Friday, January 30, 2004

More bitching about the WMD flap.

It's sad that just now the debate is heating up here in the US over whether or not the justifications for war were overblown. Yeah, there's been some bickering here and there, but not a whole hell of a lot. Nothing to the point of having someone look into it, which is at least now seriously being pondered. Over in Britian, it seems to have been going on for awhile, even if so far all it has produced is the Hutton report and an excuse for Tony Blair to yell at his MPs for ever doubting him. At least they've been trying to get some accountability for this fuck-up.

I'm still having trouble with the whole fuck-up, though. As much as I hate TB, like I said earlier, I have respect for evil genius. TB has shown mad evil genius, but the Iraq war is making them look stupid in so many ways. I was thinking, could the lack of WMD somehow actually be part of their evil plan? I don't see how, but if anyone could turn this into an advantage, it's them. Still, I can't think of any good reasons, any more than I could think of reasons to justify that Saddam allowed himself to be captured as part of his evil plan.

Unafraid to hit way below the belt

Speaking of strict constructionalist Bible fuckers...

It's so sad and furthermore infuriating because you know there are tons of families just as ignorant as this one, teaching their children rubbish like "Gay men... have a lot of disease."

The BBC may very well have found one of the ugliest families in the America. Who the fuck are they, Grand Funk Railroad? And where did they get that daughter of theirs, a Halloween party?
This having come from Richard fucking Nixon.
Because we were too busy making fun of a certain trash whore.
Damn.

Carter predicts ridicule for the state? Easy, Jimmy. No one is going to be quick to make fun of Georgia. Those goddamn inbreds.

Seriously, I don't understand how people are actually able to "reconcile" beliefs in evolution with belief in the Bible. I mean, there's no evolution in the Bible, so they've gotta be mutually exclusive, right?

Of course, there are undoubtedly some people who just give up on trying to resolve this dissonance, instead opting to pretend that it all makes sense when it really doesn't. Others I'm sure look to the Bible as more of a guideline for morals and whatnot instead of considering it, well, gospel.

But of course there will always be those stupid fuckers who kick it strict constructionalist school when it comes to the Bible, and those are the people who bug me the most. In case you couldn't tell.
After all these years, Castro's stand-up act just keeps getting better and better.

Seriously, Fidel, you're not going to die with a gun in hand when the Americans invade. You're just going to die. Once that happens, in 2138, then we might start taking serious actions with regards to Cuba.

You have to hand it to Castro, though. He really is a tough old motherfucker to still be around after all these years. How many US presidents have come and gone while he remained El Comandante? Impressive shit. Regardless of what he's ranting about nowadays, we pretty much just gave up on trying to kill him. That's as high a compliment as you're going to receive from us.

Oh, and while we're at it, kill the Cubans.
Yeah, but he forgot Lesson 0: Never open the package.
You know, I hate the guy and all, but it's still pretty disrespectful to Strom Thurmond's family to be digging up his body so soon.

I have a question: a guy who can recognize whale ribs has a girlfriend? This is a new low for the rest of us losers.

Disingenuous redefined

Of course he does. Just like he wanted the culprit in exposing Valerie Plame to be found. And how he wanted to know the truth behind 9/11. And how he wanted to see justice after Enron.

If Bush were to see any "facts," it would probably be the first time he was ever presented with that particular beast.

There needs to be accountability for this shit - across the board. It's not going to happen, or if it does, it will only be in token fashion. I wouldn't be surprised if Tenet resigned or was fired. There's definitely a case for that, but how great of a coup would it be for the administration to say "Hey, you know all these problems we've been having? Turns out, it was Clinton's guy's fault!"

Probably on of the main reasons Tenet is still around is because he's been useful as a willing scapegoat. He knows that unless he kisses serious ass, like when he took blame for last year's State of the Union yellowcake claims, he'll be out the door in two seconds. We'll see how much longer that holds up.

Let's just call it Wednesday+2

We haven't done the W^4 in a really, really long time. Mainly because the long-distance culture shock over schoolgirl prostitutes, pedophile teachers, and train gropers wore off pretty quickly. Just for old times' sake (sad that "old times" is a couple of months ago), here are a few WaiWai stories. Just ignore the fact that it isn't Wednesday.

