There are some things you can't find by stumbling across them. There are some things you can't find unless they stumble across you, and other things you can't find unless you're looking for them. Sometimes telling anyone about the thing is a betrayal of the very thing you found. I guess what I'm saying is there are better things we could all be doing than suffering through these assholes, including, but not limited to... nothing. Who's got time to just sit back in awe at the absolute splendor of existence and try to figure it out, whatever that means to you? Not me. Instead, we have to constantly deal with the greedy pricks of the world when we could be spending our time with people who are not just easy to get along with but fun to be around. This could be you, with nothing better to do than get it all down and react to it, separating the lessons from the riff raff.

A genuine lesson just showed up, a personal moment, and it's a bit of a betrayal to tell it to you, but share I shall nonetheless.

An old friend pissed me off, did something unforgivable, and I did nothing about it, let it sit there, as though it meant nothing, and years later, they came through in a big way, much bigger than the thing that pissed me off. You know, it could have gone one way or another. I could have reacted and suffered the consequences or let it go and garnished the reward. Lesson learned. All hail the glory of a bridge that wasn't burnt and a fence that wasn't built.

Transition

There's a group that wants to build a fence between the United States and Mexico and they're asking the US government for $4 billion to do it. 

If you were in the fence building business and knew you'd be getting some of that $4 billion, would you be for or against this proposition? Chances are you'd be for it. It wouldn't be a moral issue, the question would be purely financial. Anybody's business could use a couple billion mad cash. What businessman would turn it down?

What you DON'T want is the businessman with the fence company to actually BE the government official who makes the decision. That's called fascism. You want the government official to make a moral decision as well as a financial one, and the scales of justice can't have an automatic giant chunk of gold sitting on one plate of the scale for the government official to keep after weigh-in. That's called bribery. You can't have a government that does all these things with impunity and malice and forethought. That would be called a crime syndicate. You can't have a crime syndicate rule the country. That would be called America, where the "free market" and "justice for all" are anathema to one another. You can't possibly have both. Like Howard Zinn says, "You leave things to the free market and the rich will go to college and the poor will go to work."

So hey, let's all go into the fence building business and pray for a piece of that fence building project on the Mexican border. Let's drive all them feriners to Canada where they belong. Make 'em go over Niagra Falls to get into the United States. That'll show 'em, and make a mighty fine reality show too. Let's call it "I Can't Believe I'm Doing This!" We'll pick up all them Cubans in tires floating to Miami too, and drop 'em off at the top of the falls. Survive and you're a citizen. Imagine the ratings.

I kid the Cubans. They're actually good people. The Terrainians are nice too. I never Mediterranean I didn't like.

I can't help myself. And they say I need an editor. Ha! Sometimes I think that if I ruled the world, things would be a lot different because I would give people a little more reason to trust each other. Then I imagine all the people who can't be trusted and who would blow the shit out of everyone else if they got the chance. Unfortunately, you can't tell by looking at someone whether to trust them or not. It's a gut instinct that often steers you wrong. 

I don't think we need to keep people out of the United States just because they come from the south. If you want to get into the United States, there are lots of other ways to do it. There won't be any squadrons of foreign terrorists going "Oh my God, they're closing the Mexican border. NOW what are we going to do?" 

Stealing our jobs? That's bullshit too. There aren't any squadrons of unemployed beet pickers going "Oh my God, a Mexican stole my job! Somebody build a fence."

So it isn't even a moral question, it's pretty much common sense. The fence would do good for the fence builders. Years later, it would come down like the one in Berlin and those who built it would look like assholes, rich dead assholes, but assholes nonetheless.

More bridges, less fences, that's my motto.

