Staten Island is the New New Orleans, Part II...

Please bear with me, folks. Blogging has been extremely light, as I'm still doing a bit of work around the house post-hurricane, and I picked entirely the wrong week to commit to the fucking nicotine patch.

Two weeks of being cooped up with Tess (or as I like to refer to her now, Princess Pain-in-the-Ass) and her late husband's mother (who fled Brick, New Jersey before she lost power and heat in the storm, and has been here right up until yesterday), in addition to a lack of cigarette smoke, have made me irritable. The stupid-but-entirely-necessary upkeep of this old house, badly neglected by Tess and her late husband as they are/were both near-invalids, is eating up my time as I meet with general contractors, chimney and fireplace guys, concrete companies, roofers and electricians.

There's much to do in the way of stuff that falls under the category of routine maintenance that simply wasn't done, which has now become necessary after the storm, and is now piling up. If I have to talk to one more Italian with a tape measure or a pencil jammed behind his ear, I might have to go on a killing spree.

Staten Island is the New New Orleans...

I will be updating this post periodically today. 

The picture at left is an oil lighter that was lifted by a storm surge right out of New York Harbor during Hurricane Sandy, and dropped on the shoreline near the town of Stapleton (which in case you didn't know, was once home to the Staten Island Stapletons of the National Football League).This ship is now apparently leaking residual oil left in it's tanks, leaving the neighborhood awash in fuel oil, with a potential time bomb ticking near populated areas.

In addition, there is now a report of more leaking tankers and a potential oil spill in the Arthur Kill, along Staten Island's shared shoreline with New Jersey.

NBC News with video and report of the damage on Staten Island. This will break your heart.

Here's a mini slide show of the damage done to Staten Island by Sandy.

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Seen on the streets of my old neighborhood of New Dorp, yesterday:

A van bearing Massachusetts license plates pulls up to storm-ravaged Cedar Grove. Six people get out, and start videotaping and taking still photos of the storm damage. They are not wearing Press badges, and are apparently tourists who either deliberately made the trip down to New York City to see the damage, or tourists who were caught in New York during the storm.

They are asked by someone actively helping a neighbor in distress (that would be my sister, who has been in Cedar Grove every goddamned day since the storm ended helping her girlfriend who has lost her house clean up and salvage anything possible) if they are there to help or "just take fucking pictures...". The photographers respond that they are there to help. At which point, my sister asks them, "well, what do you have in that van?".

The photographers tell her that they have just been shopping, and they have bought brand new blankets and bedding, at which point my sister demands that they turn it over to her, seeing as how there's people in this neighborhood without so much as a blanket, and because my sister can be one tough, scary bitch when she's pissed off, they comply. Whereupon, they got back in their van and fled. My sister then distributed the blankets to some people in the neighborhood.

One question: There is no gasoline in these parts, and the only two stations that I know of capable of pumping gas at this time have long lines of cars waiting for fuel, and are limiting customers to $40 of gas, total. Where did these people get gasoline to come sightsee in other people's misery, one wonders?

Also seen on Staten Island: roving scrap metal salvage trucks pulling right up to storm-devastated homes, and asking the owners if they can haul off this or that bit of twisted metal, often as these people are trying to save whatever they can from the flooded pile of kindling they used to call "home". Many are just taking whatever they think they can get away with, and I'm told that some are offering to take the scrap away "for free" -- like it's some kind of public service? -- without compensating anyone. Average price of scrap aluminum this morning? $2.10/pound. Weight of aluminum siding on the average home? About 1/3 of a pound, per square foot. These guys are becoming a nuisance, and are interfering in recovery efforts. In some instances, they are making conditions more dangerous, as pulling scrap metal out of a pile of debris can often cause further collapses.

In other post-Hurricane Staten Island News:

Mayor Bloomdouche, the absolutely worst Mayor ever, has decided that it is more important to reposition police, fire and other emergency services to support this Sunday's NYC Marathon (which begins on Staten Island at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge) than it is to keep them on duty helping people recover from a natural disaster.

Update: The Marathon has been cancelled! Finally, someone grew a fucking brain in Gracie Mansion, or maybe it was the tremendous public outcry? Who cares: the last thing we needed was 50,000 skinny, mostly-white, yuppies running around, passing out ion the streets, and shitting their pants.

Staten Island may Become Obama's Katrina: This sort of crass stupidity is par for the course for our Mayor, who up until now has busied himself with keeping the Outer Borough Proles out of Manhattan, making sure we don't have too much salt in our street meat, and eradicating the deadly threat of 32-oz. sodas. Bloomdouche may have once called himself a Republican, but he has always been a Nanny-state-loving, died-in-the-wool, tell-you-all-how-to-live Libtard of epic proportions. This proves it. Nero fiddled wile Rome burned, Bloomberg diddles while New York Drowns and Starves. if you ever needed more proof as to why Liberals need to be checked, you have now had three glaring examples in the last 17 years: Nagin spent the early portion of Katrina in a fetal-position panic attack, Bloomberg worries about the Marathon and fat welfare recipients while his city is hammered by a hurricane, and Obama toured the ravaged Jersey Shore for a photo op and then headed to Las Vegas for another fundraiser.

By the way, there are more people on Staten Island -- a single borough of New York City -- than there ever were in New Orleans. That's almost 500,000 people crammed onto a 12-by-7 mile-long island, but we're mostly white, and there's a democrat in the White House, so no one gives a shit.

Update: Bloomberg is about to get his Marie Antoinette treatment, as people in Brooklyn and Staten Island are approaching full boil because of the Mayor's decision to go ahead with Sunday's marathon.

And here, Bloomberg is being compared to New Orleans helpless and hapless Mayor, Ray Nagin. And not in a flattering way, either. Hey, at least Nagin eventually left his fancy hotel room to walk through the muck.

In the meantime, pleas for help, for food, water and clothing go unheeded, and there are threats of riot in the air here in Staten Island, especially after the bodies of two young boys (ages 4 and 2), swept out of their mother's arms by a surging tide, were finally found. 

Another article on Bloomberg's fucked up priorities: desperately-needed generators being diverted to Marathon pre-race set up. This is occurring while Bellvue Hospital is evacuating patients due to lack of power.

Update: here's a link to the story on the two Lost Boys. Rumor has it that a relative denied their mother shelter as she tried to avoid the storm, and some reports say it was local residents --not relatives -- but no one is quite certain. Stay tuned, because this story is one to turn your stomachs.

The Red Cross hasn't even been here yet.

More tragic news: Hero cops saves family, then drowns in his own basement.

Just as soon as I get the information, I'll be posting some links where you can donate to help relief efforts in the Forgotten Borough of New York City, In the meantime, you can donate cash, food, clothing and anything you think people might need to the Salvation Army , The American Red Cross, and Catholic Charities, which all have good track records with providing aid just as quickly as they can.

Some Good News: Local Hotellier will not displace those left homeless by Sandy. When this is all over, someone had better nominate Richard Nicotra for sainthood. He is a shining example of how private citizens utilizing their own resources are better at helping their neighbors in need than any government.

Update: You'll be happy to know that Katie Holmes and her daughter, Suri, managed to escape their multi-million dollar Chelsea apartment last night, for better digs with electricity, running water, and no floating bodies of dead animals, a condition only the peasants of Staten Island should have to suffer. It's a fucking waste of newsprint to follow the lives of the super-famous and super-wealthy, while others are suffering.You people who worship celebrutards should be taken out and shot, as you are poison to the gene pool.

Update from New Jersey: Unionized utility workers have raised holy hell that non-union workers from out -of-state have been asked to come and restore power to some 4 million New Jerseians (like my aunt in Netcong) currently without power and water services, because Heaven Forbid overpaid union dumbasses don't have an opportunity to milk the double-and-triple overtime cash cow during a natural disaster.

