The Jihadis Are After Me...

There has been an increase in traffic to this website from a particular Arab website.

I figure I can expect either a lawsuit or a letter bomb just about any day, now. I seem to have caught the attention of some official-sounding Arab organization, and it appears as if they have been searching this site for the term, of all things, donkey sex, in all it's permutations. Among other things.

Which tells me that whoever is doing the searching is probably in Pakistan,or a Pakistani living in the US, because according to Google the only country that routinely registers more online search engine requests for donkey sex than Mexico, is Pakistan. They're also Number One in gay porn and rape video.

But that's only because they can't be Numero Uno in economic productivity, production of Nobel Prize Winners, or Personal Hygiene, and mainly because Cricket -- the only thing they are good at, besides exploding -- is gayer than Ru Paul.

So, I can expect a cease-and-desist order or a visit from an "Imam" pretending to be reasonable, I figure, real soon.

The group doing the snooping, from the limited research I've done, is some sort of Pan-Arab clusterfuck of the sort that has been championed by the likes of Abdel Nasser and Saddam Hussein, which is to say a Pan-Arab-Ba'athist-Nazi sort of coalition of disaffected camel fuckers from every corner of the Islamic shithole states. Given this sort of pedigree and this sort of membership, I'm confident that any assassination attempt will fail utterly if only because the car bomber sent to do me in will accidentally set himself off prematurely as he performs his final rite of ritual masturbation leading up to the "Allahu Akbar!" moment.

In which case, he'll still get 72 virgins, only they'll all look like Danny DeVito, and have at least one chipped tooth apiece (think about it, Men).

Come and get me, you sheepshagging wife-beaters! I'll be more than happy to fuck you up if you show your faces around here. Mohammed Atta couldn't kill me with a 757 and that was your first string.

Obama "First Time" Ad Not Only Stupid; It Was a Rip Off...

...from Vladimir fuckin' Putin, no less!

You weep for the future when you realize that this ad is targeted at young adults, who apparently can’t think for themselves, or be motivated to do anything unless it includes a certain amount of salaciousness.

And we wonder why 50% of them can’t find a job after graduating college? Maybe because some are fucking dolts who don’t have a thought that isn’t in some way connected to their genitalia, and they take their politics from a third-rate actress with obvious brain damage.

Youth is wasted on the Young.

Making Your Privates Public…

You know, there used to be a time before cell phones existed when people took great pains to do two very important things:

a. Keep their noses out of their neighbors’ business, and

b. Keep certain aspects of their personal lives private.

Apparently, this is no longer true. I won’t go into the near-impossibility of keeping most facets of your life a secret when you actually want to, nowadays (technology has made this somewhat problematic if not damned near impossible). However, one would think that some things about most people’s private lives that should be kept secret would remain safely hidden if only cell phones had not become ubiquitous…

…and if the people who insist on using them in a public setting had the same sense you’re likely to find in a brain-damaged Irish Setter.

Weiner Steps on the Weiner...

You knew this was coming. It was unavoidable.

Police question 17-yr old girl who had contact with Weiner.

Gonna resign now, Douchebag, before the cops haul your ass off to jail?

In one of those delicious ironies, as Ipost this, I'm watching Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox, and Kirsten Powers, an ex-girlfriend of Anthony Weiner who's part of Bret's panel this evening, has just been asked to comment on this tidbit. She dodged it nicely,but you could see that she wanted to go home and scrub thoroughly with Brillo.

(H/T JammieWearingFool)

The Sorry Tale of Anthony Weiner…

The most aptly-named man in Washington, D.C. finally admitted to what the even the dumbest amongst us already knew, yesterday, and made a crying spectacle of himself on national television. Anthony Weiner did, indeed, shoot little beefcake photos of himself all over the internet to various women (he says six, but that’s probably no closer to the truth than his insistence that he was ‘hacked’ by right-wing hit squads was). He also admits to some telephonic heavy breathing, which is a vision that has firmly burnt itself into my mind's eye, much to my distress.

The entire apology/self-crucifixion production became surreal when Andrew Breitbart , the man accused of being Weiner’s ersatz hacker just happened to be in the neighborhood, and at the behest of the drooling press took over the event, demanding an apology while informing us that he has even more pictures of Weiner in even more compromising positions. This suggestion makes me fervently hope that my infected mind’s eye will do me a great favor and go blind before those are ever released.

There’s much talk amongst the flapping rectum class on television about Weiner’s ‘political future’. Only in America, and most annoyingly, only in New York, could a Congressman so obviously mislead the public, dissemble so unbelievably brazenly about the facts of his misdeeds, make a public penance in which he has to follow the man who’s been wrongly accused of wronging him, still consider it possible to have a career. Only in New York could such a man, who has a Congressional Ethics hearing or two in his future, probably an irate wife who can’t wait to rape him in the divorce trial (if she doesn’t divorce him after this, even if there’s no actual sex involved, she’s a retard), be considered worthy of having a Political Future.

Sadly, Congressdouche Weiner stands a better than even-money chance of being re-elected as things are now, barring some new revelation that one of his phone/e-mail playmates was underage, or a foreign spy. If it should turn out that one of Weiner’s phone friends was another man, the people of his district – where IQ is measured by that quaint expression ‘room temperature’; after all, they’ve already voted for the most insufferable asshole I’ve ever seen in my entire life six times, so they must be the cream of the crop, stupid-wise – even that wouldn’t stop them from voting for Congressman Chronic Online Masturbator.

Some would see it as an opportunity to vote for the first apparently bi-sexual member of Congress (so far as we know). That’s how liberal they are; voting for Weiner is a badge of courage.

Besides, here in New York we’ve come to expect that out elected officials are criminals, serial adulterers, or sexual deviants, vis-à-vis Rudy Giuliani, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, Eric Massa, Chris Lee, and now Anthony Weiner.

Hell, Charlie Rangel never met a tax he didn't write the regs for that he wouldn’t happily dodge, and he’s still in office.

I watched this sorry spectacle yesterday, and wanted to puke. The first vomit-inducing portion was the part where Weiner said “I will not resign”, which I thought was absolutely outrageous. Just a few weeks ago, a New York Republican (Chris Lee) resigned from office after being caught doing the same exact thing that Weiner has done, and there was no week-and-a-half of lying involved, there were no false accusations against a journalist, there wasn’t a ten day ordeal of press conferences where we’re arguing over the meaning of ‘certitude’, and the man in the crosshairs flounders in lawyerly language like Shelley Winters floundered in the flooded ballroom of the Poseidon Adventure.

The second thing that made me want to expel my lunch at terminal velocity was the use of the word ‘apology’. Weiner said ‘apologize’ or ‘I apologize’ what seemed to me to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 times. He apologized to his wife, his family, his staff, his ’constituents’ (i.e. the brain-dead legion that would have pulled the lever for him so as to keep the hot-and-cold running food stamps and Section-8 housing flowing, unless he’d admitted to child rape or tossing puppies into a wood chipper), Andrew Breitbart, but at no time did it ever appear to me to be sincere. Perhaps that’s because I have an instinctual dislike for Weiner that rivals the hatred between cats and dogs, or maybe it’s a by-product from having to listen to him lie out of both sides of his mouth, and his rectum, simultaneously, on ever subject under the Sun for a decade-plus.

Weiner claims to take ‘responsibility’ – another word he used profusely and unbelievably -- for what he’s done, but he truly hasn’t. Had Weiner a responsible bone(r) in his body, he would have resigned yesterday. That’s what responsible, truly sorry people do. Then again, he’s a democrat, so there you go; democrats are neither responsible, nor hardly ever sorry about anything.

Anthony Weiner didn’t ‘apologize’ profusely yesterday because he’s genuinely sorry. He’s apologizing and paying lip-service to accepting responsibility because he’s been caught. He’s apologizing because he got caught in such a stupid way, doing such a stupid thing. He’s apologizing because it’s part of a ’damage control’ operation, and the public relations experts told him that it’s time to come clean and at least appear to be contrite (note, however, that Weiner only ‘comes clean’ after irrefutable evidence is suggested of his guilt. Without it, he would have continued this charade for years to come). That series of apologies you saw yesterday was not of a penitent man, baring his soul to the world, begging forgiveness.

That was a man who’s come home drunk at three in the morning, smelling of perfume, lipstick smeared on his collar, and the used condom still stuck in his zipper, begging his wife to unlock the door, pleading ‘Honey, can't we talk this over?’.

Men, as a rule, do things because they can, or because they want to. Scale Everest, split atoms, fly to the Moon, or fuck the secretary with the big tits, and many of them never actually stop to consider the implications or consequences of their actions, especially where the sex drive and ego are concerned. We are biologically hard-wired to take risks, to ignore doubts and fears, and screw everything that moves. Nature made us this way, and it’s only a very smart or dedicated man who is able to control his baser urges.

When you look like Anthony Weiner, the very poster child for birth control, and have the arrogance that comes with power and the fawning adulation of the press – perhaps the laziest and dumbest class of people yet discovered -- that intelligence and dedication quickly flies right out the window. Add the possibility of sex to ego and poor impulse control, and you’re headed for disaster. Facilitate the roller-coaster-to-Hell with a medium that provides (some think) a measure of anonymity and distance, and you’re talking a sure-fire atomic explosion of stupidity.

