CNN Forecasts Doubt

Hey Chicken Littles!

More bad news from CNN.  Global warming is being challenged by one of the network's own meteorologists.  The good news is we're gonna die anyway.  So at least you got that going for you.

Key paragraph:

      You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much

      is pretty arrogant... Mother Nature is so big, the world is so

      big -- I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water

      or... from ocean acidification before we die from global

      warming, for sure.

Well, isn't that comforting?  Like totally.

Friday Night Funnies

Looking for an uplifting story of how to find happiness in this dreary world?

Try Charlie the Unicorn meets the Banana King.  It's wonderful!  You'll be humming that song for weeks.

Seven Changeling Valkyries

 ** Spoiler Alert **

If you have any intention of seeing Changeling, Valkyrie, or Seven Pounds then read no further.

Is it me, or isn't the world depressing enough?  What with war, ever-present famine, presumed pending environmental calamity, epic economic collapse, geo-political uncertainty, and the winter blues kickin' hard just ahead of the dark solstice.  Now I can't even go to the movies to escape it all.

Five or six weeks ago I went to see Changeling, Clint Eastwood's too long visual masterpiece that, upon exit, imparts the viewer with a compelling desire to slit his own wrists.  You only wait that long because you're too busy retching in your seat in horror throughout the true (!) story.  If you have kids, or even like 'em a little bit, you can't just sit there and take it while:

• a working-class single mother comes home to find her only son missing.
  
• the police first dismiss her concern before excessively responding to the publicity of a child's kidnapping.
  
• the police return a child to the distraught mother who is not her boy, but browbeat her into taking him anyway.
• the mother is summarily thrown into the psych ward by a police captain who doesn't like the new publicity her protests are gleaning.
• a farm in the high desert is revealed to harbor a terrible & chilling history of child kidnap, torture, and murder - by ax, no less!
• trials take place to convict both the corrupt police and the serial killer from the farm.
• the serial killer is executed by hanging while the (STILL) lost boy's mother looks on.
• the mother gets on with her life after 4 or 5 years have transpired.
• the boy is never found -- dead or alive.

I think Clint's point in that final bullet is the mother never lost hope to find her son.  She might not have, but I certainly did.  By the way, any listener to the Jim Rome radio program oughta suggest replacing Mel Gibson's "Give me back my son!" bit with Angelina Jolie's "I want/Where is/This is not my son!"

Which brings us - at last! - to Seven Pounds and Valkyrie.  Just in time for Christmas.  Which has always been too syrupy sweet and just full of hope and light and life and all.  Forget all that bullshit in these troubled times!

Instead, how about another (allegedly) true story where Tom Cruise plays some kind of American-accented Nazi pirate who (like any good Tom Cruise character) after a period of self-doubt and thwarted success determines he needs to assassinate Adolf Hitler.  But then fails and is summarily executed in the end, along with several hundred co-conspirators and sympathizers.

Or Seven Pounds?  A movie marketed as some kind of feel-good man is on some quest to donate his organs to somehow worthy strangers before he dies.  Will Smith?  Hey, it's gotta be funny and heart-warming.  Sorry.

The reason for his death is not a terminal illness.  He's depressed over his responsibility in the deaths of seven people - including his wife/girlfriend/whatever - that occurred prior to the film's beginning.

So what does he do?  Seek treatment for depression?  Find family or friends at his door to intervene?  No, he decides to atone for this accident by committing suicide and donating his pieces-parts to the aforementioned worthy strangers.  And at the end of the film?  He kills himself.

Thank you, Hollywood!  You wonder why I'm not plunking down 10 clams on a regular basis?

Physician, heal thyself!  When you do, I'll be easy to find:  hunched in the fetal position with a stack of newpapers at the front door and reruns of Caddyshack or the ever-uplifting Scarface playing on the tube.

Not that I'll have ten bucks left to my name, mind you...

Random Thoughs

As if these posts weren't random enough:

Blago - Glad the Illinois Supreme Court denied the state attorney general's petition to summarily remove him from office.

The law cited is intended for governors incapacitated by illness or injury, not political malfeasance.  Would have set a dangerous precedence by opening the door to seek anyone's ouster for any reason.  And there's already an avenue -- true, a slower lane -- for firing the Gov.  Let the impeachment proceedings begin!

Hey, rules are rules.  It doesn't matter what people want "Right Now!".  Just a little concept known as due process.  That's why Obama has to wait 'til January 20th.  Deal with it people...

_____

Blago II - I've finally got it!  The guy looks just like a pompadoured illegitimate love-child of Tom Cruise and William H. Macy.  Study the linked photos and judge for yourself...

                        Macy  +  Cruise  =  Blago

_____

Madoff - Or as many commentators call him:  Made-off.  Let me get this straight.  I gotta feel sorry for wealthy investors who plunked down $1 million minimums -- and quite often the entire family fortune -- to buy into a super-secret formula to guarantee annual double-digit return rates?

Aren't wealthy investors supposed to be smart enough to diversify their portfolios?  Haven't they read investment primers that repeatedly stress the concept of risk vs. reward?  How even 10% is considered aggressive & risky; unsustainable?  Besides, you are (were) already millionaires!  You wanted more?!?

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.  So F. U.  And pass the bacon.

_____

Oil Prices - Have hit $40 / barrel, dropping more than $100 from their peak 4-1/2 short months ago.  Just in time to save the economy. Ecology can wait.  Again.

_____

Auto Bailout - The U.S. auto industry needs a bailout to stave off bankruptcy and save upwards of 3 million domestic jobs.  Where was the help when the home electronics industry liquidated domestic TV & stereo production 30 years ago?  Or when steel manufacturing fell to foreign competition 20 years ago?  Or appliance makers exited the country wholesale 10 years ago?