I will never get tired of seeing the moniker "OL" casually used. As a side note, if any of you girls over there are looking for an overseas wedding, I think we could probably work something out (how's that for romance?). Especially those of you in the 146 cm range.

I may or may not have posted an earlier story on this, but leave it to the Japanese to bring back the idea of human commodities to modern civilization.

And finally, you know you're a pedophile when even the Japanese are like "Nuh-uh. Our kids are not safe with that pervert."
Yeah, good question.

In typical BLM fashion, I have a simplistic answer: we, the people, are fucking stupid. We put up with this shit. There's no outrage, no calls to action. Nothing substantial, at least. Things seem to be improving a decent amount with election season, but I still wouldn't call us "fired up."

I have a theory as to why people don't act, and why people don't get fired up. You see, the powers that be have, over the years, built up a nice little system that brings them ever expanding power and wealth. Meanwhile, they've rigged things so that the middle class, which makes up the bulk of this country, has it just good enough that they're not going to risk fucking it up. They're on the brink of where if things were to tip ever so slightly one way, they might get pissed. Those in charge do a good job of management, making sure that the middle class stays on the side of the fence they want them on.

I'm pretty sure that there is a good percentage of people who don't trust the government. They know that it's corrupt. It's owned by corporations and special interests. I'm pretty so no one has ever said "I trust politicians" who wasn't fucking lying to themselves. This is just how it is. We know it, and we accept it. Why? Because we have our nice houses in the suburbs. We have our gas guzzling SUVs.

Surely, voting for Nader would fuck all that up.

With the middle class placated, that leaves the lower classes, which are often a breeding ground of rebellion. They're too busy just trying to fucking survive, though, that they don't have bloody time to even think about revolting in any fashion.

I always have a begrudging respect for evil genius, and I've got to hand it to them on this setup.
Hot on the heels of the physics department, we have yet another proud moment for CU.

I obviously have no idea as to whether or not this shit happens, but once the word "rape" has been uttered, it's over. There's no getting rid of that. Especially since we know that football players are always so well behaved. Plus, it probably doesn't help that CU was recently crowned the #1 party school in the nation. Again.

Still, though, if anyone can bring down the football team, it's Lisa Simpson. No, I'm not trying to mock or make light of (alleged) rape victims, but I could not let that one slide.
In another time and place, this could be funny.

It's really sad when a quote from counselor Troi sums up the current political situation.

"Imminent threat" has become "gathering threat." "Links to al Qaeda" has become "al Qaeda-like terrorists streaming into Iraq." "Stockpiles of WMD" has become "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities."

THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY FUCKING EXCUSES ABOUT BAD INTELLIGENCE OR WHATEVER. YOU PIECE OF SHIT COCKSUCKERS GOT US INVOLVED IN A GODDAMN WAR THAT WE DIDN'T NEED TO BE INVOLVED IN JUST BECAUSE PAUL WOLFOWITZ SAID SO. FUCK EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU. I ALMOST HOPE THERE IS A HELL, JUST SO I CAN SIT COMFORTABLY KNOWING THAT YOU'LL SOME DAY BE BURNING IN IT.

Okay, that's enough. I'm going to stop here before I really get mad.
Man, Georgia is so smart.

Evolution? A buzzword? No it isn't. Evolution is a fucking scientific principle. You know what else isn't a buzzword, Kathy Ms. Cox? Stupid cunt.

Evolution isn't perfect, but the best argument I can come up with against it is the fact that we still have knuckle-draggers like Cox and all these stupid parents running around. Sorry, if you're raising your kids where their only exposure to things includes stupid bullshit like the earth was created in seven days a few thousand years ago, then you are raising your children in ignorance.

Really, though, the notion of creating a euphemism for evolution can't be summed up much better than how Bobby Franklin put it. "It's stupid. It's like teaching gravity without using the word gravity."

Hey, I have an idea. If we start calling evolution "biological changes over time," then can we officially start referring to the Bible as "Stupid ignorant bullshit animal and ghost stories"?
I've linked Savage Love columns before, but in case you're unfamiliar with SL, it's no-holds-barred sex advice column that often includes graphic descriptions of sexual acts. Just in case you're at work or something.