Understatement of the Week

"The White House has grown a bit arrogant and self-centered."
- Fred Barnes: The Conservative Revolt -

20 Articles I Never Finished Writing
by Michael Dare

1. The Trial of Saddam DeLuise ("I plead guilty... to being fabulous!") 
2. Smug Check (Please check your smug at the door.) 
3. 8 Simple Rules for Stealing My Material (Rule #1: Change my name. Nobody will believe you wrote it if my name is still on it.) 
4. The Trial of Saddam Perignon (The most effervescent trial of the century!) 
5. Recipe of the Week: Amerikneidlach (No goyem will ever get this joke.) 
6. Sodomite Makes Right (or Sodomitey Joe Young, I could never decide.) 
7. Praying with People's Emotions (Give us this day our daily shit fit.) 
8. The Misanthropic Sociopathic Megalomaniac with a Heart of Gold (The world's shortest column.) 
9. Is This the Right Womb for an Argument? (I told you once.) 
10. Scathing on Thin Ice (Jokes no one will ever repeat.) 
11. A Rivet Runs Through 'er (The Worst Things I've Ever Seen.) 
12. Bono Contention (What's HE got to complain about?) 
13. The Witless Protection Program (Insure yourself against those without a sense of humor.) 
14. Neutron Bomblegum (Destroys all bacteria but leaves your teeth standing) 
15. Hemp Hemp Hurrah, or High Resolution (Hold on, wait a minute, where's a pencil, I gotta get this down.) 
16. Realizing the Terror of his Ways (Boot Camp for Reformed Terrorists.) 
17. As Long As You've Got Your Stealth (What the... Now where'd they go? They were here just a minute ago.) 
18. I Ain't Got No Money That I Can Depend On (No Tengo a Nadie) 
19. 20 Articles I Never Finished Writing

I Changed my Mind

As I'm allowed to do. When they outlaw changing your mind, only outlaws won't change their minds, especially when they decide to rob liquor stores. I've decided that my motto actually is "avoiding the topic is misanthropic," for no other reason than it's got a better rhyme.

I'm Down on My Bended Knee

Please, oh please, don't make me have to decide between Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice in 2008.

Calling All Idiots

It's time to get pissed off at the idiots at the IMDB for listing in numerical order but with the films in REVERSE chronological order. Has nobody else noticed this gigantic flaw in what is otherwise one of the internet's most incredible databases? 

Please explain why it's better for the listings to go like this...

1. Actor's third movie
2. Actor's second movie
3. Actor's first movie

instead of with the numbers reversed too, like this...

3. Actor's third movie
2. Actor's second movie
1. Actor's first movie

Is it so fucking hard to understand that anyone's first movie should be numbered 1? Pretty idiotic if you ask me.

I Changed my Mind Again

These intrusions from the other side of my brain just aren't going to work. They break up the rhythm of the thing. This will be the last one, I promise.

Unless...

I change my mind again, as I apparently do all too frequently. Maybe I'm nervous because I just got this...

Here's a stupid question. Is it the stupidest day of your life when you try and try and try to write a stupid question but you just can't come up with one?

Send your answers to holy fuck what was that?
 

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

"A drowning man is not troubled by rain." 
- Persian Proverb -

"Wanna Bet?"
- Cajun Proverb -

"Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one."
- Chinese Proverb -

"Says who?"
- Italian Proverb -

"My ass is killing me."
- Republican Proverb -

"A deal's a deal."
-  Satan -

    "Consider this: A guitar is constructed from dozens of parts: tuning knobs, clamps, the sides and faces of the air chamber and, typically, six strings. The strings produce six fundamental frequencies: 82 Hz, 110 Hz, 147 Hz, 196 Hz, 247 Hz, 330 Hz corresponding to the open notes of E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, and E4.     "A typical rocket, on the other hand, is made of thousands of parts. The space shuttle famously contains more than a million components. All these pieces vibrating together produce a cacophony of frequencies ranging from subsonic waves that only an elephant could hear to high-pitched whines akin to fingers scratching a blackboard.
    "Which frequencies might do the most damage? What parts of the spacecraft are most vulnerable to resonance? And how do you de-tune this complicated instrument?
    "To answer these questions, NASA engineers have developed 'sound studios' for spacecraft. 'These are huge chambers where we take pieces of our rockets and expose them to loud noises.' Really loud. 'One of our 165 decibel acoustic horns at JSC can make as much noise as a space shuttle main engine,' he says."
- NASA: How is a rocket like a guitar? -

