- I find this story extremely amusing for two reasons: 1) Rachel Ray is a TERRORIST. 2) Michelle Malkin is an idiot. OOH LOOK SHE IS WEARING A SHIRT SO DO ARABS DUNKIN DONUTS HATE AMERICA. No matter how much I dislike Rachel Ray, going this crazy because she decided to wear a scarf somewhat similar to a keffiyeh (which actually looks like this and doesn't feature the paisley pattern seen on Ray's scarf) is completely ridiculous. Particularly as the scarf is NOT a keffiyeh, which one can determine if they look closely instead of glancing at a black-and-white scarf and completely flipping a shit. Furthermore, Ms. Malkin, do you sincerely believe Dunkin' Donuts is trying to subliminally push a pro-Palestinian/anti-America agenda, particularly as their slogan "America Runs on Dunkin" associates the company with our country (Apple Pie, Baseball, and Dunkin' Donuts. Sounds about right.)? I think not. But to you, the commercial is an assault on our nation and all it stands for, and is a more pressing issue than our economy being in the shitter or American troops and innocent civilians dying half a world away. Well done. Now fuck off.
- Oh, Hillary, I'm sorry, but you need to stop. Your RFK comment certainly isn't helping you out. Neither is your campaign chair's strategy of blaming said gaffe on Obama. And as for the assertion that your husband didn't secure the nomination in 1992 until June? Well, he actually wrapped that one up in early April. Take it easy, Hil. Why don't you sit this next one out. Stop talking for a while.
- The ladies do not appear to be doing so well in today's installment. And Sharon Stone isn't about to buck the trend. So according to the actress, most famous for showing her cooch, the Sichuan earthquake and its large death toll are the result of bad karma from China's poor human rights record in Tibet. So the Chinese government does something bad, and karma balances things out by killing thousands of innocent people. This is kind of like the whole "Hurricane Katrina was because of buttsex" thing. Evidently, Karma is a dick. Either that, or Earl's got a whole lotta work to do. The Chinese were quick to respond to Stone's comments by banning her movies. Hopefully this was not because of her words, but because most of her films are bloody awful.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
WTF, World: Volume XXIV
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Last Man on Earth is Lame. (UPDATE!)
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Last Man on Earth is Lame.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
WTF, World: Volume XXIII
- I think "PWND" would sum up this link nicely, but I'll ramble on anyway. So last week our president essentially compared Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain during a speech in Israel. This became a topic of debate on "Hardball" a day or so later, and the conservative talk show host featured on the program threw his full support behind Bush's comments. He did this, even though he did not know who Neville Chamberlain was, what the Appeasement of Hitler/Munich Agreement was, or what the word appeasement, in fact, actually means. Luckily, Chris Matthews called him out and utterly DESTROYED him upon noticing this. The real sad thing here, however, is that, even though this talk show host may have no idea what he is talking about, he probably has a ton of listeners following his every word, who now think Obama is going to give a nuclear weapon to the terrorists and allow them to blow up a target of their choice if he becomes president. And, again, this is why Idiocracy is not just a comedy, but a chilling look into our future.
- A fossil fuel-based energy firm is funding efforts to stop the Cape Wind Farm? Why, I thought it was just rich assholes worrying about nonexistent obstructions to their vacation homes' views and even richer assholes worried about smashing their million-dollar yachts into said obstructions. On another note, I love the rationale behind those two arguments. So, according to these people, the wind turbines will be so big that they will be visible from shore (in reality, they will appear, at most, to be small specks on the horizon), and yet not big enough to be visible at considerably shorter distances to those skippering yachts. Bravo. Just shut up and enjoy your treasure baths.
- Ladies and gentlemen, your fantastic destination for Super Bowl XLVI in 2012 will be... Indianapolis! Wait, what? Apparently Buffalo was not available.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
WTF, World: Volume XXII
- This week's entry in "How are these people allowed to vote?" comes from a lovely group of folks from West Virginia, who seem to be doing all they can to perpetuate the "dumb hillbilly" Appalachian stereotype. I don't know which was more entertaining, the lady who won't vote for Obama because his middle name is Hussein, which obviously means he is related to and has the same political agenda as Saddam (not to mention the fact that he HATES America), or the lady who won't vote for him because she is afraid of black people (Ooh, looks like someone's been reading the Turner Diaries!). Again, these people help decide who will run this country. HAHA THEIR VOTE CANCELS OUT YOURS
- Florida teacher fired for wizardry. No word yet on if he turned anyone into a newt. Ah, Florida. Always coming through with a good WTF when you need it.