Because it's not truly a disaster until Chuck Schumer shows up: Senator Dingleberry arrives and immediately patronizes a Staten Island woman in front of her storm-damaged home. They say the most dangerous place on Earth is between Chuck Schumer and a television camera. Perhaps this dash to the kleig lights will finally spell the end of this national embarrassment. New York has the absolute WORST Congressional delegation in America. If they aren't merely corrupt, then they're clueless and condescending. Not to be left out, Senator Placeholder, Kirsten Gillbrand, also made an appearance, if only to get her face on television, too, because she's otherwise about as useful as tits on a bull.

One wonders how many cops were needed to escort Senator Asshole around so he could get his picture taken?

Hurricane Sandy: The Aftermath...

Things have been a bit hectic around Lunatic Central these last few days because of Hurricane Sandy. We were without power here for nearly three days, but things are slowly returning to normal. Posting will be extremely light for a bit, as there's some cleanup and house repairs that need to be seen to, and I will have very little time for this sort of tomfoolery.

Even at that, we here at The Lunatic's Asylum were extremely fortunate; being up on higher ground, and protected from the worst of the wind by the hills around here, we still have a house. We weren't flooded out, and the loss of power and phone service for a few days was a minor inconvenience compared to what some others have suffered from this storm. We ask that you remember these folks in your prayers, and that you maybe open your wallets and make a donation to the Red Cross to help those who are currently homeless, injured, and hungry.

We realize things are tight for everyone these days and if you can't fork over $10 or $20, then some charities are accepting all sorts of other aid: old clothing, blankets, tools, food donations, anything that can be used to help a few folks fill a belly for a night, keep warm, or rebuild a home or neighborhood. If you can find something buried in a closet that someone might get some use out of, then please, find a way to get it to them. You can make most donations of this sort to your local Salvation Army, or at your local firehouse and police station; they'll make sure that someone who needs it, gets it.

It's Not The End of the World...

Warning: This is going to be offensive...very offensive. And on so many levels, too. You were warned.

So, it wasn't the End of the World, but it was supposed to be. Let's put aside, for a moment, the mentality that was on display by the so-called Prophets of Doom; we'll get to that in a minute. While I was always pretty certain that the so-called Bible-approved Date of Departure wasn't really coming, the really disappointing part of the whole "May 21st is Doomsday" hoax was that it's almost a shame that it didn't happen. I said almost.

It's disappointing in this regard: Had Reverend It's-This-Time-For-Sure been right, some of the great questions which have caused so much rancor, hard feelings and bloodshed would have been answered unequivocally. If you're a Christian, you would have known that all that kneeling and mumbling had not been in vain, and the proof -- that God, does indeed, exist -- and the Christian version of Her (I figure God must be a woman, because only a woman could fuck things up this badly and then still have the nerve to demand to be worshiped) would have been upheld above all others. You would have been proven right, and those Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists would have been left standing there with egg on their faces, boy!

Wouldn't they have felt retarded knowing they had been worshiping at false altars? Could you imagine what, if it were possible to find out just what they might be thinking at that exact moment of...ahem...revelation, Osama Bin Laden and Ayotollah Khomeni might have thought? Would it have been "Ooops! Sorry!" or would it be "Damn, I guess this elevator is on it's way to the ground floor, after all!"

Another interesting question that would have been answered would have been "Will Tim the Annoying Jesus Freak From Accounting be getting Raptured, or is he just the sanctimonious putz that I always took him for?" By that, I mean would all the self-satisfied people you know who are so secure about their eventual place in Heaven -- and can't stop talking about it -- still be here, and could you imagine both the surprise and the horror on their faces if they weren't? But I guess that's mean of me to think of it that way.

Imagine the confusion, consternation, and the sound of 2 billion simultaneous palm-to-forehead smacks if the Christians, Jews AND Muslims had been left behind, and only the Druids were Raptured? The Jedi Knights? The Moonies? Talk about being pissed off and played for suckers!

Anyhow, if you're like me (and you survived 10 years of Catholic schools without murdering someone) you pretty much knew the whole thing was bullshit, if only because, well...consider the source. The Great Non-Event will be explained away in the coming days in the following manner;

The True Intent of the Almighty is often simply beyond the means of Man to discern, and despite what we think about our having 'knowledge' we truly have none when it comes to whether, when, or how, God will see fit to finally bring about the End of Days. The ways of God are mysterious, and we've made a grave mistake in trying to get inside God's mind instead of doing that which we are commanded to do, which is to get inside God's Good Graces. We've sinned by trying -- the sins of Pride and Arrogance -- and because we've sinned, God has decided that we're just not ready to see fulfillment of Her Prophecy at the present time. She will do so on Her terms, and not our's. Still, if it brought one person back into God's loving Embrace, and made just one Sinner repent his sins, it doesn't matter whether we were right or not: a much greater good has been served.

And five years from now Reverend Global-Holocaust will be entirely forgotten. He'll still be exceedingly rich and running his nationwide radio empire (it's amazing how that happens), but forgotten. At least until he makes another (wrong) prediction based on his peculiar blend of prophecy, Bible study, and numerology (Shocking! Numerology is usually so goddamned accurate!) This is the second time he's been wrong about the Date of Departure for his fellow morons, but apparently being wrong about Armageddon is sort of like being a stockbroker: You still get paid no matter what.

Considering the system Reverend Camping uses to predict these things is pretty much the same thing your broker uses to calculate a P/E ratio, I figure they're more or less in the same business -- selling false hopes, usually based upon faulty data, a great big wild-ass guess, and questionable accounting methods.

Oh, by the way, Reverend Camping has also predicted that God will incinerate the Universe sometime in October. Mark that date on your calendar. But even this beggars a question: if God is going to destroy the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, why bother to destroy this world five months early? For someone who's supposed to be All-Wise, this doesn't sound very smart to me. Why not do it all in one go, and save some time and effort?

Then again, God doesn't appear to be very smart at all. A cursory reading of Genesis -- the very first book of the Bible! -- pretty much tells you that God hasn't always got Her shit together;

There's actually TWO versions of the Creation of Man in Genesis. In the first one, Man and Woman are created together from the dust of the Earth. In the second one, Adam is all alone, and so God puts him to sleep, grabs a rib and makes Eve. Woman isn't even made from a Prime Cut. This would, taken literally, make it seem as if Adam has TWO wives. In many interpretations of Genesis, this is indeed the case; the First Woman (named Lilith) simply refuses to play a subordinate role to Adam and is banished from Eden for being a complete bitch and not knowing 'her place'. She believes that since she and Adam are created simultaneously that they are equal.

You would have thought that a perfect, all-knowing God-with-a-Master-Plan would have anticipated that if Her intention had been otherwise. Anyways, Lilith proves an unsatisfactory companion for Adam, and so God creates Eve, or as I like to refer to her "the Original Airhead". God, apparently, had this very same problem with Her other Creations, the Angels. Some of them didn't take too kindly to the idea that Man would be held higher in the esteem of God, even though She created them first. One of them was Lucifer, and another, Satan. You would think She would have seen that coming, too.

So Men, next time you wonder why it is that you just can't understand Women, just think of it this way: Even God took two swings at it -- She fucked it up twice -- and then gave up, probably in frustration.

We're told that God is All-Knowing and All-Seeing, and yet, God is often curiously absent when critical events take place in the Bible. When Eve is tempted by the Serpent, God isn't there to save her. After all, Eve doesn't know any better and needs guidance, especially so because God forbid her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, which means God probably intended to keep us all stupid in the first place. And if so, then why put a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden at all? And what a rotten trick to play: put a Tree of Knowledge in there and then tell Eve not to eat from it, knowing full well that God has implanted the Human Nature Chip in us... and then She punishes us for following our programming! I'm telling you, someone's off Her game. When Cain kills Abel, God is, likewise, AWOL; She only knows something has happened because Abel's 'blood calls out' to Her. She doesn't even know what's happened, or who did it, which is pretty lame when you consider there ain't that many people to keep track of at the time. You don't need Columbo or Sherlock Holmes for this case. Why is Abel dead in the first place? Because God didn't like Cain's gift, the ungrateful witch!