Anyway, the Google search mentioned in the last post had me curious as to what the search would actually turn up (with typos fixed). This was not for academic reasons, it's just because I'm a pervert. One thing that turned up was a contest Savage Love was running a couple of years ago on masturbation horror stories. There were two separate contests, one for the guys and another for the gals. For anyone curious, the winners can be found here.

This begs the question: where the hell can I find some women who can fist themselves? Nah, fuck, that would probably require me to leave the apartment. To go someplace besides work. Nevermind.
Google Yahoo search:

hot dog+mastubate+stuck

Oh, man, this brings to mind a couple of great stories. Great, of course, being relative.

The first story is about this girl (who was occasionally a man... don't ask) who was, um, promiscuous. She was as easy as Super R-Type on novice. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the joke needed to be made.

Anyway, there was one time she was getting herself ready for sex. It may have been her first time, but either way, to get herself prepped she decided to use a perfume bottle to loosen herself up. I'm sure you can see where this is going. The ploy backfired, and the bottle ended up getting stuck inside her. She ended up having to have her DAD take her to the ER to get it removed. Her excuse was that she was masturbating with it, but she neglected the "getting ready for sex" part. Not like it really matters; that's already a traumatic enough event for all involved.

The second story feeds from the first. We were telling yet another girl this story, and somehow that segued into the above mentioned hot dog situation. I can't remember exactly how we went from perfume bottles to hot dogs. Maybe it was just a natural progression, or maybe someone specifically brought up an anecdote. No matter; this girl, who was pretty damn funny, had a great solution to getting a hot dog stuck inside. "I'd just give my boyfriend a call: 'Hey, have you eaten yet?'"

I just realized that I created some nice foreshadowing with a great pun at the beginning of that last paragraph. I fucking rule.

Don't ask how I became privy to the perfume bottle story. In case you're wondering, it wasn't my girlfriend. I'm sure it will come as a total shock to everyone, but I didn't exactly see a lot of action back in high school. No, for some reason, we would just hear the occasional vaginal rumor that was floating around school. Nothing but maturity amongst high schoolers. There's even another one I could relay, but I'll spare you that one.
Mad points go out to Jared for picking up on both a Lewis Black reference as well as a Chris Rock reference yesterday. Further points for linking one of my favorite Penny Arcade strips, which I think of any time the old XBox controllers or Halo are brought up in conversation.

I'm sure others have picked up on my tendency to quote comedians or other sources without giving a reference. Believe it or not, it isn't because I'm a plagiarizing asshole who's trying to take credit for someone else's jokes. Usually. No, the issue there is that I basically write this 'blog as if I were talking to ETP. We both have this annoying tendency to quote shit, and since we've spent so much bloody time together over the years we're easily able to pick up one another's references without having to cite any sources. Looks like Jared is on top of things - he could totally hang with us and have no trouble communicating effectively. Now, whether or not he'd hang with us is a different matter altogether.

For the rest of you who can pick up on at least some of my myriad references, you're probably in good shape. The rest of you are on your own.

Thursday, January 29, 2004

Man, it has got to be fucking neat to be Microsoft and have the ability to take such a huge hit on each console it sells over a sustained period of time. All in the name of developing a product line and brand awareness for what's hoped to be the real moneymaker, no less.

Being the Linux nerd I am, I at one point fell prey to the stupid bullshit moral obligation to hate Microsoft. I'm still not a huge MS fan by any means, but I do have to hand it to them on the Assbox. I naturally resisted this console for a long time, but naturally the consumer whore instincts took over and I acquiesced. Instincts, and Dead or Alive: Xtreme Barbie Doll Dressup.

In the end, I was rather impressed with the Assbox. Luckily they got their shit together and started making the Controller S standard before I got mine, though. I honestly cannot see what they were thinking with the original 43 lb. monstrosity that they supposedly did so much testing on. Who the fuck was in their focus groups, basketball players and dock workers?

The ability to rip tracks from CDs and play them in certain games is just the best fucking idea ever. Unfortunately, it's only in select games, but it comes in real handy in oh-so-many cases. For example, in DOA: XBDD, I can replace all of the shitty music that comes with the game, and I can augment the selection of shitty 80s music in GTA: VC.

