fun in nyc

i'm trying to eat a cheeseburger in front of an office building in the midtown area. a tourist walks up to me with the vacantly stupid look that afflicts the truly lost and clueless. the following conversation takes place.

tourist: I hate to bother you while you're eating...

me: and yet here you are bothering me!

tourist: (laughing sheepishly) yes, well, the thing is, I was wondering if maybe you knew where I could find the...

me: people who would be happy to give you directions while NOT eating their lunch? they're all over the place!

tourist: but the thing is...

me: (pointing) look! there's one now!

tourist: oh, i understand.(frowns and walks away)


lately the streets are positively lousy with people soliciting for charity. the other day one of them tries this approach on me:

douchebag: hey! you look like an intelligent person...

me: nope. i am a fucking idiot. seriously.

douchebag: oh, now. really...

me: no. if i told you my life story you'd probably give me some money.

douchebag: (sounding a bit discomfited) uh, well...

me: c'mon. hook a brother up, why dontcha?

douchebag: (ignoring me and starting his spiel on someone else)

the last is not typical of my encounters on the street, but i was having kind of a shitty day.

and recently i noticed an ad on the side of a phone booth for some product called "headshave". the ad featured a big picture of Telly Savalas on it with a caption saying something about a classic look that never goes out of style. are people endorsing products from the grave now? more like "deadshave" if you ask me.

an unplanned vacation...

not that anybody gives a fuck, but i won't be around for a while. comment moderation will be in effect until i return.

take care...

WTF?

i was recently jousting with an obsessive (scroll down to this comments thread) conservative troll who goes by the name SteveAR over at "zandar versus the stupid" and for some reason, the first 2 paragraphs of the following post were not allowed up.

i don't like trolls, plain and simple. the proprietor of this blog is a liberal who posts articles written from a liberal point of view. for a hardline conservative to visit this blog and continually post contrary opinions is like someone visiting a site devoted to how great heavy metal is and then insisting in post after post that heavy metal music is terrible. what's the point other than angering people? there is none. you know going in that no one at that blog or website is interested in your point of view and all you want to do is aggravate them. what you're doing is stupid and considering how much of it you seem to do, almost frightening.

you actually think there's some value in confronting everybody who disagrees with you? there isn't. other than declaring yourself the winner of every argument you have with liberals, where exactly is all this getting you? have any liberal blog proprietors renounced their beliefs after being shown the error of their ways? has any liberal blog shut down rather than face the withering onslaught of conservative wisdom you have to offer? would it ever in a million years occur to you that sometimes people close comments threads due to how frighteningly oblivious you seem in debates? and lastly: why do all you guys seem to believe that anybody who hasn't heard your doctrinaire conservative horseshit is somehow missing out on the finer things in life? get over yourselves, for fuck's sake. nobody's crying because you force them to confront such harsh truths about themselves and their political beliefs. they're crying because you bore the living fuck out of them. you haven't got an original idea in your head.

i'm not Z's "sock puppet" (i'm the sort of vaguely anti-obama lefty regularly derided by Z as "manic progressive" or "useful idiot"), i'm writing to you because i honestly think that what you're doing is sub-moronic and purposeless. you will never change anybody's mind and as you can plainly see from the responses your posts engender, all you really manage to do (here and on the other blogs you visit) is reinforce the stereotypical image that many lefties have of righties.

what you do seems sick and compulsive to me. i'm not going to urge you to get help (that would be an easy laugh and wholly insincere to boot), but i'd be lying if i didn't admit to thinking that you're a badly damaged and extremely sad human being. i'm sure you feel the same way about me, but in a court of genuinely objective observers i happen to think that you're the one who'd end up looking bad.

PS: i'm currently unemployed and consequently have time to fart around on the net like this. but i don't troll conservative (or libertarian) blogs. even considering how much of it i have lately, i've got better things to do with my free time.

i tried splitting my reply into separate posts, but though they seem to be about equal length, only the second half went up. i even removed the profanity from that first section. maybe somebody over at ZVSTS likes trolling conservative blogs and took offense at what i wrote? whatever the reason, they're off my blogroll! that'll learn 'em! they must have gotten at least 2 visitors thanks to me. maybe. aw, who'm i kidding? i barely get 2 visitors a week myself.

in case anyone's curious as to why i insist on posting stuff nobody agrees with over at the av club, i'll explain: it's called "the av club", NOT "a site for smarmy, politically incorrect white guys". it's wrong to post comments that are insulting to women, gays and people of color on a site that should be welcoming to everybody. i'm sure there are plenty of sites that explicitly cater to an all-white frat guy mentality. i have no interest in visiting them and would never in a million years think of breaking up the obnoxious, deliberately offensive threads one might likely find there.

obama to liberals: "how many times do i have to tell you guys to GO FUCK YOURSELVES?"

obama held a press conference yesterday and he used it to lob another hearty "blow me!" at liberals. it's like bill clinton all over again. the guy almost seems to enjoy telling us to drop dead.