Weiner’s first mistake was to get full of himself. His second mistake was to fail to engage his critical thinking skills (being a liberal democrat, we may question as to whether he possesses any). His third mistake was to choose mediums where the possibility of getting caught was somewhat remote (although, as we all know, nothing is private in Cyberspace, and even phone bills can be quite instructive). His fourth mistake was to make a habit of it. The final mistake was to believe that he could scrub the record clean, after the fact, brazenly lie about the entire…ahem…affair…and then, after the dust settles, continue life much as he did before, maybe taking a few extra precautions but not much more.

I can promise you: even after being put in a delicate, to say the least, position by the initial discovery of Weiner’s underpants pictures, Weiner would have gone right back to Greasing the Pelican and sending dick pictures online just as soon as decently possible. It’s a compulsion; a mere routine, it all becomes a part of Life, just like the morning commute, the tuna-salad-on-whole-wheat for lunch everyday, the three-martinis after work, the evening newscast, and brushing your teeth before bed.

No, Anthony Weiner was never sorry enough to realize just what he was doing and then stop doing it; he’s only sorry that we found out what he does with his Blackberry, and the thought that the public might believe he’s Yankin’ his Crank While Texting finally got that long-forgotten-and-suppressed shame reflex to kick in.

So, what’s next for Congresscritter Weiner? Well, to judge from past sex scandals (this may be the first where no actual sex, only the suggestion of it, took place. See how the Internet and social networking are changing our lives? When a politician says “I did not have sex with that woman…” and a computer is involved, you can actually half-way believe him! Weiner might give a whole new meaning to the term ‘Palm Pilot’.), the step after admission is usually, and oh-so-painfully-predictably rehab.

Congressman Weiner may be the first famous (or is it now infamous?) Internet Sex Addict. When Weiner makes that announcement -- I'm a sex addict -- his wife will be standing right next to him (somehow, the wives must always be seen as standing by their man, even when their man is a complete douchebag. Although her absence yesterday was telling); there will be the usual rigmarole about personal reflection, ‘my Faith in God’, and ‘coming to terms with the realization that I have a problem’, but dickhead still won’t resign, naturally.

There is a Congressional Ethics Committee investigation coming. Considering that democrats usually don’t find anything wrong with deviant behavior by one of their members, it’s merely a formality. It’s a kabuki play intended to lull the public into the false belief that, indeed, Congress can be trusted to police itself, which is complete and utter bullshit given the history of Congressional Ethics Investigations of the last 40 years. Weiner will receive but a light tap upon both wrists and told to sin no more. If they’re smart, they’ll take his Blackberry and Smartphone away, and cancel his subscription to AOL (people still have those?).

Despite all the public mea culpa, despite the coming-soon orgy of putting all his psychoses on public display, despite all the talk about ‘responsibility’, deep down in what passes for his black soul Anthony Weiner still thinks he’s done nothing wrong. He still believes he’s a victim…of something…but not of hubris or stupidity. Somewhere in his tiny little mind, he still feels justified in what he has done, and can’t believe people would make such a big deal out of such a little thing (I mean the scandal, not his Little Thing, per se). He’s wrong.

We’re the victims here. A sitting Congresscritter making a casual mistake with his send options on Twitter has just told everyone in the Solar System that he’s dumber than dogshit, and ripe for blackmail. He’s just told the American public that far from his usual insistence that he’s ‘fighting for the common folk’ he’s instead spending a great deal of time taking pictures of himself in the buff, e-mailing them hither-and-yon, hitting up women half his age. His subsequent actions – trying to delete the incriminating photographs, inventing a weak conspiracy theory cover story out of whole cloth, accusing an innocent man of potential criminality, stonewalling, misleading the public and press, lying to his wife, and the Staff or other members of Congress who may have defended him – show the character, or rather, lack thereof, of the man. If he’s capable of lying about this, what else has Anthony Weiner lied about? If he’s capable of going to these extreme lengths to avoid having the truth come out, what does that say about the benefits or veracity of anything he’s ever voted on?

And finally, his Twitter Bunnies are going to be exposed to public scrutiny. Two already have. I wonder if either will make an attempt to find Monica Lewinski and ask her how her career and life have gone after she was identified as the paramour of a once-powerful man. Everywhere she goes, men probably ask her to do her famous ‘Cigar Trick’, and automatically assume she’s up for a little ‘Executive Action’ at a moment’s notice. Monica had at least one saving grace in her favor: the Internet was in its infancy, and public memory is often short. For these women, once they’re publicly identified, Weiner’s Weiner will be permanently stapled to every job application they ever fill in.

They might as well have actually done the deed for real, because for all intents and purposes Anthony Weiner has shackled each with a permanent, electronic, Pearl Necklace.

And the Happiest Man in the World Today is Arnold Schwarzenegger, because Anthony Weiner just took the spotlight off of him, at least for the foreseeable future.

Weiner's Weiner...

I almost threw up in my own mouth when I read this.

Rep. Anthony Weiner is both an insufferable twat and the most-aptly named man in Washington. He behaves in a manner that makes you want to stick an icepick through his eyeballs. Twice. Assuming that no one on Planet Earth could ever find a reasonable, defensible, logical or provable defense FOR anti-Semitism, Anthony Weiner could give them one just by opening his piehole (not that we advocate such a thing here at The Asylum. If you feel the undeniable need to hate someone, then please direct your hatreds at someone who might actually deserve it...like a Muslim.)

I've said before on these pages: New York State has the worst, dumbest, and most embarrassing Congressional delegation in American history.

This is how you know your elected officials are incapable of running a country: we live in an Information Age, where communications are instantaneous, and the ability to transmit and diffuse information at -- almost literally - at light speed is a fact of life. We live in an age of a 24-hour news cycle, with thousands of outlets constantly searching for any bit of anything that is even of the slightest interest, hungry for even more channels of input, and ways to devour more airtime at a profit. We live in an age where everyone and his dog has a video camera, recording device, cell phone, computer, and access to thousands, if not millions, of databases where they can record, store, examine and retrieve almost every fact of your life -- every utterance, every (you think) secret, every correspondence --from the most inconsequential to the greatest of All-Time-Biggest-Bonehead moves.

They should know these things are becoming the New Normal in our diseased modern culture, and that you cannot escape these traps...and yet our ruling class still does it, anyway.

John Edwards is quite possibly going to jail because he couldn't keep his pants zipped up, or a camera out of his bedroom, and it's only by the grace of whatever you hold holy that there was no such thing as Facebook or Twitter around for him to dig his hole any deeper.

And let's face it: someone is always out to get you -- your business or political rivals, your insurance company, anyone who wants to sell you something, your bank. No one has any reasonable expectation of privacy anymore, for the simple fact that everything is recorded, somewhere, and also because these new media often encourage people to volunteer in destroying their own personal privacy by allowing them to share the innermost secrets of their lives with others.

And somehow, these people -- your Ruling Class --  don't know this. Or worse, they know it, and just don't give a shit.

You would think that someone who's claim to rule over us peasants was based upon the presumptions of superior intelligence and integrity would be extremely circumspect about what he/she does on the Internet. But I guess not.

If this turns out to be true, and Rep. Weiner's Facebook account hasn't been hacked, then you have to wonder about his ability and worthiness to continue in office. In the grand scheme of things, sending a picture of your dong -- suitably covered -- to someone is probably not a hanging offense, but you have to know: given the ability of the Internet to keep people anonymous and diffuse that which one wishes to remain confidential, what would have happened if the recipient of this picture happened to be, say, a 14-yr old girl pretending to be someone she wasn't?

What if she did happen to be a 14 year old girl, and Weiner knew it? Sheesh! That's a whole 'nuther can o' worms, my friends! Doesn't anyone watch To Catch a Predator, anymore?

Unfortunately, I believe that Congressman Weiner will survive this little dustup, if only because New York City democrats (small 'd' intentional) have the mental capacity of dryer lint, and because politics in this city isn't based upon questions of Right and Wrong, or "What's good for the Country?" but upon "how much money can you steal for me, today?" and if Weiner has been even halfway decent in this regard with his constituents (i.e. partners in crime) then his minions will defend him with their very lives. Because he's a clueless and insufferable asshole, he'll just pretend as if nothing has happened and become twice the annoying and destructive dickhead that he was before.

As terrible as this sounds, I certainly DO hope this ended up in some 14-year old's mailbox, so that we could have a crime with which to charge this douchebag.

Then he can show his pecker to a whole new bunch of friends.

Free Wi-Fi in the Slums...

Leave it to San Francisco to come up with something this stupid:

Free Wi-Fi to Be Offered in City Housing Projects.

Next week's Headlines in San Francisco:

"Mayor Gavin Newsome Stunned By Rampant Wi-Fi Gear Theft"

"Laptop Theft up 300% in San Francisco; Mayor and Police at a Loss as To Why"

"Childhood Obesity in SF up 500%, Mayor Blames Endless Hours of Websurfing"

"Criminal Probe of City Wi-Fi Contracts Connects Mayor to Campaign Donors"

Screw UNICEF...

...because Africa is apparently lousy with wealthy orphans!

I get 7 or 8 of these Nigerian Scams a week, and they get progressively better with the advance of time. They all follow the same predictable pattern, though. The first clue is that it seems all these poor-little-rich-girls have masculine first names.

A young woman in (insert Third-world shithole here) has just finished her prayers. This, I find amazing because to guess from all the outcry about African overpopulation, you get the idea that any girl who has the time to pray is probably even too ugly for an African man to do the nasty with. This, after all, is how one usually achieves the sort of overpopulation common to the poorest nations of Africa. Why, the problems attendant to all that uninterrupted fucking going on over there are so serious that American Stimulus dollars had to be spent to deal with the horrific consequences.

