Karl's Jr. - UPDATED

It’s getting so a gal can hardly swing a dead cat in this media landscape without hitting someone talking about how the US has now gone “socialist.”

Which I wouldn’t mind so much if one single damn one of them knew what the fucking word meant.

Socialism, sort of, ah, famously, is when the government controls the means of production. That means that all factories and institutions are owned and controlled by the government. All of them. A famous example of a socialist government would be the now defunct USSR, manufacturer of bad cars, bad television, aggressively unfunny comics, and toilet paper rougher than an afternoon hunting with Dick Cheney.

You know what’s not socialism? I mean, besides “spreading the wealth around”? Government spending as a percentage of GDP. If you’re going to define socialism by that mark, then it would be true that by outspending the USSR on arms, Ronald Reagan was the greatest practitioner of socialism in the history of socialism, because he defeated socialism with even greater socialism. To say nothing of BushCo, who rescued capitalism with socialism.

Not only that, but the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, who make numbers like this their business, estimates that our percentage of government spending in GDP this year will be 39.8%. Under Comrade Reagan, it reached a high of 37.2%

So according to Hanity and Rush and all the rest of the boneheads at Fox News, the difference between capitalist utopia and “in Soviet Union, television watches YOU,” is 2.6%.

I think the same people are falling for this who are falling for all the hoo-ha about how the New Deal didn’t work. It’s a typical Republican MO: they cherry-pick some unemployment numbers and ta-dah! FDR’s a phony, and Americans were no worse off at the beginning of WW2 than they were when Hoover had finished dragging the US through four years of laissez-faire purgatory. I seem to recall that Hoover thought that legislation to stimulate the economy would make citizens too dependent upon their government. And Americans don’t trust big government. I mean, except when they want to, like, drive on a road or call 911 or cash a Social Security check or other socialist-type activities.

But all this is merely being used by the Republicans as a way to counter comparisons being made to Obama’s stimulus bill by people who actually understand economics, and what words mean.

It’s tempting to make a big deal out of the lack of Republican support for the bill, but for them, opposition to it is win-win. If the stimulus is seen have been effective, they will never be held accountable for not voting for it, because their spin is that they are opposed “in principle.” And if the stimulus is seen to have failed, they will never stop screeching “we told you so.” It’s no wonder only a few brave souls crossed the aisle. Arlen Specter voted for the bill, and admitted to the press that many of his Republican colleagues told him that they wanted the bill to pass, but didn’t want their “fingerprints” on it.

So much for principle.

---------------------------

UPDATE:

You know readers, a while back, Spooney and I were enjoying a nutritious breakfast (cheese grits!) at the Coral Diner in Burbank, and we overheard a young man at the table next to us bragging to his friends about how well his new job was going. Apparently it was some kind of public works deal, and for one day, at least, his crew’s job consisted of moving sandbags from one place to another. But what he was so proud of, was that his co-workers had decided to give the new guy a break, and they offered him a six pack for every 100 sandbags that he moved. At the end of the day, he told his friends excitedly, he had moved over 300 bags, forcing each of his 3 crew members to buy him a whole six pack of beer each.

It was adorable. The dude had no idea that he’d been ripped off. Or perhaps the deal would’ve been okay with him no matter what. But for the price of a sixer, the rest of the crew got to sit in the shade while one guy did all of their work for them.

This is not a story that makes Republicans feel bad. In fact, they have carried off a similar feat themselves, effectively forcing Democrats to carry the entire stimulus bill for them, while they not only bring the bucks back to their home states, but actually also BRAG ABOUT IT.

A Republican chief of staff to one of these hypocrites countered criticism by saying “Certainly it’s possible to oppose the entire bill on principle and favor certain sections of it.”

Um, no dude. It’s actually not. You can oppose the entire bill because you don’t think the bill as a whole fiscally justifies the parts that bring money to your state, but you can’t oppose the entire bill on principle, while still welcoming the sections that are going to help you get re-elected. Again, I think the problem might be that Republicans don’t entirely understand what words mean. Okay, I get that a large vocabulary is frequently a deal-breaker when it comes to being elected to public office, but “principle” is a word they really might want to look up before they go brandishing it any further.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican, supported the stimulus package in spite of taking a lot of shit from his party. Crist is also being criticized by other Republican Governors as well, notably South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, who has stated that he may not accept his state’s portion of the stimulus money. When asked for his reaction to the stand Sanford and those other Republican governors may take, Crist’s former chief of staff said “Ah…call me back if one of those governors doesn’t take it.”

Well fucking put.

Happy Valentine’s Day, America! Hope you like being fucked in the ass!

Wow, Judd Gregg must be the most principled man alive in politics today. After all, the Obama administration asked him to be Commerce Secretary, and he felt a sense of duty. He felt an obligation to serve. Who wouldn’t, when asked to take over such an important position in such perilous times? He could’ve demurred, given his economically conservative philosophy. He could’ve demurred, given his key position as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. But he didn’t. He tried to make it work. And if he did demur from urging fellow Republicans in the Senate to support the President’s stimulus bill, it’s only because, as a cabinet nominee, it wouldn’t have been right to exert political pressure. And he tried to reconcile his philosophy to the Obama administration’s. But he couldn’t. Their scheme was too liberal, too spend-heavy, too damn crazy to stand behind. So, in the end, being a man of principle, he resigned as nominee, re-joined the Senate, and, as painful as it was to him, voted against the stimulus package.

And he lived happily ever after. The End.

Did we all enjoy our little Mother Fox News fairy tale?

Good. Because as is so often the case in WDC, the truth is quite the different story.

First of all, according to Obama administration officials, Gregg approached them for the position. And he promised them that he was well aware of the President’s core beliefs, and he was also, as aforementioned big cheese on the Senate Budget Committee, well aware of the contents of the stimulus package and he said that it would not be a problem for him to get behind it.

Hm. Well, that’s quite different, isn’t it, from Gregg’s version? I wonder why he wouldn’t want us to know that he wanted the position? Vanity, maybe?