Maybe She was making a sandwich or taking a dump when those things happened? Maybe it's just me, but you would think a being capable of creating an entire universe in the blink of an eye would at least have the ability to multitask.

Yeah, yeah, I know: you aren't supposed to take it literally, because it's only supposed to be illustrative and instructive. In that case, why take "Thou Shall Not Kill" literally? Why even take "Love one another as I have loved you" literally? Either it's the Truth, and meant to be taken literally (otherwise, why even bother?), or it's just a handy tool that can be used to justify anything; today's "don't take this literally" is tomorrow's "But God said...".

God, I think, must have been a lawyer.

See, this is the problem with having been educated in the Catholic Schools. On the one hand, the Catholic Schools teach you to think when it comes to mathematics, sciences, or even writing in a simple business letter, but then on the other, it demands unblinkered credulity when it comes to matters of Scripture. Only they call it 'faith'.

That's the problem with religion, period. You're expected to believe without having to think, react without thinking, behave without thinking, to just accept without critical thought.

Which is why I'm positive that this past week that someone blew his life savings, simply giving it away in the belief that he wouldn't need the money anymore. After all, he was going to be Raptured. Pastor Bob said so. And now that he hasn't been Raptured, he's going to have survive and feed his kids, and put a roof over their heads, and maybe not have the wherewithal to do it because he believed -- he had faith -- in a different outcome.

I'm almost going to guarantee that some people, perhaps many, actually committed suicide in anticipation of the destruction of Planet Earth to spare themselves -- and maybe they took their families with them? -- the horrors of a post-Apocalyptic World. Reverend Douchebag's 'Whoops! Got the date wrong, but I meant well" excuse isn't gong to bring those folks back, is it? I wonder how he'll square that circle with the Almighty when he's finally -- he hopes -- measured for his gossamer wings and halo?

I wonder how many people died around 6:00 Saturday, and how many of those deaths can be attributed to the stress and anxiety of wondering whether the world would end, how it would happen, or whether they would be saved? It's impossible to know, but I'd bet there were some who just couldn't take the suspense and keeled over.

How many people actually LOST THEIR FAITH -- disillusioned by the false promise of a complete knucklehead -- when the Prophecy didn't come true?

And what about the sins Reverend Camping inadvertently encouraged with his little piece of stupidity? In these parts, there were actually Doomsday Parties (I attended one!), and the debauchery at many would probably rival that of Caligula's Court. Hey, if you're gonna die, might as well get drunk and laid one last time before you go, right? So the "it still brought people to Jesus" excuse is pretty much nullified; I can promise you that while there might have been an awful lot of folks on their knees Saturday, the vast majority of 'em probably weren't praying. Maybe some were begging, but certainly not for Salvation.

Religion, I guess, is what you make of it. If it provides you with a moral compass, a guide as to how to live your life, an inner peace, or just a plausible explanation of all the Great Questions of Existence -- why are we here? what is my purpose? why do the wicked seem to prosper and the good die young? is Life a series of accidents, random events and occurrences, or is it all some sort of logical plan? what happens to me after I die? -- then good for you. I don't happen to agree with you, but I'm not going to stop you or try to convince you to give it up.

My only request is that you please keep your religion to yourself.

Because when some people insist on foisting their beliefs upon others, bad things usually happen. Airliners get hijacked and flown into office buildings. Thousands get slaughtered over a piece of desert. Billions are set against each other and use the Word of Fill-in-the-Blank as an excuse for murder, rape, dispossession, slavery, and worse.

And then some idiot who can't extend that reasonable courtesy to others, and instead broadcasts his stupidity around the world -- like when you insist you know the exact date and time of Armageddon -- and his predictions do not come to pass, you make the good folks who can keep their faith to themselves, and who just want to believe in something beyond the work-a-day world, look and feel obscenely foolish and you make them an object of ridicule or maybe even hatred or a target for violence. And that's just not fair.

Now, if that's how one 'brings people closer to God' -- by scaring the fertilizer out of them, causing them to do all sorts of stupid things, cause them to question their deeply-held beliefs in a negative way because they accepted your mistake, or lie, as serious truth -- then someone is a fucking dipshit, and taking that person's advice or seeking his opinion on anything, let alone the Will of God or the End of Times, is probably asking for trouble you could better do without. Reverend Camping and his friends deserve to be ignored.

If there were truly any Divine Justice in the Universe, Reverend Hump and his Acolytes would be taken away, alright...to a cloud with rubber walls.

The World is Coming to An End: Film at 11...

I was talking to my friend Mike the other day, and he told me about something that was so uproariously stupid that I feel compelled to write about it, and share it with you all. It's what we do here at the Asylum; point out the stupidity of others and laugh our asses off over it.

Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
 
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
 
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
 
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and  little to no trace of us will be left.
 
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.

It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.

Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.

What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
 
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
 
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
 
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
 
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.

Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.  
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
 
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
 
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
 
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.

Sorry, Japan...

Okay, okay, I couldn't help myself. I went a little overboard in the previous post and made light of the situation in Japan. Now, even I have to admit that it was gratuitous, in extremely poor taste, and not exactly funny unless you're off your meds.

I (Pearl) harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese people. In fact...wait for it...some of my best friends were Japanese (oh no you didn't!). Well, that's not exactly true. I don't have all that many Japanese friends, just many Japanese acquaintances.

A long time ago, a young Lunatic was hired to work for one of the largest corporations on Planet Earth, a Japanese brokerage company which at that time was involved in one of those quixotic projects which the cash-rich Japanese of the early1990's eagerly pursued. Basically, we were experimenting with the second-generation of automated securities trading systems back then, and the reason why the company had crossed the vast Pacific and the American Hinterland to arrive upon the sunny shores of Staten Island, was to set up the Nomura Research Institute wherein this experimentation would take place. Your's Truly -- all of about 22 or 23 at the time, and full of piss-and-vinegar -- was hired to run those experimental systems.

The purpose of spending (wasting, really) a shitload of money to build a showpiece data center in Staten Island was an abject lesson in how some Japanese of the time thought. The Powers That Were had discovered that American securities firms were engaged in about 90% of the electronic trading on Japanese stock exchanges, but that Japanese companies did almost none on American exchanges. This was a national insult that could not go unavenged! Nomura was going to spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave to erase this national stain of disgrace, and at the same time show those big-nosed, smelly gaijin (barbarians) that the Japanese Way was the bestest way EVAH!

No matter how much it cost, nor how paltry the results.

Now, the story of exactly HOW I got hired is both funny, and all-too-inherently Japanese.

See, I'm an Italian boy. Specifically, Sicilian on my father's side, and Neapolitan and Calabrese on my mother's. I have a last name which sounds Japanese, if only because it ends with an 'O'. So, when all these Japanese dudes looking for technicians to fill their brand-spankin' new computer research facility saw my resume, they were intrigued by my surname...

...And had assumed that I, naturally, must have been Japanese.

So, I was basically hired, sight unseen.

When I walked into that building for the first time for what I was told was a mere formality (a for-show interview) imagine the shock and dismay when it was discovered that, alas, I was not Japanese at all. I had already been told that I had the job, and now to take it back would have been a major problem; the Japanese don't like to make mistakes (who does?) and making a boner like this one involves a great deal of shame and embarrassment (Japanese businessmen have killed themselves for lesser offenses), and besides, this was the 90's, and Japan was supposed to be taking over the world with it's battalions of highly-disciplined-and-sharp-as-tacks super-duper managerial robots. 60Minutes and the New York Times said so, you see.

