Why do I not rejoice, you ask? Well, for starters, I hoped the circumstances surrounding the end of his term with The Bushies would involve large mobs of angry citizens . . . and pitchforks. Yeah, torches and pitchforks. You might think that pitchforks would be difficult to locate in Washington, DC but remember the high concentration of lawyers who reside there. Think about it.
Anyhow, The Indecision 2008 blog was asking for folks to submit limerick s commemorating Rove’s rather sudden lack of employment. These were the ones I wrote:
Rove, the neo-Machiavelli
Eats enemies with a side of farfalle
The thought of his opponents
As dinner components
Warms him deep in his princely belly
George Bush awoke from fitful sleep
Worried what he’d sowed he’d reap
But a thought made his fear slacken
That of his personal Kraken
Rove waiting release from his lair in the deep.
911 was not just an attack
But a way to win the country back
Bush and Turd Blossom
Thought it was totally awesome
To shoot tragedy like political smack
Coulter and Rove think the same
Politics is really just a game
Bush in an ascot
Would make a great mascot
To gentrified bigots who’ve no shame
Bush often says with great pride
America has God on its side
Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney
Like Ayatollah Khomeini
Know the faithful won’t know that they lied
Rove likes his allies disposable
To ensure he’s nearly un-opposable
Ridge they would cast off
To cast Michael Chertoff
Your job’s secure until you’re deposable
Finding inquires not to his suiting
Rove found a stooge ripe for booting
Due Process could be neutered
If the career of Scooter’d
End not with a bang but a commuting
While his cronies wept with lamentation
Karl did not fear Congress’ new incarnation
Under his ruthless vision
Stonewalls any admission
They’re the best guarded crooks in the nation
1. Dubya’s decision (being “The Decider” and all) to imperiously ignore the structure of our very society by commuting the court imposed sentence of The Scoot. I mean, with a president like this, who needs checks and balances, right? Far be it from me slap executive prerogative out of the hand of our illustrious leader, but I really think that “Caesarian” ought to stay in the delivery room and out of our government. The checks and balances of our representative democracy are not, your majesty, suggestions.
2. The hilariously scripted and overly staged Democratic “debate,” for example, with its pathetically safe attempt at getting the candidates to interact with actual citizens comes to mind. I could rail at great length and with startling vigorousness about how goofy the whole thing was, how insincere and prepackaged the responses were, how an event that claimed it’s design would force candidates to actually answer questions allowed them to veer wildly off topic, or how Hillary Clinton seemed, by her facial expressions, to be considering mauling a few of her fellow Dems in the manner of an ill-tempered bear. I might also suggest that any production assistant in the studio would have been more than capable of locating dictionary and informing Anderson Cooper that the word “debate” necessitates at least some measure of dialogue. Though I’m loathe to act as a Grammar Whore, a question and answer session is a far cry from a debate.
3. Bush’s recent press conference, wherein he made sure to let us all know that “the Decider” is not, in fact, making any decisions about Iraq. You have to appreciate the animal cunning involved in setting up your scapegoat in advance. In the Q&A session alone, he mentions General David Petraeus twelve times. Remember people, when no matter how fucked up Iraq gets it’s all Dave’s fault. Seriously, that shit was all Dave’s idea. I guess Bush doesn’t have Tommy Franks to kick around anymore.
4. Despite his own self-satisfaction and contemptuousness, Michael Moore’s Sicko makes salient, upsetting points that even his egotism cannot dampen. I often feel that the generally very valid points he makes in his films are undermined by his personality. He can be a condescending dick. His personality failings do not change the truth contained in this film; conscientious Americans may feel an urge to throw a Molotov cocktail at one or more sectors of the health industry. The illegality of that action aside, you should avoid this behavior. Look, getting your medical care paid for is already ridiculously difficult. If you’re injured while committing arson on your insurer . . . well, I think it’s safe to assume they’ll be even less inclined to approve your claim.
