SemiConscious Dot Org

(All images respectfully stolen from The Goat)

Okay, I realize that, in the wild card era, division titles are not as important as they used to be. (Recent events bear that out most bluntly.) However, after holding first place for 164 consecutive days, it would’ve been a major psychological blow to jittery, pessimistic, doom-obsessed Red Sox fans the team to lose the division on the final weekend.

This team certainly isn’t perfect; several starting pitchers have struggled as of late, the offense has had major problems overcoming deficits late in games, and they’ve lost an unsettling number of one-run games. However, none of the other American League playoff teams are exactly dominant. They’ve got as good a shot as anyone.

Bring it on.

America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the motherfucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!

Jesus sez: “If I had actually existed, I totally would’ve been an American! Kick ass!”

Moses sez: “Ok, so I’m not technically a deity. But Yahweh told me he’s completely down with America bombing the shit outta people in his name! Rock on!”

Satan sez: “America is my favorite country EVAR!!!!1!!”

Note: Allah was too busy telling his followers to blow up school buses full of kids to venture an opinion on this important topic.

Buddha, on the other hand, wishes you all to know that all things, including America and terrorists, are transitory. Also, Bush and Ahmadinejad are both going to be reincarnated as dung beetles.

He’s tanned, he’s rested, he’s ready.

He’s been dead for thirteen years, and his brain still has more functioning synapses than the Oval Office’s current occupant.

Even now, his campaign brain trust gathers, plotting his ruthless conquest.

Very soon now, he’ll be rising from the dead, just like Jesus.

His victory is imminent, his followers legion, his reign eternal. He will stand astride the world like a cyborg colossus.

NIXON ‘08!

Join him or be crushed!

Yesterday, while I was at work, the Special Lady Friend snapped and decided she needed to have a cat, immediately. So she headed off to the animal shelter and picked up this little bruiser:

It’s a female kitten of indeterminate breed, eight months old, six pounds. She’s been living at the shelter for six months. While the younger kittens cost anywhere up to $100, this one was free, leading us to conclude that we probably saved her from death row.

Problem is, we don’t have a name for her yet. I prefer “Lump,” since she’s spent most of her first two days at our house hiding under furniture or staring out the windows. The SLF thinks “Lump” is a horrible name for a cat, but what the hell does she know?

Never let it be said that folks in my home state are averse to taking direct action. When a right-wing crank in the town of Lewiston found a sex education book at her local library offensive to her delicate sensibilities, did she work within the established system and fill out a complaint form asking the Trustees to review the book? Did she hold a protest outside the library? Did she file a lawsuit to force the book’s removal, like the loonie in Georgia?

Hell, no! She just stole the books!

A Lewiston woman who was upset by the content of an acclaimed sex education book published 14 years ago has checked out copies from two libraries and refuses to give them back.

“Since I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal contents, I will not be returning the books,” JoAn Karkos wrote the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries last month.

Each letter was accompanied by a check for $20.95 to cover the cost of the book, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health.”

“This has never happened before,” said Rick Speer, director of the Lewiston Public Library. “It is clearly theft.”

You gotta love that pretzel logic: The way to protect your children from “amoral” influences is by demonstrating to them that it’s okay to steal something you disagree with. (And yes, it is stealing, whether she offered to pay for them or not.)

Thankfully, neither the library nor the surrounding community are taking this idiocy lying down:

Speer told library trustees that Lewiston police will issue Karkos a summons if she fails to return the book. She faces library fines and a $25 penalty. The library issues at least one summons for overdue books each week, he said. That’s been standard library policy for the past 25 years.

Karkos’ protest has made the book more popular, and requests for copies have increased, Speer said. He said he received several phone calls and e-mails from people around the country applauding the book and offering to buy the library more copies.

“I turned them down,” he said. “We have plenty of copies now. Instead, I suggested they donate a copy to their local library.”

My library has received two donates copies of It’s Perfectly Normal in the past day and a half (as well as multiple requests to check out the book.)

Congratulations, lady. Like all censors, you have only made that which you wish to stifle more popular. And just in time for Banned Books Week, too. Thanks for all the free publicity, dipshit!

Do you know what today is?

Only the most important and wonderful day of the year!

Yes, that’s right kids! It’s

TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

ARRRRRRRR!!!

All ye buxom wenches, prepare to be boarded!

I don’t know where in Hell Chris stumbled across this link, or why he didn’t post it to his own blog, but I operate under a strict formula of of “Snooze = Loose.” Therefore, with great pomp and fanfare, I present to you:

The Greatest Essay Ever Written.

A man can only justify his actions if he regards his demeanor with deductive thinking. This man was not Oedipus, mainly because he was a fucking douche bag. One must know who Oedipus was to understand the period in which it was written. This is my thesis statement. The Greeks contributed many things to our culture, such as olives, gyros, Lenny Kravitz, anal sex, and Oedipus. Oedipus will be remembered though out time because he suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that’s why he couldn’t play baseball in the first Olympic games. He will always be remembered for his journeys and his love for the New York Yankees.

(snip)

One should ANALize the poetry on page 43, when Oedipus is rolling in his benzo and he has to bust a cap on some flagrants in the under city.

Riding in the benzo, poppin my colla

See some fine wenches, I hafta holla

Diamonds, gold, and all the mighty dolla

I’m oedipus bitch, the original balla.