Anyway, the point is that we apparently have the only praying virgin on the African continent writing us e-mails, and this new one happens to be in an extremely acute emotional state, as we shall soon see.

Anyways, you'll find that this chaste and pious young thing is the recently-orphaned daughter of Minister X of the Ministry of XY&Z. It doesn't even matter which Ministry Daddy worked for; the Ministries and Names and Countries in these scams are interchangeable. Daddy is always killed in a plane crash (of which there seem to be an awful lot in Africa), and just so you understand that a) yes, they do have airplanes in Africa, and b) yes, they sometimes do, indeed crash, a hyperlink is included to a news story on the crash in question, or at least to a crash.

Being an African Minister for Anything is a job as dangerous as New York City Gypsy Cab driver, 'twould seem. If I were ever appointed (because they don't have real elections in Africa, no matter what Jimmy Carter says, it would have to be an appointment from this week's tin pot dictator) to, say, Minister for Lint Collection in Ivory Coast, I would positively demand that the first condition under which I would take this job is no fucking flying.

Because all African Government ministers die in plane crashes, these days. Not like the good old days when they used to get shot to pieces in front of the Ministry of Juicy Yellow Fruits building, or catch Ebola touring the rain forest, or get the "bad" oyster while overindulging in the midst of their starving citizens. But I digress...

So now this orphaned waif, all alone in the world, always makes an incredible discovery; it's usually "I looked in my father's briefcase and found...", which leads one to ask "must have been some damned good luck that Dad didn't have his briefcase with him when the plane crashed, huh?". Always, serendipity takes a hand in the course of a young orphan's life, and she finds out that she's fabulously wealthy.

Because Daddy provided for her, probably by siphoning off Western Aid meant to feed hungry AIDS victims (you find one every seven feet or so over there), and bring some solace to the victims of Civil War and religious persecution, drought, and whatever fifteen-thousand plagues strike Africa this month because heaven forbid anyone ever takes a fucking vitamin over there, washes properly, or learns what soap is, or the proper rules of basic sanitation -- you'd have to stop fucking long enough to do that -- and depositing his gains in that Cayman Islands of Africa, Burkina Faso.

Upon discovering her new-found bounty, the young girl travels to Burkina Faso to speak personally with the bank manager, who tells her that, unfortunately, her father has left instructions that the money he left for her not be released because of bureaucratic mix ups, improper documentation, a requirement for marriage, etc. I gather that Holocaust victims were given similar, heart-wrenching treatment by Swiss Banks, post-war. Whereupon our damsel-in-distress does what any young girl who can't get access to her multi-million-dollar inheritance does.

Write anonymous e-mails to complete strangers on the internet, seeking their help usually with the hint of a marriage of convenience. Once the intended victim is caught on this hook, the predictable happens: she'll need a secure bank account in the States to transfer the funds to; can she use yours? If so, what is the account number? She'll need a valid address; what is yours? Phone number? A few weeks later: The Bank in Burkina Faso cannot transfer the funds without your Social Secuity number. What is it? And then when she's, amazingly, been granted a visa to come fulfill her pledge to you, she can't afford a plane ticket. What is your credit card number, so that she may purchase one?

Oh, and they all have evil uncles out to kill them, too.

Classic.

What's really amazing is;

a) there's someone in Africa who has enough time between starving to death, or dying of a preventable disease, to write these things, and

b)Someone always falls for this scam. Someone must, or it would have stopped a very long time ago.

Wrote about it last week, here. This week's is almost the same exact letter (hyperlinks removed for security):

Hello Dearest,
I am writing this mail to you with tears and sorrow from my heart. With due respect trust and humanity, I appeal to you to exercise a little patience and read through my letter I feel quite safe dealing with you in this important business having gone through your remarkable profile, honestly I am writing this email to you with pains, tears and sorrow from my heart, I will really like to have a good relationship with you and I have a special reason why I decided to contact you, I decided to contact you due to the urgency of my situation, My name is Miss. Nathaniel Kipkalya Kones, 24yrs old female and I held from Kenya in West Africa.

My father was the former Kenyan road Minister. He and Assistant Minister of Home Affairs Lorna Laboso had been on board the Cessna 210, which was headed to Kericho and crashed in a remote area called Kajong'a, in western Kenya . The plane crashed on the Tuesday 10th, June, 2008. You can read more about the crash through the below (hyperlink removed for safety).

After the burial of my father, my stepmother and uncle conspired and sold my father's property to an Italian Expert rate which the shared the money among themselves and live nothing for me. One faithful morning, I opened my father's briefcase and found out the documents which he have deposited huge amount of money in one of the banks in Burkina Faso with my name as the next of kin. I travelled to Burkina Faso to withdraw the money for a better life so that I can take care of myself and start a new life, on my arrival, the Bank Director whom I met in person told me that my father's instructions to the bank is that the money would only be release to me when I am married or present a trustee who will help me and invest the money overseas. I am in search of an honest and reliable person who will help me and stand as my trustee so that I will present him to the Bank for transfer of the money to his bank account overseas. I have chosen to contact you after my prayers and I believe that you will not betray my trust.

But rather take me as your own sister or daughter. Though you may wonder why I am so soon revealing myself to you without knowing you, well I will say that my mind convinced ed me that you may be the true person to help me. More so, I will like to disclose much to you if you can help me to relocate to your country because my stepmother has threatened to assonate me. The amount is ($12.8 USD) Million United State Dollars and I have confirmed from the bank in Burkina Faso on my arrival.

You will also help me to place the money in a more profitable business venture in your Country. However, you will help by recommending a nice University in your country so that I can complete my studies. It is my intention to compensate you with 30% of the total money for your services and the balance shall be my capital in your establishment. As soon as I receive your positive response showing your interest I will put things into action immediately. In the light of the above, I shall appreciate an urgent message indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely.

Awaiting your urgent and positive response. Please do keep this only to your self for now until the bank has transferred the fund. I beg you not to disclose it till I come over because I am afraid of my wicked stepmother who has threatened to kill me and have the money alone, I thank God Today that am out from my country (KENYA) but now In (Burkina Faso) where my father deposited these money with my name as the next of Kin. I have the documents for the claims.

Yours Sincerely,

Miss Nathaniel Kipkalya Kones

Electronic Heroin...

I railed the other day against the evils of Facebook and Twitter. Personally, I find those stupid little beeping things to be just about the deadliest tools mankind has ever invented. Worse than the Atomic Bomb, the AK-47, and American Idol put together. Andrea Peyser in today's NYPost agrees, and tells of one particular horror story of the Social Networking Age.

It's bad enough that, for example, here in New York we have had to pass laws against people using a cell phone in a moving vehicle, but we've had to take it step further and pass laws against texting while driving. You can hardly walk fifty feet in this city without running into some self-important douche with a Bluetooth stuck to his ear. You can't sit quietly on the subway or the bus without your ears being assaulted by a variety of ringtones, buzzes and beeps, and the absolute worst, being privy -- against your will -- to half of someone else's conversation, because Heaven Forbid they should have to call someone back because they can't hear them. No, it's best just to scream over the noise of the ferryboat into your little box, because the complete stranger sitting 11 rows behind you still doesn't know every detail of your boring little life.

You can't buy anything without a cashier asking for your cell number or e-mail address. You can't ask people for directions, because thanks to personal GPS systems or apps, they don't know the streets of their hometown anymore...even in neighborhoods they've lived in for a million years. Nowadays, we just follow the flashing lights on the cell. People don't even exchange phone numbers anymore: my nephew has a girlfriend that he never calls, but I'll bet he has the strongest thumbs I've ever seen...from all that texting they do together.

I got a note from a neighbor a few days ago regarding my wayward trash cans (the Sanitation men were rather careless with them...again...I gather). Right there on that little piece of paper, my neighbor (I guess she's about 40, and a mother) had written "LOL" and put an emoticon (those little internet smiley faces) next to her signature. Moron.

My sister has somehow managed to do the impossible. Yesterday, I saw her carry on five conversations...at once. She had her husband on the house phone, one of her Little League moms on the cell. She answered a text message on the BlackBerry, an IM in her AOL session, all while sending a fax.

What was she faxing?

A letter of complaint to her cell company. It seems they charged her too much for text messaging,and she was sending THEM a copy of their own contract to prove it.

It's gotten so bad, that people don't even speak to each other anymore unless there's an electronic contrivance involved. Personally, this PC is the only compromise I've made. I don't own a cell (refuse to carry one), I don't use an online "social" service anymore. I don't Facebook or MySpace, and I haven't touched my LinkedIn page in a year. Won't pick up a BlackBerry. I don't feel the need to be"connected"to anything...ever. I never feel as if I'm missing anything; you can still leave a message at the sound of the tone -- I'll get it...eventually -- and I've had the same (singular) e-mail address for a decade now.

I don't beep. I don't buzz. I don't vibrate. I'm not Social Networked, and not only do I NOT feel like an outcast, I'm fucking ecstatic about the fact. It's a badge of honor, to me.

But, I can speak. In fact, I actually LIKE to talk to people. I can carry on the most extraordinary conversations. I can talk your ear off, if you let me. And guess what else I can do with this wonderful command of the Art of Conversation?

Meet Women.