I could discuss these topics with tedious devotion. I am hindered, however, by the very thing that keeps me from posting with the regularity I should; an unpleasant combination of laziness and cynicism. (more…)
]]>Imus has been having a very bad day that just won’t end. The media has been laying siege to him like angry villagers with pitchforks. Let the record state I have no sympathy for this guy. He’s just a nasty shock jock; a pseudointelligent wanna-be with aspirations of demagoguery. He is what he has always been: a person paid to be offensive, to confirm those secret, base beliefs held in the reptile brain of his listeners. He says cruel and ignorant things so his demographic doesn’t have to. They can smile to themselves, comforted with the knowledge that some quasi-famous cretin with a microphone legitimizes their hidden prejudices. The world is a different place than it was 50 years ago. Those with a fifties mentality must, in most public scenarios, hide many of their certainties in a dark little back room like a retarded cousin. They can tune in to shows like his from time to time for a little validation; they think they possess a dark truth the world can’t bring itself to admit.That said, the shock and indignation resulting from his vile little faux pas has been somewhat overblown. Is Imus’ bigotry really that startling a revelation to us? Does it really warrant twenty four, hour wall to wall news coverage?
There are a lot of really fucking important things going on in the world right now. Death, terror, corruption, natural disaster, progress in Northern Ireland, war, deceit, incompetent leadership. Are we to believe these stories less important than the sponsors of this mean little shit finally seeing him for what he has been all along?
It’s important that we understand this point. The firing of Imus isn’t some kind of moral victory. His show was lucrative to sponsors. He pushed things too far. They don’t want the advertising of their products to be construed as tacit approval of an unpopular point of view. The sponsors don’t care about the point of view itself, just about how an association with it will affect the sale of their wares.
Media outlets produce a product. That product has nothing to do with quality or content, because the programming they produce is merely a byproduct of their business. What a media outlet actually sells is the attention of the consumer. This is why consumers of television and radio programming don’t pay for individual programs; the income comes from the sponsors. The sponsors pay the station to advertise because it holds the attention of consumers. If millions of people tuned in to Fox every Thursday night to watch Keanu Reeves wash his balls, you can bet there’d be adverts for Coke and Mitsubishi during the breaks.
Before we all get together and have a steamy little circle jerk about how ethical the sponsors and the stations were to kick his tired ass to the curb, we need to remember who we’re dealing with: Corporations. The same pressure they brought to bear to oust Imus is regularly used to bury stories that are legitimately of grave importance to us. From dangerous products to the unimaginable power of lobbyists to selective war coverage, countless stories of critical interest are muscled out of the public discourse by advertising dollars and media complaisance. These are the same corporations who have essentially destroyed journalism. Before we start masturbating over how responsibly and morally this situation has been handled, put your dick down and remind yourself these entities are not our friends. Like any skilled hooker they appear concerned but have no interest in us beyond our money.
We love our iconoclasts. We love punishing them even more. A cursory inspection of the entertainment landscape will reveal plenty of people paid to push the envelope. Some of them have been slapped down; some have yet to push it too far. Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Maher, Ann motherfucking Coulter, all are (or were) paid – and paid generously – to fuck with people in their own inimitable styles. Some, like Maher and Limbaugh, took a hit and bounced back. Some, like Opie & Anthony and Howard Stern, moved to outlets more suited to their shtick. A few have been frustratingly bulletproof so far. I suppose we’ll have to see videotape of Coulter and O’Reilly devouring live infants and murdering helpless elderly people before we can get rid of them. I suppose the strangest element in society’s relationship with entertainers like these is how mercurial and unpredictable the relationship is. They are paid to push it to an edge that we’re constantly shifting around.
It’s not that I object to the whole sordid mess being covered by the media; it’s that it’s not in any way, shape or form important enough to warrant perpetual, uninterrupted coverage. We don’t need up-to-the-fucking-minute awareness of Imus’ job security; it implies that this information is more significant than the other news it takes precedence over. It is not, not even when ensconced in the “need to open a dialogue about racial inequities in the media” sense. Though that is a very valid issue long in need of discussion, I think we need to address the crippled and listing vessel that modern journalism has become before we figure out how to crew the fucking boat. Gaining equality in a squalid, debased and spurious institution is little more than becoming a cog in the machinery used to manufacture that inequality.
Clearly, we need to have a little talk about what news material is important and what is not. There is a hierarchy at play in the world of knowledge; information is ranked on a scale, folks. I whipped up the following to help create some context, to help categorize a few topics that are often much in the media and demonstrate how to determine what needs your attention now and what can legitimately wait until you fucking get around to it. It’s a broad range of issue such as fire, governmental incompetence and the constant threat of Russell Crowe. In the interest of clarity, I’ve used as a template the DHS threat level, a system of great clarity that is easily understood by all. They’ll be funnier if you read each one from the bottom up.
As you can see, there are theoretical circumstances under which even the most insipid and meaningless subject can merit your attention. If your ass is getting Crowe Kicked this is information you want a.s.a.p. But, frankly, the temporary fetishes we get for suffering celebrities consume far too much of our energy. To place so much emphasis on the self-destruction of some rich, famous fuck with too much hubris to doubt his professional invulnerability . . . Well, it is an embarrassing waste of time and money.
Can you imagine being a young veteran in a V.A. hospital bed, watching television over the inclined stump of what used to be your leg, and seeing this much coverage of Imus or Smith or Richards or Gibson? What would you think, seeing barely a glimpse of the bleak and trackless misery of your life but seemingly infinite attention paid to such pointless banality?
I can’t get my mind around that thought; it made me feel a little sick just to type it.
]]>If you see me during daylight hours, chances are you are seeing a profoundly tired Josh. Sleep and I have a long standing estrangement. To me it is merely a rumor of eight hour bliss I’ve never been able to independently confirm, placing it in the dubious region of myth populated by the sasquatch, yeti, Lock Ness Monster and, of course, the Dreaded Chupacabras. This is not, tragically, because I am still a rapacious party-animal, raising various types of hell throughout the unsleeping streets of New York. The days of my heroic decadence are long passed; those that hear tales of that Bacchanalian Epoch receive them more like an ancient oral history than accounts of actual events. No, my continual exhaustion is regrettably not a payment made for glorious overindulgence.
Today, for example, I am operating on roughly six hours of sleep. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Unpleasant, perhaps, but not a genuine misery? This is an excellent example of the importance of context to understanding: those six hours of sleep were distributed over a four day period. I have transcended tired into a kind of low-grade sociopathy. Sleepy is to Josh as crappy is to genocide.
What would possess me to do such a thing to myself, you ask? Are you fucking mad, you wonder? Will he ever stop trying to guess my internal monologue, you hope? Judge me by my size, do you?
Your confusion is the result of two fallacious assumptions. (Fallacious – as in a fallacy. Get your mind out of the gutter for a moment) First off, you assume I have a choice in the matter. I do not. Could I create the proper conditions I would hibernate like a fucking bear. I love sleep. No, that’s hardly accurate. I adore sleep in a way that is almost sexual, the way one dying of thirst enjoys a quenching drink of water, the way men enjoy tits. Trust me; had I options I would choose the daily coma. Sleep is to Josh as drugs are to rock n roll.
I understand the perception of me held by most of the world: Women, dizzy with arousal, hyperventilate and perspire in my presence, erecting flower-strewn shrines in my honor. My genius is celebrated by discerning people near and far, and history is already constructing a well-appointed lounge to accommodate the legend I will leave behind. It is understandable. People Covet Their Neighbor’s Josh; they imagine the experience of my life is akin to skipping along a sunlit forest path lined with the lush and verdant foliage of early summer. This path, they fantasize, is surrounded by nubile, articulate young women willing to satisfy my every craven desire. This mental montage is typically accompanied by a lyrical orchestral score and, very likely, the chirping of little birdies. This image, however flattering, is about as far from reality as the stony precipice upon which squats the dark fortress where Dick Cheney takes refuge from truth.
Your second mistaken assumption: That everything in The Land of Josh totally fucking rules. Allow me to refute this misconception here and now; the blessings I’ve enjoyed in life have not been free of charge. From my uniquely mangled genetics arises a fascinating paradox: I am my own bully. I do not require an external tormentor. My tattered chromosomes are more than happy to punch me in the nose and stuff me in a locker. For me, “DNA” probably stands for Die, Nerd-Ass!
Though not fully understood by science, it is known that one’s genetic makeup has a powerful influence on most, if not all, aspects of one’s life. There are many hereditary traits that serve beneficial or malignant purposes, and no human being is without a few turds in the genetic punch bowl. Every person endures some abuse from their own genetics, receiving one or two biological bitch-slaps. The ailments borne by inhabitants of this genetic Elysium are minor nuisances. Examples include:
- Crooked teeth
- Unibrow
- Eczema
- Excessive, orangutan-like body hair (aka Robin Williams Disease)
- Oblivious Talentlessness (Pamela Anderson’s Disorder [1]) (more…) ]]>
I was laughing today, while reading CNN’s website. Though there has been a lot happening in politics to laugh about recently, today it was something other than the impending (and hopefully grisly) demise of a certain Attorney General’s career. The sharks in capitol hill are circling good old Alberto; the piquant aroma of blood in the water just an appetizer to what will be, with any luck, a hot subpoena buffet. Since taking power in November the Democrats have occasionally taken a break from punching themselves in the nuts long enough for us to catch a glimpse of their ever growing cajones. Gonzales was dirty and despised from the start – the worst kind of cheap lipstick, shameless company whore – and this is the opportunity Dems have been waiting for. So, with their big, sore balls in tow the sharks are closing in on the AG. The splashing, sputtering sound of panicked thrashing is so loud right now I almost missed the topic of today’s post.
Those that know me are well aware that I regard all religions, particularly those that politicize their dogmas, with great suspicion. The attempt to insert theological agendas into politics is a reprehensible behavior that, in my humble opinion, is little more than using faith as an excuse to force personal aesthetics onto everyone else. The hubris of it is rather breathtaking: obviously God, Allah, Xenu, The Great Pumpkin or *insert cosmic entity here* really sucks at getting his/her/it’s message across. Despite omniscience, omnipotence, Dodge Omnis and *cough*vatican*cough* shitloads of cash, He/she/it needs the help of one or more pompous, condescending dickheads. They seem convinced that their deity must have fucked up with the whole “free will” thing and are attempting to remedy that error by criminalizing any behavior they find distasteful. Yikes, before I get up on a high horse big enough to smuggle Trojan infantry, I will get to the point: A statement made by several leading members of the National Association of Evangelicals had me laughing my ass of this morning.
Apparently, there is a bit of a schism forming within this organization of ultra-conservative slapheads. This rift is being caused by a most unexpected doctrinal wedge: Global Warming. At their meeting this week in Minneapolis the more rabid of their ilk released a signed statement criticizing the group’s recent direction. According to the statement, Rev. Richard Cizik, the group’s Washington Policy Director, has been mouthing off a bit too much about Global Warming. Rev. Dick is distracting them from more important issues, like their burning need to control every aspect of human reproduction.
This is a quote from the letter. I’ve inserted some translations from the Dogmatic Bullshit to English Dictionary, 2nd Edition: (more…)
]]>Anyhow, what I want to advise you against is the process of getting married, which is a terrain that getting married demands one navigate. Short of an Elvis Chapel in Vegas, getting married seems, sadly, inextricably interwoven with being married. This path, however well-beaten it may be, holds great peril. Every married man at my office, upon hearing of my engagement, has, without exception, expressed a startling mixture of sympathy and commiseration. Having spent much of the weekend investigating wedding venues, I have begun to understand this reaction.
Being mugged at gunpoint is a clear and understandable transaction. There are few rules, but those that exist are well defined. Speaking with wedding coordinators is rather like being mugged at gunpoint by an overly-friendly hostess at Bennigan’s. Though there isn’t a weapon in the strictest sense of the word, these subhuman creatures wield the meaning of your event with the ruthless efficiency of a Sergio Leone gunslinger. There is a weapon involved here – of this you may be certain – it is just more subtle and diabolical than a firearm. Remember, this is your wedding you cheap fuck, not your ten year high school reunion or some shit. (more…)
]]>I caught a few minutes of a Saturday morning educational program for children. You know the kind; These programs are packed full of saccharinely wholesome adults dancing around singing things like “Brushing Your Teeth Is Fun!” I don’t know in what psychiatric facility they find actors for this kind bollocks, but I imagine the employment application must have questions like: “Have you had a full frontal lobotomy? Do you have a severe dependence on heavy Narcotics? Have you been waiting tables and doing community theater for over a decade and lost any sense of shame and/or self respect?” In any case, the Quaalude Express was at full speed and the boys and girls at home were being taught about the days of the week. Herein lays the reason for today’s rant: these nauseatingly perky shits were trying to play our great nation’s children for suckers.
I will elaborate. Firstly, they chose to anthropomorphize the days of the week. As each day of the week introduced it/him/herself I couldn’t help but think of the children’s books in Fight Club - the “I am Jack’s Spleen“ thing.
I am Josh’s Monday; I can make Josh homicidal before lunchtime. Look, I made Josh foam at the mouth. Foam, Josh, Foam! I digress. Here is an excerpt from the show:
Perky Retard: “Hey Wednesday, how are you?”
Perky Retard Dressed Up as Wednesday: “I’m super, Bob. I’m the middle of the week!”
What does “Dressed Up as Wednesday” mean, boys and girls? Some brain damaged jackhole in a dog costume and a sparkly vest. Note to the show’s producers: The trays of mushrooms growing in the costume manager’s office are not potted plants; Normal people do not pot mushrooms. Even more insultingly, the most important line of dialogue was left out:
Wednesday Retard Dog Vest Guy: “I’m super, Bob. I’m the middle of the week! I’m the day of the week that makes Daddy want to drink Whiskey.”
]]>Ah, Fall is here again, and with it the requisite receding leaves, lengthening skirts and politicians masticating the truth until it oozes from their mouths in pulpy, slobbery globs. The chilly mornings lead to warm afternoons, making everyone on the train sweat and fidget because they don’t want to carry their jackets. No more maddeningly smooth tummies peeking out through girls’ half-shirts. No more pink toenails sticking out of over-priced sandals - with the exception, of course, of hippies bent on displaying their environmental consciousness by wearing Berkenstocks. They’ll happily pair them with ugly lumberjack socks they bought at Abercrombie.
Fall is my favorite time of year because of Halloween, the greatest of holidays. One of the few holidays that hasn’t been assimilated by Christianity in America, Halloween still revels in it’s neolithic pagan roots. It upsets fundamentalists, which brings me no small amount of glee. I can dress up like some horrific thing and terrify children without fear of being assaulted by an offended parent. Shrieking children bring me almost as much joy as they bring Dick Cheney, who feeds almost exclusively on their brain matter. This is why his back is so hunched; it’s been distorted by constantly bending over to bite the head off some weeping, frightened youngster. That’s probably the only thing Dick does that doesn’t fling me into fits of frothy indignation.
The debates so far have been pretty engaging political theater, but I fear the ultimate effect will be less than satisfactory. I can’t say for sure if they’ll really change the minds of undecided voters. The media have been so spineless and cowed in their coverage I get an image of Dan Rather cowering in a corner, pleading “don’t hit me again, Mr. President! Don’t beat me anymore, Senator!” Kinda makes me want to prank call Rather’s house, leaving dozens of voice mails wherein I just repeat “Kenneth, what’s the frequency?” over and over again.
Rather (and the rest of the press) have become simpering pussies these days. In Friday’s debate, our cro-magnon President repeatedly ignored the rules, flew from his seat in a rage, shouted answers at the fine people of Missouri, and at one point even argued with the moderator. Do we see any significant mention of his inability to control his anger? One article on CNN had an obtuse reference to it buried in an article on the Politics page, but still referred to the debate as a “tie.”They make me fucking sick.
They essentially function as tepid corporate castrati, singing in childish timbre any song handed to them by the candidates’ press liaisons. One of the few journalists left with any testes to speak of is still writing a (I hope) very lucrative sports column for ESPN. What pisses me off is that the time he’s spending creating witty insights into football isn’t being spent badgering republicans for the truth.The press have become so tamed that, in comparison to them, some of the fringe people still at least trying to do real journalism - opinionated and ofttimes slanted, but at least with a hunger for truth - seem like crazed pundits or half-witted conspiracy theorists by comparison. Regardless of my reservations about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, the deep craving for the truth that film embodied is exactly the feral element that has been excised from the press at large. No more Ed Murrow, behind whose dignified exterior lurked a ferocious belief in giving the people the truth. No more of the halcyon days of Cronkite’s early work; there was a time when he’d do anything to get at the truth. If he were trying to get a story on the Wampas from Empire Strikes Back, his narrative would have been from inside a gutted Taun Taun.
No one is looking out for us anymore. No one is reminding us of the value of truth the way they did in the past. The conversion of news into entertainment that was most significantly spearheaded by CNN has insinuated itself into every mainstream news outlet. This has been the case for so long that no one remembers what good reporting is anymore, or why it was so valuable. As soon as ratings come into play in news, all is lost. The news is saddening, frustrating, frightening and, yes, sometimes boring. It’s not supposed to be fucking entertainment; it’s supposed to be in-fucking-formative. The worst part is that these days people who are very informed about the world, those with real, metabolized knowledge, are often viewed as self-important eggheads. How the fuck are we supposed fight back?
]]>Fall seems to have arrived in one startling motion this year, like someone showing up early to a dinner party already inappropriately drunk. Fall didn’t call ahead, send a warning email, or politely RSVP, it simply stabbed it’s finger repeatedly at the doorbell and staggered into the living room, leaving a trail of dripped whiskey stains on the carpet. Do you remember seasonal changes the way I do, when sometime in early September there’d be one surprisingly chilly morning, which was a trailer for Fall; it reminded us that Fall would be in theatres soon and we should break the sweaters out of storage. The transition to cold weather last year also lacked proper introduction. It took a few weeks of uncomfortable small talk before everyone got with the “it’s time to wear a coat” program.
I wear a black Porkpie or fedora most days when it’s cold, because if I’m going to keep my fat head warm I want to do it with some style. I’ve found, though, that many passersby don’t know quite what to make of a guy under 40 wearing such a debonair anachronism.
“Is he Jewish?” they think, “No, he doesn’t look Jewish. Could he be a mobster? Oh, that’s retarded - mobsters haven’t dressed like that since 1957. Maybe he’s just a weirdo? Dear god, could he be some crazed renegade Amish guy looking to smite us for our sinful, decadent ways? Is that a Hayfork under his topcoat?”
Okay, maybe it’s not all that interesting, but I like to amuse myself with the idea of it. What I find really interesting about wearing old-school hats is the way in which it seems to grant membership in some secret club. Men who wear these kinds of hats appreciate other men who wear them; we know we’re a bit out of step with our surroundings and like seeing other guys who have similar proclivities. I have gotten many an approving nod from and had more than a few pleasant conversations another hat-headed gentleman. In our gang there are no secret handshakes, tattoos or code words - just a stylish headpiece and a smoldering resentment that there are so few proper haberdashers left in the world.
A word of advice to men considering joining us in the Hat Head Brigade: the wearing of a hat, no matter how dapper, will not attract certain kinds of women. Almost all women under the age of 25 will be confused and repelled by your stylishness. They will be simultaneously reminded of Cary Grant, their grandfather, and a loose montage of images from Mobster flicks. The wearing of a great hat is an anachronistic statement - it will add an air of stylish good taste, it will add a certain sophisticated gravitas, but it will repel most girls with exposed midriffs and will attract elderly ladies like a “loosest bingo cards in town” sign outside a church rec hall. However, you will comfort yourself with the knowledge that your self respect and dedication to refinement is far more lasting and rewarding than some cheap evening enmeshed with a lithe, perspiring co-ed gymnast with a head full of Bacardi and a streak of adventurous nymphomania . . . Forget I said that. Your hat will definitely get you laid. It will toss you into a horde of young, beautiful ladies who appreciate a style that gasped it’s last breath forty years ago. You’ll ride a wave of luscious honeys like a rock star. Trust me. You’ll get more ass than a toilet seat. Really. Fine, fuck you if that’s how you’re going to be about it.
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