- Republicans hate mothers. Hate 'em. I really don't understand their rationale behind this. It wasn't like the vote in question was to give mothers a bajillion dollars of taxpayer money or something like that; the resolution was just some abstract thing akin to "Okay everyone. Cupcakes are great. All those who agree, say aye...". But no. Republicans had to vote en masse against the resolution, expressing their dislike for moms and possibly cupcakes as well. Evidently those bible thumping red state representatives forgot about that whole "honor thy mother and thy father" thing in the Ten Commandments. In other news, the house minority leader's name is "Boehner". /dick joke
- In addition to creating the internet, Al Gore is also responsible for the global food crisis, according to Fox News. Wait, what?
- And the biggest WTF, by far, goes to the Burmese government, for their general resistance to aid following the Cyclone Nargis tragedy. I may jokingly complain about Fox News and creationists here (nearly) every week, but the actions of the military junta in Burma are appalling and those in the government are truly despicable human beings.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Losing My Dignity, Italian Style
Okay, time for a damage assessment.
Where are you?
In a bed. In Venice.
Good. What time is it?
I have no idea.
It’s 10:30. Do you have your wallet and passport?
Yes, thank God.
One last question: Why are you still wearing your shoes and coat?
Fuck.
Thus began the morning of my last full day in Venice, a day spent, primarily, nursing the third worst hangover of my life.
Yes, I rank them. I’m like the BCS, but with drinking (BCS? MORE LIKE BLOWS CHUNKS SYSTEM! LOL I KILL MYSELF SOMETIMES).
Where was I? Right. Remembering my night before. You know how, if you lose your keys, it's good to retrace your steps to figure out where you put them? I was applying the same method to discover why, exactly, I was still wearing a jacket and shoes. Let's take a trip back in time...
/"Wayne's World" dream sequence
The night began quite innocuously.
"Okay, we need to finish this wine so that John doesn't have to carry it home."
John was as close as our group had to a Venice native. Although he was not Italian, per se, he had lived in Venice for the last two years, and knew the city, at least to my knowledge, as well as any local would. He is a gregarious and generally affable man, which suited well for his one time side job: providing drinking tours of Venice for tourists. Sometimes he was actually paid for this, on other occasions he simply received free alcohol for the night. Through this work, he managed to become personally acquainted with, and I am completely sure of this, every single person in the city. This would come in handy later in the evening.
For the time being, John supplied us with wine. Lots of it. It needed finishing, and I wasn't about to let anyone down.
Let it be known that I am not, in the least bit, a wine drinker. It’s not that I’m trying to be some sort of reverse-snob; I just have never acquired a taste for the stuff. I don't sniff the glass, I don't (consciously) do the swishing motion, and I don't sip. Years of beer drinking have hardened my psyche so that I will drink pretty much anything at the pace I drink beer, which tends to be relatively fast. As always, I am an ass.
So roughly one hour and five glasses of wine later (WOO WINE POWER HOUR), the UNESCO office in Venice (bless the United Nations and their hospitality) closed up shop, and we were out on the street. And, like any street in Venice, it was exceedingly beautiful. When I first arrived in the city, I spent a few hours just walking around taking photographs. Eventually, I had to stop because I realized that literally everywhere was picture-worthy. You can't turn around without seeing some picturesque bridge arching over the canals or beautiful old buildings slowly, artfully crumbling back into the stone streets. This is all heightened by the fact that there are no cars (or motorcycles, mopeds, or even bicycles) to be seen in Venice. They are not allowed. Which is nice.
From the UNESCO office, we worked our way to the Ponte Rialto, which I’m sure is Italian for something (Rialto bridge, if you’re keeping score at home). To be honest, I always hate name-dropping places in other languages. I feel it makes me sound pompous. I always picture some snooty old lady dressed like a character in The Great Gatsby saying “Oh, the Cote de Azur is splendid this time of year. You simply must see it,” or a trustafarian condescendingly lecturing about his adventure to some far-flung destination where he/she was the only white person in sight. I’d much rather say something like “We met at Tim’s bridge”, but, then again, that sounds ignorant. It’s quite a sticky situation being neurotic, you see.