Lots of them, in fact. Without having to see them online, or browse a rogues gallery of mugshots in the Social Network thingamajig. I can actually ask them out without feeling odd because there hasn't been several months of text messages between us and we haven't "friended" each other. I get to evaluate them all by myself, instead of relying upon the often-confused opinion of my online homies responding to my internet poll. They love to talk, you know, and they enjoy the give-and-take of real conversation.

Try that with a phone stuck in your ear.

This fabulous power of conversation makes it easier to exchange bodily fluids...instead of emoticons. This amazing power of speech, the ability to relate to another on a human level, simply amazes others who see it in action. It's a wonder: it reminds me that I'm human. It's not antiseptic. I actually enjoy it; there is no distance involved. Conversation is a lost art, and all that electronic whizzbangery does nothing except to ensure it will remain lost -- and make the rest of you progressively dumber, and emotionally sterile.

Facebook is the End of Civlization...

If you want to see the biggest fucking losers on the planet, try looking for them on Facebook. Perhaps the only people worse than Facebookers (Facebookees? Facefuckers?) are the Twitter assholes.The really insane thing about both is that these walking anuses are not only laboring under the gross misapprehension that I have a burning desire to know the intimate details of their uninteresting lives, but that I need pictures of it all, too, and require an update every minute of every goddamned day.

I've always been proud of my ability to basically ignore that which is wildly popular with the general public. After all, the general public is a bunch of self-interested little prats,possessed of slug-like intelligence, and very little in the way of good taste. It is the General Public, after all, which has made Jersey Shore the phenomenon that it is. It is the General Public which continuously clamors for ever-lower-common-denominator forms of entertainment: Fear Factor, Sixteen and Pregnant, Jerry Springer, Facebook...and gets it!

Too many people, with too large an opinion of themselves, with too much free time, and too many options to transmit their mental slag to a drooling public which is often just as stupid. The Internet and modern communications, for all the great things they allow us to do, are too easily abused by mouth-breathing nosepickers.

(Excluding Lunatic bloggers,of course. We provide a valuable public service.)

It is the Facebok aficionados who brought us Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, and patted itself on it's collective back for being so....cool? Progressive? Unbiased? Patriotic?

Puerile simpletons, the lot.

One of the most depressing aspects of 21st Century America is that this is, increasingly, a society run by twits, for the benefit of twits, and never once does anyone ever seem to realize just what fucking twits they themselves truly are. The major drawback to our modern culture and society is that it has now become possible for complete idiots to not only survive, but to flourish, very often with little-to-no conscious effort on their own behalf. We have created a society where one can live quite well -- if completely oblivious -- by just existing. These are the people who somehow think everyone else simply needs to know all about them in he same way a diabetic needs insulin...and even cares to.

These are the people drawn to Facebook...like moths to the flame.

I mean, you DO know what people do on Facebook, right? It's where college co-eds (people who are supposed to be reasonably intelligent) secretly take pictures of their sorority sisters sitting on the toilet and post them for the entire planet (and every potential rapist and pervert) to see. It's where those insane people who insist on dressing up their pets in gay costumes share their special brand of stupidity. It's where people will share the most intimate details of their lives with millions of complete strangers, with no regard for their own privacy and security, and very often, with absolutely no sense of modesty. Facebook is where the desperate near-suicides congregate for one last go-round of the entire "NOTICE ME!!!!" drama-insanity before they finally figure out that no one really gives a shit, and then they go off meekly to eat that shotgun barrel.

It's where that ubiquitous Lone Gunman posts his final manifesto before he goes out and commits Suicide-by-Cop, taking out a few dozen innocents in the process.

You never see greasy-looking men shuffling along the streets in over-sized overcoats, waiting for little children to come by so that they may expose themselves to the unsuspecting tykes; they have Facebook for that now. A very valuable accoutrement in the child molester's toolbox, indeed.

Facebook is gold-plated proof of the old saw (I think it was H.L. Mencken, the Grandmaster Douchebag of his generation, who said it) that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". If you Facebook, in my estimation, you're a big, stupid douche with too much free time, and no self-esteem, screaming for attention in Cyberspace because screaming for attention in Reality doesn't seem to get you any. Get a fucking clue. Get a fucking life.

Nothing, however, can truly describe the special kind of bedwetting doofus one finds on Facebook better than the bedwetting doofuses themselves. We all know of the gay Rutgers University student driven to jump from the George Washington Bridge when his"friends" outed him on Facebook...as a joke. If that didn't get you to start wondering whether Facebook was really a good thing, a complete waste of time, or a ticking time bomb in the hands of the dumbest people on Earth, there's this story:

Italian Police Investigate Burglary of Virtual Home.

Yeah,not like there's a whole lot of Mafiosi or illegal-alien-Muslim-terrorists-in-training roaming the streets of Sicily, right? I'm glad the Italian police have time for this sort of thing; taking an obviously stupid person seriously.

If that doesn't have you shaking your head, try this one:

Mom Kills Baby for Interrupting Farmville.

Check out the picture (probably taken from her own Facebook page, no doubt!) of the Killer Mom: does that look like a sane individual to you? Hell, does that even look like an attractive individual? I'm almost shocked that someone was actually capable of keeping his eyes shut long enough (and keep his lunch long enough) to make that absolute beauty queen a mother (proving once again that some men are absolute goats, and would fuck a catcher's mitt, if it held still long enough). What makes me...shake...my head even more than this story, are the absolute numbskulls who voted that story "Hilarious" on Newser.com. Those sick and twisted bastards are probably on Facebook, too.

That's what's waiting for you on Facebook: people who cannot separate fantasy from reality, and someone who would violently shake an infant, smoke a cigarette, and then shake the kid to death for interrupting her online agricultural experience -- and a bunch of douchebags who find that sort of thing side-splitting, pee-your-pants funny.

Facebook, like Islam, is a threat to civilization. And instead of stringing up the idiots who invented this new form of Electronic Heroin, we made them rich -- and celebrate them in feature films.

I shudder to think of a future run by absolute dickheads who can't stop Tweeting, or who kill their children for interrupting their game of Farmville. That's what we've raised.

You People Are Sick (10/03/10)...

Once again, I've scanned my Blogger stats for this past week, and not surprisingly, I've found yet more evidence that mankind is, indeed, doomed. If we're lucky, we'll all die in a nuclear winter, or by some super influenza, or perhaps be hit by a comet trapped in the Earth's gravitational pull, but the alternative -- based on some of the incredibly sick shit I see in these stats -- is too painful to contemplate; a inexorably slow decline by genetic degeneration.

Of course, it's not all doom-and-gloom. If one has a sense of humor, you might find something to laugh at in all this human frailty and insanity. I often do, and I always like to share it with you!

You can see the results of last week's stat search here.

The top search terms that brought you to this site this past week were:

1. "Donkeysexe", or variations thereof - still Numero Uno, and all set to maintain a strong showing for years to come! Those of you looking for such things are, indeed, unfit to continue breeding, or you might need to be locked up to protect society, in general.

An interesting twist on this week's donkeysexe stats is that not a single hit on this term came from the Middle East (the statistically-dominant segment of donkey-lust aficionados). I wonder if this is because I posted my discovery that this term was being used predominately by "good" Muslims, or because I alerted the Islamic censors to the little trick of spelling "sex" with an extra "e" to spoof the filters, who then cracked down on the practice. If so, some poor dickhead in Saudi is probably having his pecker lopped off in the public square, right now. I'd apologize, but screw you: you're a sick bastard.

Or perhaps there was a really good "Death to America" rally somewhere in Pakistan and folks just didn't have enough time to diddle themselves to images of donkeys in various sexual motifs, what with all the flag burning and Jew-bashing to be done.

However, there is a strong indication that this is still popular in some precincts of Canada and Luxembourg. What's wrong with you people?

2. "Firemen Jerking Off, or Firemen Caught Jerking Off" - apparently, there are firemen out there playing with an altogether different variety of hose, and the word "pumper" must now take on an entirely new meaning. Yet another sick sexual fetish that makes one despair for the future of the human race.

I shudder to think of what might be going on in fire houses all over the planet! Why, if it wasn't for arson, these guys would probably be splooging each other within an inch of their lives every day.

3. A Surprise Entry this week was the search term "Danny Glover Racist" which surprised me for two reasons; first, I don't remember blogging anything about Danny Glover at all -- but I must have at one time or another -- and secondly, someone still remembers who Danny Glover is.

4. Making a respectable showing this week was the new search term "Obama(s) Asshole". Now, I do admit to having called President Odouchebag an asshole once or twice, but I most certainly do not recall ever having blogged about his asshole, specifically. Could it just be that some people are incapable of spelling "Michelle Obama" or "Rahm Emmanuel", or perhaps just too lazy to do so?

5. Another surprise entry in the "You people are fucking disgusting" category was the term "Dingleberry". I very rarely use this word, except as a synonym for "John Kerry". I would hate to think that someone typed this word into their Google search under the mistaken impression that it's a breakfast cereal, or the latest weight-loss fad, and therefore, I have to assume that people who used it are actually interested in the Dingleberry itself.

Apparently, it's very popular in Brazil. As to why, I have no clue, and am almost fearful about making a guess.

You People Are Sick...

I really must thank Blogger. For while getting money that you've earned for posting Blogads may be a task on par with the Labors of Hercules, they at least have provided me with a nifty set of webtools that have provided several hours of unbridled entertainment.

I think I've mentioned this before: Blogger now provides some web analysis tools for it's bloggers that allows them access to certain kinds of information about their readers/visitors. So, I can tell where a visitor to this website comes from (country of origin), how they got here (search engine, crosslink from another website), and what search terms they used to eventually get here.