There's one thing that pisses me off about the Assbox, though. It's basically a stripped down PC, but as yet they didn't think to include a battery-backed clock?
Okay, we can give Kerry one point for his response to being made fun of over his dancing ability.
What, you expect the media to go "in depth" or something over here?

Don't ask, this just came to mind, and at very least ETP will get it

Dear BLM,

I love speaking in public!

Signed,
Lying sacks of crap
Yeah, because voters in Iowa are real representative of America in general.

True, the media has done more than its fair share of hyping Dean. And yeah, part of Dean's recent slide is because some voters are thinking more critically about Dean as opposed to the manufactured image of Dean. There seems to be more to it, though. Like how Dean was taking constant shit from everyone for quite a long time there. It was bound to wear on him eventually.

Although Kerry does have some momentum built up, winning New Hampshire and Iowa doesn't mean that he's going to win it all. Still, it's certainly not going to hurt, and I could easily see Americans just resigning themselves to Kerry winning since he's won all of two states. It's kind of irritating that Iowa and New Hampshire can have such a huge impact when they, in so many ways, are not representative of Americans as a whole. As yet, those two contests seem to create bias in future caucuses and primaries, thus exaggerating the importance of the first two. Maybe I'm once again too simple-minded to see the wisdom in this process, but it would be nice if several of the first caucuses and primaries were held in various parts of the country on the same day in order to try and mitigate this effect.

Earth to tall bitch: what is your fault? THIS is!

Even though I complained about it recently and I never repeat myself, the Iraq issue is one of the things making it hard for me to get on board with Kerry. John, if you think the decision to invade Iraq was a bad idea, maybe you shouldn't have helped sign over congressional power to go to war back when you had the chance to put a stop to it.

I'm still not buying this bullshit that Bush "breached faith." Why exactly did anyone have faith in Bush? Was it not plainly clear to everyone that TB just couldn't wait to go to war?

Kerry has always rubbed me the wrong way, mainly for his inability to give a decent handjob. Regardless, it looks like we need to give that man two turntables and a microphone, 'cause he's presently where it's at.
One con I really want to go to this year is Anime Central, mainly because it's in Chicago. Even if the con sucks ass, I'd be in fucking Chicago, and it's not like there isn't other shit to do in that town. Anybody up for it?
A couple of release dates I care about, via ANN:

Onegai Twins novel: April 2004
Narue no Sekai manga vol. 1: May 2004
Not satisfied with winning a Nobel Prize a couple of years back, my alma mater is not fucking around.

I don't understand how CU seems to not be that good, yet there are at least two professors I know of who have gotten the so-called "genius grant," and we have people who won a Nobel Prize. Of course, this is all coming out of the physics department. Unlike the rest of us, they apparently have their shit together. And when I say "us," I'm talking to you people in Arts & Crafts and Business. Sure, the engineering department isn't winning anything, but we're still better than you people.

Except for the "virtually no women" thing. That kinda blows.

Contrary to what he'd like physics to have you believe, "Joementum" is not conserved

Lieberman clearly hasn't played any Grand Theft Auto, else he'd have a better idea as to how things go down in that game. When killing women in GTA, you don't always go about things by "pushing her to the ground, kicking her repeatedly and then ultimately killing her, shooting her over and over again." You don't need to do all that to kill a woman. Sometimes you just shoot her, and you don't necessarily have to do it over and over again - a good shotgun blast will take her out immediately. Other times a sturdy golf club will do the trick. Typically, you don't even have to push her down - the weak-kneed bitch will just drop when you hit her or shoot her. And you're not always rewarded, Joe - sometimes the poor piece of crap isn't carrying any money. That always fucking pisses me off. It's bad enough if I'm wasting time in the presence of those vile creatures we call "women," but if I'm going to murder one of them senselessly in virtual streets, she had better drop some goddamn cash.