Anyway, there are several wine bars located within a block (or whatever the Venice version is) of the Rialto, all of which have the same basic character. Essentially, you walk up to the closet-sized bar, order a glass of wine, and drink it on the street. Almost all drinking and dining in the city seems to take place on the street. Even large restaurants appear to have the capacity for perhaps twenty people indoors. The plus side of this is that you get to enjoy the weather. The drawback is that it rained nearly every day I was there. Still, the wine will make you forget this.
We managed to take advantage of three bars in the area. All of them prominently featured Prosecco. Prosecco is a sparkling white wine, and can be thought of as the Venetian version of Champagne. It’s made from, well, Prosecco grapes, which only grow in the Veneto (the region surrounding Venice) due to the unique soil characteristics there (probably something to do with the minerals and pH, but geochemistry is boring). Other wines try to pass themselves off as Prosecco, but they are not. So if you’re inspired to go out and buy some, make sure to check the label and find out where the wine came from. Again, I am not a big wine drinker, but Prosecco is awesome. I’m sure someone who is knowledgeable in this area could tell you about the wine’s fruity or floral overtones or something like that, but I’ll leave you with this: It is delicious, and the bubbles tickle your nose.
One subject I do have some expertise in is beer, however, and following an earlier experience with it in the city, I made sure not to purchase any that night. Beer in Venice is bad. Very bad.
Let me explain.
One evening I strolled up to a restaurant, sat down, and asked for a beer. The waiter asked me if I wanted a small or large glass, to which I (obviously) responded “Large.” Seemingly half an hour later the man returned with a twelve-ounce (keep in mind this was the large option) glass of watery-tasting lager. Disappointed, I downed the beer and asked for the check, which came back to me with a charge of ten euro. Surely, I thought, there was some mistake, and I quickly scrolled through the drink menu for prices. I was wrong. Twelve ounces of crap beer cost seventeen dollars (at that time’s exchange rate). Let me put that in caps for you so it will sink in. SEVENTEEN DOLLARS. This is not because that restaurant was a tourist trap (all of Venice is, frankly). Beer was priced like this (generally from six to ten euro for 750 mL) at bars and restaurants across the city. Lesson learned, I made sure to stick to Prosecco from then on.
Moving forward, our group of sixteen (this number would dwindle down to four as the night progressed) managed to squeeze into one traghetto, a cheap gondola used to ferry passengers across the Grand Canal, en route to our next bar. By some miracle of science, the gondola did not sink. However, it sat perhaps two inches, at most, above the waterline. A wave would have swamped us and we would have drowned in a combination of lagoon water, garbage, and raw sewage (Venice has no sewage treatment; everything discharges to the canals). Luckily, we made it across, thanks to divine intervention and the skill of our two gondoliers. One, it seemed, had somewhere between little and no larynx. I, and the rest of our party, was also convinced he was drunk. By the way his voice sounded, he had possibly imbibed some sort of gravel-tar-liquor combination. He began to sing “O Solo Mio” (with all the intonation of Stephen Hawking, might I add) before changing his tune halfway through to a completely different song. I don’t remember what it was, but, for comedy’s sake, let’s say “Living on a Prayer.” Still, for a drunk robot he was good at his job and not one passenger ended up even the slightest bit wet (insert wildly inappropriate joke).
From here we continued through the Sestiere (think neighborhood) Dorsuduro, stopping at places where John was intimately familiar with the bartender. This equated to pretty much every bar in the land, and the night began to rapidly go downhill for yours truly. I had not eaten since lunch, and continued under the assumption that we would stop for pizza before we went to the next bar. That pizza never came. I was in trouble. Eventually, through some twisted logic, I convinced myself that, since wine had calories, it was like eating something, so I would be okay. That idea must be one of the stupidest things I have ever conceived, and it would come back to haunt me sooner than I anticipated.
