I like to think I would have been just as disgusted 10 years ago as I am today with the dumbassery on display in Boston over idiotic guerilla marketing tactics by a bunch of knucklheads from New York promoting a cartoon show for pothead so-called adults by planting digitized circuit boards that resemble in no small fashion the kind of munitions used to blow up bombs targeting our fellow Americans and primarily our fine service men and women out in harm’s way protecting my fat ass from people who wish to do me harm.

But I’m not sure that I can think that. I am sure, on the other hand, that I’m dismayed that

• pinhead marketers thought such a stunt was a good idea
• pinhead broadcasters greenlighted it
• no pinhead marketer was hospitalized by a Bostonian who opened up a can of whoop-ass during the planting of the dipshit advertising devices

I’m telling you…the teevee is no good, see? Read a book, even a shitty one.

Went with this:

Click-n-lock, wide-plank, neutral stuff. It’s “acclimating” now. I’m gonna get me some of those knee pads, so I can pretend to be a SWAT guy and be prepared for Greyhound station men’s room duty when things go south. OK, that’s a little blue…apologies to the sensitive souls. Should have the floor done by next weekend, though, then I’ll duct-tape up some paneling, and Boom! Done! Deck&Smoker time, baby…the important stuff.

The NRA Wine Club

An NRA Beer Club, or an NRA Bourbon Club, makes more sense to me.

About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines. [...] The bird, weighed down by the deer head, apparently failed to clear the transmission lines, she said. A repair crew found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby.

Cool. More deer-head stories, please.

I wish I had something interesting for you, but I don’t. I put ceiling fixtures in at the new office at the new casa, rehung the sliding closet doors that were effed, and looked at a bunch of damn flooring like some woman trying to figure out what I should put down in the J.S. McKenney Memorial Wing.

This flooring business is driving me crazy. I mean, you walk on it. Who cares, as long as you can walk on it, right? No, I get all wrapped up in wide plank vs. narrow plank, laminate vs. engineered, glue-down vs. floating click-n-lock, light colored vs. dark colored. Screw it…I’ll go to Lumber Liquidators tomorrow and buy whatever’s easy and on special that day and get it over with. I need to be spending time on my garage workbench, the lighting for it, and how to set up the reloading station…not freaking floor coverings. I should have listened to my pal, Bill and just epoxied it, like a garage. Of course, after the stupid floor, it’s walls.

No, screw that, too…cheap stuff. I care more about the deck and the smoker than I do about the damn walls in the damn office. No, not even that…I care more about going camping and freaking fly-fishing than I do about any of this home & hearth crap right this minute. Damn, I hate being tied to a city. Poor career planning on my part, I guess.

I was in Orlando this week (for less than 24 hours) and I couldn’t find a single station playing Southern Rock. I would have made do with even Molly Hatchett, but alas, it was all Hispano and rap and talk. That’s OK…I’m so old, I ate dinner in my room. I really should have emailed this one and dragged her out for a coffee, but it was one of those super-engaged sales dealios that are exhausting. So much so that I ate. dinner. in. my. room. Do you have any idea how lame that is?

My new little buddy the Genius Programmer was disgusted with me not having my tie wrapped around my head like a ninja in a disco until dawn. As I explained to him, I need someone to mentor, or all this learning I’ve done over 15 years is going to go to waste. I’m trying to convince him to be my associate and learn how to sell, but he resists me. To the point of getting his entire upper body tattooed. That’s how much he doesn’t want to sell, even though he’s a stinking natural — he’s got ink coming up his neck and stuff. All I can think of, when he tells me about it, is Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man. Mr. Original, they call me…

I must find a place in the country soon. City life is killing me. I want to listen to the birdies, and outwit the big bucks, and shoot a lot at paper. Some fly-fishing would be nice, too. I don’t care if I catch anything…just being able to lay it out there would be a Good Start.

I try to keep up with the smart kids, but it’s impossible.