This is, of course, neglecting the fact that the focus of the GTA series isn't killing women. That just sounds good when you're pandering to an audience of women. It's also about killing policemen. And drug dealers. And other thugs. And random innocent people on the streets. It's about money. And doing drugs. IT'S A FUCKING GAME ABOUT THE MOB. Kinda like The Sopranos, only interesting but with no hotties like Meadow.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is horrendous, all right. Horrendously good. Jesus fucking Christ is that a fun game. I've been playing a ton of it this week. GTA3 is a fucking good game, too, but my video game ADHD kicked in and I punted on it, but I'll be getting back to it for sure.

Of all the hours I've logged this week, a good chunk of it wasn't even running mob missions - it was mostly just running around perpetrating general malfeasance. My favorite thing in the GTA series is running vigilante missions. Christ, those are fun. I could do those all day. "Your time as a law enforcer is up!" How funny is that shit?

Fucking with the cops is fun, too. Sometimes I'll just run around and see how high of a warrant level I can build up. I've gotten it up to five stars. That's fun shit, what with the FBI in their black SUVs joining in the hunt to take you down.

Yes, the GTA series is violent. We're a culture that likes violence. The thing is, most of us are able to distinguish fantasy from reality. I can guarantee you that everyone out there has thought about killing someone at some point. Someone pisses you off to the point where you at least say "I wanna fucking kill that guy." That doesn't mean that you go off and kill that person. In fact, I think that if you haven't thought about killing someone at least once, then you have anger issues.

I remember after I first played GTA3, I went out driving the next day. And I was thinking to myself, "man, I've got the urge to run some red lights and run over pedestrians on the sidewalk." Doesn't mean I actually fucking went and did it. Why? Because I'm not that fucked up, that's why. The same goes for most anyone else who plays GTA or any other violent video game for that matter. This further extends to people who watch violent movies or get off with porn. Even violent porn, where the violence is simulated. There's nothing wrong with having a fucked up imagination, so long as that fucked up-edness stays in your mind. For some people, it doesn't stay in their minds, because there's something else completely separate from GTA that was already broken inside their minds. For the rest of us, though, we can partake in different kinds of socially maladjusted escapsim, and we and those around us are in no danger.

Oh, except for when it comes to dealing with Haitians. I hate them and I am going to kill them, because the game says to. I LISTEN to what Grand Theft Auto tells me to do.
Someone got here doing a search for the Barbie Twins' 2003 calendar. This begs the question: haven't the Barbie Twins been put to sleep yet? If it hadn't happened before 2003, then they're never going to get that shit done.

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

... Which begs the question: what the fuck is "affordable" for a Lamborghini? Oh, wait, key word in there: more affordable.

Regardless, nothing will ever beat the now out of production Ferrari F50, for me at least. This fucking thing redefined "excess." Its looks are exotic as hell. For cars, exotic is good. As Newsradio taught us, this is in contrast to when you say a woman's looks are "exotic," which is actually just a polite way of calling her ugly.

Anyway, back to the F50. I remember reading an article on these things a few years ago. Ferrari (supposedly) wouldn't even sell you one unless if you already owned two Ferraris - they wanted to try and reduce the chances that you were just looking to re-sell it. Then, you had to plop down 250 grand for the down payment. Payments were about $5,000 a month, with the car in the end costing $450,000 (maybe more). Oh, and did I mention that was merely a lease plan with an option to buy at the end? A fucking LEASE.

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I so totally wanted one of these fucking things.
Business 2.0's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for last year.
One thing I've gotten tired of is watching Monopoly be whored out to pretty much anyone. NASCAR monopoly, sports Monopoly, douchebag Monopoly. All I can say is, where the fuck is my Monopoly? The most miserable Monopoly ever. Brings a whole new dimension to family game night.

That being said, this is pretty fucking funny.
Yeah, harping. It looks like this is going to be the administration's mantra; it wasn't us, it was the media intelligence community. When I go to the money machine at night, I'm not looking over my shoulder for the media - I'm looking for the intelligence community!

Yeah, I wouldn't doubt that we had bad intelligence. But I'm not buying that there was no pressure from above to come up with something. I'm real sure the administration, who had an agenda to remove Saddam from before they came to power, was just willing to let the intelligence community to do their thing and then see what happens. They strike me as "maybe we'll get lucky" kind of guys. Unless if they just knew the intelligence community would fuck it up, in which case that was a pretty shrewd maneuver.