This information more than makes up in entertainment value whatever cash Blogger still owes me, but makes impossible to collect; keep it! I haven't laughed this hard or this much in years, and the laughter probably has a better therapeutic value than all the cash in the world! I've also puked more than any anorexic ever could, and have shed a pound or two.

Screw Jenny Craig; if you want to shed some pounds, checkout what some excuses for human beings are doing on the internet!

Some of this is just plain disturbing. Having access to some of this information makes me wonder about the future of the human race, and quite frankly, about whether or not this planet would be better off without us, or at least a few selected segments of the population.

The militant tree huggers just might be on to something...

To illustrate: the top search term (what you type into Google or Bing that might point you to this page) seems to be "donkeysexe". Let me assure you; this is not a typo. At first, I thought it might have been, but it isn't because it occurs far too often for it be an accident. Then I dug a little deeper (yeah, the thought of digging deeper into the realm of "donkeysexe" scared me, too), and what do you think I found?

The majority of the people who search the web for "donkeysexe" and arrive at this page come from...wait for it...the Middle East. Except for that truly disturbed person in Lichtenstein, and the obviously-undersexed asshole in Medicine Hat, the majority of the donkeysexe requests came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Dubai, and Turkey. The reason it's spelled the way it is, is probably because the Islamic censors in those countries have filtered the probably-more-accurate term "donkeysex", and the addition of the extra "e" spoofs the filters.

Now, having used the term at least 10 times in this screed, I can most likely expect far more visits from members of the "Pro-Human/Burro Relationships Community".

I wasn't even going to type the term in myself, just to see what this was all about, because, quite frankly, Ive heard the tales of drunken Spring Break vacations in Tijuana, and I don't want to know anything more.

I found this phenomenon both fascinating and disgusting. Fascinating because I have long believed that part of the problem of Islamic terrorism was to be found in sexual problems and dysfunction, and this pretty much proves it,to me at least. It's disgusting in the sense that we have perhaps millions of Islamic douchebags running around with a penchant for bestiality.

The next item on the agenda of "You people are sick" is the search terms "epiduo and low sex drive/low testosterone".

I have written about Epiduo in my Bad Medicine series. It is a skin cream used to treat severe acne. Apparently, it also takes the lead out of your pencil, steals the wind from your sails, and knocks the starch out of your collar. Actually, I don't know if it really does, I just wanted to string together a few metaphors that described impotence.

Anyways, this whole association brought a thought into my head (where it quickly died of loneliness); I cannot, for the life of me, remember seeing anyone walking about lately with the sort of severe acne that was pretty common when I was a kid. I mean, I don't see anyone with that horrific red-purple moon cratering that one of my generation associates with acne. Not a single "Pizza Face". Haven't seen one in years, that I can remember.

One reason may be that because of medications like Epiduo millions have been spared that kind of scarring. But now, come to think of it, the association of acne medication and low sex drive probably contains a far better explanation: there might still be millions of people with acne, but they can't procreate as easily as they used to. Bad Acne is being slowly bred out of the population! Talk about good news/bad news: you're face is now fit to be seen in public, but your pelvis bazooka is on the fritz! Personally, I'd keep the acne, if only to make sure my Wedding Tackle was in proper working order, and besides, women today practically throw pussy at anything with a heartbeat 24 hours a day.

Another disturbing trend: the number of people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to type "douchebag" into a search engine. Several score of you each week, by the look of things. Unfortunately, I'm going to attract this type of person to this site if only because that happens to be one of my favorite derogatory terms, but I would suggest that those of you who find this wildly entertaining perhaps should seek professional help.

You certainly are not going to get any tips about how to recover that feminine sense of "freshness" (wtf, are we talking about a salad or your crotch?) here.

Which brings us to our last "most unusual" search term. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this applies to this website, because I don't think I've ever covered the subject in nearly seven years of blogging. That term is: caught jerking off. Someone is typing that into Google or Ask.com, and arriving here. Several times a day. I think they're leaving sadly disappointed.

I didn't want to, but the opportunity to gain yet another insight into how fucked up people are led me to do a cursory investigation of this topic, and the revelation was disgusting enough to cause my testicles to retract into my chest cavity (waiting for that one to show up in the report next week), as if they were desperately seeking emergency shelter from some great, impending doom.

Apparently, this is a Gay Thing. Gay Men all over the planet are seeking videos in which someone is caught Greasing the Pelican in a public setting, and deriving sexual pleasure from both the act, and the disgust/shame created when they're caught by their unsuspecting witnesses/victims. Personally, I don't see the appeal of Choking the Chicken in your cubicle, Working The Wang on public transport, or standing behind some Dude on line in a McDonald's somewhere with your John Thomas in hand, just praying that these activities will be caught on closed-circuit video, to be dispatched for the deviant entertainment of others across the World-Wide-Web.

If I caught you doing anything like that near me, I'd fucking kill you on the spot. And there isn't a court in the land, I think, that would convict me. Except maybe in San Francisco.

It is difficult to form a positive opinion of one's fellow beings when confronted by documentary evidence of just how truly sick some of you are.

But I have to admit, it's funny as hell.

Thank You,My Loyal Minions!

For the first time, ever, this word vomit has managed to snag 1,000 readers in a month, and we're not even done with September yet! This is about 25% more than usual, and I'd like to think it's more than just an anomaly or dumb luck, that I'm actually saying something here that resonates with a whole lot of folks.

I've given up on making this blog a going financial concern, for the following reasons:

1. To make scads of cash on the intertoobies, you have to be offering folks something they cannot get elsewhere. Insanity and stupidity abound, and so my special brands of those two commodities are probably not particularly unique enough to generate revenue. I've gotten some, but...

2. ...trying to get money out of Google AdSense requires navigating more obstacles and complying with more bureaucratic bullshit than what's called for in the Catholic Church's requirements for canonizing a saint. At least in the case of the Church you only have to have had performed a miracle or two, or maybe died a horrible death at the hands of the heathens before you receive your reward, while AdSense buries you in electronic, third-party triplicate, only to bury you in a slew of new-and-improved requirements in fourth-fifth-and-sixth party quadruplicate...if that's even a word. And even at that, the rewards are hardly worth making even a part-time job out of blogging, so I might as well do it just for shits and giggles, right?

You'll note that all the advertising that used to be on this site is now gone, for just that reason. I'm not in it for the money (not that I ever really was. Mind you, this whole thing started as therapy), but I do think it's pretty cool to see that something I wrote was striking a chord with so many people.

I'm reaching more folks, and it seems the biggest gateway is Twitter. Which I refuse to use (I'm opposed to most forms of Electronic Heroin, past a reasonable point, thank you), and your standard search engines. This means the majority of people are finding me accidentally, still. Which brings me to my next, admittedly self-serving points:

1. If you're a regular visitor, and like what you read here, then please follow this blog. It's easy to do, and free, for the love of Pete!. All you have to do is click the "Follow This Blog" link at the top of the page. It would be nice to see all the people who come here regularly, and I'll admit, I want to see this mostly for vanity's sake.

2. I would like to see if there are even more brain dead zombies who would like to see what's up here, and so I ask that if you have a blog that you consider a cross-linking arrangement. That's good for the both of us. Drop me an e-mail, and let's see if we can't get you posted on the blogroll!

If you don't have a blog, then I would hope that you would consider sharing my posts with your friends and relatives, even -- or most likely, especially -- the ones you hate.

Thanks once again to all of you for making this a bigger deal for me than it is probably for most of you. It makes my day!

Blogger is Eating Replies, and Other Issues...

If you've been trying to reply to blog posts in recent weeks, and haven't seen your reply posted, there's a good reason for it.

Well, there's a reason for it;it just doesn't follow that it's necessarily a good one.

You see, I use Google AdSense on this site. Those are all the fancy little advertisements you see along the edge of the page when you navigate here. The idea is that there might -- just might -- be an ad that appeals to people on whatever subject I manage to spout about, and that interest might cause someone to click on those ads, whereupon, I get paid.

A little while back, I was updating my AdSense account info when I had realized that I had lost my PIN number. Naturally, I sent Google a notice that I was requesting a new PIN (you can click for one on the account screen!). The new PIN Was supposed to be mailed to me within 2-6 weeks. We're now on Week 9, and no new PIN yet.

In the meantime, all you're seeing on this page are Public Service ads. Google apparently does this when you haven't completed updating your account information (information you can't update because you haven't gotten your PIN yet), and it also does some really funky things: the site counter which counts the number of visitors to this site has mysteriously stopped counting anyone. Naturally, since the site counter is no longer counting anyone, I can't tell a) how many people are coming here, and b) calculate how much ad revenue, if any, I might be earning...or more likely, LOSING.

And of course, replies to posts are appearing in my e-mail box, but not on the site. Probably all of these things are related.

If you've sent something and wanted it posted, I'm sorry. It's not my fault, and I'm doing the best I can to deal with Blogger/Google, which is sort of like getting a root canal without anesthetic...and the dentist deciding that the easiest access to your mouth is through your rectum.

This Just In: Pakistan is The Donkey Sex Capital of the World...

Via JammieWearingFool, we find out that Pakistanis surf more internet porn, and more of the most disturbing internet porn, than just about any other people on Planet Earth. When they're not waxing the totem to images of kiddie porn and goats in sultry poses, most Pakistani males can be found yelling "Death to America!" in the streets, or lining up at the local Al'Qaeda recruitment station because they're somehow laboring under the misapprehension that they're morally superior to us decadent Americans.