So now I couldn't be un-hired without somoene having to disembowel himself, and so I spent the next 18 months working like a galley slave with a bunch of Japanese managers just waiting for the moment when I finally stepped on the weasel so that they could fire my Italian ass and erase the memory of their mind-boggingly-stupid error. Eventually, because I was young, stupid, and not at all mature (I think I'm still two of those things) I gave them one; I have a terrible habit of not caring about time. I would be late for my own funeral, you know. I think I was pretty much late for work on a daily basis in those days, and it was only the quality of my work that kept me there that long. Just as soon as the lateness thing got to be too much, they sent me to the unemployment line.

A month or two later, I found myself working for another Japanese company which was right across the street from the old one, and I stayed there for four years before the stupidity of the whole thing got to be too much. These were the days of outsourcing and cost-management-as-corporate-lifestyle, and so when my department -- which had started out with 10 people -- was reduced to one --Me -- and I was working 70 hours a week, it was time to move on.

But I did meet an awful lot of Japanese in those days, and found the majority of them to be pretty good folks, if strange. That weird factor was mostly due to cultural differences, but once you got used to it, it wasn't that bad. I made some pretty good friends during that time, like the guy who was so in love with American cars that when he shipped back to Japan, he had his vintage Thunderbird and Cougar shipped with him. He used to send us pictures of himself and a bevvy of Japanese cuties in those cars -- which sat in his garage (at enormous expense) because of high gasoline prices, every few months. Thats how he'd get laid: Hey Ladies,I have a set of classic American cars...Wanna ride with the top down?

The Japanese men were strange birds. In the office, they were all work and didn't know you from a hole in the wall. After hours, they were stalwart drinking and softball buddies, and wanted you to introduce them to American girls, about whom they spoke in the crudest of ways (but who am I to judge? I probably talked the same way about the Japanese girls). The Japanese ladies were everything you'd expect; quiet, shy, demure...until they had spent a year stateside in the example and tutelage of the American women, who ruined them.

Ah, I remember a couple of Japanese lasses quite fondly before they discovered Oprah...

Anyways, I found that many of the myths we had been told about the Japanese were simply not true. The first myth to get busted was the stereotype of the hard-working dude who would spend 20 hours a day in the office. From what I saw, those who did only did so because they were waiting for phone calls from Tokyo. They didn't have any real work to do (that was left to the Roundeyes). I remember one man (a senior executive) who's only task seemed to be to sit silently at his desk and chain-smoke (yes, you could smoke indoors in an office in those days!), and thumb through his impressive collection of Japanese porn.

The second lost Maxim of Japanese Invincibility in Business was that the Japanese were smarter than we Americans, which is why they were about to conquer the planet economically. This was patently untrue. I did meet a number of highly-intelligent people, but the majority were not the best and the brightest examples. Once you figured out the Japanese style of business, it didn't take long to figure out why:

If you're a manager in Japan, and you're told that you must send one of your people to America for three-to-five years, you don't send your right-hand man. You grab Fuck-Up San, and give him a raise, a new, bullshit title, and a plane ticket to the Land of Ten Thousand Golf Courses. This made everyone happy: the manager kept his best people, the company had a warm body who could speak Japanese to watch things and send faxes in the U.S., and Fuck-Up San was as happy as a pig in shit, driving his Cadillac, eating steak, and playing all the golf and watching all the Playboy Channel he could manage.

But I did form some really good friendships with a number of my Japanese colleagues during that time. Most of them were really just ordinary people once you got them out of the office, and they could party like there was no tomorrow. The shame of it all is that I would have stayed at that job, probably, if it hadn't had been for the American Manager placed over me; the douchebag that had the audacity to tell me that, even though I had worked 600+ hours of overtime that last year, he couldn't give me a raise without breaking his budget, and then when the company had announced that it was paying it's first-ever bonus (because it had made it's first-ever profit), tried to squash my bonus because I had handed in my two-weeks notice just three days before.

Yeah,I never figured that one out, either.

The President of the Company wanted to thank me for my efforts (that 600+ hours had resulted in a very happy customer, and a huge contract for the company), and when he had found out that not only was I not aware that I would be paid a bonus, but that my American boss had conspired to keep it from me, he went ballistic. So far as he was concerned, I had earned that money, even if I was leaving. It was only fair, he said.

And that is my most vivid memory of the Japanese that I have: It was fair. Even when I was fired from my first Jap Job, it was, in retrospect, only fair. Years later I would come to remember those days rather fondly, not just because of the people I had met and things I learned, but because I finally came to understand the Japanese Way; everyone got a square deal, provided they earned it. That's a far cry from the way American business is often conducted.

So now we come to the point of this little reminiscence. I used to laugh at some Japanese customs and ways because, as a Westerner, they didn't make any sense to me. It's only years later with images of a country ravaged by earthquake, tsunami and the threat of nuclear meltdown that I began to think back to those days when I worked like a sleddog, and had a man whom I had seen every day for four years, but had never spoken to, tell me in broken Engrish that his greatest concern was that his corporation lived up to it's responsibility to ensure that I was treated fairly and with respect at the end of it all.

I've collected all the spare clothing in the house this morning, especially two winter coats that I no longer wear, and which are still in good condition. The whole thing is being bundled up and delivered to the Red Cross this afternoon. There's folks in Japan who have lost everything, and if the earthquakes and tsunami and runaway reactors weren't bad enough, there's snow on the ground, and a great many people have lost everything they own. They need blankets and warm clothes, and I have closets-full.

And if there's any justice in this world, one of those coats will go to the man who gave me respect and courtesy -- at least someone very much like him --in his hour of need. I return the dignity he gave me with a small gift of a warm coat, a couple of sweaters, and some old-but-servicable shoes. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, sure, but I think at this time it would mean more to someone who needs it than all the money in the world.

Please, if you can manage it, head on over to the Red Cross and make a donation for Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami relief. They may be weird to us, but the Japanese are a good, kind and decent people who could use our help, but who will never ask for it. Don't be a douche; stick a crowbar in your wallet or empty your attic of anything useful, and send it to them.

Biology For Dummies...

Lots of tree-hugging hippies out there like to write nasty -- and they'd like to think anonymous, but not really George P. in Terre Haute, or Alyssa V. in Schenectedy -- e-mails, and a few with more braincells than usual like trying -- and failing -- to hack other people's computers and e-mail accounts, too. You know who you are, and if you don't knock it off, I'm going to make a special effort to pay you a visit and MAKE YOU STOP...permanently. I can promise you that ObamaCare won't support you in a vegetative state for very long, so please, don't make me have to beat you.

I can handle nasty. Doesn't bother me at all. I just can't handle STUPID. Drives me insane.

This post brought some blowback (and really, people, can't you just use the reply function to make your stupid case? Oh, right; that has a 4,000 character limit, and unfortunately, you can't spout crap in under 5,000), most of it about the destructive effect of all that extra carbon dioxide that will kill us all.

Apparently, you don't need to know the basics of biology in order to be an environMENTAList. Nor do you need critical thinking skills. All that is required of you is that you simply believe, in much the same way the Muslim or the Catholic establishment doesn't really give a shit about what you think; they only care that you believe, and obey...and send money. This willing suspension of disbelief, to disregard evidence, logic, objective truth, or counter-argument is called "Faith". There's no thinking required. It's the major reason why so many sad-sacks join storefront churches, or strap explosives to themselves in the name of God; Faith is far easier than Truth or Reason, and certainly cheaper than a psychiatrist.

If you're a committed environut, you have to only believe four things (mostly because you're incapable of remembering more than four things) , not taking into consideration evidence to the contrary, nor accepting any argument or evidence whatsoever that would seem to knock the intellectual underpinnings out from beneath your beliefs. These four things are:

1. Carbon dioxide is a deadly poison.

2. Carbon dioxide levels are too high, and that Man has the ability to to do all of the following;

a. Calculate precisely how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere,

b. Calculate precisely how much CO2 is "just right" for the continuation of Life as We Know it, at optimum efficiency,

c. determine that if CO2 levels are too high, that it MUST be the result of Mankind doing things (i.e. going through the processes of what we like to call "living").

d. Discern just how elevated CO2 levels will affect the climate of the planet (as if there were only one world-wide climate!), with disastrous results, especially for people who are, in the best of times, slowly starving to death because they can't grow food, fucking themselves into starvation, killing each other in the name of religion, killing each other because they have nothing better to do, or dying of diseases that could be easily prevented if only they'd use soap, or stop fucking their livestock.

