Vernon T. Bludgeon Consulting is pleased to welcome the newest addition to its executive staff.
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Bill Clinton? He’ll be fine.
I hear on today’s news that 26,000 people have wished Bill a speedy recovery.
Folks, don’t worry: he’ll be fine. Unlike so many millions of his fellow citizens, Bill enjoys access to the finest available medical care as part of the benefits package that came with his old job (President). I bet it’s all covered 100%. I bet he won’t even have to see a so-called Explanation of Benefits. As my dad pointed out the other day, he surely doesn’t have to share a room — with some random moribund loser crapping into his colostomy bag. In fact I wouldn’ t be surprised if the hospital comps his phone.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge Bill his quality health care. I just wish we had universal health care in this country, as they do in every other country that is considered a modern, developed democracy.
One Helluva anti-RNC Protest
Mordant wit and creativity showed up along with those 200,000 or so protesters at the demo against the Republican National Convention last Sunday. I took quite a few pictures, such as
this one, and this one, and this one (insolent skanky-ass New York hoes! I love you!).
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Arrogant scumbags, don’t come back.
Who’s Up for Some anti-RNC Protest?
I know I sure as hell am. See you there.
¡Bravo Hugo Chávez! Fuck the Wall Street Journal
Yeah you heard me.
The editors of the Journal apparently think the outcome of the referendum in Venezuela reflects the sorry state of Venezuelan democracy. Right. When the guy who’s in power cares more about the plight of the impoverished masses than about the oligarchy, and the oligarchy can’t get rid of him, then that isn’t democracy. Thank you George Orwell.
sometimes people who don’t know shit know shit
Two little anecdotes illustrate the point of our title.
Anecdote 1:
I’m at work and one of the geeks and I are playing around with a Dell laptop running Mandrake Linux 10 and trying to get its display output to a VGA projector. This should be trivial, but it wasn’t. I readily acknowledge that I don’t know shit about laptops and this guy does. But as he’s struggling and fumbling around for minutes after minute, I say, hey maybe it wants to be rebooted. No, he says, that’s not it. More minutes go by before he tries rebooting. Bingo.
Anecdote 2:
A client for whom I do web development emails me a spreadsheet in which there is a column of numbers that is supposed to match id numbers in a database table. I start fooling with the sorting and unwittingly commit the most bone-headed mistake any fool who knows spreadsheets knows not to do: I highlight a column and say “sort..,” and when the dialogue pops up and prompts me to “widen the selection” I say, “bah, I know what I’m doing” and bypass it, and fail to notice that it sorted only the values in that column and left the rest untouched. Being a database guy used to saying “select * from some_table order by foo,” I suppose I just expect all the data fields in a row to stay together. But no excuses — I continue to examine this spreadsheet, see the ids have apparently been randomly re-assigned, and start mentally accusing the clueless ones of somehow screwing something up, and proceed to waste numerous minutes of their time with emails trying to encourage them to get it right, because they don’t know shit, and I do. Uh huh.
Giving in to mobile telephony
I finally, finally gave in a few weeks ago and got a mobile phone. I held out as long as I could on the grounds that (1) I was a contumaciously independent-minded eccentric who disdained herd mentality consumerism, and (2) I didn’t really need one.
But I guess I said WTF and joined the herd. And right away I learned something interesting: getting a mobile phone does not automatically make you more popular! Especially when you don’t tell anyone your number. And here I was expecting the cute sexy little device to be ringing off the… hook?
Whatever, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Nixon’s Anniversary and the Lost Art of Resigning
The 30 year anniversary of old Trickie Dick’s resignation got me thinking about this. Politicians and hotshot corporate executives just don’t know how to resign in this country any more. Oh sure you still get some resignations, like Governor what’s-its up in Connecticut who recently threw in the towel, at long last, when there was an angry mob circling his house with torches and clubs. For the most part the art of resigning is practiced more in Europe and in Japan nowadays. People in the USA, in general, just don’t seem to know when to say, “ok, I fucked up, give me an hour to clean out my desk and I’m gone.”
Nixon held on as long as he could, too long no doubt. But let’s remember — guys were dropping like flies all through the Watergate scandal, mostly resigning in disgrace, some in protest. Not like these arrogant, shameless shits you have in DC nowadays, like Rumsfeld, you should have hit the road long ago over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
Pinkwater proves Terry Gross is an idiot
The other day I heard Daniel Pinkwater, the writer of children’s books and self-proclaimed fat guy, interviewed by Terry Gross on her show Fresh Air. There’s always been something vaguely annoying about Terry but I’ve never been clever enough, or perhaps never tried hard enough, to identify and articulate exactly what.
Now Pinkwater comes along and without any apparent effort to humiliate or ridicule her, makes it plain that Terry is something of an idiot. When she asked him “were you close to your parents [when you were a child]?”, he said something like “Close? They were my parents,” i.e., how far away could they be, for fuck’s sake? This was but one of numerous examples. It loses a lot in the retelling but take my word for it.
Farenheit 9/11:: Go See It. Now!
Sure, parts of it are extremely painful and distressing. Sure, it’s slanted, one-sided, and manipulative of the audience’s emotions.
On the other hand, to my knowledge no one has disputed, much less refuted any of the facts asserted in the film. And words like “good,” “powerful,” “effective,” etc., don’t come close to doing it justice. Devastating is more like it. There were no basic facts revealed to me that I hadn’t already gotten from my progressive alternative lefty media sources. But Michael Moore develops those facts and drives them home with.. well, devastating… impact.
If you’re an advanced Bush hater you might think it impossible to walk out of the theatre despising George and his vicious, greedy warmongering cronies even more than when you walked in. But you will. And somehow George will seem more pathetic and ridiculous — as well as dangerous — than ever before. And that, in turn, combined with the tremendous success of this film, has the effect of instilling in me a measure of confidence than he is gonna be fired come November.
Will it change any minds or just preach to the converted? Apparently it can open and change some minds, from what I hear. If you get a Bushie into the theatre you’ve already accomplished something remarkable — who would want to see that liberal faggot-ass America-bashing commie bullshit? And if the Bushie watches the film, the Bushie’s wheels will simply have to start turning, if he has any.
It isn’t enough just to beat this guy in November. We have to thrash him and kick his evil ass out into the street (and into prison would be nice, but first thing’s first). Nothing less than a landslide will do. That’s why I just heeded MoveOn.org’s latest plea to give money to the wealthy, senatorial, phony Mr. Kerry, but by hitting a URL that signals his campaign that the money came from a progressive, not from a corporate fat cat. Yes I’ve come around: I’ve shit on Kerry before, but now I’m pretty much with the program.