"At the trial Saddam insisted he is still president, he is still in charge, despite the fact that his people disapprove of him and his top assistants are all in jail or going to jail. No, I'm sorry, that's President Bush."
- Jay Leno -

"Belaboring the obvious is funny." 
- Mr. Funny -

    "Imagine that you are on your way to work, coffee in hand, one December morning when three men in United States military uniforms, armed with guns, approach you. They say your name; you acknowledge it.
    "One of them slams you in the chest, knocking your briefcase and coffee to the ground, but not before the hot beverage spills on your hand, burning you. The men throw a heavy plastic black hood over your head. You can see nothing. It is very hard to breathe. You are confused and scared out of your mind. You do not have any idea what these men might want. What happened to the quiet day you were expecting? How can you get word to your family? Nobody knows where you are. They will be paralyzed with worry.
    "You are helpless: this cannot be. This is a free country, not a totalitarian state. This is 'the greatest country in the world.' Things like this happen in other places, not here. Innocent people are protected here; innocent people are not jailed and abused for no reason, not here...
   "Put yourself in the position of this prisoner. It could very easily have been you. If you're a United States citizen, it could still be you in the not-too-distant future. Or it could be someone you love with all your heart, someone you would die to protect.     "There is no protection in the current US law for any innocent person who undergoes such treatment. You could be treated thus just for sport, really, and your abusers could claim they 'suspect' you of some sort of terrorism, thus leaving them free to do as they will with you, without oversight or accounting.     "The story just touched on above is that of at least one man in Abu Ghraib - an innocent man who was tortured and abused at the hands of US military personnel in such unimaginable ways it makes me sick to contemplate them...
   "But what kind of 'civilized society' could allow such systemised abuse of human beings? What kind of society does the United States want to be? This abhorrent, arrogant abuse of power must be stopped. There is no moral or ethical justification for it. We ourselves are made victims when our government so incapacitates us with terror that we lose our own decency and compassion. We cannot allow such blind, incoherent fear and cold-heartedness to take us over. We cannot allow hatred and ignorance to destroy all the good that we claim to have in abundance. We cannot devolve into beasts. Yet that is what happens when we allow ourselves to behave in such subhuman ways."
- Maura Stephens: Why torture is OK -

     "Scientists from Brazil and the US say new research suggests deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has been underestimated by at least 60%.
    "The team has completed a study using a more advanced technique of satellite imagery that can pick up more types of logging activity.
    "These include selective logging, where loggers pick out trees of value but leave the surrounding forest intact." 
- Simon Watts: Amazon 'stealth' logging revealed -

   "The longer we wait to withdraw the more people will die. All the arguments about how if we withdraw it'll be chaos are absurd because there is chaos now. And the chaos in fact is to a large extent - and those generals indicated that - caused by our occupation. It's the occupation that's fueling so much of the anger and so much of the violence. So the most healthy thing we can do is to get out of there as quickly as possible. Even from a military point of view, we're losing, we have to get out.
    "From a larger moral point of view, of course, we didn't belong there in the first place, we don't deserve to be there. Even if we were winning, it would be an immoral victory. We have won before at certain times where the winning was not something we could be proud of.
    "We won in the Philippines - we defeated the Filipinos, and what was the result? The result was fifty years of occupation, dictatorship and poverty. So the real question, the moral question is not 'are we losing or are we winning?' The question is, 'why are we there?'
    "And we seem to be there for oil, for military bases, for the psychological kicks that people in power get from extending the American Empire. So both from a practical and military point of view, the fact that we're losing - and from the long term moral point of view, which asks are we doing the right thing - the best thing that we can do is to get out of there as quickly as possible."
- Howard Zinn -

"We have two types of citizenship in the United States: common and preferred."
- E.L. Doctorow -

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such a twilight that we must be aware of the change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas -

"What does restoration look like? The South African government started a series of programs in 1995. After the 'Working for Water' program hired unemployed people to clear thirsty alien trees from important watersheds, rivers began to run again that had been dry for forty years. 'Working for Wetlands' is restoring marshes to purify polluted water. 'Working on Fire' sends crews to prevent and control wildfires. 'Working for Woodlands' is reforesting subtropical thickets to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and support bio-diversity. These programs serve as job training and often hire the poorest of the poor. This is what restoration looks like."
- Ken Ausibel, founder of Bioneers: Heeding the Law of the Land -