3. That Science is providing all the answers to the mysteries of a number of complex systems that we barely understand, and have barely begun to study in earnest.

4. That sans evidence that Man is actually doing catastrophic harm, it is your duty to insist that He is, and to make every effort to arrest progress that it's in your power to do. Usually, this means whine, bitch and moan until you get your way, like a four-year old.

Or write nasty, you-think-you're-anonymous e-mails. So, boys and girls, let me tell you about the Great Chain of Life, in eight (8) Easy Steps. Pay attention, because you just might learn something that might cause you to give up that lifestyle of pretentious affectation you're engaged in now.

1. There are untold trillions of a certain kind of organism on this planet which we call "Plants" and "Plant-like Organisms".

2. These Plant and Plant-like Organisms like to eat, and in fact, must do so to survive, just like you do, only without Che Guevara T-shits, American Idol, patchouli oil, marijuana, and bottled water.

3. Because they don't have access to Tofu, Doritos and Starbucks, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms have developed a wonderful system of making their own food, which we call Photosynthesis, in which they combine CARBON DIOXIDE with water, sunlight, and trace elements to produce complex carbohydrates (you know, like you get in your tastes-like-shit-but-is-supposedly-healthy-as-all-hell PowerBar?) and sugars. The Plants and Plant-like Creatures eat these sugars, and therefore, grow and thrive.

4. As a result of Photosynthesis, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms basically "shit" OXYGEN, a gas which is a requirement for life for water buffalo, mountain gorillas, polar bears, spotted owls, parrot fish, and dumbass Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who write stupid e-mails telling me I should die because I happen to disagree with them...an' stuff.

5. It is a known fact that when Plants and Plant-like Organisms have access to more CO2, they tend to grow faster and bigger, much like your average person if fed a steady diet of Chips Ahoy's, Ruffles, Pork chops, whipped-cream-out-of-the-can, ice cream and Pepsi would. More plants means more oxygen, and more food for cute little grazing animals like Bambi and Dumbo.

6. If one takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, then one deprives the Plants and Plant-like Organisms of their main source of food, thus killing them. And Bambi and Dumbo, too.

7. If one kills the Plants and Plant-like Organisms, one reduces the amount of Oxygen in the air, it means that those of us with the ability to find our own asses with both hands and a flashlight will have to kill and eat nosepicking environMENTALists in order to survive in an Oxygen-and-food-depleted environment.

8. Once the herd has been culled of the dumbass envirowhackos, we survivors will go back to putting CO2 back into the atmosphere, so that the Plants and Plant-like Organisms can eat and grow again, so that we can breathe, and so that the chickens, cattle, pigs, and fish -- assuming any of them survived both the loss of plants (their fucking food), and Oxygen -- will return, so that we may eat them instead of environMENTALISTs who aren't so tasty, are far from being Brain Food, and have less nutritional value than CheezWhiz.

So, you see, CO2 is not so much a poison as it is a RESOURCE NECESSARY FOR THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET, YOU DUMB-AS-DOGSHIT ASSHOLE!

Also, I get a kick out of people who:

1. Tell me I should save the world by killing myself, but who apparently won't follow their own advice. Avoiding the "looming environmental disaster headed our way" doesn't fill them with enough fear and despondency to take their own lives. No, no, no; it's all of us regular people who should sacrifice ourselves on the Greenie Meanies' behalf, the selfish cocksuckers. Ever notice how those of us who don't agree with them are "selfish" but those that who would demand your death for their own personal comfort and salvation mysteriously aren't?

2. Lecture me about the evils of industrialization, whilst using a computer made from petroleum products and mined metals, transmitting across the ether on cables made of the same, the whole endeavor powered by coal, oil or natural gas burning power plants, or nuclear plants which leave radioactive waste, the very same things these douchebags say is destroying the atmosphere, and without which, modern life would be impossible.

3. Can use the terms "Massive Global Warming Catastrophe" and "Unprecedented Global Ice Age" in the same sentence and not notice the inherent contradictions, massive stupidity, or delicious irony, contained within?

4. If Darwin (your other Icon) was right, then whatever survives the no-plants-no-oxygen conditions of a global catastrophe will evolve so that they can. It's called Adaptation. They just probably won't be going to college and majoring in Keg Party, Gender Studies and Repeating the Stupid Shit My Professor Says.

If you can process all of this, Children, then maybe you'll begin to discover why it's so difficult to take you seriously.

On The Chilean Miners...

I have been absolutely glued to the television for the last few days, entranced by the rescue of 33 miners trapped half-a-mile underground for the last two months. What an incredible story! What a testament to the ingenuity of man, of persistence! A shining example of all the best qualities of mankind. It's a compelling story of bravery and endurance, and although I must admit that I had not followed the whole thing from the beginning, I most certainly have watched these last few days with a feeling of absolute awe.

Congratulations to the Men who were rescued; their tale in simply incredible. How they managed to remain calm, organized, and hopeful is something I'm just dying to read about soon. There must be some absolutely awesome "Life Lessons" somewhere in this incident, and I for one, can hardly wait for them to speak on them. These, truly, are MEN, and if I had my way, just as soon as they are able to speak about their ordeal I'd ship every one of them into every high school in America to pass on what they know and what they've learned to every soft-headed douchebag slacker in existence. This is how REAL MEN behave under adversity.

Congratulations to the rescuers; your work ethic and your cleverness are about to become legendary. What you've done should be immortalized in a famous speech comparable to Churchill's "The Few", or JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you...". You are a shining example of the better virtues of mankind. All the commentators on television have been yacking about the detailed andmeticulous planning that obviously went into this rescue, and i must say, I agree 100%. Absolutely incredible.

Congratulations to the President of Chile; you have now become the Gold Standard of National Leadership. You were an unpopular man before this incident, but now you are a paragon of virtue. Your political folks said don't get involved, there is no hope" but you told them to get lost and did what you thought was the right thing to do, and mounted and supported this massive rescue. You gave leadership. You devoted whatever resources your country could muster to the task. And you were right -- and in the process, you've inspired an entire country and maybe even the world.

I almost wish you were my President!

Perhaps we should bring you here and stick you in front of the American political class and lecture them on what real leadership is all about? Well, it's a lovely thought, but I doubt it would take, as our politicians suffer from a congenital, bulletproof stupidity.

Well done, to all involved.

Pakistan is Flooded...

The devastation is great. Thousands dead. Millions homeless. Property damage in the billions.

I've never had so much fun in all my life!

If it were left up to me, Pakistan would be washed away, erased, as befits the biggest mistake of British Foreign Policy Evah. I guess your phony-baloney God is really looking out for ya, huh? So far as I'm concerned, the destruction hasn't been great enough because there's still Pakistanis left alive.

Anything that kills homicidal maniacs by the thousands is just fuckin' ducky in my book. I hope it rains for another year.

Of course, the calls to"Help the Victims" of the Pakistani floods have already begun, but I'm inclined to turn a deaf ear on them, or at the very least, would think to make any aid this country might give, official or through private charities, contingent upon a single, non-negotiable condition:

You will not get as much as a fucking Saltine without first handing over Usama Bin Laden.

The Pakistani government knows where he is. In fact, they help hide him, they support him, and merely pretend to be helping us in the fight against Al' Qaeda so that the flow of American military and economic aid may continue...which is basically the entire Pakistani economy, unless you count the Fly and Lice Markets, or consider Body Odor to be an economically-viable export.