This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for a hundred years. But because there was a provision in there that they didn't get, that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for maybe 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness, of compromise.

according to doctors who support single-payer, the uninsured will number something near 23 million nine years after the plan has kicked in. but hey, fuck them too!

If that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it: We will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are.

This country was founded on compromise. I couldn't go through the front door at this country's founding. If we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.

slavery went on and on thanks to compromise. and then the south fired on fort sumter. but naturally, some of his enablers on the left cheered BO's hippie bashing routine.

there's something fundamentally wrong with people who don't get what a pissy jerk-off obama sounds like there.

at some point in the future they may wake up to how utterly bankrupt the "enlightened adults know that compromise is the way to get things done" position really is when the other side is a group as detached from mainstream ideas as the republican party.

i'm not among those who believe that obama is a "manchurian candidate", but he is doing immense damage to the cause of progressivism right now. to keep insisting time and again that borderline-crazy republicans have to be placated to get any legislating done ignores the fact that this kind of behavior clearly emboldens them. somebody needs to stand up or this will never stop. when democrats are in control they'll continue to barely address the concerns of most of the country and the watered-down legislative gruel we get will be rammed down our throats with a reminder that "it could have been so much worse" or "hey, we had to do something or else...". there'll always be an excuse for doing as little as possible and explaining that we should be grateful for it.

no.

we all understand that the democratic caucus is too unwieldy for certain things. that doesn't excuse obama for giving away the store BEFORE negotiations even begin.

beyond that, indulging the republicans as they get more and more extreme is simply a mistake. it's bad for the entire country in the long run. obama is not stupid. the democrats are not stupid. they have to know what a huge mistake they're making. meeting lunatics at some halfway point brings one dangerously close to crazy territory.

if i recall correctly, obama told us to push him in the direction of progressivism, didn't he?

"Let the Republicans back in power." that's a typical threat obama supporters use. they have no idea how hollow that starts to sound when it's repeated over and over and over.

not all of those who disagree with obama are doing crazy things like forging alliances with anti-tax zealot grover norquist the way jane hamsher of firedoglake has. some of us are simply raising entirely legitimate questions about why it is that obama seems almost eager to sell out progressive ideas going into every single fucking negotiation.

(this post is nothing more than a slightly edited version of some comments i posted on "zandar vs the stupid". what can i say? i'm lazy.)

andy harris: asshole of the week

andy harris gets the booby prize this week. he's the newly-elected tea-party republican congressman from baltmore who ran on repealing the healthcare bill, but at his freshman orientation got all bent out of shape when he found out that his new congressional healthcare plan wouldn't kick in until 30 days after being sworn in. it's douche-y and i did get a pretty big laugh from it, but i can't get worked up over the story. the guy now has a job that includes healthcare benefits. what's he supposed to do, turn them down? he didn't run promising to repeal the congressional plan, he ran promising to repeal a plan that would have absolutely no bearing on his life and health if he got elected. and people voted for him! how can you not laugh at shit like that?

he's no different than any other tea party-er. they're great when it comes to yammering against welfare and lazy people, yet there've been numerous funny stories in the news detailing tea party candidates who've been more than happy to take a suck on the ol' government teat when times were trying for them. some (like joe miller in alaska, who lost his senate bid anyway) have come pretty close to what might be seen as abusing the system. i guess it's ok when they do it, because, y'know, they're not lazy malingerers. it's those other people. the ones who, uh, look different. right?

shit. now i am worked up. i'm going to baltimore to kick andy harris right in his fucking teeth. i'm sure the congressional plan includes dental, so it shouldn't be a big deal. plus it'll give him one more reason to bitch about having to wait so long for his healthcare benefits. that'll be good for another chuckle. hey andy! long after your plan kicks in, nearly 40 million americans will still be uninsured!

asshole.

she said "no"

there are 2 new clips up on my youtube channel as of yesterday, but this one (like "false canoe") is exclusive to the blog.

the softest thing

howdy. here's a personal favorite of the many songs i've written and recorded. if you check my blogger profile there's another blog listed there with links so that you can visit my youtube channel and download most of the songs i've posted. based on the stat counter reports, i know a lot of people who don't much care for me are visiting from the av club. personally, i can't imagine why you'd waste your time. in all the years i've been posting there i've looked at maybe a half-dozen of your user profiles. to each his own.