This is funny for a variety of reasons:

a. You'll never find a Pakistani man in a (human) porn video, ever, because they've all been short-dicked. That's why they fantasize about 72 virgins; the virgins will never know what they're missing. In fact, I'll bet most Pakistani men have such small tallywhackers that they have to pass water from a sitting position, like women. That's why the only porn you'll ever see Paki men in will probably involve livestock, and humpbacked quadrupeds, and certainly each other. It seems that "rape video" is also very popular in Pakistan, and that's probably par for the course; considering how bad they smell, Pakistani men probably have to rape their women before they get a chance to run away.

b. These people -- apparently chronic Internet masturbators -- are building mosques to celebrate their victories over us Infidels, and moving into our neighborhoods in great numbers all the time. Do you really want a neighbor who enjoys child rape porn? Do you really want him to tell you all about the finer points of camel sex, or left to walk the streets with his tiny hard-on after he's gotten all excited by his fifteenth sheep-ball-sucking video of the day, and lookin' fer a place to park it? With your daughters playing outside? Hell, even with your DOG playing outside? Here's another reason to keep Muslims out of your neighborhoods (besides the smell, the occasional pipe bomb that explodes during construction, and Just Because They're Muslim); they come from a sexually-repressed society and culture, and have sex -- even animal sex -- on the brain all the time. All that "Death to America!" shit and ramming airliners into office buildings really is Sex Gone Sour, and they can't get the blond-haired, blue-eyed chicks to toss 'em one (the REALLY slutty ones, you know. All the biggest whores are blond; you see them on American TV). Look into every terrorist's background, especially the one's raised in the West, and you'll find the Blond slut sexual fantasy went seriously unfulfilled, and at least one blond chick "humiliated" the fucker at some point, and that's what sent the little bastard back to the mosque where he gets radicalized.

c. Now you know why the Ayahtollah Khomenei had to devote the last years of his life to issuing instructions on what to do with your quadrupedal sexual partners after you're done with them. There was an entire etiquette involved in fucking, killing, eating and/or passing them around. Apparently, this was a huge problem in the Muslim world way back then, and the advent of the Internet has made it infinitely worse. Now instead of "enjoying" German Shepherd porn as an occasional guilty pleasure, a retreat from the work-a-day world of beating your wives, honor-killing your daughters, spray-painting anti-Semitic slogans on every wall, and praying 11 times day, now thanks to the Internet, you can watch Moroccan Camel Scheisser videos all day long, at your convenience. Why, it's practically hot-and-cold running donkey sex over there. Hey,did you ever notice that the two countries with the most donkey sex (Pakistan, Mexico) also happen to be the biggest shitholes on Planet Earth? Someone should study this phenomenon....

Really, these are the people President Obama is apologizing to? Trying to appease and "engage" these sorts of people? Quite frankly, I'm wondering why we aren't shipping MORE animal porn over there, and keeping the little fuckers so busy jerking off that they don't have the time or energy to trade shots with the Marines. That would be a surge of a totally different kind.

These people are too fucking sick to be left alive.

Update: Turns out that I was right about Pakistani men having to piss like women. In fact it appears as if the entire Middle East does.

Why Do We Even Have a Post Office?

The Postal Service wants more money because it's going broke. I don't mind forking over another 2 cents to mail something (because I'm a 21st Century guy, and I actually mail things like...maybe twice a year), but at some point you have to start wondering just why we even have a Post Office at all.

After all, this is an Electronic Age, where e-mail is pretty much free, cell phones, computers and Blackberries a are ubiquitous, and if you're a real geek, you can get a bunch of iPhone Apps that will turn your handy little piece of Electronic Heroin into a lean, mean machine that can do calculus, allow you to watch television, read a book, and maybe even fillet a panda, if you need to. Who needs the anachronistic process of writing an address on an envelope, licking something that tastes like a mixture of those black jelly beans that no one eats and ass, and walking to the mailbox anymore?

Why, it's not as if my mail carrier actually delivers much of anything to my home anymore. I get three bills (gas, electric and cable), and the rest of it is stuff I can most certainly do without; catalogs I never asked for, direct mailings from the local politicians, those Val-U-Pacs full of mostly-useless coupons from local businesses that apparently can't get customers without a coupon for 10% off carpet cleaning on odd-numbered Thursdays only, or without offering a free set of steak knives that always break the first time you use them for every 50 pound bag of World War II-surplus no-name brand dog food you buy (I guess because once the food kills the dog, those knives might come in handy?). Same for my gas and cable bills...mostly ads.

I would guesstimate that for those three actually useful pieces of mail I get every month, I probably get somewhere between four and six pounds of useless paper and cardboard that I never wanted, never asked for, and simply toss away. And even those three useful presents I get are stuffed with all sorts of advertising and completely inane shit, which means the guy who lugs the mail around all day probably has 90% of all that wear and tear on his back thrown away.

Take my electric bill, for example; Con Edison is very thoughtful and sends me a three-page bill every month (it needs to be three pages because two of them are simply a rundown of the ass-rape taxes that the Fed'ral Gubmint and NY State have so thoughtfully put upon my energy use), and the third is taken up by those lovely bar-and-pie graphs giving me -- a complete doofus apparently -- a handy visual aid to show me just exactly how I'm getting the Big Purple Electric Shaft every month.

The other six pages of nonsense, printed in color no less, are devoted to advertisements and public pronouncements...usually about how Con Edison is dedicated to saving the environment, although not by saving trees, it seems, and those "Helpful Hints" like "Turn Out the Lights When you Leave the Room..it saves Energy!". My mother only shouted that at me all my life, Assholes, so lay off. Maybe there are Con Ed customers somewhere who weren't hen-pecked or developing common sense when they were children, and somehow it fell to the Electric Company to fill this void? That's when they aren't hectoring me to donate to some charity, letting me know that I can reach a Customer Service Representative (three lies for the price of one, complete with photo of a model who is just to awesomely gorgeous to work for Con Ed. Sure, entice the lonely, chronic-masturbator-losers out there to call by putting a pretty face on the bill. I wonder how many a day call wanting to talk to The Chick in My Electric Bill?) 24-hours a day, and reminders that you should Run Like Hell if You Smell Gas and Call a Professional, and a friendly reminder that you just might want to stop looking for the source of the mysterious gas odor in your darkened basement with your Zippo lighter aflame.

I can't, for the life of me, figure out where all the catalogs come from. I figured it was from the online services or utility companies that I use selling my address as part of a mailing list. Now, for some reason I can't discern, I get an actual J.C.Penny catalog just about every other week, and it's not the small one, either. I never shop at J.C. Penny. Radio Shack has my address, yessirrreee, and, no--- I didn't give it them. Lilian Vernon? What the fuck am I going to do with a Lilian Vernon catalog? I hate fucking cats, and I don't need a tea cozy, a hand-knitted dick warmer, or a genuine Lebanese Straw doormat with my dog's photograph silk-screened upon it under the caption "Grrrrrreeetings!". I don't have a dog, for one thing, and the only Lebanese anything that will ever enter my house will probably have D-cups, been converted to Christianity, and possessed of absolutely no gag reflex, whatsoever. Donald Trump, would you please stop asking me to feed your slot machines? No, I don't care if you have Rich Little and Dion and the Belmonts playing the Taj this weekend -- I'm not making the trip! And a man with your cash can get a decent wig, already!

I mean, do we really need all this stuff? It seems to me that a Postal Worker is really expending a lot of effort to hand-deliver information that is already on a website somewhere, and he's actually only expensively delivering absolute shyte. Wouldn't it just be cheaper to encourage those still getting a paper bill to use the website (something I'm about to start doing more often), where they can get that info and conduct their business, too? No envelope, no printing costs, no energy wasted shipping bills back and forth, no Lilian Vernon, no Lebanese, no Pizza Hut or Domino's special offers -- Pizza Hut? Dominos? This is New York. Anyone who eats at Pizza Hut when we have the best pizza on the fucking planet should be made into a Lilian Vernon Doormat -- just a Happy Postman who doesn't have to lug all that crap around; forests spared, gasoline saved, fewer trucks on the roads, fewer delays at the airports.

I mean, it's not as if the Post Office actually makes money, anyway. It's a freakin' Federally-protected MONOPOLY ... and it's still broke.

So why does it persist? Why hasn't the Electronic Age eliminated such an organization?

Primarily, because there's still a significant percentage of people in this country who aren't computer literate. These are mostly Old Folks -- who won't oblige us and die already and spare us the expense of supporting them well after their productive value to society is long past. Mostly, they remember FDR fondly (suckers!), and will tell you the tale, ad nauseum, about how they walked to school through five miles of foot-high snow, uphill both ways, without shoes (because it was the Depression, you know), everything cost a nickle (you could get a lung transplant for a nickle back then, it seems), and they never mastered anything more complicated than a rotary telephone. Which they still have. That's when they aren't ruminating upon the virtues of Epsom Salts and Jimmy Stewart, or drifting into Alzheimer's.

These people will need to be accommodated, and worse, they'll need to be accommodated in the manner to which they have been accustomed, which means a pile of dead trees delivered by an overpaid federal employee who collects, sorts and hauls absolute crap all day for a living. Asking these people to adapt automatically encompasses huge problems (not least of which, is their predictable, full-throated menstrual fury about why is it things need to change?), primarily one of expense and convenience; these people might not own a computer or cell phone, wouldn't know how to work one, can't be bothered to learn how, and would probably scream to a Congresscritter who will sponsor a Free-PC-For-Your-About-to-Drop-Dead-Anyday-Great-Gram bill.