I wouldn't send a single blanket. Not a bottle of water. Not a box of Pampers, nor bottle of Aspirin until that murdering sonofabitch was in American custody and awaiting televised execution in an American prison.

If someone needs to "save" drowning Pakistanis, let it be the douchebags who managed to collect $100 million to build an obnoxious mosque near Ground Zero, or perhaps a dozen or so Saudi Princes can give up hookers and Maker's Mark in Las Vegas this weekend and scrape up a few bucks to help out. Let's see some of that vaunted Islamic charity, generosity and decency we're always hearing about in action, eh?

In the meantime, the more the media shows pictures of suffering Muslims, the more I laugh. There is, it seems, Cosmic Justice.

Do We Really Need A Congress?

I watched some of the posturing about BP CEO Tony Hayward this afternoon, and based on that performance my answer would have to be a resounding "NO". At least not if it meant that if we kept Congress, we'd have to keep the parade of morons currently there. That bunch of people I saw this afternoon were scary; there wasn't enough intellectual firepower up there to burn calories. The performance, the fake concern, the sarcasm, the posturing, the begging for Hayward to resign, was pathetic.

If none of those people aren't already sterile, we should probably make it a requirement for public office. After all, we spay and neuter house cats, so why not Congresscritters? But I digress...

Let's get something straight: Mr. Hayward did himself no good today, either. His company, which is already on my List of 10,000-Least-Favorite-Things-After-Ebola, is in deeper shit than I might have thought possible. If the e-mails that the Congresscritters were jabbering about today are any indication -- e-mails which contain complaints about safety from members of the drilling team, hints about cost-cutting, and internal memos which paint a picture of a company that was in total disarray, where the executives don't know what the workforce does, where the line-managers seem to be cowboys, and this was before the disaster -- are anything close to true, BP will probably cease to exist.

And that is as it should be; that's the Free Market at work. Companies that fuck up go out of business, it's just a shame that Congress can only remember that when they have a convenient foreign whipping boy willing to be shaken down to the tune of $20 billion just to keep the lawyers at bay (for now), and conveniently forgot it when Citibank, General Motors or AIG -- whose executives contributed to the campaign coffers of every Congressional Retard on the Hill -- were at the helm of their own disasters.

But don't get the idea in your head that Congress, by exposing BP's internal e-mails and hectoring Hayward with questions they knew he wasn't going to answer was actually doing anything that will prevent another Gulf Oil Spill, plug the damned hole, or clean up a solitary shoreline.

They just kept asking Hayward questions in an attempt to get something on record with which to clobber him later on. It's an old lawyer's trick, and it's how they eventually got Martha Stewart, you know. They want to lock Hayward into a story so that when the facts eventually do come out (especially the ones that show the government asleep at the switch, or which catch the regulatory agencies at their usual dumb-as-dogshit best), they'll be able to dance around those inconvenient revelations by hammering Hayward over "changes in his story".

BP is not off the hook, as far as I'm concerned, but the dog-and-pony show these last few days with the oil industry being beaten up in the public square so that complete and utter dingleberries can look "concerned" and "tough" and "in command", is an even sadder sight than seabirds slathered in crude oil.

Especially that asshat Joseph Cao, who started all that stuff about hara-kiri. If I remember correctly, Cao was one of the republican votes for ObamaCare, so maybe he'd care to demonstrate the proper technique for the rest of us? At least it would spare us his fake sanctimony and transparent grandstanding. Incidentally, Cao is Vietnamese, I think, and hara-kiri (more properly called "seppaku") is Japanese. Vietnamese don't kill themselves: they surrender to the nearest communists they can find and then take to rickety boats to save their worthless asses...at least the ones who eventually grow up to be Congressmen, that is. Cao is the Republican Party's answer to Anthony Weiner.

I know we have to keep a Congress, if only because if we didn't have one the President of the United States would become a dictator...oh, wait, that's already happened...but do we have to keep this one, and give them excuses to stage trials, asking questions (written by aides who did some actual research) of people who know even less than they do?

After that disgusting display, I'm of the mind that all 535 members of both Houses would be more useful if they stopped shovelling their usual nonsense, and hit a Gulf Coast beach to shovel tar balls, instead.

Certainly, BP should be punished for whatever it has done, or failed to do. The time for that, however, will be after they manage to plug the hole in the Gulf and start the cleanup in earnest, because there is no other entity at present who can do either. The Federal Government is inept, and it's hands are tied by bureaucratic bullshit, legalities, and the fact that public employees don't work very hard, or display much initiative. So, lay off BP, especially with the lawyer's tricks and the third-degree bullshit, until they've done what you need them to do.

The fucking lawsuits can wait.

But then I guess if there weren't this Show Trials, some people (mostly the Press, which is an even bigger crowd of idiots than Congress) would ask "where's the government in all this?", and those jerkoffs on Capitol Hill would have no answer. At least now they can claim to have "grilled Tony Hayward and asked him tough questions on the record...", which at least keep them occupied long enough so that they weren't trying to figure out how to tax us to pay for penile implants for illegal aliens.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop the leak, or clean up one drop of oil. How much you wanna bet that every one of those flapping rectums will make certain the video of today's puppet show appears in their campaign commercials this fall, though?

BP can't plug the hole fast enough, and 2012 can't come soon enough.

Douchebag of the Week (6/8/10): Tony Hayward...

Yes, it has been a long hiatus for the DOW Award, but that was due to more than just simple apathy on my part; there have been far too many candidates to choose from. There were no truly Epic Douches, defined as those who stood head-and-shoulders above the field, to single out for special recognition. How to choose when the field is so full?

The sad fact of American Life is that the phenomenon of Douchebaggery has become so common is that it takes an industrial disaster of epic proportions to make the distinction between the huddled masses of workaday douchebags, and those who have ascended to the mystic and exalted heights of Mount Douchebottle -- the Olympus of Douchedom -- on their way to cosmic douchebag immortality, to burn brightly in the sky in the Galaxy We Call The Douchey Way.

Tony Hayward, the CEO of British Petroleum (BP) has made the arduous journey from ordinary douche (obnoxious businessman) to become the four-star General, the George S. Patton, if you will, of Douchedom.

Hayward's company has poisoned the Gulf of Mexico -- perhaps for generations -- with an oil spill that began 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, at the very limits of technological and engineering capabilities. BP has allegedly co-opted the very regulators (and politicians) who are supposed to ensure that a) BP doesn't make the mistakes that lead to an uncontrollable oil spill, and b) has a a plan and the wherewithal to clean up after those mistakes, with campaign contributions and a cozy relationship with the regulators that involves the promise of future employment.

It does this all the while running commercials, for years, about it's commitment to a cleaner environment and the Energy of Tomorrow.

BP has, despite protestations to the contrary, done little to protect the Gulf Coast, or to actually clean up after itself. It has lawyered up (and granted, the Obamatards stepped in right way with the threat of Federal lawsuits -- talk about putting carts before horses!) it has fudged the numbers on the size of the spill, the amount of oil leaking, the effects of it's counter-spill efforts, even the number and amount of claims it has paid to local fishermen. It has been aided and abetted by the Obama Administration it has bought and paid for, while all the while giving that same bunch of lame-ass morons both a plausible excuse for their piss-poor reaction (BP is responsible, not us!), and the excuse to further rape the American consumer and Taxpayer (tighter regulations and restrictions on the Energy Industry, as well as new taxes, are on the way).

BP is front-and-center in an environmental disaster that makes the Exxon Valdez look like a cup of coffee spilled in a bathtub. The scope and scale of this disaster, and the difficulty involved in shutting off the flow of oil, makes a Chernobyl-like explosion appear to be an acceptable risk in terms of making nuclear power a more-viable alternative to oil.

Yet, through it all -- all the ruined fisheries, the devastated local economies, the now-sure-to-be-cancelled tourist season, the dead pelicans and otters, the frightening imagery of an uncontrollable undersea volcano of black sludge -- Tony Hawyard feels picked on. He "wants his life back". He wants the media spotlight off his company, and him personally.

