was tempted to do a drunk post as an homage to woozie's awesomeness but opted against it for a variety of reasons (re: I fell asleep). Anyway, I woke up with the gin eyes and there's nothing new on the politics front for me to whine about so enjoy the following sober analysis:

You Know You're A (Drunk) Redneck When...

-a trip to Wal-Mart qualifies as Friday night entertainment.

I Know I'm Drunk When...

-I start seriously contemplating Britney Spears' life and career. Like why anyone would allow her to name her album Circus but then feeling sexist for thinking someone else named her album but then considering the notion that Britney Spears understands irony makes me shiver.

-The dimly-lit, maudlin ambiance of a local honky tonk stops bothering me.

-The Taylor Swift emanating from the jukebox stops offending my senses. In fact, it makes me down right giddy to the point I want to dance. And I don't dance.

-I can feel my pulse in my face.

-I lose my "Mid-Atlantic" accent completely in a Larry the Cable Guy-inspired, ear-raping Deep South burr.

I Know It's Time To Leave When...

-I start contemplating my life and career to the point of inebriated psychosis.

-I start theorizing with a complete stranger about the "significance" of the fact I was born on the thirtieth anniversary of James Dean's death and also share a birthday with Truman Capote ("Do you think I'm, like, imbued with cool?").

-The absurdity of the situation comes barreling down on me with the force of Fat Man / I start feeling like I'm in some awful b-movie from the 70s and the credits are about to roll.

-Even though I'm sipping a rum and coke, I can't stop fantasizing about the gallon jug of Club 400 gin my daddy has in the cubbard at home.

-I start yelling non-sequitirs from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas just to weird people out. "You dirty little faggot! Call the manager! I'm sick of listening to this dogshit!" and "Still humping the American Dream, I see..." and "As your attorney, I advise you to slow down..."

-Every sentence begins with "yeah" and a giggle.

"To alcohol: The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."- Homer J. Simpson

Cletus Says: Bush Isn't Totally Incompetent

This morning started off like many before it. I awoke after five hours of restless sleep pissed off, groggy, and in dire need of a bigass pot of coffee. But there was one slight difference: I happen to awaken in the Fox News Twilight Zone Where America Is Awesome All The Time. The front page of my hometown newspaper has a photo of an African woman and the following article summary: "Aid worker Sweetness Mzolisa poses at the Nocingile day care center in Khayelitsha, South Africa. From a windowless shed, Mzolisa leads a chorus of praise of an international hero: U.S. president George W. Bush." At first I thought I was hallucinating; after all, I didn't fall asleep until damn near 5 am today and once I did, I had a succession of horrifying nightmares involving the Twin Towers, dead fish, The Joker, and blogging (fuck!). But no, my hometown paper actually has the words, "praise of an international hero: U.S. president George W. Bush," written in one non-ironic sentence.

I'm not going to lie; I didn't read the rest of the article because I didn't want to induce more nightmares. I calmly and rationally concluded that I had indeed awoken in an alternate reality and went about my business with this knowledge. I don't want to know why she thinks that and I don't care. I know the people who write for this paper have been waiting eight years to crank out that phrase- "praise of an international hero: U.S. president George W. Bush"- and figured with eight days left, they might as well contribute to this notion that Bush wasn't a complete giant fuck-up failure incompetent idiot infantile moron (commas are for pussies).

