The department of no self-awareness

Headline of the day!

CYA!

See how the wrinkly old shitbag Greenspan covers his ass after the fact!

Shit you don't want to eat

There's unhealthy food out there and then there's scary franken-food. Something tells me the Baskin-Robbins Heath® Shake should be avoided if you want to live past 25. It comes with 320% of your daily recommended allowance of saturated fat. Yum. Check out the ingredient list, too.

Shooting down deficit hawks

With the economy now firmly in the shitter, people like to talk a lot about "tightening belts." Tightening belts and reining in spending are good if you're managing your household budget, but don't believe the hype that cutting government spending during an economic downturn is necessary or good. It's not.

Check out Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman's op-ed today on the subject.

Gag me with an antique spoon

Why Walnuts McCain won't be our next president:


This ain't no photochop. It was actually taken by a Reuters photog during last night's debate.

Sarah Palin is..... 50 Cent?

This is just an awesome comparison. A. Serwer at Tapped says Palin reminds him of 50 Cent. Read on, it actually makes sense:

The conservative movement at this point basically reminds me of people who thought 50 Cent was going to be the greatest rapper ever because he had been shot nine times, not because he could actually flow. Let's face it, 50 is wack. He's wack like Sarah Palin is wack. But like Sarah Palin, he had a story that reflected the cultural values of realness and authenticity that hip-hop fans had come to place above actual rhyming ability. Most of these fans are not from the hood in the same sense that the folks at The Corner are not Real Americans(tm) from "flyover country," and they can't yet understand what the obsession with authenticity is doing to a movement they supposedly love.

Sarah Palin parking lot

Check out this recent parking lot action outside this Ku Klux Klan rally Sarah Palin rally in Ohio. The stupid! It hurts!

Where are the foreclosures happening

Here's a cool map of where the nation's foreclosures are concentrated. Florida, you're doomed!

Caribou Barbie's strange odyssey

Here's a bewildering look into the icey heart and addled mind of Wasilla's village idiot. Enjoy.

Walnuts is a little bitch-boy

Why don't you go cry to your mommy!

Seriously. What a jackass. Republicans made a huge mistake voting for stupid-ass Walnuts over Mittens or Huckabeez.

Moto photos

I finally got around to washing the bike and taking a few photos. Here ya go. In case you missed it, I got a 2001 BMW R1200C.


Rest assured, this isn't my typical riding gear. No flip-flops!

Greta Van Nosejob

She looks like she walked really fast into a wall. Yep, that's Greta Van Susteren, possibly the least qualified jackass on Fox News (Steve Doocey is a close second). Check out her interview with the "First Dude," and prepare to want to kill yourself.

Billy Badass

I must be on some kind of Billy Badass kick lately, because I'm getting a bike, got a fresh tat and am even considering growing a beard just for shits and giggles.

I've actualy wanted to get a tattoo for about a year or so, but could never decide what to get. It couldn't be something trivial, so I eventually decided to get my lovely wife's initials done up. Luckily my co-worker had a 70s-era graphic design book with tons of really cool stylized letters, so I chose one that captures not only Dionne's initials, but also what I call her on a daily basis -- Di (pronounced like "Dee," not the princess who got killed by the paparazzi).

I know it's probably not his most challenging piece of artwork ever, but I think I found a pretty damn good tattoo artist. Check him out my man Guzik here. I kinda want another one now!

2 Wheels

I have been seriously slacking on the blog this summer. I admit it. Hopefully you've been able to live your lives without me for a while.

There's one major thing that's been on my mind lately: I'm getting a motorcycle this weekend. It turns out, my old man bought a new BMW K1200GT for himself and decided to give me his 2001 BMW R1200c. To get an idea of what it looks like, check out this page.

Here's the plan: I'm flying up to Pittsburgh on Friday morning. Then we're going to ride south Friday and Saturday, eventually making it down to Asheville, N.C. Then Sunday morning I'm gonna do the last 200 miles or so by myself and pops will hoof it back to Morgantown. It should be a nice leisurely pace!

The Onion... or the real thing

Is this a joke or not? I can't tell. It really should be in The Onion.

ESPN might take itself too seriously

A real news flash, I know.

Check out "The Onion."

Walnuts and sex (you're welcome!)

You probably heard about John "Walnuts" McCain's latest gaffe involving his position on health insurance paying for contraceptives (and only tangentially related to Viagra, but the media picked that up and ran with it anyway). Well, here's an interview from last year in which the old bag of bones got thrown off by a question about AIDS. This man CANNOT seriously be running for preznit, right?

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

The asshole of the South

Di and I travelled to South Carolina twice recently. Once to Charleston (a very fun little city) and once to a state park (where we camped and went to the beach).

Both places were nice enough, and the people in Charleston were pleasant, but the rubes who make up the rest of the state are downright fugly. I should have known this when they spent the entire weekend staring at us like space aliens. (For those who don't know, she's black and I'm a 'Nilla/cracker/Altoid/honky.)

So I wasn't surprised that a campaign to attract gay tourists to South Shithole is being criticized by rightwing fucknuts.

Here's state Republican Sen. David Thomas:

“South Carolina is a wonderful, family friendly destination not a Southern version of San Francisco. This campaign goes against our core values.”

Of course, one of the Wonkette commenters pointed out that South Shithole also regularly produces stories like this one.

Some highlights:

- The victim's name is Tammy. (shocker!)
- The perp's name is Pooh Bear. (He also has two first names and is Tammy's son. Again, none of this should surprise us.)
- The perp supposedly urinated on his mother.
- Tammy then stabbed Pooh Bear six times. (This being S.C., Pooh is lucky he didn't get shot.)
- The following quote was uttered: "Why did you pee on me Pooh Bear? This was met with the reply from Pooh Bear of: "Mama you done stabbed me."
- The police didn't charge Tammy with assault

Google suggests some stereotypes

You've probably encountered Google Suggestions already, even if you don't realize it. It's the feature in the Google toolbar/Firefox search menu that automatically pulls up the most searched terms as soon as you start typing. Hence, if you type in "S," up pops the most common serach terms starting with "S."

So I happened to type in "stereotypical," and before I could complete the phrase, up popped the list of most stereotypical search for stereotypes:

- stereotypical gay
- stereotypical British phrases
- stereotypical Australian names
- stereotypical black foods
- stereotypical chinese song
- stereotypical college student
- stereotypical gay names
- stereotypical working class

Make of this what you will.

Walnuts misses the train

I'm going to keep harping on how out-of-touch, and behind-a-few-steps John "Walnuts" McCain is. Don't get it twisted, the "Maverick" is really just a half-senile old bag of bones without an ounce of forward thinking.

Here's a nice smackdown of his record on Amtrak and rail transit. Walnuts thinks we can engineer emissions-free cars sooner and more efficiently than we can improve transportation options. What planet is he from?