Poor baby.

You see, Tony, this is not about you, inasmuch as you have gotten the attention solely because you happen to be the man in charge. You're the CEO, you get the salary, and it's your job, frankly, to be the lightning rod in the shitstorm -- it's why you're overpaid in the first place. If it bothers you that much, then don't whine, just fucking quit. We couldn't possibly think any less of you, anyway. What this is really about is the millions of Americans whose lives are now going to be affected, perhaps for decades, because of this disaster. How do they get their lives back, Shithead?

And yet, Mr. Hayward, already regarded in this country as something slightly-less popular than Cholera, thinks he can make people forget that BP has destroyed their beaches and livelihoods, and that all his douchey tomfoolery over personalizing the effects can be erased by a propaganda campaign, a series of commercials and public service announcements about what BP is doing to help clean up the Gulf and make things right.

That sort of rehabilitate-the-image crap works for democratic party politicians, Mr. Hayward (mostly because their supporters are dumber than dogshit), but we're talking about people's wallets and health, now. Most Americans can be counted upon to misunderstand "complicated" issues like politics, but they certainly understand money and upset stomachs. And when some foreigner-with-a-bad-attitude insults them by pretending as if they don't matter (because Tony wants HIS life back, ignoring the lives his company has probably destroyed), Americans get angry and no amount of PR will douse the fires. Just ask George III what happens when Americans feel ignored, marginalized and ripped off by uppity British assholes.

If you think you can brazen this out after making your true feelings known, Mr. Hayward, you're in a sorrier position than Barack Obama, and probably in as thick a bubble, too. Commercials aside, even you can't be dumb enough to believe your own bullshit.

For being a total Douchebag above and beyond the call of duty -- for daring to think that you could brazen your way out of an ecological disaster of this magnitude, for displaying an intense conceit that is only explainable in psychological terms, for poisoning an entire sea, and finally, for giving the opportunistic and overreaching Obama Administration another excuse to practice their craft and destroy the American Energy Industry (and why not? They've already destroyed the Health Care Industry, the Auto Industry, the Real Estate Industry and the Banking Industry) -- Cap and Trade is on it's way, along with a bewildering array of new taxes, restrictions, regulations and so forth -- Tony Hayward becomes the first-ever recipient of the Douchebag of the Week Award With Oak Leaf Clusters.

And I know of a really big hole that you CAN plug with those clusters, Mr. Hayward.

How to Piss An EnviroMENTAList Off...

A Discussion I had this afternoon at the local Starbucks (paraphrased). Because I'm a complete jerk, I sometimes like to yank people's chains when they give me an excuse to do so. Especially deeply-committed numbskulls. My arguments weren't even good ones -- I just threw crap at her in order to piss her off. Although I do have to say, she looked AWESOME in that tight t-shirt!

Earnest Tree Hugger: Good afternoon, Sir. Can I ask you to sign a petition asking Congress to forbid any more offshore oil drilling, in light of the nasty spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Me: You may ask -- but I'm in favor of drilling for all the oil we can, so that we don't have to buy it from murderous Muslims and South American communists.

ETH: Even if it means destroying our fisheries, and marshlands, not to mention millions of migratory birds?

Me: Oil is taken from the ground every day without destroying fisheries you know. It's almost your fault, and by that I mean people who walk around screaming about "Saving The Three-toed Desert Mosquito" that are complicit in that Gulf Disaster, you know? Besides, don't you care about Arab and South American fisheries? Why don't you try to get them to stop drilling?

ETH (taken slightly aback): All we want is for the Big Oil Companies to be responsible for making certain the environment is protected, and to persuade Mankind to change his ways. What's wrong with that?

Me: Why should Mankind change his ways, and what makes you think most people give a hoot about a bunch of migratory birds? Birds don't pay taxes, you know. And so far as I can see, you're only trying to get ME to change my ways. You aren't petitioning the Saudis or Hugo Chavez, you know, and they drill more oil than we do.

ETH (Getting annoyed with me): If we don't change our ways, if we don't break our addiction to oil, and we continue to treat the environment the way we do, we'll all be dead.

Me (reeling the sucker in): Ah, so if we don't change, we're all dead?

ETH (Heavy sigh): We'll destroy the planet, and then where will we be?

Me: Young Lady, do you believe in the Theory of Evolution?

ETH (non-plussed): Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?

Me (smirking): You make an argument that states if Man does not change -- that is to say EVOLVE and ADAPT to a new way of Life -- that Man will be dead. Why is it that Man is capable of Evolving and Adapting --yet fish, swamp beasts, migratory birds, insects, and so forth, who have been here a lot longer than we have -- are assumed to be unable to do so without your enlightened stewardship, or Congressional action?

ETH (Confused): What does that mean?

Me: It means that no matter what happens Nature recovers -- it always does. Either the Fish and Birds can adapt to oily water -- that is to say Evolve -- or they will die, and Evolution will have been proven. By protecting them by retarding the progress of Man, just might possibly be interfering with their own Natural Development. I mean, if Evolution is the Real Deal, the fish and birds will adapt, right?

ETH (Getting aggravated): But that Oil Spill is not a natural occurrence!!!! We're interfering with Evolution when create catastrophes like that!

Me: Of course it's a natural occurrence. Oil seeps out of the ocean floor every day, and our own process of Adaptation involves the manipulation of Nature. Maybe it doesn't seep out in these quantities, but it still does so all the same; the fish and so forth seem able to handle it.

ETH: That oil wouldn't be gushing out like that if we didn't drill for it! It's poisoning everything!

Me: We're drilling that deep because we're not allowed to drill on land, or closer to shore -- and that's your fault, too, you know. And besides, Crude Oil is made up of natural substances, isn't it?It used to be plants and animals at one time, didn't it? Nature created it, it stands to reason that Nature will figure out how to deal with it without our help.

ETH: So you don't care that we're killing off all life as we know it with this spill?

Me: It's hardly ALL life, you know. And no, I don't wish to live in a world that's poisoned, or has dirty air, or undrinkable water, but what makes you think that anything you can do, or worse, Congress can do, will make anything better?

ETH: Well, we have to try!

Me: Try, yes. But not if it makes us all poor and returns us to the Mud Age. By the way, your cell phone -- made from petroleum products, mined metals, and caustic chemicals -- is ringing, Sweetheart. You going to answer that?

ETH (perturbed): No, I'm not. I'm trying to get you to sign this. So, are you going to sign my petition or not? (She offers me her pen, and the sheet of paper -- made from dead trees -- clipped to her plastic -- made from Oil -- clipboard. I point this all out, she rolls her eyes).

Me: No,I don't think so.

ETH: So, you don't care about that Oil Spill, do you? You have no conception of the damage that's being done to our world, do you?

Me: I care about the Oil Spill, Sunshine. I just don't think a petition to Congress will solve the problem.

ETH (Flushing red): Would you stop calling me "Sweetheart" and "Sunshine"? It's very annoying, and sexist.

Me: No more annoying than someone who enters my personal space while I'm trying to read my newspaper, starts sermonizing, and then sticks a petition in my face.

ETH: I said "Excuse Me".

Me: Okay, so you're a polite, sermonizing petition-pusher.

ETH: So, would you please sign my petition?

Me: You still want me to sign your petition, even though I don't believe in what you're doing and you find me annoying and sexist?

ETH: It's for a good cause. You know, you were right about invading your space, and all. Sorry about that. Would you please sign? We're only trying to Heal the Planet.

Me (Noticing that she's changed tactics and is now patronizing me as a way to get me to do something I don't want to -- as if that will work). No, I don't think so, Cupcake.

ETH (now enraged): STOP CALLING ME PET NAMES! I DON'T LIKE IT!

Me: I'm sorry, Sugarshorts, but I'm not signing today. Have a nice day (cracking his newspaper open again).

ETH (Perhaps about to cry): How can you just sit there?