I bust out my 9, to light up your impala.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard may be pimpin’ hos in heaven, but he apparently comes back from beyond the grave occasionally, to take over the pens of high school-aged term paper writers.

I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us.

As a hopeless music junkie, the past few months of involuntary poverty have been torture, cut off from my weekly cd fix. Thank Jeebus I have friends who know what I crave, and who gave me music store gift certificates as wedding presents. I should get married more often! (Ha ha ha ha! Just kidding, baby! No, really…)

And now, for the tunes:

High On Fire, Death is This Communion
Finally, after two and a half long years of waiting, we get the followup to the magnificent Blessed Black Wings. I seriously doubted whether High On Fire would be able to match or top that opus, my second-favorite album of 2005, but they’ve come pretty damn close. The primal Motorhead-meets-Slayer roar remains as brutal as ever, and Matt Pike’s raspy bellow is even beginning to acquire some melody. This might just challenge Machine Head’s The Blackening for Best Metal Album of 2007.

Tomahawk, Anonymous
Mike Patton has made a whole lot of weird music over the course of his long career, but this might just be the weirdest. After dabbling in genres as diverse as metal, funk, jazz, techno, hip hop, classical, and carnival music, he tackles…Native American chants. And combines them with metal. And like everything else he does, it works.

The Nightwatchman, One Man Revolution
Bet you didn’t know that Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello moonlights as a folk singer, did you? He’s pretty darn good at it, too. This is classic protest music, inspired by the likes of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Springsteen. Morello’s voice is nothing to write home about, but that’s not really a drawback in this kind of music. I’m still waiting for him to make an acoustic guitar do all those crazy helicopter-air raid siren-turntable scratch sound effects, though…

In the past five days, more virtual ink has been spilled in the blogosphere over the New England Patriots “spying” “scandal” than any, you know, real news. And, true to the spirit of the blogosphere, 99.9% of the commentary has been beyond stupid. But here and there, a rare voice of sanity and perspective emerges:

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. Obviously, the Patriots just wanted to have a videotaped record of the crybaby NY Jets crying like little babies on the sidelines so that Rodney Harrison can have something to laugh at while he’s taking steroids. I also note that the No Fun League and all the haters out there chose to go after a team called “The Patriots” on the sixth anniversary of 9/11. Make of that what you will. I’m sure Osama did.

At last, someone who’s not afraid to treat this non-story with the mockery and derision it so richly deserves.

Now, obviously, anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows this “spying scandal” is pure, unadulterated horseshit, but obviously, such inconvenient facts won’t keep the Haterade-drinking haters from crawling out from under their hate bridges, dripping with hate, to hatefully try and cast a hateful light on the Pats’ past dominance in a rather obvious attempt to cover up their own colossal failures.

Like, say, the Steelers. Or the Rams. Or the Chargers.

Yep, you heard it here first: it was spying that caused the Steelers to fall behind 24-3 at halftime in the ‘02 AFC title game, even though all this spying is supposed to help the Pats with second half adjustments; it was spying that caused Rams coach Mike Martz to call 57 consecutive passes in the Superbowl, even though the Pats were leaving six defensive backs on the field on every play and daring him to run the ball; and it was spying that caused a Chargers safety to try and run back a fourth quarter interception for a TD and subsequently fumble, when simply falling down would have ended the game.

I will give credit where it’s due: the one team who’ve regularly had their heads handed to them over the years by the Pats that isn’t scrambling around, mewling about how they “wuz robbed” is the Indianapolis Colts. They really are a classy bunch…or is there more to it? After all, the Colts fell behind 21-3 in the first half of last year’s AFC title game, then blitzed the Patriots for 32 second half points. Practically every offensive call they made was absolutely perfect. It’s almost like they… knew what was coming! Maybe this is nothing more than a case of the pot not wanting to call the kettle black!

(Note to Bob: that was a joke.)

Regardless, the narrative has been set in stone. The Pats are the Outlaw Franchise now and forever. Oh well, that tag seemed to work pretty well for the Raiders for three decades…at least until their owner went senile and started trading away future Hall of Fame receivers for fourth round draft picks. (But maybe it’s not senility! Maybe Belichik drugged him! That cheating son of a bitch!)

If that’s the lot we New England fans are now left with, then rest assured, we’ll run with it. Expect to see an eyepatch appear on the Patriots’ “Flying Elvis” logo before too long. And expect our mockery and derision to be that much more spiteful and merciless after our team steamrolls to its fourth Superbowl title in February.

Oderint Dum Metuant
-Caligula

UPDATE – 7/16: Well, hopefully this will shut LaDanian Tomlinson the fuck up. Cowboys, Colts, Ravens, Steelers: you’re next.

It’s official, kids. The war in Iraq has shoved our political discourse straight through the looking glass. How do I know this? Because George Will is actually sounding sane:

What “forced” America to go to war in 2003 – the “gathering danger” of weapons of mass destruction – was fictitious. That is one reason this war will not be fought, at least not by Americans, to the bitter end. The end of the war will, however, be bitter for Americans, partly because the president’s decision to visit Iraq without visiting its capital confirmed the flimsiness of the fallback rationale for the war – the creation of a unified, pluralist Iraq.

(link via TBogg)

I understand that having all that blood on one’s hands must be exceptionally sticky and uncomfortable, which is why so many of the loudest cheerleaders for this pointless, stupid war are now speaking out against it. But do they really think a few critical editorials – four and a half years too late – are going to buy their way out of Hell?