Of course, blind people will need paper bills printed in Braille. Accountants will scream for paper hardcopies, and let's not forget the one, true advantage that paper has over a computer -- it never breaks.

The second problem is one of security. I would probably do everything online if it wasn't so ridiculously-easy to hack a computer or cellphone. The average user is dumb as a fucking stump about internet security, and even the security companies themselves routinely have their security breached (mostly by ex-Employees that they've screwed over. They never learn!). Until encryption software becomes user-friendly, hacker-resistant, and cheap for the majority of knuckleheads out there, most will still receive a bill. Even large corporations who can presumably get the best-and-brightest to hack-proof their systems will suffer security breaches (most of them already do, because you can't hire the best-and-brightest through a second-rate service that you've never laid eyes on in Mumbai, even if it is cheaper than hiring Americans).

Of course, we could stimulate the development of such software and systems, if we just made an effort to do so. I don't know why environMENTALists aren't pushing for online bill payment every goddamned day, even above Windmills, Global Warming/Freezing and The Virtues of Hemp , just to save trees and prevent air pollution. They'd be a damned sight more useful in this endeavor, and they'd actually have some things they've never had before --- a point, and an achievable goal.

Naturally, the reason why we still have a Post Office is (everyone together, now!)....Political!

The Post Office is a super-duper federal jobs program for nose-picking dolts who just couldn't qualify for that top-flight janitorial or fry cook job. Post offices employ thousands of unionized people-who-know-how-to-look-busy-when-they're-just-jerking-off, and those jobs are located in Congressional Districts that come with politicians attached to them, like ticks. The unions are often generous with the campaign cash and "volunteers". Closing a Post Office anywhere is an activity akin to suggesting that we pass a decree certifying that blind, three-legged kittens are an excellent source of protein and Vitamin C, and an excellent winter fuel. People will suggest that you be strung up for even daring to say something like that. There have probably been more Presidents assassinated than Post Offices closed, I'd reckon. So long as there's overpaid-and-otherwise-unemployable unionized government douchebags doing a completely-superseded-by-technology job, there will be politicians who will protect them.

Which means someone will have to pay more for a monopoly system that's run like a Chinese fire drill, is always broke, and that fewer and fewer people actually use. Twenty years from now, we'll all have microchips in our heads (or something) that will connect us to the internet and e-mail, and all sorts of other shit, and some dumbass in a blue polyester uniform that hasn't changed since the1950's will still be dropping a shitload of useless paper on my doorstep, and delivering Delinquency Notices to People Who No Longer Live Here. I mean, it's already getting to the point that when someone says "Check the mailbox", they automatically go to the Blackberry to start looking for e-mail. Within a very short span of years it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that old-fashioned mailboxes will once again become valuable...as antiques.

So, I say let the Post Office have it's two cents now; but someone should just have the balls to finally suggest that, within a decade, we may not need it anymore, and then begin the process of dismantling a quaint reminder of days gone by. The occupation of "Letter Carrier" should soon be going the way of the Barber-Surgeon, Town Crier and Witch Doctor. If someone in a position of authority actually did this sort of thing-- planned the slow demise of the Post Office over time -- it might even serve as a form of economic stimulus; DHL and FedEx already do it better than the Post Office, and the technical problems of securing personal data and networks, and of protecting financial information, would draw a ton of investment money back into the Technology field. Telecommunications would experience new growth. People could be put back to work in the Private Sector, rather than the Public One. The Unions would be struck a death blow, and it might even serve as a model of how the Private sector might eventually obviate the need for many government services altogether, saving the taxpayer billions!

Which is why no one will do it, naturally. And why five years from now when the Post Office isn't even delivering the Lilian Vernon catalog anymore, the price of a First-Class stamp will be $11.95.

Blogger is Upgefuckt Again...

Blogger seems to be having issues with handling replies to posts. Not sure when this started, seems to be a common issue for many blogs this day. If you've posted a reply to something in the last 24 hours or so, it may not appear, even if I have "okayed" it.

So don't take it as me ignoring you. It's just Blogger (but hey, the damned thing is free, so what do you expect?).

Words I'd Thought I Would Never Type...

"Al Gore" and "Sex Scandal". In the same sentence. Allegedly.

Though I struggle not to form some mental picture of the Goremeister wrapped in a towel, rivulets of white, doughy flesh hanging over the tuck, my inner eye has just such an image burned into it. The very thought is profoundly disturbing, and if I don't keep my guard up, it pops, unbidden, back into my tortured mind and activates the gag reflex. I've thrown up into my own mouth so many times in the past week that no amount of toothpaste or Scope will wash away the lingering taste of involuntary bile. Even Cayenne and Jalapenos have not scoured the residue of nausea away.

The scene my subconscious insists on creating has me on the verge of committing a violent act, as if the release of all that pent up disgust and rage will somehow scrub the grey matter clean of the mental version of ring-around-the-tub. I shan't link to any of the stories floating on the Web because they'll only make you projectile vomit, but all the highlights of this sordid..ahem...affair (allegedly) are included. It's always the same unwanted vision running through the diseased landscape of my inner mind:

"...His swollen, puffy, corpulent body lay stretched out upon the masseuse table, face-down. A towel covers his flabbier parts, but he's still clenching his butt cheeks together in an attempt to leave the impression that there's still a few remnants of sinewy youth there beneath it all. His manly back, covered in a thick, Brillo-like fur, was glistening with scented oils and lotions. Somewhere in the background, Barry Manilow was softly playing; the Muzak of the Rutting Bore. Manilow knew how to make chicks cream. Al had selected it exactly for this purpose. The masseuse, a vision of early-middle-aged American womanhood -- thrice-divorced, a stray hair protruding from the mole on her chin, face frozen in a mask of permanent surprise from the combination of poor eyebrow-pencil skills and Botox, the Low-End-Store-Brand-Danny-Kaye-Auburn dye job -- leaned over the Beached Whale of an ex-Vice President in that starched, institutional-green smock that always turned him on because it reminded him so of the Good Old Days of Soviet Communism. She was rubbing away the knots and strains of the rough-and-tumble universe of The Sanctimonious Bullshit World Tour, and the absolute Roman-Coliseum Fishbowl that was the Modern Indulgence Selling that used to characterize much of pre-Reformation Christianity, but which still smelled slightly enough of capitalism that the rubes hardly even noticed.

Her strong hands, much like her donkey-like Slavic ankles, swollen from so much water-retention that she had been unable to file the Last Wedding Ring from her finger -- even though her last divorce was finalized five years before -- found a tender spot. The Gorebot winced momentarily, and then relaxed as her expert digits rubbed the tension away. He sighed, a sound that was almost half-seal-bark-half-phlegmy-rattle. She paused to pluck an errant, wire-stiff back hair or two from under her fingernail, and in that moment, the former Vice-President-in-Litigation made his move. With a great deal of grunting but less struggle than usual he had turned over on the table, and a hint of his manhood became visible as a bump under the hospital-white towel, like a miniature Washington Monument caught beneath the the thick, cold layers of another Ice Age. But that was an illusion: were it not for the triple-layered rolls of belly fat that slid past his waistline and sloughed off between his spongy, varicose-veined thighs, there just might be a whole whopping four, perhaps four-and-a quarter, inches of pulsing Inconvenient Truth lurking beneath that linen.

She was taken aback. She caught her breath, a staccato-sigh of surprise, nay, perhaps even fear. She tried not to look, but couldn't help herself; for even laying down the Vice-President's boobs were strangely bigger than her own, with great, fleshy, earth-toned nipples and the same thick, stiff hairs pointing out of them. They strangely reminded her of Sputnik for a moment, and she was caught in a web of confusion, embarrassment...and lust? She flushed and appeared faint, the first sign of the coming glow of perspiration began to darken the smock beneath her armpits. Her slightly fried-onion-y underarm scent aroused him further -- but this hunter liked to play with his prey first.

"They all react that way...at first", said Al. His dark eyes looked into hers. They were hypnotic, but she could not decide if it was because he was such a magnificent specimen of Old-Money-Hypocrite-middle-aged pork, or because even when he spoke in short sentences he was still such a dashing figure of bone-crushing boredom and banality. She stepped away from the table, but he grabbed her wrist -- gently-yet-firmly and still somehow clammy-and-slimy. She was strangely aroused and repulsed, all at once.

" You know", Al begins., "I was the Inspiration for Love Story..."

Her Drug-store false eyelashes fluttered, her face reddened, and she nervously licked at her lips. Al knew that he had her now; they all fell for that line. Tipper fell hard for it --- that and the inherited Controlling Interest in Standard Oil. So did that Naomi Wolff, that little vixen. He began to remember fondly the six...no...seven whole minutes he had held Naomi in the sodden grip of flop-sweaty passion. It had been his crowning achievement, and had infused him with a sense of manhood that he had not felt since the days when he was writing for Stars and Stripes and pretending to be fighting the War in Vietnam until Daddy could pull enough strings. He remembered the blazing fire of the assault upon Tipper's head on the campaign trail, when he appeared so passionate and devoted to her that he almost sucked her into his being as if he were sucking the Bavarian Cream from the center of a doughnut.