Moving on to similar bullshit...I read last night that Obama might not bother with investigating the Bush administration for its war crimes. He said we should look forward and not in the past and all that other fuckery he thinks will ingratiate himself with the Republicans (note to B: they think you're the anti-Christ! They don't want to be your friend, they want Jesus to slay you!). I cannot even stomach the idea that Bush -n- company might get away with their shit. Another note to B: the GOP appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the activities of Bill Clinton's penis. Please don't tell me you've surrendered your balls like every other Democrat on the Hill. Appoint me to look into it! I'll do it for free! Shit! If we can paralyze and immobilize the entire government by forcing them to look into Monica's mouth, we can sure as hell set up a House committee to look into waterboarding and rendition and Enron and Halliburton and Guantanomo and the bullshit Iraq "intelligence" and turning the judicial branch into a foaming-at-the-mouth, neo-con cabal of historical revisionist Constitution rapists and etc etc etc. B, seriously. Please send the message to the world and future generations that war crimes are at least as important as ejaculate. It might be nice to remind the world- and ourselves- that we are indeed a First World country in the 21st Century and not the Roman Empire feeding Muslims to the lions for our entertainment. But maybe it's just me.

Not Another Israel Post

I'm sick of that shit so I'm going to ramble incoherently for this particular entry. Here are some things that are chapping my lily white ass right now:

Number one: The cover of Joe The Liar's new book. Presumably, "Joe The Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream" means fighting against the forces of the gay liberal conspiracy to destroy America under a fake persona with an exposed ass crack via a book that was ghostwritten by someone smarter than you.
-Nostradamus, his fan club, and Nostradamus-related programming. He was not a prophet. He wrote vague statements about the events of his day that people later interpreted as prophecy. Sort of like the people who wrote the Bible. Take this quatrain: "The sky will burn at 45 degrees / Fire approaches the great New City / Immediately a huge scattered flame leaps up / When they want to have proof of the Normans." Clearly this references airplanes flying into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Because if there's one thing the hijackers hated, it was a lack of proof of the fuckin' Normans! Goddammit, they hated that shit! I think that's also mentioned in sentence one of bin Laden's first fatwa against the U.S. Check it. But it does teach me an important lesson if I ever decide to enter prophecy as a profession: if it's vague bullshit, the people will come. I just want to thank the History Channel for airing three successive and sincere programs on this asshat.

-The Bible Code. Basically like Nostradamus for your computer nerd religious fanatics, the Bible Code is supposedly a series of secret messages hidden in the Bible that can only be found via a computer program that runs a series of matrices on the text to find vague, chopped up words that, if you squint your eyes and damage your cerebral cortex, clearly predicts events of our day. If god is omnipotent, then I think he can do better than "the assassin will assassinate" in reference to Yitzhak Rabin's murder. Yeah, god, assassinate is what assassins tend to do. Funny thing is, some Australian scientist ran the same matrix on "Moby Dick" and found similar shit. So I think there's one thing to conclude here: HERMAN MELVILLE WAS THE SECOND COMING AND WE FUCKIN' MISSED IT! OMFG!

-Educational bureaucracy. It took me a half hour to unenroll from a community college where I was planning on studying something in the medical field. I had to fill out a form in one building, drive to the other side of campus to get it signed by my advisor, drive back to the first building, and then take the form to three different offices to have it notarized by two different people. And you know they'll still send me a bill for the classes I'm now unenrolled from.

-My town's roundabout. In an effort to be cool, European-like, and save money on another useless traffic light, my town erected a roundabout (or "traffic circle," if you're a lame Yank) near said community college. Problem is, the local yokels cannot figure it out. As I was passing through it today, a guy in a truck did like a 380 in it; he went around it completely then took the right he was closest to when he pulled up to the damn thing. During that minute he was driving around, he must have been pissing himself in terror that he'd died, been sent to hell, and give this Sisyphean task as eternal punishment for his inability to understand the hard science of yielding to your left and exiting to your right. And I'm sure he's not the only one who's had that existential crisis while frantically trying to exit this black hole of a demon known as our town's roundabout.

-Maintaining this constant level of outrage. It's exhausting. :)

Don't Imitate The Jews

I only read the op-ed section of my hometown paper when I'm bored or feel like insulting my intelligence. It's always filled with the paranoid, ill-informed rantings of the paranoid, ill-informed hicks who populate the tri-state area around my confused little town. I just happened to peruse this particular section today, and was greated by an article titled "Don't Imitate the Europeans." The author took issue with a previous op-ed written from the standpoint of a secularist (yeah, I'm not the only one in Appalachia) and conveniently, for my mocking pleasure, numbered her points.

