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Great news, kids! If your birthday is February 29th and you just turned 84 today, you’re finally old enough to drink legally! Enjoy!
Above: His frat brothers bought him a hooker to celebrate!
But wait, there’s more good news! Ponder this is as you down that first frosty cold one, my newly-legal octogenarian friend:
In just 176 years, you can retire.
If only the good lord had seen fit to strike me stone blind ten minutes ago, I would’ve been spared the trauma of seeing this picture:
The Red Sox met with President George W. Bush at the White House today. Notably missing from the proceedings was Manny Ramirez, whose absence was noted by Bush. “Manny Ramirez isn’t here, I guess his grandmother died again,” Bush joked.
For God’s sake, Tek, don’t shake his hand! You’ll get Loser Karma all over you! Your ACL will pop like a grape in a microwave!
I try to console myself with the knowledge that every World Series winner has a silly photo op on the White House lawn the following spring, and the Sox owners are all big time Democratic contributors, and Curt Schilling was probably the only person who actually enjoyed meeting our stupid cracker Preznit, and the photo op probably drove uber-Republican George Steinbrenner into a fit of apoplectic, jealous rage…
But still, it’s painful to look at. My eyeballs will take days to recover.
For the past several years, a favorite annual ritual of mine has been to read and dissect the ranking and relative (de)merits of those individuals in The Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome Americans list. Every installment is a treasure chest of hilarious, spiteful mockery, directed at those sewer-swimming politicians, celebrities, pundits, and assorted cultural vampires who so richly deserve it. To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks: they are demons from Hell, sent here to Earth to lower the standards. The Beast calls them on it.
However, I have a major problem with 2007’s list: the curious absence of 2006’s winner, John McCain. Not only did he not repeat as Most Loathsome, he missed the Top 50 entirely! If his behavior in 2006 was so unspeakably loathsome (and it was), his actions last year were even more so, from defending the disastrous war authored by his one-time hated rival George W. Bush to his ludicrous assertion that Baghdad streets are “safe for Americans” to walk on and his subsequent April Fool’s Day stroll through the marketplace:
On the heels of those narrow-scope photos came reports of what McCain’s entourage was actually comprised of. That “safe” Baghdad market had been flooded with more than one hundred battle-ready troops and armored Humvees. Three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, and sharpshooters were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Simply put, McCain’s “safe” street was one overly loud mouse-fart away from being paved with flaming lead during every step of that little walk.To compound the calamity, a report emerged two days later describing the abduction and slaughter of 21 Iraqis who worked in the marketplace McCain’s mini-Normandy force had stormed the previous Sunday, an obvious act of retribution for his visit by a violent Baghdad militia. Already belied by the revealed firepower he brought along, McCain’s “safe” walk in Iraq led directly to yet another horrific Baghdad bloodbath. There is bad, there is awful, and then there is this thing, this quantum singularity of ignominy that bends the very light now shining upon it.
Call it farce, call it folly, condemn it for its drenching hypocrisy and the mortal consequences suffered by 21 innocent people. One must also see this, in the end, as a true American tragedy of historic proportions.
I’m sorry, Buffalo Beast. For this egregious failure to fully take into account John McCain’s complete and utter douchitude, you must be punished… and there’s only one punishment commensurate with your sins. That’s right, you’re about to be on the business end of a
I’m sorry to have to do that, but you brought it on yourselves. Perhaps you’ll be constructive and use this as a learning experience. After all, McCain has already provided you with plenty of fodder for 2008’s list, dropping his one remaining principled stance by voting to allow the CIA to torture. And with 2007’s winners, George Bush and Dick Cheney (the Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine of American politics) shuffling off to retirement soon, he should have the field all to himself…
Unless Crazy Mike Huckabee somehow snags the Republican nomination, of course.
That whooshing sound you hear is the last shred of John McCain’s respectability as a human being disappearing into the ether.
The torture victim is now a torture advocate.
Eager to curry favor with the Pro-Torture Douchebag Wing of the Republican Party, McCain has abandoned the last lingering remnant of his legendary principles. So much for the “Straight-Talking Maverick.”
This brings final confirmation of my lifelong conviction that The Only Good Republican Is An Unemployed Republican.
In 2006, librarianship was a Hot Job.
In 2007, it was “hip.”
Now, in 2008, librarianship is a Best Career.
Oh, joy.