Yes...panting feminists and women in prisons everywhere around the world mailed him their soiled underwear for months after that. Not even Clinton got that sort of love. But that was all in the past; the future, for at least the next three-to-five minutes -- more if he could manage to contain the raging Beast Totem in the Towel -- was now there before him. She was panting now, her chest ( with one breast hanging four inches below the other, and the thick, reinforced underwire of her brassiere became visible beneath the fabric ("Steel-Belted Radials", All liked to call those. He wondered, "Front-loader or back-loader?) was heaving like the stormy North Atlantic.

The Goremeister had caused a Storm in her Maidenforms. She was dead in his sights now.

"Don't be afraid, Yummymuffins. I may have invented the Internet, but no one will know of our passion. It will be OUR guilty secret...".

She wilted at that, delivered as it was with a slight Southern drawl and that sibilant-yet-slightly-effeminate "s" of his. She was now all his. He pulled her closer and began to negotiate the towel so that his throbbing, massive-relative-to-your-average-cocker-spaniel Pelvis Bazooka -- the Green Hornet, as he liked to call it -- could be unleashed in all of it's glory. Yes...she was well-and-truly his, and She would be yet another notch in his ever-expanding belt. There was a flash, like lightning. A quick stirring in his loins, an explosion of ecstasy that caused white-hot spots to float before his eyes, and which made him slightly dizzy thanks to the Watered-Down-Canadian-Healthcare System Viagra he had been taking, and he had marked her forever with a hot load of Environmentally-friendly Man-Milk...all over that sexy-as-a-Phony-Carbon-Credit-Sold-Under-False-Pretenses (allegedly) starched smock. "Mark your territory well", Bill had always told him. It was a valuable lesson. He held her gaze for another seven, maybe ten seconds, so that she could bask in the afterglow. All women needed to bask. Al knew this, being the quiet, passionate, unselfish type who always saw to a woman's needs.

"I'll bet you keep that smock forever, Snugglelumps. No one does it like ManBearPig". She sighed, and was about to speak. "No...not another word about it", he said as he pressed his thoroughly-gooey finger gently across her lips. "We must part now, and keep our Runaway Passion a secret, for those parts of the planet that manage to avoid being flooded by sea-level rise, de-forested by the Inhumanity of Mankind, the shores piled waist-deep in drowned polar bears, all destroyed in the Name of the Internal Combustion Engine, burned to the ground by Acid Rain, or frosted over by the Next Ice Age could never understand what passes between us...".

With that, Al Gore, The Love-em-and-Leave-'Em Ambassador of Mother Gaia, wiped his sexed-up hand upon her cheek, hitched his towel back into place, and in a motion that was reminiscent of a crippled walrus trying to refloat itself from a shingle beach, swung the massive U.S.D.A. Grade-A hamhocks he called legs off the table, and waddled to the door, leaving a tangled mat of greasy back hairs on the smooth, vinyl surface of the table. An Oil Slick of Romance. He paused to give her one last, piercing come-hither look from his watery-yet-still-somehow-smouldering eyes, that bulged out from beneath his Just-for-Men-treated eyebrows, only to find that she was vomiting copiously upon the floor.

It was always the same. Al always had that effect on women; he made them all sooooo fucking hot -- hotter than a rapidly-heating atmosphere burdened with the excess carbon dioxide of a civilization intent upon it's own doom -- that their bodies just could not withstand the onslaught. Now that his Inner-Beast had been Unleashed, he set about seeking more nubile prey. There must be a sixty-plus-year-old T.V. satirist's wife just dying to be Gored by Gore...."

And now you know why I've been puking for a week...

Me and my goddamned imagination! I won't sleep for a year.

There's Money in That Thar' Shyte!

So, here I am, looking for a new start and wondering just what the hell I'm going to do with whatever time I have left before cancer, or some Islamic Nutjob with an Explosives Fetish, finally finishes me off for good.

Prospects have been, for a very long time, bleak. I mean, I spent my early working years doing "Brain Work" -- I was Computer Operator for a decade, and then a Data Center Manager for five years, and then a System's Automation programmer for five years after that. I'm not exactly the kind of guy who knows one end of a hammer from another, and when someone asks me to pass a screwdriver, I start looking for the Absolut bottle. In fact, asking me to work with my hands (unless you're a Lady, wink-wink) is a dangerous thing; I haven't fixed anything of value since I did that nasty thing to my dog with a fork (just kidding). There's not much Brain Work to be done, nowadays,and when there is it usually requires ridiculous qualifications (this is done purposely to discourage "Cattle Call" interviews of potential candidates....and discrimination lawsuits).

I've tried finding more "White Collar" work since my illness, and the subsequent destruction of my chosen profession in recent years; I have done some "Contract" work (only to find I'm not Asian, or cheap, enough to get steady work, even when I drop my price).There have been a few technology "side jobs" here and there, and once, I even tried to sell Green Energy (door-to-door) to sanctimonious assholes who simply loved the idea of the Green Economy...until they find out what it costs.

I've tried to apply for government jobs, only to find that I'm a) Too White, b) Too Male, and c) Too Smart, which puts me at the bottom of any hiring list for those plum Municipal and Federal jobs that require little thought, no sense of responsibility, and the ability to simply occupy a desk for 20 years until the prospect of "Early Retirement" with a generous pension kicks in. At this point, my only viable career options were beginning to look like "Pimp" or "Mafioso".

Ah, but then came all those internet thingies that say "Qualify for Job Training Funds in Your Area!", that I usually delete as spam before they even get comfortable in the inbox. But then one day, I figured "Why the fuck not?" and clicked away, and was actually surprised when one of them actually turned out to be legitimate. Wouldn't you know it; there really are a few (very few) "programs" that Straight White Guys might (key word) actually qualify for!

Serendipity having called, I responded, and found that there were a wide array of careers open to me, but that they don't fall under the categories that one might consider "careers", as much as they are "trades". Certainly, there must be a trade for me, right? Well, I considered culinary arts at first, specifically, baker or pastry chef. I could get the money for that, and even if the hours suck and the job can be messy, it's at least better than digging trenches or pumping gas, right?

But the pay sucks, and the one thing I'm not willing to do is take low pay -- I once had a six-figure income, and dammit, I'm going to have one again. So, I did some thinking (a dangerous thing), and my train of thought led me here:

We live in a world of shit. It's full of people who are full of shit, obsessed with their own shit, and enamoured of the smell of their own shit. I'm surrounded by assholes who pour forth the most inane an uninteresting --and often, frightening -- shit you can imagine, and just when you thought things couldn't get worse, scatalogically-speaking, the whole thing is run by politicians and businessmen who are experts at flinging bullshit with both hands. And when they're not trying to sell you a load of crap, they're all in the commode grunting and pinching some off. There's money to be made in Shit, if you're willing to be an unabashed opportunist (just ask lawyers, psychotherapists, political consultants, and Used Car Salesmen).

So, I've decided that I'm gonna take that grant money -- and go to plumbing school -- where, hopefully, they finally teach me that a wrench is not something you monkey with, or throw into the works, and that when you screw or nail something, it had better not have breasts and a heartbeat, or an irate boyfriend.

When Life hands you Shit...Learn to become a Horsefly. The Path to Being Waist-Deep in Cash is to be Knee-Deep in Shit, First.

In addition to the plumbing training I'll be receiving, this school will also teach me the finer points of tile work, a bonus when you stop to consider that there's more to the Plumber's Life than clogged toilets and leaky faucets -- there's also kitchen and bathroom renovations to be had (as well as heating systems, septic, pool and solar-heating systems). I expect to be "apprenticing" after training for a couple of years, but at least I'll have a license that says "This Guy Knows His Shit". I expect that the average workday will leave me...ahem...pooped (groan!)... but let's face it -- if there's any sort of work that people will pay top dollar for, in any economy, it'll be of the "Keep that Shit Away from Me!" sort.

Wish me Luck with this Shit.

P.S. - Imagine my surprise when I went to the "Retraining Center" and ran into not one, but THREE guys that I used to work with back "In the Day" -- a "real" programmer (master's degree, and former teacher!), an Electronics Engineer (former IBM Field Engineer), and another man with both a CNE and MCSE -- a veritable Networking Guru of Newtonian ability -- all with more than 20 years of experience "in the field".

The sad truth is that unless you're willing to relocate to some godawful place like North Dakota, or worse, Punjab, Magnitogorsk or Jakarta, and work for less money than the typical Dental Hygienist makes, you ain't finding high-tech work. Even the sort they advertise for in North Carolina and Texas are less "Tech" and more "after-sale-support". Unless you want to work 93 hours a week on contract for a major software developer who can break the contract just because it's partly-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-showers, you're not going to work in the sharp-end of the technology field at all... especially if you're 40+ and don't have a degree.

The scuttlebutt amongst my three former colleagues is that many people they've known "in the business" , have either picked up a trade (carpentry, painting, electrical work, roofing), or taken jobs driving buses, joining Law Enforcement, or had become the subject of a "Deadliest Catch" or "Dirty Jobs" episode or two. A few were lucky -- relatively speaking -- and died young (all seem to have died from problems usually associated with overwork and stress, like sudden heart attacks and strokes), with not a few suicides. The time was when the field was an "interior" one, restricted to those who did it, and those who knew about it, and the "community" here in New York was rather small. It was not unusual to work with someone for a couple of years, part ways and not see or speak to each other again, only to wind up working in the same joint a decade later -- where everyone knew the same people and told the same stories.

It seems the "community" is getting smaller, and less-personal, and the "Old Breed" is rapidly disappearing.