Me: I was doing so before you bothered me, and will do so after you're gone. There's an entire coffee shop full of people; why are you still picking on me?

(ETH has no answer for this, and storms off to bother someone else. I laugh).

I'm concerned about the Gulf Oil Spill because it's a catastrophe that will deprive people of their livelihoods, cost a shitload of money we don't have to clean up, and yeah, I care about pelicans, too. But the combination of Treehuggers and Government are in large part responsible for this mess, and I don't intend to give either any more power or permission to interfere any more than they already have.

We're now seeing what happens when we pay too much attention to environMENTALists, and give far too much deference -- and power -- to Government.

"Obama's Katrina"

So speaks Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, with regards to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I must take exception with Mr. Rove for this pronouncement, if only because being a political operative, it's his job to paint the opposition in the most negative light he can, and let's face it -- it doesn't get any more negative than evoking the nightmare visions of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Rove, if given the opportunity and the confluence of different circumstances, might as well have made the point that this spill is "Obama's Holocaust" or "Obama's 9/11", if he could get away with it.

What Rove, and many on the political right seem to overlook is that Katrina, and the government response to it, doesn't lend itself to the same sort of political pretzel logic that this oil spill does. To begin with, this isn't a natural disaster; it's a man-made accident (or as Man-et Napolitano likes to say, "Man Caused Disaster"). Katrina was unavoidable, beyond the ability of man to predict and control. This spill probably was, or at least might have, been less-likely had major mistakes not been made. I say this with the full admission that I am not an expert on the oil industry and off-shore drilling, but from what's been reported thus far, there's a lot of "fell-asleep-at-the-switch" crap out there to give one this general impression.

Secondly, what Rove and the political right fail to recognize is that, unlike Katrina, there are no images of African-Americans too stupid to get out of the path of a hurricane they knew was coming, and watched on television as it crossed the Atlantic for two weeks -- before it finally made landfall. There are no heartbreaking images of children slogging through waist-deep sewage, no reports of gang warfare in the streets, no elderly folks left to die in abandoned nursing homes. There are no "victims" for Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera and Katie Couric to sermonize upon and to club a Republican President over the head with. The "outrage" is mostly coming from the predictable precincts: the environMENTAL fringe, James Carville, and the Gulf Tourism Industry, aided by Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana) and Mary Landrieu (Senator) who see it as an opportunity for even more federal funding to their state.

(As if FEMA air-dropping Krugerands in buckets into Louisiana post-Katrina -- there's a reason why New Orleans is 30' below sea-level and sinking ever-deeper, you know -- and Landrieu's $300 million Health-Care bribe wasn't enough? Look, you need to clean up that spill for obvious reasons, but dammit, when does the Federal Spigot get shut off?).

I defy any government, no matter how efficient, to deal with these sorts of issues, whether a Katrina-like storm, or a massive oil spill 5,000 feet under water. The problem for GWB post-Katrina is that the "victims" were mostly part of a supposedly-oppressed class which was reflexively trained to believe that "The Government" is supposed to "do something", and upon the discovery that "The Government" (starting with the Mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louisiana) was unequal to the task, and when the Victim Class found itself stripped of even the simple self-preservation instinct, their resulting plight was that much easier to attribute to a lack of leadership and outright racism. Obama, personally, will not be tarred by this brush in the way that George W. Bush was; he will largely skate -- aided and abetted by the media which has an emotional and ideological investment in the man -- on the worst of the Katrina comparisons.

Where Obama will have problems with this situation is in some aspects of the federal response, such as it has been, and most of those will disappear as soon as a few heads roll. Obama is very good at deflecting criticism by throwing his friends under the bus, you'll remember. As for what that Federal Response has been, and why it's been so dismal, I postulate the following:

1) In this, as in most things, Obama is simply in over his head. Then again, when you present yourself as the Messiah, making such grand pronouncements as "This is the Moment When Global Warming Ends" and "this is the Moment When The Oceans Cease to Rise", well, you get what you deserve. I never expected Obama to part the waters -- or in this case just separate the oil from the water -- because I never had the sort of investment in the Cult of Personality that most Lefties do.

To be fair, it's difficult to expect Obama himself to have the answers to every problem, but you would think that he would at least have access to the best-and-brightest with the expertise to advise him in these situations. It's becoming clear that his best advisers are probably also infected with the same ideological stupidity as their leader; the initial response has been to find a way to make certain everyone knows BP is responsible, especially financially, and then reignite the dormant debate on the need for Green Energy programs. Some have said this has been the goal all along; that the government was going to do it's least so as to further justify the Green Boondoggle.

There's many reports of Obama and BP campaign cash, and the federal regulatory agencies involved with the oil industry being stuffed with to the rafters with porn-surfing, drug-taking, ticket-punchers who want an oil industry gig after their government "service" is ended. This is the modus operandi of every federal regulatory agency, by the way, and it's something that needs to stop. And I thought Obama was against giving Big Business the ability to sway elections and policies with huge campaign contributions? After all, he did call out the Supreme Court on just this notion. If so, how did BP's cash wind up in his wallet? Corruption -- all the way down the line, but mostly within government -- seems to be the common thread that runs through most major disasters (Oil Spills, Financial Crisis, etc.), nowadays.

2) The Greenie Meanies in the Administration may have disrupted or interfered with initial spill responses because of competing environMENTAL agendas; The initial NOAA-approved plan for a controlled burn may have been halted because the EPA was concerned about elevated air pollution levels, or the effect on fisheries. The ability to build sand berms to keep the oil from reaching shore are hung up in EPA red tape over impact statements. In no small part, certain aspects of this disaster are a direct result of The Greenie Meanies and their dumbass Global Warming Cult; they have advocated for tougher regulations for decades (which apparently aren't enforced by the masturbating junkies in government "service", or which can be side-stepped with a campaign contribution), which has pushed the oil industry to drill in ever-deeper waters, further from the coast (because we don't wish to inconvenience caribou, or a few dozen Eskimos, or ruin some summer-vacationers ocean view), so that when disaster strikes, the conditions under which present-day off-shore drilling is conducted make it impossible to swiftly respond.

If you think an oil spill is already hard enough to contain and clean up on dry land or enclosed waters, try containing one 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. BP may be in deep shit, as it were, but it was the Tree Huggers, in part, who forced them into deeper water, into taking greater risks, and into pushing the boundaries of modern engineering to this extent. The Green Assholes will never admit their complicity in this disaster, but to them responsibility is always something for other people to exercise and accept, isn't it? This spill is (almost) a direct result of paying Tree-Hugging Retards far too much attention, and exempting government from the same levels of accountability that hold sway in the Private Sector.

Some have gone as far as to say that the Federal Government has conspired NOT to act, so that the Oil Industry can be demonized in much the same way as Wall Street was.

As I write this, President Odickhead is back on television -- and the first words out his mouth are "The Government has been in charge since Day One" and "BP is responsible for this mess". He's already saying that off-shore exploration is being halted, and is setting the case for further government intervention in the industry. The last 37 days belie the "Day One-assertion" made by the Obama Administration, and the rest of this speech is simply the setting-up of the legal framework which will explode into the rationales behind a further restriction of freedoms and commerce. New regulations, Blue-Ribbon Panels and government organizations are on the way -- because this is the solution to every problem on Earth, you know -- which will raise energy prices and hurt an already-anemic economy. These but make Lefties feel better about themselves but will do nothing about reducing American dependence on foreign oil, or meet the energy needs of the country. We're about to further destroy economic progress for the sake of a few thousand windmills that won't work (and which the Greenie Meanies will cry to shut off because they kill birds in the thousands).

You know, none of this would have happened if they were just drilling in ANWAR, already.

Our country is being micromanaged by complete and utter retards who haven't got a clue. On anything. Worse, they are being directed by even bigger retards with agendas. If this disaster hasn't driven that home to you, I don't know what will --short of another 9/11.