"In an interview yesterday, Joseph Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career. If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' no-proof suit against Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time."
- Richard Keil -

"The real bottom line is the biological bottom line. We are animals who live within the exquisite confines of the air, water and land where life exists. It's the biosphere that is the source of everything that matters to us including the economy."
- David Suzuki -

    "Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up. Last week, President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.
    "This hoax is then used to justify the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick and can actually contribute to the virus having more lethal mutations.
    "So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion.
   "We are being told that Roche manufactures Tamiflu and, in yesterday's New York Times, they were battling whether or not they would allow generic drug companies to help increase their production.
   "But if you dig further you will find that a drug was actually developed by a company called Gilead that 10 years ago gave Roche the exclusive rights to market and sell Tamiflu...
   "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was made the chairman of Gilead in 1997."
- Rumsfeld To Profit From Avian Flu Hoax -

"I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars."
- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson on Meet the Press -

"Perjury is just a little technicality punishable by up to five years in prison."
- the law -

"Isn't 'some perjury technicality' precisely the 'waste of time and dollars' you used to impeach Clinton?"
- follow-up question not asked on Meet the Press -

"Although Hunter is gone, she [Anita Thompson] is still surrounded by him, weighed down not only by his papers, which entirely fill the basement, and by his fans, who still turn up from time to time, but also by his stuff, which covers every surface, and which she will never be able to throw away. After I've got rid of the taxi driver, Anita takes me inside and makes me - unexpected, this - a cup of Lady Grey tea. Then, while she disappears to dry her hair, I have a look round. The experience is like being in some crazy, hippie version of Sale of the Century. In the living room, I see: a cactus, a stuffed alligator, a small cannon, an exercise bike, a ram's head, a stuffed crow, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an owl, a human skull and a blue candle in the shape of a woman with its wicks as nipples. In the kitchen, Hunter's handwritten notes - 'Let's get stoned and have orgasms and laugh a lot' - are stuck to every wall. So, too, are photographs of him. In one, he is wearing lipstick and a pink wig. It is captioned: 'Hunter's aunt visits, September 2004.' On a kitchen counter is a lamp. On its shade hang some 30 pairs of Hunter's spectacles, their glass still smeared with his fingerprints."
- Rachel Cooke: A lonely legacy -

"If we divide into two camps - even into violent and the nonviolent - and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace. We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence within ourselves. We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.
- Ayya Khema: Be An Island -

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."
- Arthur C. Clarke: First on the Moon -

"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky -

"Crime does not pay as well as politics."
- Alfred E. Newman -

"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it."
- Laurence J. Peter -

"You will not be able to give anyone happiness by means of your wealth, so do it by means of a cheerful countenance and good humor."
- The Prophet Muhammad in Qushayri: al-Risalat al-Qushayriyya -

"I never vote for anyone; I always vote against."
- W. C. Fields -

"The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophesies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true."
- Eric Hoffer -

"He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat."
- Robert Estabrook -

"It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe -

"Harriet Miers is not the brightest bulb in the room, and it's going to be on display for the whole country to see and it's going to be embarrassing." 
- Rush Limbaugh -

"If I ever agree with Rush Limbaugh, please shoot me."
- every liberal in America -

"Why is Saddam being tried for crimes he committed before the BFEE [Bush Family Evil Empire] went into business with him? And why did Poppy Bush get in bed with Saddam after these atrocities? Was Saddam a model dictator his last 23 years? Did he not commit any crimes between 1982 and that spider hole?"
- Bartcop -

"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin -

Everything Else

Ugly? Why not get a face transplant?

Chances are increasingly looking like you'll definitely have something better to do than look at a depressive Deltoids ad.

Oh, and everyone in California... NO ON EVERYTHING except 79 and 80.

Final Stupid Question

Why is everyone posting this mug shot...

instead of the real one?