The article kicks off thusly:

"1. That government’s “task” is to provide that “individual believers holding diverse convictions may challenge one another without ... interference.” Untrue. The First Amendment provides that government will not prefer one religion over another; and it forbids one’s harassment of another."

OK, the first part of your rebuttal is true and the second part is not. It's not true because you're using a red herring. What the first author wrote was that we may challenge each other's religions without interference, which is absolutely legal and a right recognized in any free society. We're discouraged from harassing people about it and it's illegal to discriminate others on the basis of their religion or lack of religion. Maybe you should remember that last part.

2. "That '(t)he greater the distance between church and state ... , the greater our religious liberty.' False. Complete neutrality, or absence of religious involvement in government affairs and vice versa, is termed “laicite.” It is the political system of secularism, which suppresses expression of religious belief in public and oppresses those who do it. By definition, religious freedom is “the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance” (source: Wikipedia)."

False false. You make the typical Republican logical fallacy of characterizing secularism as an organized political movement as opposed to a philosophy. The First Amendment protects against what you're freaking out about and banning religious practices or customs could never legally happen here, provided the First Amendment can survive the last 14 days of the Bush presidency.

"A leading secular state is France, where in 2004, religious symbols were banned in public schools. President Nicolas Sarkozy criticizes this type of “negative laicite;” and he intends to develop a “positive laicite,” which, as noted at Wikipedia, “recognizes the contribution of faith to French culture, history and society, allows for faith in the public discourse and for government subsidies for faith-based groups.” As France strives to progress beyond its stymieing century-old secular politics, the United States would be unwise to regress to embrace them."

I did LOL a little when I first read this. I have to respectfully disagree that increased secularism would be a step backwards for the U.S. I agree that the government shouldn't concern itself with banning religious symbols and clothing (which was the main point of the French law; it banned niquabs and yarmulkes in schools). In fact, government shouldn't deal in religion at all! Wow! Thank you for making my point for me! And this is the second time you've cited Wikipedia. Someone should have told you that's not a reputable source and if this were a college paper, you'd ge a D.

"French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 work Democracy in America, finds the synergy of faith and politics that he experiences here remarkable; and he concludes that religion in society is necessary to temper government’s propensities to seize authority (or to impose priority) over peoples’ expression of their convictions, and to inhibit peoples’ tendencies to surrender it."

I don't recall this particular summation in Democracy in America, though it's been four years since I read it and the book is 676 pages long. It's likely that deTocqueville was being ironic. He was also found our propensity to sue remarkable, which is impressive when you consider he wrote DIA in 1835. Not to mention American history is littered with instances when the government "seized authority over peoples' expression of their convictions." Where have you been the past eight years? Oh right. You're a Republican. So seizing authority over secularists'/peaceniks'/dissenters'/brown people's expression of their convictions is what the government is supposed to do. As long as your rights aren't being impeded, there's no problem.

"French philosopher Jacques Maritain, a drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is quoted at Wikipedia praising the U.S. model of religious freedom in the mid-20th century as superior because it had both 'sharp distinction and actual cooperation' between church and state. He called it 'an historical treasure.' He begged: 'Please to God that you keep it carefully, and do not let your concept of separation veer round to the European one.'"

The mid-20th Century. The mid-20th Century. Hmm...I'm trying to recollect what might have just occured around that time period in Europe that may have contributed to this quote but, damn, my lackluster American education is failing me. I think it was something to do with Jews and golden stars and gas chambers but I'm not sure. Maybe I should check Wikipedia.