But somehow automotive is too big and entwined with the whole economy to be allowed to fail.  Hey, we're not addicted to oil!  We're addicted to car production.  It's just the cars that are addicted to oil.

At least we still have fast food and financial services.  Those are working out great for our, um, collective health.

_____

Global Warming - Last week Houston got hammered with winter weather.  Then New Orleans a day later.  Today it's Las Vegas' turn in the snow globe.  Now what are the odds of that?  All you Chicken Littles can keep saying the sky is falling.  Hmm, I guess it is.  It's called snow.

_____

Buffalo Bills - err, I mean Ralph Wilson's ultimate 401(k) plan.  A personal retirement ATM that spits oceans of cash taken from poor & dumb slobs who'd rather paint their naked chests in red and blue paint, booze like vikings, and publicly have their hearts ripped from their chests and stomped upon again and again and again.

To be liquidated upon his death (we're still talking about Wilson's pension here) with proceeds to be distributed to his heirs.  Which don't include the people of Buffalo.

_____

Enjoy the weekend folks!    (Oh wait, it's only Thursday...)

Illinois - Scarface Edition

Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich:    Hello Barack!  Congratulations again on your win.

Presumptive White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel:    Good morning, Governor.  The President-elect couldn't speak with you today.  He's very busy with some folks from Detroit.

Blagoface:  You know what?  Fuck you!  How about that?

Emanuel:   Listen Blago, I just want to make clear we appreciate your considering our preferred candidate to replace Senator Obama.

Blagoface:  In this country, you gotta make the money first.  Then when you get the money, you get the power.  Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

Emanuel:   She's a good woman.  Call her, uh, "Candidate #1".  She'd make a good senator.

Blagoface:  You want to give me the cash, or do I kill your brother first, before I kill you?

Emanuel:   Why don't you try sticking your head up your ass?  See if it fits.

Blagoface:  I got ears, ya know.  I hear things.

Emanuel:   Yeah?  What do you hear about George Ryan and the Jackson family?  What about them?  What about Eliot Spitzer?  What is he gonna do when you start moving 2000 keys?

Blagoface:  Fuck Eliot Spitzer!  And fuck the fuckin' Jackson family! Fuck 'em all!  I bury those cockroaches!

Emanuel:   What about homosexuality, Rod?  You like men, huh?  You like to dress up like a woman?

Blagoface:  I never fucked anybody in my life didn't have it coming to them.  You got that?  All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one.  Do you understand?  That piece of shit up there, I never liked him, I never trusted him.  For all I know he had me set up and had my friend Angel Harris killed.  But that's history.  I'm here, he's not.  Do you wanna go on with me, you say it. You don't, then you make a move.

Emanuel:   Here pelican, pelican, pelican...

Blagoface:  Look at that!  A junkie.  I got a junkie for a wife.  Her womb is so polluted, I can't even have a fucking little baby with her!

Elvira Blagoface:    Can't you see what we're becoming, Rod?  We're losers.  We're not winners, we're losers.

Blagoface:  You know what your problem is?

Elvira:        What's that?

Blagoface:  You don't got nothing to do with your life.  Why don't you get a job?  Work with lepers.  Blind kids.  Anything's gotta be better than lying around all day waiting for me to fuck you.

Elvira:        Don't toot your horn, honey.  You're not that good.

Blagoface:  Go home.  You're stoned.

Emanuel:   So you want a job for your wife too?

Blagoface:  Okay.  Fuck you.  How's that?

Emanuel:   Fuck you.

Blagoface:  Fuck You!

Emanuel:   I don't have to listen to this bullshit!

Blagoface:  You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours?  You own nothing, you got nothing!  Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you?  Watching everything you do?  Everything you say, man?  Do you know I eat octopus three times a day?  I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears.  I got the fuckin' Russian shoes my feet's comin' through.  How you like that?  What, you want me to stay there and do nothing?  Hey, I'm no fuckin' criminal, man.  I'm no puta or thief.  I'm Rod Blagojevich, a political prisoner from Chicago. And I want my fuckin' human rights, now!

[Slams desk]  Just like the President Barack Obama says.  Okay?

Emanuel:  Obama should see this human right.  He's really good. What do you say Fitzgerald?

US Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald:    Get him outta here!

Side Two

Side 2, Track 1 - "Here Comes Satan's Claws (right down Satan Claws Lane)"

Track 2              - "Trippin' in a Winter Wonderland"

Track 3              - "Fuck You, Baby"

Track 4              - "I Predict a Riot"

Track 5              - "Frosty the Asshole"

Inappropriate Christmas Carols

Here's the album so far:

Side 1, track 1 -  "I saw Mommy Banging Santa Claus"

Track 2 -             "I'm Dreaming of Dorea Holmes"

Track 3 -             edited - too controversial (right, Dr. B?)

Track 4 -             "Rudolph the Brown Nose Reindeer"

Track 5 -             "Carol of the Balls"

Any idea from the peanut gallery?

Every Sentence in my Head...

I don't consider myself a very original thinker.  That's why I'm pretty proud of the scribbles on this blog.  Pretty much everything that isn't credited or obviously ripped off is my own ranting & raving.

You should easily notice when I quote someone else.  Most times I directly cite the author and/or provide a link to the original work. Other times, I'll sign the quote as the artist (ie. "Pete" for Pete Townshend or "Bruce" for Bruce Springsteen, etc).

In a few cases, I have quoted without citation.  That's due to my perception that my audience is small (to be sure, counted on one hand) and solid belief you know where my material comes from.

It won't happen again.

"Why," you ask?  Here's all the reason anyone needs.

Cops - Calgary Edition

(it's really from a Midas commercial)