Yeah, that’s just what the profession needs. All across the country, library budgets are being slashed and positions eliminated, patron traffic and reference usage plummet, and the general perception of the public library as an obsolete institution spreads ever farther. So by all means, let’s convince more people to take out tens of thousands of dollars each in student loans to pursue a pathetic joke of a “degree” that amounts to little more than a glorified union card. More people to drive up competition and drive down wages for the ever-dwindling pool of jobs in the field…a field which doesn’t pay for shit to begin with.
But that’s not even the worst of it. The worst part is that, somehow, you just know that anyone attracted to librarianship because they read about it in a “Hot Jobs” list will be a natural recruit for The Library 2.0 Cult. There will be more Hipster Librarian dingbats around to drive everyone batty with endless, pointless debate over the “meaning” of a vague, awkward marketing term that means absolutely nothing whatsoever. Eventually, the debate will get so insular and self-referential and “meta” that it will create a Black Hole of Stupidity and disappear up its own ass.
Sort of like this post.
Those of you with no frame of reference to the exceedingly closed circle of the library blog world, who have never heard of “Library 2.0” and have no fucking clue what I’m talking about, should consider yourselves lucky.
As we shovel out of the 97th snowstorm of this wretched winter and gear up for yet another Arctic blast, here’s some news to brighten your day:
The American College of Physicians wants to legalize marijuana.
So does Rick Steves.
So does the US 9th Circuit Court.
(all links via Technoccult)
And as if that wasn’t wonderful enough, there’s this:
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)—A federal appeals court has overturned a statute outlawing sex toy sales in Texas, one of the last states – all in the South – to retain such a ban.The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by as many as two years in jail, violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
It’s almost summer.
(Direct link to clip nyah.)
And while we’re on the subject of the Drive-By Truckers: seems they’ve got a new album out. As usual, everybody loves it. Guess I know what I’ll be buying after work today. I wonder if the Special Lady Friend will appreciate a cd of hard-edged Southern rock as a Valentine’s Day present?
I know I would. Maybe it’s a Guy Thing.
Bonus clip: Outkast goes all P-Funk on your asses.
Welp, the votes from Maine’s Democratic caucuses are just about all tallied up, and it looks like Obama won by a landslide. I had planned to attend the caucuses, but it snowed all day, so I stayed home. However, so many people braved the bad weather that the official turnout broke state records. These people are obviously all far better human beings than I am.
This, the latest in a string of consecutive wins for Obama, has triggered chaos and shakeups in the Clinton campaign. It should also pull him just about even in total delegates, despite the most Herculean efforts of those scrupulously dedicated professionals at Fox News to convince everybody otherwise:
In other fantastic news for Democrats, John McCain has received the official endorsement of George W. Bush. Amazingly enough, even at this late date, Dear Leader remains so well-insulated from the undeniable fact of his own staggering unpopularity that he doesn’t seem to realize that his endorsement of McCain’s campaign represents the kiss of death:
Regarding attacks on his performance from Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, Bush said, “If the Democrat party feels like they can win an election by focusing on me, I think they’ll be making a huge tactical mistake.”Of Obama, the president said, “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.” In response, an Obama campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said: “Of course President Bush would attack the one candidate in this race who opposed his disastrous war in Iraq from the start. But Barack Obama doesn’t need any foreign policy advice from the architect of the worst foreign policy decision in a generation.”
Of course, this could all be a ruse. Perhaps Dubya is actually smarter than I give him credit for, and knows full well how disastrous his “endorsement” is for McCain’s chances. Perhaps this is just George’s way of delivering one final kick to the balls of the man he smeared into the ground back in 2000.
Regardless of the reason behind DubYa’s endorsement, the die is cast: he has put his official stamp of approval on John McCain’s campaign, where it will hang like a poisonous millstone for the remainder of this election season. If you think these pictures won’t be showing in every Democratic television ad after the convention, you’re nuts.
(Above: candidate, albatross)
Face it, Republicans: this is the final nail in your political coffins. You’re going down like the Hindenburg in November. Granted, your imminent election defeat, while immensely gratifying to those of us who actually want the human race to survive the next four years, is far less punishment than you all deserve for having spent every waking hour of the past eight years doing everything in your collective power to run this country into the ground and turn it into a sick mockery of everything it once stood for.
But it’s a start.
At last, a religion fat, skullet-wearing 35 year old virgins can call their own:
(link via Unusual Churches)
I think we all know who’s going to be attending services every Sunday:
