Stories You May Have Missed

Here are a couple of items from one of my favorite websites, Wonkette.  (I list my favorite websites on the side of the page you are reading now, for your ease of use.)

The first concerns an effort by a group calling itself  the “Southern Legal Resource Center”.  They are urging Southerners to describe themselves as "Confed Southern Am" on the census form. 

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“A significant number of Southerners identifying themselves as Confederate Southern Americans on the Census form could finally spell the beginning of the end for the discrimination that has been running rampant, especially for the last 20 years or so, against all things Confederate, and for that matter against Southern heritage and identity in general,” SLRC executive director Roger McCredie said in a written statement.

The best comment on this story comes from one of the best commentators on teh Wonkette, "Prommie" (if that is his/her real name):

So, the theory these fucktards are trying to work is that racist redneck fucktard hillbillies are a protected class under Title 7 on account of “national origin,” in that they are descended from citizens of the confederate states of amurrica.

This is totallly fucktarded. What they should be doing is seeking protected status under the Americans with Disabilities Act, on the grounds that they are fucktarded. They could use their own legal arguments as proof they are fucktarded, in a unique application of res ipsa loquitor.

Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/414487/southern-racists-will-declare-themselves-as-such-on-their-census-forms#more-414487#ixzz0jnKwqMbI

Meanwhile, it turns out Pat Sajack is a rich, right-wing gasbag!  Who knew?  Sajack is not so much for the new health care law.  I might not be much for "Wheel of Fortune" anymore.  Perhaps I should let them know.  Anyway, the point is, who cares what Pat Sajack thinks?


Some comments then:

• Funny since Pat is probably a millionaire several times over–so worried that other folks are going to get something he already has. He needs to go back to his Playboy wife & stick to educating folks about the difference between vowels & consonants.

• P_t S_j_k is RET_RDED  Pat I’d like to solve the puzzle.

• This turd represents the top tier of our society. Think about that for a second. Think about what he did to make that money. Then think about what a teacher makes.  Cry me a river, Sajak. If it were up to me I’d tax you at about 90% starting around $200,000, so count your blessings and keep your mouth shut.

Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/414540/pat-sajak-is-doing-what-now#ixzz0jnNd7INJ

Anyway, just a couple of items I've seen the past couple of days that have amused.  Party on, etc.

A Quote

I heard this on "The Mike Malloy Show" tonight (March 30, 2010 edition). A listener sent it in with the comment that Dr. Martin Luther King had the Teabaggers figured out 50 years ago:

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

I love the Mike Malloy show.  You get stuff like this every night!  It airs live from 9pm-midnight Eastern time and you can stream it from the website or enjoy the brand-new MalloyVision feature whereby you can watch a radio show being performed which is, oddly, more interesting than you would think it would be. If you miss the 9pm seating, you can catch the show starting at midnight on a couple of west coast stations including, KPOJ in Portland and AM1090 in Seattle. 

I can safely say that Mike Malloy has had more of an influence on me than any other broadcaster I have ever come across on the dial. 

Mike used to be on the air here in Detroit before Air America fired him--the first of many, many mistakes they would make en-route to their untimely corporate demise and I'd love to get him back on the air here.  He's on live in San Fransisco and Los Angeles and we could use a little of what he has to say here in my town, too!


I urge Everybody to tune in!

Why Nashville (at) Florida Matters

Okay, in the overall scheme of things--The Big Picture as it were--it don't.  Nashville (at) Florida mattering, that is.  None of it does.  Whether or not the goddamn puck goes into the goddamn net is not going to effect world events at all or in the least.  One night a long time ago when I did hockey play-by-play for a living (as Donald Sutherland said in "Animal House", "Hey, this is my job!") I woke up in the middle of the night with the most dreadful thought: that I was wasting my life on that very thing.  That very meaningless thing: whether or not the puck went in the net.  Because, in the final analysis, who gives a damn? 

But...

If you are following the race for the playoffs in the Western Conference of the National Hockey League as I am now that I'm being allowed back in the Press Box again to cover Red Wings games for the Michigan Talk Network, it does matter.  Detroit, in the midst of a late surge which is remarkable in its scope, is trying to chase down the Nashville club (they are named "The Predators" although presumably not in honor of Catholic priests) for the coveted 5th position in the playoffs.  All the while Detroit is trying to hold 7th-place Los Angeles ("The Kings") and 8th-place Colorado ("The Avalance--you don't want these bastards falling on you) at bay as in the NHL the top 8 teams in each conference move on to the playoffs while everybody else sees their season end and fires their entire coaching staff and most of their front-offices.  This is how hockey works.

So, with all this in mind, there I was on the internet last night trying to find a feed of the big Nashville (at) Florida game.  I came across somebody (who said he was) from Austria who showed a few minutes of it after the Sabres (at) Boston game but then switched to another game and I wondered how he could do that.  Florida was leading by a goal with under ten minutes to play and if the Panthers (that's what they call their team there in the hockey hotbed of Miami--"The Panthers") could hold that lead the Wings would remain just a point back of Nashville.  So I was stuck following the scoreboard at espn.com and watched in dismay as the scored changed to 2-2 with under 4 minutes to play and then to 3-2 Nashville in overtime.  Damn.

So the Wings fall three points back of the Predators although Detroit has 2 games in hand which is hockeyspeak for Detroit has played 2 fewer games than Nashville.

Edmonton comes to Detroit tonight and I will be there.  Hopefully I'll get to sit next to Phil Myre again.  He's a former NHL goalie who now scouts for the aforementioned Panthers.  I've sat next to him the past few games and have some stories to tell because of it.  Like the other night when he said with 4 minutes left in the 2nd period, "This game is dragging.  It feels like we should be farther along than this.  I said, "You'd be surprised at how often I hear that from the person sitting next to me at a game."

Right now, it's off to play hockey and then tonight it's off to watch hockey.

I'll close by mentioning that which I wanted to mention in the first place but only now feel comfortable in bringing up because, really, who in the hell would still be reading this by now?  Eric Cantor is an asshole.

More on that later.

Some of You Actually Voted for this Poor Bastard. Seriously. You did...

WALNUTZ RALLY REALITY from John Walnuts on Vimeo.

Why Enunciation Matters

I had lunch with my dear friend Lori yesterday, a great gal about whom I have long said that were it not for just a few niggling little details, i.e., that I’m married, that I am old enough to be her dad and that she is physically repulsed by me, we’d be quite an item, indeed.

We try to get together for lunch every month.  We’ve been doing this for a while, long enough at least that when I phoned yesterday because I was running late thanks to my daughter but that’s another story, she asked me if she should go ahead and order lunch and when I said she should, she didn’t have to ask what I wanted because she knew because as I say, we’ve been doing this a while.

When I did get there—if I didn’t mention it I was a little late because of my daughter (who, by the way could have gotten a ride home with one of her friends instead of making me drive halfway across town, not that I’m annoyed about it or anything)—I discovered to my delight that Lori had baked cookies and, because she’s so nice, had brought me some.  “Yum, yum and woot, woot!”, I say.

So we had our lunch and our laughs. 

I opened with my best material which was this true story:  I had a sex dream about my wife a few days ago.  My wife!  Who does that?  I could understand the dream I’d had involving Christina Applegate a while back (the “Samantha Who?” Christina Applegate not the “Married With Children” Christina Applegate because that, the latter, would just be rong.  She has very nice hair by the way, in case you are curious.)  But my wife?  I thought I was over that.  I mean, we’ve been married 17 years.  I don’t have to dream it.  I can live it.  But anyway…

It was around 3 o’clock, (we had a late lunch because I have a noonish hockey game on Friday’s) and Lori asked what I had going on the rest of the day and I said Jeannie (she’s my wife and the subject of my sick little dreams) would be home around 5 and that we might go to a fish fry and Laura (who had made me a little for lunch did I mention?) had to be driven to a movie and etc. 

Then I said, “Would you like to have a cookie?”  Lori had baked some and brought them to the restaurant for me.

She got a look on her face like I’ve never seen on her face before, ever:  Surprise.  Horror.  Shock.

She said, slowly and seriously and dramatically, What did you say?”

“A cookie,” I said, “Would you like to have a cookie?”

“Oh, my god,” she said.  “I thought you said, ‘Would you like to have a quickie.’”

Whoa hey, now.  So, now I’m the one who is stunned; dumbfounded, really.  And talk about being in a fix.  If you answer “yes”, you’re a creepy old guy who’s willing to cheat on his wife.  But if you say “no”, you might hurt her feelings, and who wants that? 

I handed her a cookie and we both promised to never speak of this again.

“Do you want a quickie?”  Oh. My. God. 

One thing you can count on when it’s lunch with Lori.  There are going to be laughs, lots and lots of laugh. And maybe even cookies.  But no quickies.  Or any other “ies.”  So help me (us) God.   

Old Guy Hockey

Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are hockey days: the days I strap on the pads, lace up the skates and spend an hour trying to stop the damn puck before it enters the damn net because if I don't it causes me to swear and take the Lord's name in vain and things of this nature.

It's called "goaltending", but as my daughter correctly points out, there really isn't a whole lot of tending going on out there, per se. Not like, say, tending as one would apply the term to gardening. Now, there you have to seed and weed and water and all like that there.

Goaltending, not so much. The net, it just sort of sits there. It does not, in and of itself, require too much attention once it has been positioned on its pegs. Occasionally--okay, more often than "occasionally" some days--a puck must be removed from it, but really, that's about the extent of it. So those terms, "goaltending" and its Canadian cousin "netminding", are somewhat misleading. One does not "mind" the net either in the circumstances outlined above or it terms of obeying what the net might have to say. (Which, if you are hearing from the net means you have a bigger problem that the already substantial issues you exhibit by being a 50+ man out there playing a boys game which involves having 3.5 ounces of hard rubber shot at 90 mph at your head and places besides your head where you'd like to get hit by 3.5 ounces of hard rubber shot at 90 mph even less.)

But, as usual, I digress...

I noticed something which I took to be interesting after the game yesterday. One guy was talking about his bad hip, another his aching back and so forth and so on. Myself, I've got a bad ankle and somebody hit me in the forearm with a puck a couple of weeks ago and now the thing is bruised from my wrist to my elbow.

Listening to all of this in The Room™ got me thinking. I really have arrived at Old Guy Hockey.

You know how I know? In Young Guy Hockey after the game in The Room™ you hear something like, "Let me tell you about the girl I (almost) banged last night."

In Old Guy Hockey after the game in The Room™ you hear something like, "Have you tried Cortizone for that?"

Louie Gohmert's Big Day

In today’s edition of “Heroes of the Right”, we proudly present for your consideration one Louie Gohmert (R-Of Course) who found himself shouting utter nonsense in public—including once in the well of the House—not once, but twice today. Cameras were there to capture it all. We’ll begin with today’s teabagger rally, an event attended by 1.2 or 1.3 million people according to FuxNews. (You can watch the video and estimate the size of the throng for your own self):



Oh, he's done. Sorry, I was busy chanting "self-executing" over and over and over again. (I am not sure why, but I suspect that's exactly what every one of the right-wing idjuts he was talking to, er, yelling at, was thinking, too.) For the record, and I'm guessing you'll hear more about this on select media outlets like Countdown and The Rachael Maddow Show because I've been listing to Randi Rhodes talk about it all afternoon, when the Rethugs controlled the House, the used the self-executing provision of the rules 40 times under Newt Gingrich and another 114 times under Dennis Hastert.

So, surprise, surprise, Gomer; the right is lying to you. Again and as per usual.

Meanwhile, Louie of Texas wasn't done with the mouth-shooting off thing. See if you can figure this out because I sure as hell can't. Maybe it's because the good representative (think his village is short an idiot?) is from Texas and is, as such, a product of the Texas public school system.



Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. What, exactly is that all about? Perhaps the commentator "comicbookguy" over at Wonkette has said it best:

"Hang on, so if someone eats the bill, he will vote yes? Am I the only one thinking, crazy as it is that’s one more vote? This could be the tipping point. Come on Obama, step up to the plate! What are you willing to do for the American people?"

(Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/414249/louie-gohmert-shouts-angry-nonsense-about-eating-a-bill#comments#ixzz0hDbMhkt0)

Gotta run but I can't. My head is spinning, you see.