I Told You So, Honey

From the inbox, proof in writing that I am not a complete failure, but a success:

Hello,

We noticed you currently have $10.00 of CafeCash in your CafePress.com account. Congratulations on your success!

I wonder if the liquor store accepts CafeCash?

Life Goes On...And On...And On...

An Oprah's Book Club selection, with foreward by the Rev. Al Sharpton:

When a Stringer Calls

Rich Lowry and others at National Review Online tackle a tough one today: if the phone rings and you can't be sure it's not the BBC, should you answer? E.g., "Thank God, it was just someone from a collection agency. I thought it might be the Beeb."

Singer/Songwriter Alert: Heart currently being ripped out by "Even Tho" by Joseph Arthur. Click Audio & Video and check out the pigtastic video.

Beyond the Valley of the Suck

On a scale of 1 to 10, today started out at -100. Called up my 77-year-old alcoholic dad in the trailer park bright and early and asked him for a loan so checks wouldn't start bouncing. Could I be a bigger failure? Hmmm...let's Google old girlfriends. Hey, lesbian ex-girlfriend went back to school and got her education degree so she could teach typing! This week: H, I, J, K and L. Good call -- that MA in English wasn't worth much, but I swear I use the letter "I," like, every single day. Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles? Not so much. Spent rest of day beating myself up for being such a loser and scouring the sleaziest drugstores in downtown Cleveland for vodka (Orloff, $3.69). Could this day suck any harder?

Well, mom could call this evening and break the news that dad has colon cancer. Man, would that suck. What? Dad does have colon cancer? At least I have my web log for comfort.

Art Appreciation

I did my part for public art this week by "enhancing" some of the stale leftovers from Cleveland's Ingenuity Festival, such as the kitschy "suburban" installations in the city's train station, with "Yes, I am a crappy public art installation" placards.



My ancestors got the Pieta, and all I got is this lousy barbecue grill on astroturf.

Hurricane Katrina Traced to Kanye West

I'm not saying that Kanye West personally is directly responsible for Hurricane Katrina and its devastation. Still, in using a speeded-up sample of Chaka Kahn (after The Chimpmunks held out for five figures) as the backdrop for his "Through The Wire" single, West had to know that the evil robot overlords behind the record industry would tried to cash in with hastily produced imitations.

"Marketingbot!" yells Universalbot into the intercom. "DJ Payolabot is airing 'Through the Wire' ... after only one payment! We didn't even give him the blow yet. Get whoever's in the building in the studio, and speed up some old crap in the background. Jesus, I don't care! Anything!" And so we have Akon's rip of Bobby Vinton's "Mr. Lonely," which will likely inspire a few rip-offs of its own, until I kill the whole trend myself next year by rapping pro-Bush lyrics over a slowed-down Chipmunks record.

Anyhow, you can't expect to put out a record that sucks so very much as "Lonely" and not expect the earth's atmosphere to just play along. The resultant vacuum produced by so much aural suckage between Chicago and New Jersey literally drew Katrina ashore.

All of the hot air spewed by Kanye West since has even me shopping for flood insurance here in Cleveland, but the man still won't shut up. Clearly, Kanye West doesn't care about white people.

P.S. I didn't see the whole Kanyethon mess. I was out of town, in white upstate New York, driving through a tiny little white town and stuffing five bucks into the boot of a young white fireman who was standing in the road collecting for hurricane victims. Of course, I'd already donated at the request of the white cashier working at Whitey Whiteman's grocery store. Until I heard Kanye, I didn't even think of writing "For White People Only" on the bill. Ah, well.

Who Wants to Be Chief Justice? The Home Game

How many times does the word "privacy" appear in the United States Constitution?

1. Four
2. Seven
3. Zero
4. Why do you want to take away a woman's right to choose?

When Weg Met Amerika

So I've heard this guy, Raymond van het Groenewoud, described as "a popular Belgian musician," which is funny, 'cause it reminds me of the line so many local bands from Nowhere, Iowa and environs have used when faced with their stacks of unsold CDs at the local shop: "Actually, we're very popular in Eastern Europe," or, "We're huge in Romania." Sort of like the old Canadian girlfriend line, but it covers your whole band.

If you're dying for a taste of what's hot in Belgium (and have the Amerikan-made Windows Media Player installed), hit this link for some serious European production values and hard-hitting lyrics that really make you think ... that that wasn't powdered sugar on your Belgian waffle this morning after all.



Reportedly, the props department had "no problem whatsoever" locating enough pitchforks, torches, and goats for this extensive video shoot.

The kind folks at Brussels Journal have translated a couple of verses for you, ignorant Amerikan who is too stupid to speak their language:

Down with American colonialism
Down with that ugly, biting English
All the Anglo-Saxon pretence, arrogance
Yes, a hot pick up their ass
And that is that [...]

I am from the Belgian, the European panel
And I ask you: “Clear my channel! Clear my channel!”
Megalomaniac unicellular idiots
Kiss my ass, yes, kiss my balls

Me, I love political criticism from a country that still has a constitutional monarchy. Us, we have King Friday, and even with some guy's hand up his ass to make him talk, he's still less of a puppet than yours.

Flight 93 Memorial Revised

Final monument positioning may vary pending soil testing and confirmation of compass direction from Pennsylvania to Mecca.

Wake Me Up When Green Day Ends

Visit the sick bastards at orgrish.com for all the 9/11 footage you need, including multiple angles of those whose freedom of choice was reduced by militant Islamists to jump or burn.

Before I have to hear Green Day ask one more time, "Wake Me Up When September Ends," let me remind Billy Jo and Co. to put down the bong and realize one thing: it's not a dream. This is the real deal, dumbass.

This Gaping Hole Has No Bottom

Here's that audio of Air Amerika's Randi Rhodes taking her finger off the "gunshot" sound effect button long enough to call Bush "happy" that Democrats are drowning in New Orleans. (Right-click to save and treasure.)

Randi

P.S. And Michael Graham was forced off the air for being insensitive.

To: S. Blumenthal Re: My Big, Black Dick Subj: Blow It

Even now that it's fashionable to blame everything since and including the extinction of the dinosaurs on the Bush Administration, it's still amazing how many people are blaming George W. Bush for Hurricane Katrina. Take former Clinton advisor (yeah, that sounds like a fun job) Sidney Blumenthal, published in Salon and picked up by that hungry-for-truth nation that made "Holocaust" a household word:

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

OK, two can play at that game. Try this on: if your former boss had followed through on his "virtual obsession" with getting bin Laden as much as he focused on getting some fat sloppy intern his daughter's age to hum "Hail to the Chief" between his pasty white thighs, there might not have been a 9/11, and thus, no Iraq war. And New Orleans would have that impermeable force field Bill Clinton always wanted to build.

I've had it with this shit.

UPDATE: Ah, the voice of reason. Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation reminds us all that this "is not a time for personal attacks." And, P.S., "At least [Rush] Limbaugh has the excuse that drug abuse tends to stunt emotional development." OK, time for one or two more personal attacks.

No, says vanden Heuvel, now it is time to "empathize with those who are suffering and think about how we can help them" ... apparently by "asking serious questions about why the Iraq War has led the White House to divert funds from an urgent project to upgrade levees." Um, you'd think a magazine editor would own a friggin' dictionary.

UPDATE 2 - UPDATE BOOGALOO: EU Rota swings the mightly LexisNexis hammer at Blumenthal's argument.

UPDATE 3 - REVENGE OF THE BLOG: Stephen Spruiell lays on the hurt.