It always insults me when religious people somehow try to twist the First Amendment or the writings of the Founding Fathers to support this notion that we're a Christian country (and just an FYI, The Federalist Papers pushing for the ratification of the Constitution were first published as a series of letters to the editors. A series of op-eds started this country!). The first European colonists may have been nutbag Christian fundamentalists but we were not established as a haven for this kind of warped world view. We're a beacon of religious freedom, which includes freedom from religion for millions of us rationalists. Israel is what happens when you "found" a country based on only one religion (and for only one religion).

To quote the late, great Henry David Thoreau, "The government is best which governs the least." So you can worship your invisible space god and I can worship my Richard Dawkins. Live and let live.

The Following Dumb Things Make Me lOLz

-Watching that kickass Iraqi journalist throw his shoes at George Bush's face. It will never get old and gives poignant new meaning to the phrase "shoeicide bomber." But I do have to take issue with the media reporting that his flying shoes represent only Muslim outrage at Bush. Believe me, no one hates Bush more than Americans right now.

-Knowing people are booking rooms in my hometown for Obama's inauguration, even though it's long, lonely, red two and a half hours away from Washington, D.C.

-The final election results from my county. We went almost 2:1 for McSame-Palin.

-The giant leaning Christmas tree downtown. I would have taken a picture but I kept laughing too hard to hold the camera straight. There's also a Santa Claus holding an American flag, which struck me as slightly insane.

-The Republican "outrage" over the Rod Blagojevich thing. And listening to tv hosts continually stumble over "Blagojevich."

-Listening to all the hicks who live in my hometown freak out over Obama's victory. One of them actually said: "I'm scared." What's to be afraid of? He's only the anti-Christ. And why are you afraid of the impending apocalypse? Isn't that what you nutbag Christians are trying to precipitate in the Middle East with your bizarrely vociferous support of Israel? Hell, man, look on the bright side! Obama's gonna be great for the sales of the Left Behind: It All Started November 4, 2008 series!

-Facebook status. It's just so narcissistic and stupid (unlike, say, having a blog where you espouse your worthless opinions). But at least I get to know whenever one of my "friends" is "so sad it's ridiculous" or "laughing so hard because McCain got beat like a cat gets beat down the stairs." (<--- They're real!) I mean, these are mostly people I haven't seen in five years or more and this is all I get about their lives since high school. And if it says anything...aw, fuck it. It doesn't say anything! It's just pointless inanity!

-Dick Cheney nonchalantly admitting he OK'd torture. And that Iraq never had WMDs (remember them?). And our collective indifference to those admissions.

-My mom's reaction to the Caylee Anthony case. OK, even I think it's sad that a two-year-old probably got killed by her mother, but my mom is acting like it's the first time the media has blown a filicide case out of proportion. I think she also views it as a reason she's a good mom, like I should be thanking her for not chloroforming me as a toddler. Uh, thanks Mom.

-Conservative bloggers. Get on talk radio! The blogosphere is our thing!

-Procrastination. I went to the big city today (Hagerstown, Maryland, population: 39,640) and every discount store I went to was packed with lazy (yet pushy and vicious) last-minute shoppers. While I was sitting in traffic waiting to leave the mall parking lot, I couldn't believe we're going through the worst economic crisis in 80 years. It certainly isn't keeping people out of the mall or off the roads. The way the media portrays it, every single American is spending the holiday season cowering in terror and hoarding their pennies in their soon-to-be-repossessed homes.

-That Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at George Bush's face! You're my hero, man!

Local Randomness and Maudlin Self-Reflection

It's snowing! It's our first measurable snowfall of the year and the whole area is overreacting, as usual. Schools let out two hours early and most other public buildings closed early as well.