"Limited data"? What the shit is up with that? We had our foot in Saddam's ass for years. I understand that intelligence gathering is difficult and takes time, but c'mon. Iraq still had to be one of the most heavily watched countries on the fucking planet. Even still, if all we had is limited information, what the fuck are we doing going to war based on it? Doesn't someone at the top check fucking references? Don't we have defense secretaries and national security advisors with underlings who can look into the shit they're handed? Obviously they can't doublecheck everything, since they're relying on the intelligence community to do that for them, but couldn't someone somewhere at sometime have had a conversation like this:

"Are you sure about this?"
"Well, we have limited data."
"Then maybe we shouldn't be starting a war over it."

Of course, there's no point in checking things if you're already hearing the answers you want to hear.

Let me do something I never do here at Fe and give the administration the benefit of the doubt. Check this out, though. Even if the administration put no pressure on anyone, and furthermore they didn't lie but were just acting on bad intel, this is STILL on the administration. Remember how September 11th was the intelligence community's fault, and we've been doing all this shit for over two years to address those issues? Clearly we haven't taken enough measures, and by measures I mean effective measures, to begin solving these problems. TB: GET ON IT.

7%

Several years ago, we formulated the theory that men are such bullshitters and are so fucking lazy that they're doing pretty well if they manage to accomplish 7% of the shit they say they're going to do. 7% is the typical high water mark, although if you're really on and do something like land a date with some girl you've been stalking, you can reach the promised land of 10%. Then, there are sad-sack kids like this one guy we used to know who was lucky if he could operate at the 3% level.

Anyway, this week I think we've made our 7% mark, and and we got there on Sunday, bloody Sunday. You see, about a week ago, I found these really cool sets of sushi plates. After buying them, though, I was like "Well, guess these are never getting used." ETP and BOETP (Bride of ETP; she currently has no online presence so she's stuck with that moniker until she does; not to trivialize her in any way, unless of course if we're talking wedding dresses) also picked one of these bad boy sets up, and I was like, goddamn it, now I'm hungry for sushi. This degenerated into us deciding that we finally needed to get our shit together and just try making our own sushi.

Yeah, I know. Not only are we notoriously bad for not just not following through on plans but not even making plans in the first place, now we're bullshitting about something that, if done improperly, can get us sick or killed. You know, raw meat and all. Regardless, here we are, running around the mall, making plans for what needs to be bought to make this happen.

It didn't help that we came up with this idea well into Saturday evening, but by the end of the night we at least had a book and a rice steamer. Since it was late, we punted on the "finding raw fish" thing and decided to try again on Sunday. We did, however, bust out man's most useless invention, the phonebook, to check out places to go buy fresh fish on Sunday. Oh, and we ended up going out for sushi. Silly gaijin.

Sunday could not have gone more poorly (well, almost), mostly because we're idiots. You see, the phonebook listed plenty of places to buy fish, and we're like, hey, we're making sushi, so the best places to buy sushi-grade fish have gotta be Asian markets, right? Yeah, well, we go halfway across town to this place with a bunch of Asian shops, including a couple of grocery stores. The two that we hit did not give good vibes. I'm sure this is just how it is at fish markets, but there's whole fish sitting on ice in the open air, which I'm just not used to. They might as well just throw it on the floor as far as I'm concerned. Regardless, we did manage to get most of our basic supplies - rice, sushi vinegar, nori, wasabi, low-sodium soy sauce, bamboo rolling mat. Everything except, well, fish.

While we're in the Asian market phase of our little misadventure, it starts snowing. A lot. God's revenge for my complaints about Colorado never getting snow anymore, as well as his revenge for us being so impudent as to make plans and try to follow through, was coming to fruition. We managed to survive, however, and finally ended up hitting a couple of regular grocery stores (read: lame white people; because, in addition to all looking alike, Asians have irregular grocery stores) to look for fish. We didn't have much hope of finding anything, but it was all we were left with late on Sunday while being buried in snow.