For the time being, the evening followed followed a marching-like cadence. Walk to a bar. Order a drink. Drink said liquor. Urinate. Go to next bar. This rhythm would occasionally be interrupted by someone spilling a drink, or random singing, or John yelling “PROSECCIAMO!” (This is a made-up word. –iamo is an Italian suffix meaning “we will”. Thus, John, in his love for wine, tacked it onto “Prosecco” to make “We will Prosecco.” It was his battle cry.). You tend to not realize how much you have had to drink when you fall into a pattern like this. I certainly did not.
The wine caught up to me all at once, and Venice became a blur. I listed to the side like a crippled ship in a storm as we walked to each of John’s old haunts. I was in trouble. Luckily, some sort of reason managed to poke though my drunk haze, and I switched from booze to water at a few bars near the end of our adventure, saving me from further damage. I was still hopelessly intoxicated, however, and all the water in Venice wasn’t about to change that.
At my last stop of the night, I found a random Italian person and attempted to chat him up about soccer. I love to talk about sports to the point that it must annoy the crap out of anyone I speak to. Soccer, in particular, is one of my favorites. I was in the home of the reigning World Cup Champions, and, in my inebriated state, figured anyone here MUST want to talk about the sport. Luckily for me, the man I approached was as drunk as I and happened to be a fan, which worked out nicely, as he was not scared off by my enthusiasm. Unfortunately, he spoke between little and no English, and my Italian is basically limited to “Grazie”. So somehow it ended up that we just shouted names of soccer players and teams at each other, punctuated by nods and “Si, si”s when we agreed that said player/team was any good.
“LUCA TONI.”
“SI! SI! ROBBIE KEANE.”
“SI! SI!”
And so on.
After what felt like five solid minutes of shouting (which probably were ninety seconds) I broke for the bathroom. On my way back out, I walked square into a table and some chairs. It was time for me to call it a night. I slurred my goodbyes to my remaining compatriots and headed out into the night.
And I’m sure John soldiered on with the stamina, and liver, that only someone who once drank professionally could have. I, through the grace of God (and my compatriots Rick and Derek who, bless them, must have pointed me in the right direction at every intersection), managed to make it back to the hotel, successfully navigating through windy streets and steep bridges using a walking style that could essentially be boiled down to "lean forward and let your feet catch up".
Everything else from here should pretty much self-explanatory, as nights when you are extremely inebriated end the same way, regardless of where you are.
Eight hours later, I woke up on top of my bed, fully clothed.
I spent much of the next day aimlessly wandering around the city. Yet again, it was a gray and drizzly day. I walked for a solid three hours, enjoying the sights and sounds as long as they were not too loud and I did not have to move my eyes quickly. Although I eventually managed to shake the hangover, I couldn't escape the feeling that I had lost something the night before.
So if you happen to be in Venice and find my dignity anywhere, drop me a line and we can make some sort of arrangement.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
WTF, World: Volume XXI
- The electoral process in America is slowly changing from something designed to express the voice of the people and help change the country for the batter, to, I don't really know... A sport? Reality TV? Who knows, but, at this point, it all looks like a huge fucking joke. One reason is because of jackasses like these people. Seriously, seem to not give a shit about relevant issues or the repercussions of their actions. But hey, when your candidate wins the election, you can celebrate like your team won the Stanley Cup, riot, and rub your rivals faces in the dirt. Fixing the economy, resolving the war, improving our nations' image? Who hives a shit, hippies, we fucking won the election. Aaaaand... scene.
- Hey, (Sir Edmund) Hillary, you know what's a good quality for a President? A sense of shame. Evidently she does not understand this, and now she's trying to change the rules to gain the nomination. Again. She reminds me of those kids who, when playing"rock, paper, scissors" would bust out something like "Atomic Bomb" because it blows up everything, even though the game isn't called "rock, paper, scissors, ATOMIC BOMB".
- I gotta give republicans credit. They are excellent at smear tactics. Case in point: Jonesville Church of God (because, according to these people, Jesus is Republican and probably hates black people and/or muslims). "Obama, Osama, hmm..." OH I GET IT THEY ARE SPELLED KIND OF SIMILAR.
- The final WTF for this week goes out to me, who has failed to update the site with any regularity over the past month. Well, that changes now (I hope). Enjoy Friday's super long entry.