Yeah, I know. This isn't very exciting... until you realize that it was a humid, sunny 58 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. It's a good thing this climate change thing is nothing more than liberal scare tactics rather than an empirical historical trend. Fuck you, Al! And now for a completely gratuitous Simpsons quote:

"Could this record-breaking heat wave be the result of the dreaded 'greenhouse effect'? Well, if 70-degree days in the middle of winter are the 'price' of car pollution, then you'll forgive me if I keep my old Pontiac"- Kent Brockman

I had a job interview today! The job is for a part-time census-taker position. Actually, it wasn't an interview, it was a test. I had to take a standardized test in a room full of other potential applicants. It was a test divided into sections designed to measure our strengths in particular areas of intellect (ie verbal, math, etc). Sort of like the SAT. I suddenly realized the absurdity of the situation when it dawned on me that I took the SAT exactly six years ago this month...in a room not unlike the room I sat in today. And when I was taking said SAT six years ago, I certainly thought I was preparing myself for a job beyond the one I was applying for today. I did manage to graduate from college (finally, after five years) but for what? To end up taking a test in a room full of people who were all easily at least twenty years older than me, some so old I was convinced they'd probably signed up for a job like this during the last depression?

It's almost enough to make me depressed...until I realize I don't really care. The job only lasts ten weeks and the pay is insane. I do realize that the time is coming for me to make a decision: to be (a grad student) or not to be. Or to continue down this path of working random jobs far below my skill set for a few weeks at a time because I'm too lazy to move away from this shithole hometown I loathe.

But this intrapersonal melodrama is gonna have to wait. Rachel Maddow's on!

Rural America: Living Up To Stereotypes

This is the state of the state I live in. The state of Maryland theoretically ends at Frederick, which is located roughly at the black line. To the right of that line lies Baltimore and the D.C. suburbs. That's where all the people and wealth in the state are located. That part of the state is overwhelmingly Democratic, which is why Maryland is always a solidly blue state. The Eastern shore and the area to the left of the line are, well, not so Democratic. But because no one really lives there, the Southern sympathies of those areas are easily overriden (praise Jaysus).

Of course, being a denizen of that lovely place I affectionally call "Eastern West Virginia," I get to put up with racist and backwards shit that should have been settled decades ago. Just this year, at a vocational high school near my hometown, a controversy erupted over some white students displaying the Confederate Flag. Yes, the Confederate flag...in Maryland...a state that was a member of the Union, not the Confederacy. Now while most of us consider the Confederate flag to be a symbol of hate and division, others see it as a symbol of pride and unity. The furor from this shit even reached as far as The Washington Post, which painted my hometown as some shithole relic of the Old South (which it both is and isn't, since Maryland isn't the South!). As you can see, it was clearly just the honor students worried about their constitutional rights to free expression and not just idiot neo-Nazis. After all the dust was settled, it was ruled that the racist assholes were allowed to keep displaying their hate flag, for after all, it's their constitutional right.

Now, despite my personal opinions on the Confederate flag, I actually agree with the ruling. Because if I ever got caught burning a U.S. flag (which I've never actually done), I could just point to this event as precident that it's free speech. And then I'd inform all the haters to kiss my blue ass and move to West Virginia (which is a state that seceded from Virginia to be a part of the Union, though don't tell them that. There's plenty of Confederate flags in that state as well).

Fun times in Appalachia.

Get Your Fat Ass Outta My Face

The other day, I found myself in a similar argument with a friend over my smoking:

Friend: But why do you do it?

Me: Because I enjoy it and everyone hates it. You know I'm a contrarian prick.

Friend: But it's disgusting and it kills you.

Me: What doesn't kill you these days?

Then I proceeded to launch into my typical defense of smokers, which invariable involves comparing smoking to eating shit. To wit, there are roughly 400,000 Americans who die of cancer each year and not every single one of them was a smoker. In fact, most of them were probably fatasses who lived off sugar, uncaffeinated coffee, and high fructose corn syrup who passed anti-smoking laws because they worried about the effect of second-hand smoking on their treasured health. Let me repeat that fact: 400,000 Americans die every year of cancer and most of them were not smokers.