Especially note Greenwald’s highlighting of Hugh Hewitt’s latest Stalinist ploy, and that “libertarian” Glenn Reynolds is all about it, because uttering “opposition to the surge is wrong” and Republicans who don’t see that must be punished.

I added the links to the above blockquote, because Mona didn’t. Please go and read them as they stand on their own without any additional commentary. But the bottom line here is that one guy (Hewitt) is not real happy with the Senate doing that non-binding vote dance about sending extra troops, and is asking people to withhold their dollars from any Republican Senator who votes for the non-binding resolution thingy.

So, if I understand Mona correctly, pledging not to give my own money to a political party because of a vote they are taking in my name is…Stalinist?

What, exactly, then, would the Jeffersonians, Franklinians, Adamsians, Washingtonians, Whateverians, Libertarians, have anybody do? How does a little man like myself make my voice heard? I feel like I’m on safe ground here when I say that my contributions towards a political campaign are one of the few ways I can do that, and I’m equally re-assured that Stalin wasn’t about to have a damn thing to do with such fiscal tomfoolery. Interesting Teddy Roosevelt quotes about criticizing presidential leadership aside, I’d sure like to see how Teddy would feel about one unelected man’s campaign for something he feels strongly about. I doubt TR would have much truck with it being called unAmerican, but I’m likely projecting or something.

I seriously give up. Henley has always run a clean joint, and I’ve always used him as a libertarian lodestar, but this is ridiculous. Stalinism – withholding your campaign contributions is now Stalinist. Pardon my French, but fuck that shit.

(Edited to fix a link.)

Bill Parcells retired from coaching Monday, leaving the Dallas Cowboys after four years without a playoff win and just two weeks after a stinging wild-card loss to Seattle.

Seriously frothing your soy milk: Cowgirls Espresso, Natté Latté, Moka Girls, The Sweet Spot, Bikini Espresso, Best Friend Espresso

“If I’m going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee” said one male customer, “I’m not going to get served by a guy.”

Hear, hear, sir.

My wife is in town for some new house planning and move strategizing. Last night, with no movie channels in my subscription to the hideously overpriced local CableCo, we were desperately trying to find some way to avoid talking to each other, and lit on the Video on Demand component of said CableCo. I utilize this feature occasionally, if I’m bored dickless, or when I’m out of genre books* and it’s too late for a Half-Price or B&N run. Well, sad to say, she found Little Miss Sunshine on offer and we had to watch that, since she hadn’t seen it yet and I guess it got some good chatter amongst the hausfrau set. I found it formulaic, and boring beyond words. Fortunately for our future together, she wasn’t that thrilled with it, either. I guess it’ll never stop, the annual making of the quirky dysfunctional family that discovers they really are a family on a road trip movie. After all, there’s a sucker born every minute, and they will need their generations quirky dysfunctional etc. movie. I just don’t want to watch them, so I won’t.

After LMS, and a few seconds wondering what all the hullabaloo was about (I’m not deaf to the chattering ironic classes, though I sometimes wish I were, so I still hear all the talk on the radio) and then dismissing it, we chose to watch The DaVinci Code. What a dog’s breakfast that was. I’d read the book, so I knew the ending, and that might have ruined it. The Wife had not read the book, and it took almost four hours of pausing, rewinding, and explaining to get through the damn thing, and that definitely ruined it. Still, they managed to take a ripping good can’t-put-it-down page-turner and destroy all of the tension and urgency. Ho-frikkin-hum. No wonder I don’t go to the movies anymore. These days, all I really want to know about a movie is “Did he blow up good?”

