September 2009 Archives

Ordinary Americans think that a dirty old man who drugs and sodomizes a little girl should be locked up in prison and left to die there.  The people who breathe the rarified air of Tinseltown feel otherwise.  A group of Hollywood knuckleheads has signed a petition calling for Polanski's immediate release.  They find it unacceptble that one of their icons should be arrested while en route to a film festival paying homage to him.  After all, it's a "decades old" charge and he is, well, famous.  He even won an Academy Award.  He is an elite, and as such, should not be made to answer for his actions.

The list of notables making excuses for Roman includes Woody Allen and Whoopi Goldberg. Allen has his own issues with photographs, young women, and inappropriate relations and really should be ashamed of himself for even speaking on this matter.  And Goldberg doesn't even think Polanski did anything wrong.  During a discussion on "The View", she said "I know it wasn't rape-rape" but wouldn't explain what exactly what it was.  Hmmmm.   I think there is a word used to describe drugging a young girl, having your way with her against her will and then and sodomizing her?  That's a real puzzle for sure.  What is that word?

If the facts of the case were being discussed without the names being known, I have no doubt that many of these Hollywood pinheads would support a long prison sentence for this child predator.  It is, after all, a shocking act that Polanski has admitted to.  But because his movies have been called "masterpieces" by people like Debra Winger, a sex offender fugitive is receiving lots of love from people in the movie business.

I would like to ask Goldberg and the other mixed nuts she hangs with the following: if George W. Bush had admitted to drugging prisoners at Gitmo, raping, and sodomizing them, would they sign a petition to have him immediately released?  Methinks that they would not.

Fat Kid: *ring*

911 Operator: 911.  What is your emergency?

FK: I need to file for a restraining order.

911: A restraining order?  Sounds serious.

FK: You bet it is!  I get, like 10 calls a day!

911: Threatening calls?

FK: Occasionally

911: Threatening your life?

FK: Mostly just threatening to hurt me real bad.

911: Any other types of calls?

FK:  Sometimes she just and asks where I am and when I will be home.

911: Sounds creepy.  Has this person ever tried to make physical contact?

FK: Yes.  She's always at my house.  Sometimes she even comes to my work.

911: Wow. What sorts of threats have you received?

FK: Well, today it was "If you don't pick your dirty socks off the bathroom floor, I am going to give them to the dogs to play with."

911: Ummm....That's an odd threat

FK: And yesterday it was "The next time you drink  the last of the milk, throw the bottle in the garbage instead of putting it back in the fridge."

911: Sir, that's not really a threat

FK: It was an implied threat.  I could see it in her eyes.  You had to be there.

911: Sir, is this your wife that you are talking about?

FK: Well, yeah.

911: I'm sorry, but you can't file.....

FK: Can't I just get a temporary order?  Like, from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM so that she can't call me at work.

911: Sir.....

FK: Yeah, you're right.  One that is good all day and night is better,  That way, when I get home and she starts to tell me about how I left a mess in the garage again, I can point menacingly at the restraining order and she'll have to leave me alone, right?

911: Sir, if I might offer a suggestion.

FK: What's that?  I tried getting a dog to protect me, but he's no good and always takes her side in everything.  I tell you that little mutt is useless......

911: Try cleaning up after yourself once in awhile.  And stop calling 911.

When tragedy strikes and we are looking for answers where none exist, we humans have a hard time dealing with it.  We like answers.  We seek closure.  So, the question seems natural.  Why, God, didn't you stop this?

I am not God, and I cannot presume to speak on His behalf, but I think the answer to that question would be "How would you know if God did prevent a disaster from happening?"  If a mudslide in Cambodia is miraculously aborted because God caused the rain to fall over the ocean rather than on the mountain, who would let us know?  The Almighty doesn't have a PR firm issuing press releases.  Likewise, if a drunk driver were delayed 5 seconds via divine intervention - just long enough to prevent him from hitting a bunch of school children - would you ever even know?

Of course not.

Likewise, with handguns, the only time they ever make the news is when they fail to protect us.  When some mad man goes into a mall or restaurant and shoots a dozen people, it makes the news and we all ask the question of why we even allow people to own guns.  But when a mass murder is stopped in its tracks by a citizen with a gun who disables the attacker, we never ask the question of why every citizen doesn't own a gun?  We never ask the question because the incident doesn't make a big splash in the news.  Consider this: if some of the teachers at Columbine High School had been armed and were able to thwart Harris and Klebold from carrying out their massacre, would any of us even remember the event ten years later?

The ironic thing is that the feel-good measure we imposed to make our kids safe at school actually endangers them.  By declaring our schools to be "Gun Free Zones" we have alerted every nut job that if they try to harm any of our kids at school, they will meet no armed resistance.  There have been far more shootings at banks than there have been at schools.  Yet we don't dare deem banks to be "Gun Free Zones" because we know what the consequences would be: the lack of deterrence would be an open invitation to be robbed.  Banks do not employ armed guards in the hopes that they will shoot bad guys trying to rob them.  They employ armed guards with the thought of preventing a robbery in the first place.  If the government's theory of "Pass a gun-free zone law and you will prevent gun crimes" worked, a lot of bank guards would be unemployed.

Maybe I am just one of those rednecks that President Obama accused of clinging to his God and his guns (I don't own a gun, by the way).  But I am grateful to the protection that each has offered me, even when I am unaware of that protection. 

A great many people reacted with horror and amazement at the videos.  

I did not.  

In fact, my first reaction to the pair was "posers."  See, the Fat Kid already did his own investigation into ACORN.  He knew that the group has very close ties to President Obama and that federal money was sure to come pouring into the group since, after all, Obama is a Chicago politician and that's how Chicago politics works.  Having lived in Chicago, I knew that I had a better chance of my chihuahua crapping gold nuggets than ACORN did of not cashing in on its connections.  So, my first thought was "How can I get me some of that money?"

I put together my own undercover costume and visited my local ACORN office.  A transcript of my conversation is below.

/Begin Transcript/

ACORN worker (AW): Good morning.  How can I help you?

Fat Kid: Yo yo!  What up, yo?!

AW: Ummmm.......

FK: Word up.  I heard a rumor that you all are about to be flush with that federal stimulus money, and I thought I'd come down here and see how I could score me some of that cabbage.

AW: Cabbage?

FK: Fo' shizzle  You know, some of that money Washington is throwing around.

AW: OK.  We do try to connect the community with federal resources that are available.....

FK: Resources.  That's what I want.

AW: What exactly did you have in mind?

FK: Well, see I'm a regular, how you say, entrepreneur.  I have my hands in all sorts a stuff.

AW: OK

FK: First, I thought I could help you with them, you know, illegal aliens, and getting them plugged into the system and voting and stuff.

AW: Well, ummm, we already have programs that help undocumented workers participate in the system.

FK: Yeah, you guys got the folks from Mexico and all that covered, yo, but you've ignored a whole population that could be working for you.

AW: And who would that be?

FK: Why, Klingons, of course.

AW: Klingons?

FK: They're aliens.  And they don't ever vote.  Plus I speak the language. "vaD jIH joq Hegh!!!"

AW: What did you just call me?

FK: I said "Vote for me or die!"  See, I also speak Teamster, so I got all your bases covered.

AW: I don't think......

FK:  "jIH rur Huch!!!!"  It means "I like money."  I also speak Beltway.  I'm versatile.

AW: I really don't think there are enough Klingons to make this a worthwhile project.

FK: OK, how about this: I have a whole library of books that I had to read when I was a kid.  Today's youths don't want to read all that stuff, so how's about I translate it into today's language and, you know, update them?  You feelin' me?

AW: What books did you have in mind?

FK: Did you ever read "Little Women?" 

AW: It was one of my favorites when I was a little girl.

FK: Well, I've already translated, with a new title and everything.

AW: New title?

FK: "Hood Rats."  Catchy, huh?

AW: Actually, no.

FK: How about my retelling of "For Whom The Bell Tolls"  I call it "Yo, G!  Answer Your Phone!!!"

AW: Huh?

FK: I rewrote "Lord of the Rings."  I call it "King of Da Bling."  You think Hollywood would be interested in making a series of movies based on the books?  Maybe I could get a producer credit.  I'd be rollin' VIP, huh?

AW: Sir, if I may interrupt.  You strike me either as a suburban white guy trying very hard to sound like a pimp from the 'hood or else as someone who just escaped from the mental ward.  Either way, kindly stay right here while I make a few phone calls.

FW: Wow.  Look at the time.  I gotta fly.

/Transcript ends/

Speaking of cryptic English phrases, what, literally, does the phrase "how come" mean?  It almost sounds like something Frankenstein's monster would utter while trying to speak for the first time.  I mean, the two word sentence "how come" doesn't really have a subject and "come" is barely a verb in this context.  How did such an asinine pairing of words come to universal usage?  Or how did more complex, meaningful phrases like "I am rubber, you are glue.  It bounces off of me and sticks to you" get popularized? Some precocious child dreamed it up on the playground one day and dropped that line on a schoolmate, who then used it on another, and pretty soon the whole world was infected.  Just like the T-virus.  Somewhere there's an old geezer trying to convince his friends that he invented the phrase and those friends are all dismissing him in disbelief.  But someone invented it, right?

The words "up" and "down" mean opposite things, yet the terms "beat up" and "beat down" have identical meanings.

Using 26 letters of the alphabet, we have a virtually unlimited number of words we can create - yet we have so many words with more than one meaning, it's sickening.  Why don't we invent new words and eliminate some of the secondary meanings to all these confusing words.  And we have so many different rules for spelling and pronunciation that I am glad I grew up an English-speaker because I wouldn't be able to learn it if I grew up speaking another language.

It doesn't matter the venue or event, too many people think that alcohol will make their experience more enjoyable.  And it doesn't matter the venue or event, being around a bunch of intoxicated people will make it far less enjoyable for me.

I was running  the other morning, listening to the radio.  The new Lynnard Skynnard song came on and it was so good that when the commercial came on promoting their concert stop here in Phoenix, I considered getting tickets.  But when the DJ reminded me that I would be able to rock out to "Free Bird" for half an hour, I came to my senses.  I hate that song.

If some alien civilization has developed the technology required to span huge distances of space in short times and developed fuel technology that allows deep space travel, why is it that the only thing we ever hear of them doing on Earth is abducting some drunken red neck and sticking a probe up his butt?  Maybe it's the alien life form of Cow Tipping and these aliens visit our planet as a fraternity prank.  It would explain an awful lot.

Another former member of Congress worthy of mention is Cynthia McKinney.  Anybody who follows politics knows she has a big mouth, but we weren't quite prepared for her accusations that the Louisiana National Guard killed 5,000 prisoners and buried their bodies in a mass grave during the week of Hurricane Katrina.  The fact that there were not 5,000 families of missing prisoners alerting the media that they had lost contact with their loved ones did not seem to sway Rep. McKinney.  She is also remembered for assaulting a House Police officer when he refused to let her around the metal detectors at the House entrance and for claiming that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and allowed them to happen.  Too nutty even for the Democratic Party, she has been a Green Party member since 2007.

But however outlandish our domestic politicians  may be, they pale in comparison to the wife of the newly-elected leader of Japan.  Miyuki Hatoyama claims to have ridden in a UFO to Venus, which she described as a beautiful, green planet.  Not content to merely sound a little eccentric, she claimed that she and Tom Cruise knew each other in a previous life, in which Mr. Cruise was Japanese.  Mr. Cruise remembers the encounter differently, as his previous life was spent on the planet Teegeeack in the service of Emperor Xenu.  The Bat-Crap-Crazy theme she was working on was completed with her description of how she eats the sun for its "yummy, yummy" energy. This all begs the question of whether Japan's socialized health care system covers anti-psychotic drugs.

The great thing about our First Lady is that she hasn't been an embarrassment to her husband or to the country.  We can pick our own leaders and we get a fair vetting of their personalities during the campaigns.  Spouses are a different matter.  Oftentimes, unless the significant other is a loud mouth during the campaign like Teresa Heinz-Kerry, we really don't have a clue what we sort of First Lady we are getting.  I am pleased that the biggest Michelle Obama "controversy" we have had to deal with has been whether or not she should have worn shorts or long pants to the Grand Canyon.  Now, if she had tried to explain her fashion faux pas by saying "Well, on my home world, we wear shorts all the time" I would really start to worry.