We're sitting there at Albertson's, looking at the fish selections. There's color-added salmon and not-too-bad looking tuna and... That's as good as it got. Finally, I'm like, we need to research this some more. We were anxious to give this a shot, but not really anxious to pick up some kind of bacteria or parasite and die. The decision to "fuck it" (not literally) was then made, and instead we'd be getting hot dogs and buns to make coneys. Which, as I understand, could still qualify as a Japanese feast.

I was worried at this point, because I knew that if we didn't get our shit together that night, this sushi thing was never going to happen. Much like our "efforts" to start playing tennis on a regular basis, if we didn't get into some kind of groove I knew the sushi thing was going to fall into the 93% bucket. Fortunately, we came across some crab meat, which was the last necessary ingredient for California rolls, save cucumber and avocado, which were readily available. Sushi, in some form or another, was back on.

Here's a couple of quick shopping tips. If you're going to pick up a bag of frozen shrimp, look at the fucking price tag first. The black man's lobster is fucking expensive. Also, Albertson's does not carry wooden rice cooling tubs, mainly because you decided to go look for them. If you forgo looking for them, they're on aisle 12, right across from the feminine hygiene products.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention one of the big reasons as to why we were such fucking morons. I mean, from the standpoint of this story. You see, we're at Cost Plus as well as Albertson's, and we notice that virtually ALL of the shit we risked our lives for in the ice and snow is available at these places close to home. Granted, no place other than the Asian market had the low-sodium Kikkoman dispenser, but I'm sorry, it really was not worth all that bullshit just for that green-topped fucker.

As a random side note, probably the worst idea of the day was when ETP suggested going back to the Asian market while wearing a "Looking for an Asian girlfriend" t-shirt. I may as well just get it over with and head back there with an "If I see one more naked Asian I'm going to throw up" t-shirt, because the end result will be the same. Namely, me getting run out of town.

Anyway, let's try and restore some linearity here to yet another badly fractured and poorly written entry that, coincidentally, no one but those involved will give a shit about.

Finally, finally, finally, we get back home with all our loot, ready and rearin' to go. We bust out the rice steamer and fire it up. We lay out the bamboo and nori. We start mixing the vinegar with salt and sugar, which will be added to the rice for stickiness. We're slicing and dicing. It's actually happening.

As we were shopping during the day, we came across "sushi vinegar" and "rice vinegar," not sure what the difference was. Instead of, I dunno, reading labels, we just got the sushi kind, since we figured we couldn't go wrong with that. Well, that was a fine call, but only after mixing the vinegar with salt and sugar did we notice that sushi vinegar ALREADY HAS salt and sugar.

No matter, we're still doing it. And four California rolls later, each of more or less decreasing mangled-ness (including my trillian-style inside out, patent pending), things were a marginal success.

So, what'd we learn today? Or, Sunday? Well, we're morons. It's not like we didn't know that, but hey, it doesn't hurt to be reminded every now and then. Wait, yes it does. Furthermore, we learned to not bother with real crab, and skip straight to the imitation stuff. You see, many sushi restaurants use imitation crab in their rolls. Which is fine, because it tastes good. Real crab, however, or at least the crab we got, was total ass. Finally, we learned that you really can do anything just so long as you set your mind to it. And if I ever get this "after-school-special" ever again with a statement I make, I'm going to be making some imitation crab meat.

We did do one smart thing, of course, and that was not rushing into buying raw fish of questionable repute. No, that intestinal fest has been re-scheduled for Superbowl Sunday. Tentatively.

The Beastie Boys ain't got shit on me

One thing I always find disarming is that despite being all uptight about sex in this country, we seem to have no hangups talking about dick medication. Viagra or whatever else is A-O-K nowadays. We get embarrassed over anything remotely sexual, but we're chomping at the bit to talk about old, broken dick. It's nice that we're opening up, but it's just weird to me when we do.

In addition to the prescription shit like Viagra and its competitor (or competitors; I can't remember if that second one is available yet or not), there's all that other "male enhancement" nonsense that you always see magazine and radio ads for. I hear a bunch of these when I'm listening to JFR, which is no surprise since his audience consists of almost nothing but male cretins. Yes, I'm obviously one of those cretins, but for what it's worth my dick still works okay. Although, just between you and me, I'm not sure why it does. You'd think it would have wised up to the big picture and just given up about six years ago.