* Oh, yeah. Almost forgot the digression. I’ve cleaned out the apartment of books to be read during the recent sickness, and so I picked up what I knew would be a disappointment, Larry McMurtry’s Sin Killer, that I snagged for 5 simoleans on the remainders table somewhere and thrown in a corner. Why does McMurtry, one of the greatest fiction writers ever, keep doing this to me? I suppose that I am really very grateful that McMurtry has given me what he has, and that these flops are part of the deal between author and reader. I’ll keep it by the bed and chew on it occasionally, as it is a superb sleeping aide. Two, three pages of the Berrybenders, and I feel like I’ve been crowned with a 3 lb. sledge. All of which is to say, I’ve got to get to HPB today and stock up on some hard-boiled and some Westerns. Maybe I’ll re-read Lonesome Dove…

Never even heard of this Loreena McKennitt lady, but she does Celtic music, and somedays that’s just what I like. For example, it’s been nothing but miserable Scottish weather for a week and I’m starting to feel kind of bloody-minded from being sick, and being cooped up. A Scotsman would get this stuff in the summer and would probably be happy with it, though.

I digress. Check out this video of Ms. McKennitt. That kind of voice, that kind of song, and that kind of backing instrumental gives me goosebumps. Anyway…more stuff to check out.

Click for a million more…

Here comes more of the Central Planning Committee:

The House rolled back billions of dollars in oil industry subsidies Thursday in what supporters hailed as a new direction in energy policy toward more renewable fuels. Critics said the action would reduce domestic oil production and increase reliance on imports.
…
Democrats said the legislation could produce as much as $15 billion in revenue. Most of that money would pay to promote renewable fuels such as solar and wind power, alternative fuels including ethanol and biodiesel and incentives for conservation.
…
Young, who had on a bright red shirt, made reference to it when he said, “It’s the color of this bill we’re debating Communist red.” The legislation “amounts to a taking of private property” by forcing oil companies to renegotiate leases they view as valid contracts, he said. The bill would bar companies from future lease sales unless they agree to renegotiate flawed leases issued in 1998-99 for deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Taxation is not revenue, no matter how many times or how many Democrats say it is. I’m a fart in a whirlwind here, though.

So…Thanks, Democrats and Angry Republicans! You’ve screwed every American with this one.

Via Donald Sensing…who breaks it down for you real common-sense, like. Me, I’m just tired of it already, and we’ve got two years to go, and practically nobody is going to know, when the price at the pump goes back up real quick-like, that they are the ones paying for this, and that it was given to them by their friendly National Mommy Party. No, all the multitudinous idiots are going to be whining and moaning about Big Evil Oil.

I hate being this kind of sick, because I can’t string two thoughts together to save my life. If I had a broken leg or dislocated hip, I could get some work done, but fever and body-aches kick my mental ass. Therefore, I’m on a surfing safari.

So, anyway, for the Gun Nuts out there, read the Glock 21 Torture Test. No, torture is not hyperbole. It’s shocking to anyone who babies their babies. It includes dropping from an aeroplane, and that’s not the worst. My opinion of the plastic gun from Europe goes through the roof.

…I feel like they shot at me and missed, and shit at me and hit. Under the weather is where I’ve been for three stinking days. I finally went to a doc-in-the-box, and I’ve got not just the flu, but bronchitis. No wonder I feel so miserable. Bastards wouldn’t give me a damn shot, though…just a prescription for some horse pills and the advice to ’stop smoking.’ Thanks, Doc…it never occurred to me. This is one of the huge downsides of moving — my uncle the doctor would have given me a shot with some whiz-bang shit that would make me feel 25 years old again, and enough sample dope to get me through Christmas.

And here in SA, it’s sleeting. Sleeting. If Dallas drivers, who have to deal with it pretty much annually, suck at driving in the wintry mix, and they do suck, horribly…well, imagine what it’s going to be like here on the Mexican border. Yeesh.

I’ve got three cans of soup, one can of chili, and some pita bread. I reckon I’ll pull through. I’m out of beer, but (and this is how I know I’m really sick) I haven’t wanted a beer since Saturday. I do have some bourbon with which to lace my TheraFlu. Which, by the way, I gues they changed the formulation of that, too, to cut down on the meth bidness. That stuff used to make me sleep like a baby and have fever dreams that were as loopy as anything you could imagine. No more…it don’t do nothing these days.