Secondly, what pisses me off as a smoker is that we as a society placate, coddle, and pity the fatties. "Oh, wah. I'm 600 pounds and I don't know why God did me like this!" God didn't shove mountains of shit down your throat. God did not invent the Oreo pizza or the deep fryer. And God probably doesn't consider being fat a "curse." Dude used to make shit rain frogs and killed tons of people just to prove a point about his severe jealously. You know, we shouldn't make excuses for these people. Just like me, they have a vice that should be frowned upon. But unlike me, they get Oprah specials and a bizarre outpouring of sympathy. Just because everyone is fat doesn't make it right, mmmkay? Besides, it's funny as hell to watch fat people fall down.

This brings me to the state of Maryland's decision to ban smoking in bars and restaurants a few years ago. OK, right. Because people go to bars and get shitfaced out of concern for their health. People waddle into restaurants to stuff themselves numb at the buffet (with room for desert!) out of concern for their health. If you're going to make it difficult for me to light up without being cited, then you better make it hard for fatties to access their drugs. Ban fatties from fast food joints! Make McDonald's, Burger King, and Little Debbie shell out big like the tobacco companies did in the 90s! Jesus! The hypocrisy here is really astounding.

Anyway, after I went through all that, my friend had to admit I had a point. Fuck yeah I do.

Another Blow For Secular Progressives

Move over, Nevada! We Marylanders voted big to allow slot machines in the state. The ballot initiative allows for up to 15,000 slots in five counties, including the one I live in. I can tell you we need the jobs up here in Bumfuck, irrespective of the impending moral calamity the Christians are predicting.

I really love the Christian argument for why slots are so bad. Because "gambling" is bad. Oh really? Even though the proceeds will go towards funding public education? Oh, yeah. I forgot. They homeschool or put their kids in fortresses away from the progeny of the evil and dreaded secular progressives. And you know these are the same people who play the lotto and hit the bingo halls with the gals every week while not noting the delicious moral hypocrisy of it all.

This reminds me of a conversation Marge Simpson and Maude Flanders had on an old episode of "The Simpsons." It was the one where the hurricane destroys the Flanders' home:

Marge: Well at least your homeowner's insurance will cover the damages.

Maude: Oh, we don't have homeowner's insurance. Neddy considers it a form of gambling.

I never got the joke as a kid but it just keeps getting funnier as I age.

Vote Early, Vote Often

Something that has me intrigued is the early voting phenomenon. According to an AP story, more Democrats are casting early ballots than Republicans, even in beet red states like Georgia. This is a reversal of the trend, because usually more GOPers get out the vote early.

31 states allow early voting and, of course, Maryland is not one of them. At least not yet. We have an early voting initiative on our ballot next week that I plan on supporting. I would venture to say most Marylanders want it.

The pros: it stretches out the election period over a few weeks as opposed to a single 12-hour day, thus bringing more people into the system who would otherwise sit it out. Secondly, it makes it goddamn hard for lazy people to make excuses not to vote. And thirdly, it's way more convenient. Hell, I saw the other day on CNN that some district in Nevada has polls set up in a mall! A fucking mall!

Of course, early voting has its nay-sayers, chiefly my own dad. He whines that it'll make it easier to commit fraud. And I'm like, "Dad, people commit fraud anyway. At least early voting makes it harder (or at least more inconvenient) for Republicans to use scare tactics."

Just an Introduction

Greetings from the mountains of western Maryland! I don't really know why I've decided to start a blog but I'm totally bored at the moment and I do a lot of impulsive things when I'm feeling like this. I suppose I just have a lot to say and have no real outlet to do it. I just want a place where I can vent about my crappy hometown and other things that pop into my crazy head.

I'm from Bumfuck, Maryland. Is it a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C.? Nope. How 'bout a suburb of Baltimore? No no. It's nestled snuggly in the mountains of Appalachia, far from the brights lights of the cities. Not a whole lot goin' on here. That's why I'm here now.

Well, I guess this is a decent introduction and I'll wrap it up now.