Anyway, one of the commercials I constantly hear is for Enzyte (bring on those Google hits, guys), which advertises itself as "natural male enhancement." This reminds me of a complaint I once made. If it were fucking natural, you wouldn't be taking a pill for it. NATURE would do the job for you. So quit calling it what it isn't.

Another one is for something called Prosilon. I don't know if I'm spelling it right or not, but I really don't care anyway, and I sure as hell am not going to go searching for it while at work. No, I'm just going to talk about "old, broken dick" while at work. Getting back to the point, this commercial is done entirely by a woman who is way too enthusiastic to be talking about poorly performing penises and whose voice is just a little too pleasant anyway. The whole commercial is a bunch of bullshit about re-gaining your youthful sexual prowess and staying power and blah blah blah. My favorite line is "Become the legendary lover that women BRAG about!"

You've got to be fucking kidding me. At this point, I'd be lucky to be the shitty lover that women bitch about.
Clinton doesn't need the Internet, because he can get women. Real ones.
Let it be known that all liberals aren't total pussies, and some of us can throw down when necessary.

As a quick little exercise in media bias, that article was from the somewhat more conservative New York Post, while this is from the somewhat less conservative CNN. There's a bit of a difference there. It's up to you to decide just how big of a ruffian Franken is.

Oddly enough, a quick check over at Fox News didn't turn up anything other than a link to the NYP story (both are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.). I thought they'd be jumping all over this shit after that little lawsuit over Franken's book. Maybe they got tired of actually helping Franken's career and decided to leave it alone.
Tony: 2 (officially)
Detractors: 0

Tony Blair lives to kiss George W. Bush's ass yet another day.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Tony: 2 (tentatively)
Detractors: 0
Tony: 1
Detractors: 0
This is yet another example as to why I would worship Onion writers as deities were I to find religion.
It looks like the Oscar nominations have been made public. I'm not posting a link, because I don't care. The Oscars have been dead to me since they proved what a total bullshit sham they are after stiffing both LA Confidential (the best movie ever) and Saving Private Ryan (which was also fucking harsh) for best picture.

Monday, January 26, 2004

A day of reckoning looms for Tony Blair.
Oh, man, can life get any better? Let's fucking hope so. Until it does, there's some new GYWO to keep you satiated.
THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY FOR JUSTICE.
Arena League Football: Who gives a fuck?
Harping.
If this is the reason why Spirit is fucked up, then you've got to be kidding me. How... How in the fuck did they not stress test the filesystem? Good job, NASholes. Maybe they should have loaded PKzip before sending Spirit up there.
Massive quantities of ready-to-go WMD and proof of strong ties between Saddam and al Qaeda... Or a guy who just got to Iraq who reported to a guy who reported to Osama. Either way, I think the premises for war have been satisfied.

Yes, I'm going to keep harping on this shit.

Oh, and just since he was mentioned: fuck Daniel Pearl. I felt no rage when that guy was killed, unlike oh-so-many others. What the fuck do you expect to end up happening to someone running around with shady characters in Pakistan? That he'd be treated to ice cream and then sent home with a Pulitzer-prize winning story? I also felt no sympathy for the guy, although I did feel sorry for his wife and unborn child, who have had to suffer because their husband/father was such a selfish asshole.

There are few bigger pieces of shit than "investigative journalists." Egotistical assholes who care more about the personal glory that comes from "getting the scoop" than, oh, I dunno, their families. They'll give you some bullshit about doing great work to inform people, but that's not what drives them. Sorry, I just get pissed when someone knowingly puts themselves in great danger out of sheer self-indulgence when they have a wife back at home and a kid on the way.
VENKMAN BURN IN HELL.

I was wondering what kind of pretentious fuck named the bird N'kisi, and then I saw that the bird's owner is a New York artist.
World's largest metaphor fails to hit iceberg and, subsequently, fails to become a metaphor.
It's taken over two years and it's only one section, but it's a start.

In other PATRIOT Act news, whether or not it's been used is not the whole point, cocksuckers. Assuming Asscroft isn't just flat-out lying about it, of course, but still. An unused permission slip to violate civil liberties is still a permission slip to violate civil liberties.