Or maybe something more.

I wonder, what changed, between the time Gregg offered himself up, and the time when he high-tailed it out of there?

Readers, what changed was this: the Obama administration took control of the 2010 census away from Commerce, and gave it to the White House.

Huh?

Who gives a shit about the stupid-ass census?

Republicans do. Oh, they do.

Which states are poised to gain representatives after the census? Arizona. Florida. And your favorite and mine - Texas.

Whoever administrates the census can make sure that the polling in those states is particularly thorough, and that the polling in Democratic areas (big cities) is lax. And because TX, AZ & FL have Republican-controlled legislatures…any new districts can be gerrymandered so that their breakdowns will remain now and forever, reliably Republican.

Yes, surprise, surprise, the Republicans were cooking up a scheme to ensure their return to power. The ole’ “permanent majority” dream of BushCo has reared its ugly head again, and so soon!

But who busted it? No one knows for sure. My guess? Rahmbo.

On the Origin of Godtards

Someone, let’s just say someone who should’ve known better, recently hit me with the old chestnut “if man evolved from apes, how come there are still apes?”

I flashed back to when a classmate in my junior high biology class once asked that same question. My teacher, Mr. Shank, first treated that student to a twenty second Shank Stare. The Shank Stare was a fearful thing indeed. I had personally seen the Stare boil water in a bunson burner. I had seen it kill mold growing in a petrie dish. Once on the receiving end of the Stare, you would go to any length to avoid it again. You would even study your biology text.

After delivering the Stare, Mr. Shank sighed, and said “Can anyone who HAS been paying attention this semester care to answer that question?

How can it be that an educated adult doesn’t know that humans did not evolve from apes, but that humans and apes share a common ancestor?

How can it be that 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin, and almost 150 years after the publication of “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin remains, as journalists are fond of telling us, a controversial figure?

What they rarely mention is that the controversy is a mostly American phenomenon. In other parts of the world, Darwin is recognized as one of the true giants of thought and science, and his birthday is celebrated as a day signifying the advancement of mankind. But then, “thought” and “science” and “advancement” are things that Christian Americans tend to ascribe to godless communist homosexual faggot commies.

And those are the more open-minded ones.

For those of you tempted to dismiss my last statement as mere hyperbole, need I remind you that during the last presidential election, 3 Republicans candidates, all Christians, declared that they did not believe in evolution. One of them, the deceivingly genial Mike Huckabee, went on to declare in a later debate that “if anyone wants to believe that they are the descendents of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it.”

Oh, if only Mr. Shank, who has died and gone to awesome teacher heaven, had been in the audience!

He would’ve reminded the former governor of Arkansas (a state that spends less per student on education that any other state) that humans ARE primates. And then he would’ve flunked him from the presidential campaign, along with fellow idiots, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Sam Brownback, who is still a senator representing Kansas.

In fact, he would’ve flunked Kansas.

Do you know that moment in Annie Hall, when Alvy Singer pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a movie marquee, and gets him to shoot down the ignorant blowhard in line behind him? That’s what I wish I could do with Mr. Shank every time some Godtard says that they don’t believe in evolution. I wish I could get Mr. Shank to flunk America, and not let us come back until we start paying attention.

When the world falls apart, some things stay in place: Grammys 2009

The Grammys, after suffering from a catastrophic 3-year U2 shortage, finally got their fix last night when the group (whose last album, “How to Build the Most Stupendous PR Machine in the History of the Music Industry,” was nominated for Grammys in various categories for…how many years in a row? 27?) opened the telecast with some song that I’m going to guess was about boots, since Bono, whose voice could barely be heard, kept lifting up his legs and pointing to his boots. I can only conclude that his performance was meant to be a public service for those Grammy viewers with hearing disabilities. When they call Bono a humanitarian they aren’t fucking kidding, people.

Come to think of it, U2 definitely established the Grammys’ unintentional theme of the evening, which was, “I can’t hear the vocals. Jesus Christ. How many strings tracks are they using, anyway?”

The Grammys didn’t hesitate to bring the crazy right off the bat, as presenter Whitney Houston was definitely on something, although it seemed to be maybe only massive amounts of alcohol or pain killers, and not crack. Her wig, on the other hand – still on crack.

Next, The Rock proclaimed that “The Grammys are a way of life,” a statement that should have sent the entire audience running for the exits, before the doors to the Staples Center were locked from the outside, and they were all forced to spend their remaining years in a Korbel-induced stupor whilst trying to avoid bumping into Boyz 2 Men in the greenroom toilet. Le Rock next attempted several verbal Grammy-related assaults, finally proclaiming, with an impish grin, that like Katy Perry, he, too, enjoyed kissing girls…which is hilarious because…he’s a MAN! GET IT? HE’S A MAN! HA HA HA!

Cut to Katy Perry, who rolled her eyes at the camera. And can I just say, I have a HUGE problem with that.

First of all, Katy Perry should not be disrespecting the man who in all probability will be the star of the first film to cast her in some small part that she cannot fuck up too bad after she inevitably turns her considerable ambition to the big screen. Which no doubt will be the first item on her agent’s agenda after single #2 flops the big flop.

Secondly, Katy Perry, don’t go sarcastic on The Rock, because a) it’s wasted, and b) at least the dude could wrestle, or whatever it is that those wrestling dudes do. You, on the other hand, cannot even manage to sing what must surely be a strong contender for TOP TEN SIMPLEST SONGS EVER without making everyone in the audience wish that you had packed a pitch corrector in your ironic banana corset. At least he managed to become famous without marketing his product with a video straight out of Penthouse Forum, complete with a bad Fredericks of Hollywood wardrobe and a cast that appeared to be blow-up sex dolls with AFTRA cards. Listen, Katy, have you ever kissed a girl for real? Because it’s not like an episode of “The Girls Next Door,” okay? Because those girls don’t kiss girls because they like it; they kiss girls for money.

Come to think of it, Katy, it might not be too late to audition for the next season.

Anyways, it wasn’t too long before the 2^nd most inevitable Grammy band, Coldplay, took the stage for some really hard-core earnestness, which was made all the more earnest by the fact that Chris Martin could barely be heard above…I dunno…whatever that shit is that plays in the background of every single goddamn Coldplay song.

You know, it’s not that I hate them, exactly, I just wish that award shows would stop thinking that because they’re recognizing Coldplay, they are somehow appreciating something innovative. Another member of Coldplay, while accepting one of their Inevitable Awards, apologized to McCartney, sitting in the audience, for copping the Sgt. Pepper uniform bit. Only, the uniforms that Coldplay wears are pastel. The Beatles at least had the good sense to wear jewel tones. Hello.

Also high on the list of Grammy inevitables is Kid Rock, who performed several songs that seemed mostly designed to position himself as the new redneck laureate. And I applaud that, because I think it’s damn hard to base a whole career on an affinity for midgets and being drunk in Vegas. Still, I just can’t approve the creation of, nor an appreciation for, a song that is essentially a mash-up of “Werewolves of London” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” with an overlay of lyrics that frankly, make Bob Seger sound like Alfred Lord Tennyson. Kid Rock has proclaimed himself the “Rock and Roll Jesus,” but to me he’s more like the Rock and Roll Ron Popeil. He’s pretty much selling whatever he thinks you’ll buy.

Oh, and a small side note to Blink 182: before you proclaim to an audience of 20 thousand people that your band is “back,” you really should make sure there’s a least one person there who cares. Because, crickets. Ouch.

And now, it's time for Spooney's 2 cents:

"What is with that Carrie Underwood chick's guitar player? Is that 1980s Nancy Wilson? She's all fake metal. And look at the wicked stupid '80s BC Rich guitar!"

Funny, right? Thank you, Spooney.

Also, does Kanye West have a mullet now? Color me intrigued.

Which reminds me: hip hop summit, aka the Rap Pack.

This much bally-hooed moment, in which rap giants Kanye, Jay-Z, T.I. and Lil Wayne performed “Swagga Like Us,” would have been a total 4 minute honk-shoe were it not for a very pregnant M.I.A., who bounced around the stage in a polka dot…um, dress? determined to mash her hit “Paper Planes” into the ensuing mess. It was right up there with Radiohead backed by the USC Trojan Marching Band as Best Killa Moment of the telecast, if only because it was kind of awesome to see so much faux gangsta testosterone so effectively thwarted by what appeared to be a magic dancing lady bug.

Interspersed throughout the evening were Lifetime Achievement Awards, which this year went to Gene Autry, Brenda Lee, The Four Tops, Dean Martin, folk artist Tom Paxton, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and jazz pianist Hank Jones.

Okay, here’s my beef. Except for the brief bit and all-star homage to the Four Tops (which would’ve been much better if the stars could’ve, uh, sung harmony, which was kind of the whole reason to love the Four Tops), we got zero information on any of the LAA winners. How much cooler would it have been, to have seen, say, a three minute video about why Dean Martin was so freaking awesome than to see Justin Timberlake and T.I. perform for the second time on a 4 hour show? How about we skip Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, and instead learn the younguns all about the magnificent Brenda Lee, and why she should be worshipped as a divine goddess who deigned to walk the earth?

How about we skip Kenny Chesney, and his hat-down “aw shucks, me sing?” act, and instead do ourselves the gigantic favor of hearing Gene Autry lay down a song or two. Because Gene Autry was amazing, y’all, and everyone should know that, and if our National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences can’t manage to make us understand why, maybe we should devote 4 hours of prime time to someone who can.

Sucka for the snark? Check out Grammys 2008.

When I needed sunshine I got rain

So, hanging on to the ole “faith-based initiatives,” are we, Obama?

Convinced that they are “a force for good greater than government”?

I’m not so sure.

Obama’s calling his the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and he’s appointed a 26-year-old Pentecostal Minister to head the thing. The minister, Joshua DuBois, said "We're also going to make sure we have a keener eye toward the separation of church and state."

Putting a Pentecostal Minister in charge of maintaining the separation of church and state? Isn’t that a little bit like putting Dick Cheney in charge of upholding the Constitution?

Oh, wait.

Seriously, though, at this point, my honest reaction was that I was glad that it wasn’t a Catholic in charge, because, ah…they’re not really at the peak of their credibility right now.

Yeah, who could have predicted that when the College of Cardinals elected an ex-Nazi to be Pope, he would end up having a little problem with the Jews? He also had a little problem with the Muslims a while back, but that mishegas was clearly just practice for the shitstorm he is weathering these days.

The Pope claims that he was unaware of Williamson’s background as a Holocaust denier when he reinstated him after his 1988 excommunication. I’m not really buying that, but the Pope is sticking to his story, oh, and asking Williamson to, basically, you know, take it back.

And I’m sure that as soon as the Pope finds out that Williamson says that women should not wear pants or go to college or hold a job, he will ask him to take that back, too.

So far, Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and impromptu GWB backrub victim, is the only one who’s trying to hold the Pope’s feet to the fire. Of course, she’s a Lutheran, so there might be just a teeny conflict of interest there. Sarkozy, President of France and actual Catholic, has, in keeping with his nation’s reputation for general weaseliness, criticized Williamson but not the Pope.

I keep waiting for the great outcry, at least amongst U.S. Bishops and Cardinals, but the Bishops are apparently none too eager to criticize the Pope publicly, and the Cardinals...just lost the Superbowl. And I can’t really blame them for being reticent. Criticizing the Pope can get you excommunicated. Whereas, denying that Hitler had a plan to kill the Jews can bring about a Papal reaction more along the lines of “oops!”

But back to Obama, he who actually gave a shout to atheists during his inaugural speech. A first! Okay, so I’m not crazy about being called a “non-believer,” but compared to what I usually get called, it’s not so bad.

His ideas about creating some sort of nation-wide interfaith camp is an ambitious one. I only hope that those of us whose faith rests solely upon humanity’s shoulders don’t get forgotten in the process, like we have since, well, ever. Yeah, my hopes are not high. Woody Allen once joked that he spent two weeks at Interfaith Camp, where he was “sadistically beaten by boys of all races and creeds.” I can identify.

I live in fear that one day, all the religions of the world will wake up and realize how much they have in common: namely, their hatred of people like me.

I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

In the past couple of weeks, several firsts:

1. First black president
2. First time that I am OLDER than the President of the United States.
3. First time my birthday party was busted by the LAPD
   

I have to say, I’m pretty excited by #3. I’ve lived here fifteen years now, and this is the first instance of Los Angeles sort of collectively letting me know that they do not approve of my activities. I have gotten one ticket for jay walking, and a pretty stern warning about a dim tail light, but those were in Beverly Hills and Burbank, respectively, which are separate cities from mine. In LA, as long as you’re not going more than 20 miles over the speed limit and/or shooting at people from your car, you’re basically given the key to the city.

So, two LAPD officers showed up at around midnight Saturday night. I was alerted to their presence by a departing guest. This is the entire exchange:

Me: Good evening, officers.

Officer #1: We got a complaint from a neighbor about the noise level…

Me: I’ll turn it down.

Officer #1: Thank you.

The End

Poor guys. In a neighborhood where El Norte music blasts and children shriek and illegal fireworks boom at parties that make a mockery of occupancy limits well into the night, my little emo gathering must have been quite the hilarious letdown for them. I mean, I seriously doubt that the Shins could rattle my neighbor’s windows like their 808s rattle mine, but hey, I must have pissed off someone. Maybe it wasn’t so much the volume of my music, but the choices. Maybe they just don’t like Ben Folds turned up to 5 on six-inch outdoor speakers. Readers, you might think I’m exaggerating, but I swear that at the time the 5-O strolled up the walk, my stereo was playing the flute solo from Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California.”

I have chosen to look upon the incident as a sign that, in spite of my age, I can still inspire an urge to involve the authorities.

The next day, as I was watching the Superbowl and dumping leftovers on top of tortilla chips and trying to pass them off to Spooney as “nachos,” I vowed that I would continue to rebel, you know, in my own little older, Midwestern, hipster-adjacent kind of way. I would stop going on and on about refinancing my mortgage, and I would do more things that I want to do, even if there is a sign nearby telling me not to. I’m going to smoke on the beach. I’m going to make a left turn before 7pm. I’m going to fish off the pier. I’m going to stop somewhere else on red, and take my dogs to Venice on a Saturday after 10am in between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I’m going to go in the door for authorized personnel only. I’m going to walk on the bicycle side of the bike path.

Just kidding. I hate that. Damn, walking people, do you not understand why I am jingling my bicycle bell at you? You are on my side of the path, you know, the side of the path with the spray-painted bicycle graphic. You should be on the side with the spray-painted person-walking graphic. I mean seriously, how hard is that?

And just then, I heard this announcement:

“This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast, or any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited.”

First of all, “is” prohibited??? Don’t you mean “are” prohibited? Jesus.

Secondly, are they seriously attempting to suggest that I cannot describe yesterday’s game in a public forum without their consent?

I can’t even talk about it???

So I can’t say that I started out watching the game two hours behind on TiVo, and still caught up to meat time for the last half an hour even though I watched all the commercials?

And I can’t say that my theory of “shiniest pants win” was proven correct once again?

I can’t point out that cardinals are not native to Arizona and I feel that has got to be demoralizing to the team? Or that despite attempts by the AZ Cardinals to make their bird head logo look “mean,” it instead looks “adorable”? Or that given the dearth of non-abandoned steel mills in the area, the Steelers should just go ahead and change their name to the Pittsburgh Importers and maybe just put that little Moneybags guy from the Monopoly game on their helmets instead?

Well, joke’s on you, NFL. I mean, maybe not as big a joke as that whole opening song with Faith Hill singing about the game with cringe-inducing specificity, but still, a joke.

Because I’m about to comment on the game:

It was okay.

The commercials were boring, except for this one.

And for the first time in my life, during Springsteen’s halftime show, I longed for a career as an NBC cameraman:

McCain go home

Woof!

What's that you say, McCain?

Woof! Woof!

Obama's fallen down a old mine shaft and he's a Democrat and he needs a tax cut?

Woof!



(thanks to Michael for the link)

Happy birthday to me

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another one bites the dust. Fucking marvelous.

The only thing good about today, is that Lilly Ledbetter finally got her sweet, sweet revenge.

Nothing fucking golden can stay

First off, I want to say that, generally speaking, if a lesbian has a better haircut than you, then you need a new haircut.



Secondly, I think that I may have underestimated the size of Blago's balls. They're huge. When Rachel Maddow asked him in an interview yesterday, RE his assertion that his taped remarks have been taken "out of context," how the following statement...

“It’s a fucking valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing. If they’re not going to offer anything of value I might just take it. I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden. I’m not just giving it up for fucking nothing.”

...could possibly be put in any context that would make it anything other than an admission that he's giving away a US Senate seat to whoever offers him the best SWAG bag, he said:

"Well, let me answer that two ways. First, I can’t comment specifically on that, ‘cause I haven’t heard those tapes. But assuming that’s what it is, if you hear all the tapes, and you hear the whole thing in its context, if I feared that that was something sinister or onerous would I want all those tapes heard?

And, in addition to that, just playing devil’s advocate, I’m not acknowledging that’s what actually were on the tapes, ‘cause we haven’t had a chance to hear it. But playing the devil’s advocate in assuming it was. Why can’t the construction of that be I want them to help me pass a public works program, a jobs program, that the Democratic speaker, Mr. Madigan, has been blocking."

Ah, where do I start?

How about:

1. You haven't heard the tapes? Forgive me if I've gotten this wrong, but isn't that you SPEAKING ON THE TAPES?

2. If you really want to hear the tapes, you should've stopped by your impeachment trial that you decided not to show up to so you could go on your little jury-pool-tainting media blitz.

3. We can't infer innocence from your claim that you want the tapes heard by the public, when you already know that's what's going to happen. OJ pioneered this defense when he claimed that his DNA link to the murder scene could not mean he was guilty, because he wanted the results made public. It's a logical fallacy. Actually, that's a polite word for what it is.

4. When you said that it's possible that all you wanted in return for the seat was cooperation on a piece of legislation, you should've first checked to see if that was also unethical. Because it is.

What an interesting mix of cagey and hilariously fucking stupid the (for now) governor of Illinois is! He's so completely missing the "shame" gene, it's kind of fascinating. It makes me homesick for Chicago, where that kind of politician is as plentiful as the puddles of puke outside of Wrigley Field.

And speaking of no shame, how about that conference that Bank of America hosted for various CEOs so that they could strategize about how to defeat the EFCA?

The EFCA is a bill that would roll back certain provisions of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and enable employees to vote a union in at their workplace without allowing management to force a circumvention of the process. It's a good bill. The House has passed it already, and Obama's supporting it. And if passed, it could mean that the vast majority of retail employees, a sector that has replaced manufacturing in terms of its importance to our economy, could earn a wage upon which they could raise a family in something other than complete fucking poverty.

Naturally, big business does not want to see it pass. And in this conference call, which B of A hosted 3 days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, participants (including bailout recipient AIG) were urged to give money to Republican candidates opposed to the bill, as well as to The Center for Union Facts, an anti-EFCA lobbying group founded by Home Depot CEO Rick Berman.

So not only did B of A spend tax dollars to host this thing, but by doing so, they are using our money to enable our own economic oppression.

CEO Berman, whose employees would obviously benefit from increased wages and benefits, stressed the importance of the cause by stating that he could've been on "a 350-foot boat out in the Mediterranean," but instead was on the phone call, working to defeat the EFCA.

I'll just let that settle in for a minute.

I don't know why our government can't simply do what Jon Stewart has proposed, which is to give the bailout money to the people who can't pay their mortgages or their credit card bills, with the stipulation that it can only be used for consumer debt. Because if they did, people's mortgages and bills would be paid, and those same institutions that are now flailing would have their precious fucking money. Everyone wins.

C'mon Republicans. You're always saying that we should keep more of our hard-earned tax dollars, that the government can't spend it as well as we can. Now's your chance to put our money where your mouth is.

I'm confused

Which branch of the military is Coldplay in, exactly?

In praise of Spooney

As of today, Spooney and I have been together five years. I KNOW. I can hardly believe it myself.

We were both about 6 months out of 10 year relationships when we met on the interwebs. I had been on numerous bad dates by then so I was a little weary of the whole dating thing, but I agreed to meet Spooney for a drink because he was funny, and he had a nice deep voice.

The bar he suggested as “between his place and mine” was actually much closer to my place, which was sweet. A lot of people in LA have bastard commutes, and so spend much of their personal lives trying never to leave their neighborhoods. People like that are always suggesting plays, restaurants, and clubs that just happen to be down the street from where they live. One guy I met online who wanted to meet for a movie would only suggest films playing at the Beverly Center, which was 4 blocks from his house. I knew at the time that he was doing that thing, and yet I met him anyway. He turned out to be a selfish jerk. What a surprise.

Anyhoo, I was on the 101N on the way to the bar to meet Spooney when I noticed that the 101S was jammed. Right as I got onto my exit ramp, I saw a huge accident with emergency vehicles and all lanes closed. Just then I realized that Spooney had to be traveling on the 101S to get from his place to the bar. He would be late. Very late, judging by the traffic. And seeing as how we’d just met, I hadn’t given him my cell phone number yet. Fucking great.

I settled into a booth at the bar and ordered a beer. After about 5 minutes, the bar phone rang. For some reason, I knew it was him. I was absolutely certain it was him. The waitress picked up the phone, listened, and then looked around the bar. She stopped when she got to me and said, “Are you Vikki?”

It was him. He called information to get the number for the bar. Then he called the bar to tell me he was going to be late. And this was before iPhones, remember, so doing that entailed dialing, and talking to people, and dialing some more. It required effort. It’s not like now when your phone just does all that for you if you ask it to.

And this from someone living in LA, a city infamous for its lax manners. I was so impressed that I decided to wait for him. Luckily, he was close to his exit, and I only had to wait twenty minutes. And then we spent four hours talking. We almost closed the dang bar.

Here are some things I remember:

He totally had the Boston accent thing going on. Adorable.

He laughed pretty hard when I imitated my mother. Listen gals, what better signal do you want that a guy gets you, than having him understand why your mother is unintentionally hilarious?

He told funny stories about growing up in a small town. I could so relate!

He complimented my shoes. I know. It’s like someone had given him a manual on how to get to me.

And then at the end of the evening, he walked me to my car. He didn’t try to kiss me goodnight, but he looked like he wanted to for a hard second or two before he turned away. Which was, at the time, pretty much exactly what I wanted.

And Spooney continues to provide me with mostly exactly what I want. If pressed, I will admit that once in while, the gear talk gets a little dull, but hey, we all have our obsessions. I understand that my obsession with efficiency and organization is way tedious sometimes. And we do everything together, which is great. He’s the best companion I’ve ever had, and you know, that’s a really underrated thing. I really can’t say enough about how wonderful that is.

Well, I’ve gotten mushy enough, and I promise I won’t be pulling out the sticky valentines for every anniversary. It’s just that 5 years is a long time in Vikkitikkitavi years. I’m not easy to please, frequently, and I…I can be a tough bitch, and judgmental - girl, you don’t even know. Judgmental is the bear with which I wrestle, for sure. But here’s one good thing about me: I will walk through fire for the man I love. And Spooney, that’s you, baby.

Voulez vous coucher avec la vérité, ce soir?

Obama appears to be doing well. He, like Clinton before him, took advantage of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in order to rescind the Global Gag Rule. I wonder if all the Hillary groupies will now stop writing letters to Ms. Magazine bitching about their Obama cover. Probably not.

He signed an order to close Gitmo as soon as we can figure out where to send all the scary dudes we've been keeping in there for all these years. I vote Texas. In fact, now that the cowboy charade is over, I hear the Bushes will be moving to the manse in Dallas and won't have much use for their Crawford brush-clearing photo op staging area and oppressively patriarchal wedding location. Maybe the former detainees could turn it into a going concern. I'm not sure they deserve such a fate, but I am sure that the Bushes sure as hell deserve to live in Dallas, and Dallas probably deserves them as well. Never in my life have I visited such a souless/lifeless/humorless berg. When the highlight of your city is a museum devoted to an assassination, you might want to have the chamber of commerce make a tiny bit more of an effort. Of course, Dallas was the site of my run-in with a rifle-wielding Guardsman at airport security. Dude actually pointed his M16 at me, I think because I had crossed over some invisible line on the agressively patterned airport carpeting in order to help my then-husband with the bags that they had just finished searching because we had flown in from Los Angeles and therefore = terrorists. My brother, who many years ago was in the National Guard, reassured me that a Guardsman in a civilian facility would never have been issued actual bullets, but I dunno. We are talking about Texas, after all, where they have ammo cozies for sale at the airport giftshop.

Obama also ordered federal employees to disclose more information to the public, and he shut down the Penn. Ave. to K Street superhighway and gift registry. Along the way, he also slyly confirmed, just in case we'd heard anything to the contrary, that the Vice President is indeed a member of the executive branch and as such, subject to its rules. Just, you know, FYI. Not like anyone's planning anything.

Plus, he reiterated that non-administration federal employees should be hired for their skills and experience, not for whether they dress left or right.

Yeah, so that's Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld AND Gonzalez, in case anyone's counting.

It's a nice start, except for the fuss accompanying the flubbing of the oath of office by CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Roberts. A friend of mine compared Roberts to those pretentious waiters who refuse to write your order down in order to impress you, and then get it wrong. It's 35 words, dude. Either memorize it for real, or fucking read it. Plus his "So help you god?", while no doubt intended to come off as "playful" and "not stodgy!" instead read as pretty solidly toolish. Roberts, it's not about you, dude. If anyone comes away from the ceremony remembering the Justice who administered the oath...UR DOIN IT WRONG.

Drudge's headline for the re-swearing that was done in the Oval Office yesterday out of "an abundance of caution" noted that Obama did not use a Bible. Which, constitutionally speaking, matters not a whit, although the freepers tried their best to whip up some outrage. I guess Rick Warren's invocation with helpful Son of God pronunciation guide wasn't enough for them.

Quelle surprise!

That's French. I'm assuming Obama's made it okay again to be French, or at least snotty.

Of course ex-president W, who elevated churlishness to an art form, could not resist an attempt to rebutt Obama's inauguration speech. Before a friendly crowd in his boyhood home of Midland, Texas on inauguration day, he said:

"We worked to extend freedom and human liberty as the alternatives to tyranny and terror. No matter whether or not you agree with my decisions or not, one thing you have to agree with is that we have not been attacked in the last seven years."

No, we have not. At least, not on our own soil. That doesn't mean we haven't died. 4200 US soldiers have died in Iraq. 30,000 have been wounded. Iraqi civilian deaths are approaching 100,000.

Let us not forget that this war was not sold to us as a means by which to liberate Iraqis from an oppressive regime. Because we would not have bought it. It was marketed to us, carefully and deliberately, as a necessary measure to strike down a country intent on striking us, a charge we now know to have been not only false, but manufactured.

This is the truth. Whether Bush was your guy or not, this is the truth. Whether you voted for Obama or not, this is the truth. Whether you espouse "America - love it or leave it," or believe that BushCo brought down the twin towers with hidden explosives and had the passengers of those four flights shot by their own countrymen, this is the truth. We were lied to.

And they will never be punished for it -- not in their lifetimes, and unfortunately for me, not in mine.

Come on up

Okay, folks, here's the thing about Rick Warren, and shit like that.

I've been mulling this over for a while, and here's my conclusion: it's brilliant.

I know, I've read all the hateful stuff, and believe me, I find him plenty abhorrent. On top of that, I think the whole fallacy behind his mega-seller "The Purpose-Driven Life" is just hooey. The first sentence of the book is, "It's not about you." Now, while I applaud any effort to push Americans into being less selfish, I think it's wrong to tell people that the way out of their self-centered hell is to live for God. I think everyone would be better off if they acknowledged that there is no God, and to learn that to think about others, and to put others before yourself sometimes, and to act charitably, and yes, even to work toward a government that "spreads the wealth around" are things you ultimately do for yourself. Undoubtably there is a moral imperative at work, in that society cannot advance if we don't all care about the collective good, but also, look, if doing all those things I just listed made me feel bad, or even indifferent, I'm not sure I'd bother either. But they don't. They make me feel great about myself, and I don't mean in an "I'm so fucking cool" way, I mean that when I do something good for someone other than myself, it makes me feel good to think about it. Like when you find the perfect present for someone, and you can't stop thinking about giving it to them. It's a great feeling. I mean, there's nothing better, right?

And goddammit man, but Spooney's smile is hard-wired into my pleasure center. Sometimes I manage to express to Spooney how I feel about him in a way that makes his whole face light up like he's a little kid. In that moment, he looks at me like he's never had a bad day, like he's never lost someone he loves, like he's never been betrayed or disappointed or made to feel small. I live for that. I wish I could do it every day. And holy fucking shit, readers, I want that for everybody.

The trouble with living to serve God, is that people tend to start to believe that they have a personal relationship with the Almighty, and in the absence of actual tangible input from Him, which is, let us just remind ourselves, impossible, they start to attribute their own motivations and prejudices to God, and believe that their own ignorant douchehat opinions are shared by a being capable of creating the entire universe from fuck all. The next thing you know, they're on television proclaiming that God wanted 1500 citizens to drown in their living rooms because of the way some people like to configure their sexual organs.

So why then is picking Warren brilliant?

Because, to denounce him is counter-productive. This guy is very very very fucking popular with a lot of genuinely decent people, no matter what I think of him. Why not let those people know that they have a voice? Why not let them know that they have a place at the table? If Obama comes into the White House liberal guns blazing and no room for compromise, he'll get one or two things done off the bat, but then he'll find himself cock-blocked and vilified until the end of his term, or terms, if he even gets another one. He's got to draw the other side toward the middle, and to do that he must step toward the middle himself, or he's got no chance to stay relevant. Is it what I would do? No. But then, I'm not president. I'm an asshole who presumes to tell people that god does not exist. I do not have my finger on the pulse of America.

And it's not like Obama didn't tell us that he was going to do this. I think he mentioned more than once that he was pretty interested in bringing the divergent sides of this country together. No red states or blue states but United States, remember? And what we're working toward is something better than what we have now, okay? Can we all just agree that to make things better must sometimes be enough?

And if you think back to when Bush first ran, what was one of the reasons why so many centrists felt comfortable voting for him? Because he promised to govern from the center, and to draw both sides toward that point. Did he do that? No. Did he ever have any intention of doing that, 9/11 or no? No. You don't pick Dick Cheney as your veep if you have any intention of doing that, obviously. So he lied to us. Deliberately. And it's one of the things I hate most about him. Do you want people on the right to feel about Obama the way we all feel about Bush? Do you want Obama's climate change initiative to stall in Congress? Do you want his health care plan to die in committee? Do you want him be blamed for this economic mess the way Carter was blamed for Nixon's?

Or do you want to get shit done?

I'll admit that I've been feeling pretty hopeless recently. My own economic troubles have seemed to mirror the nation's, and I feel like the time I have left on this earth to do what needs to be done is slipping away, fast. Even the thought of an Obama presidency hasn't buoyed my spirits much.

But then, I was watching the concert on the mall in D.C. yesterday, and you know that I am a stone cold sucker for elevated rhetoric. And when Bruce Springsteen sang "The Rising," and the choir behind him was singing the words "a dream of life," and the camera zoomed in over their heads to the stone visage of my beloved martyr Lincoln, who believed more than anyone ever has, or could ever hope to, that our dreams for this nation shall not perish from the earth...well dear readers, I am only slightly ashamed to admit that tears streamed down my face and that everything changed in an instant.

I've still lost much, I've still been betrayed and disrespected and made to feel as if I were the one in the wrong. But maybe I'm starting now to get the hope thing. Just a little bit.

Think good art global, act good art local

A while ago, I vowed to get rid of all my pre-fab art and hang only original stuff. I'm not there yet, but here's some cool stuff I have acquired, some of it from people you might know.

Too long ago for me to only be acknowledging it just now, my blogger friend Dave from Bad Art Global sent me two paintings from his yellow tulip series. The one on the right also features a robot, which is a common theme of Dave's. I believe they are watercolor on heavy paper. I love these pieces and so I used them to frame two pieces I acquired on the Venice boardwalk. "Karoake Brian" is pastel crayon on cardboard, and "Todd Fish" is acrylic on 2x4. Don't they make a great grouping? And I think I paid twenty dollars total.

This is a print from Mary Catherine over at little red fox. It's called "Little Ghost Girl," and you can buy one in her Etsy shop for only $18! I love her stuff.

I bought two paintings of cows at a yard sale for about ten bucks, and my ex made frames for them out of scrap wood.

This one is supposed to look like you're looking through a fence. Cool, huh?


This is a photo I bought from a photographer at the NoHo Arts Festival. At $35 it's one of my more expensive pieces, but I really like it.


I also got this at the (sadly, now defunct) NoHo Arts Festival. It's part collage and part original painting, on cardboard. I paid $25, I think. It's interesting, isn't it?


This one I also bought on the Venice Boardwalk and I paid 100 clams for it. Pricey, I know, but it is an original acrylic on canvas, and it's over two feet wide. The bridge pictured, called the Hyperion Aqueduct, runs over the LA River between Silver Lake and Atwater Village. One of the tags the painter included on the underside of the bridge is a from a tagger who works in my neighborhood as well. Small world.

Spooney painted this one. The photo doesn't do it justice; the brush strokes are nice and the colors are sort of softly unique. As far as I know it was free, but Spooney will probably reposess it if we ever break up.


My sister painted this for my Grandmother, and she was gracious enough to let me have it when Gran died because she thinks its corny, and I love it. My sister has such a talent for watercolors, which I could never do at all because watercolors are HARD.

And this thing I did. I drew it for Gran about 15 years ago, and I ended up with it again after she died. It's from a photograph of her holding my sister as a baby. The mat and frame are hideous, I know, but I think I was trying to match Gran's sofa, or something. Anyway, it's ebony pencil on paper, and the cost was only a tiny bit of heartbreak.

Jai ho! Golden Globes!

The Golden Globes are too business-like and efficient to truly ridicule; y'all will have to wait for the deliciousness of the Oscars® for the full-on snark.

HOWEVER, a few thoughts:

1. Slumdog Millionaire is the best movie I have seen in a long time, and any award that the foreign press and/or the toadies at the Academy seek to bestow upon it is well-deserved. What I'm wondering is, will the Academy of MPA&S throw it into the "foreign film" category just because there is some subtitle-age, thereby leaving the best picture category open for more conventional Hollywood tripe like "Benjamin Button" aka "Brad Pitt Really Wants That Oscar It Has Been a Long Time Since Twelve Monkeys, Yo." So if you haven't seen Slumdog - go. The premise/framing device is really great, and just about the time you're getting kinda tired of the device, they drop it and just set the story loose. And I love how they heightened the realism without turning the movie into an exercise in magical brown people. Plus, the acting is great, and geez, I even like the soundtrack, and I normally HATE Indian music (and world music in general) with the burning heat of thousand white-hot suns. So, all that, plus the Indian Regis Philbin. Awesome.

2. 30 Rock brings teh funny, but the ratings are not so good. And I have noticed that every smart friend of mine who "meh"s the show is a dude. What's up wit that? Are they not down with the non-glam female lead, or are they perhaps just disciples of The Hitch and his theory that possession of ovaries = not funny? Whatever. Big ups to the show for all the wins and to my friend Jack McBrayer who should be nominated next time, huh?

3. Ricky Gervais is the new Sasha Baron Cohen. Unfortunately, Sasha demonstrated last night that we have no need for the old one. All I got to say is, Bruno better be funny.

4. In the categories where actors who play real people were nominated for Golden Globes, they won 5-2. Well, actually, 5-1, because I don't think you can really count Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII.

Here's Meyers as Henry VII:


Hey, Jonathan, a dancer on a float in the 1998 West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade called. He wants his pants back.

And here's King Henry VIII


Yeah, I think Meyers might have gone a little overboard with the ab definition. Also, his sword is bigger.

Yeah, that's what she said. And by "she," I mean his fourth wife, the German-born Anne of Cleves, whose strategic marriage to Henry secured an alliance against Charles V.

Anyway...I seem to have strayed a bit from my original point, which is, that outside of a Holocaust movie, playing a real person, especially if that person is mentally retarded, physically disabled, or just not feeling very well, is really the best way to win an award. And if you play a real person in the Holocaust, then you can only be beat by someone who...well... died tragically just before the voting began, I guess.

5. Mickey Rourke. Do not care. Didn't care about his first train wreck, and do not care about the second one that's clearly headed his way. The guy's a drug-addled peacock with SAG card, and his skillz are not all that. Seriously, name me one movie since "Pope of Greenwich Village" in which Rourke was impressive. And if Eric Roberts doesn't get to skate for a quarter of a century on an Eric Roberts vehicle, then neither does he.

And don't say "Barfly," either, because first of all, anyone looks cool portraying Bukowski, and secondly, see that actress over in the corner there, the one who can play something besides drunken bemusement? That's Faye Dunaway, and she just stole the movie from him.

And also, Mickey, I don't care if you are buddies with Bruce Springsteen and you love your dogs, man, don't trash talk your competition. Sean Penn doesn't hate homos, okay? Shut up and keep your head down and you may get another chance to have a career in film. Lord knows there are tons of mediocre actors with bad face lifts who are pretty sure they can stay off the stuff who are dying to take your place.

6. Colin Farrell won best actor in a film musical or comedy for In Bruges?? Really?? Colin, see my comments for Mickey Rourke above, and for chrissake, stay away from the collagen.

USA to Illinois: No. --UPDATED

Here in California, our senators have been pretty much set in stone since Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein were both elected in 1992. Since they’re both older Jewish Democrat gals with a penchant for power suits, how do we tell them apart? Simple. Boxer is the smart liberal whom we’re pretty much always proud of. Feinstein is the one with the naked ambition and the “centrist” (read Republican) tendencies. My theory is that she wants to be The Next Hillary, and she’s kicking up a fuss over Obama’s nominee to head the CIA to prove that she’s got mad spook cred. She thinks that Obama’s guy doesn’t have enough intelligence experience. Hey, YOU try finding someone with CIA on his resume who isn’t painted with the Gitmo taint.

The Gitmo taint is some powerful stanky taint, readers, more powerful even than the Blagojevich taint, from what I hear.

And speaking of the Blagojevich taint...

Boo. Bad. Very very very very bad for Illinois. And no, I don’t care that Obama got Reid to agree to seat Roland Burris. Neither do I care that our own Feinstein inexplicably stepped up to caution against turning Burris away from the Senate door. Perhaps it was payback for Obama's apology to her for not consulting her on the spy guy.

And no, I also don’t care that the formerly cool formerly Black Panther Congressman Bobby Rush likened the Senate to a “plantation,” and Burris to some kind of latter-day Mandingo. Um, just kidding about the Mandingo part.

But only just.

So, in case the press hasn't made it clear yet, Roland Burris is a joke, and I’ll give you 3 reasons why:

1. His 2 kids are named Roland Burris and Rolanda Burris. Rolanda. C'mon, even George Foreman would blush at Rolanda.

2. He seems to have trouble distinguishing tombstones from resumes.

Wait, I just remembered another one. Make that 4 reasons:

3. He thinks that his appointment was ordained by God. Haven’t we learned by now that remarks like that are never a good sign?

Sorry, 5. I got 5. Wait, 6.

4. He believes that Illinois deity Abraham Lincoln is not only aware of the job he’s doing, but gave him an excellent performance review.

5. He cried racism where none existed, and by doing so has cheapened a claim that should never, ever, be invoked in bad faith.

Okay, 7. But that’s it.

6. When asked whether he would run for re-election when his appointee term was up, he said “Let me get my Senate legs under me and get in and raise some money to pay for all this stuff.” Ladies and gentlemen, you have just witnessed a preview of the Roland Burris legislative agenda.

7. He weighed another man’s life against a negligible risk to his political ambitions and chose…his political ambitions.

Are we seeing the common thread yet?

You know, the late, great Mayor Harold Washington once famously explained to the city of Chicago what “hubris” was. I can see now that there are at least two Illinois politicians who clearly were not paying attention.

----------------

UPDATE 1/8/09:

Well, that didn't take long. Burris, who was called in today to testify in front of the Illinois House impeachment committee, has admitted that he spoke to a representative of Blago's regarding the empty Senate seat.

What so bad about that? Only that he swore an affidavit stating that he had no such contact.

The Best Part: Burris defended himself by saying that he had originally contacted Blago's rep (actually a former chief of staff and close friend of the governor) not to lobby for the Senate seat, but to try to drum up state business for his consulting firm.

Because that's so much better.