When the hammer comes down

Tom Delay was indicted today and that just fills me with such tremendous amounts of glee it almost makes the melancholy from travelling all week drift away.

Enjoy your next steps to unemployment and disgrace you piece of shit. I'll enjoy watching you cry about how unfair politics can be for the next six months.

Body slammed

Things have lined up against me that have left little to no time for the old blog this week. I feel like the Iron Sheik of blogging who just got pounded by Hulk Hogan's 27 inch pythons of overwhelming business. I'm off to Palm Springs on Sunday, I'm sure flying out west will be a treat with Rita making landfall. Oh joy!!!!!

I have lots of good tales to tell including a conversation about the awesomeness of spandex pants and BC Rich guitars. It will be worth the wait I promise.

Let's be careful out there.

RockStar AMS

I haven't seen my friend Iron Mike Holden in quite some time and now I know why. That shifty little bastard changed his name to Mig, turned into a raving ponce and is trying to become the new lead singer of INXS!!!!!! I was watching TV last night and there he was talking to Dave Navarro with some crazy British accent.

Look at the proof!! Do pictures on the internet lie!!!!

Mikey I don't where you get the moxie but as a friend I have to tell you if you're going to wear the skintight leather trousers and you're...ummmm....shortchanged in a certain critical area follow the lead of Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap and get some image assistance from the produce department at the grocery store.

You go Iron Mig, may the gods of rock and roll guide your way. Follow in the swanky footsteps of Michael Hutchence, just stop following when you get to the hanging yourself in the nude part.

You can catch Mike this Sunday, September 18, 2005 at the Austin Grill's "A Heart As Big As Texas" Fundraiser at the Austin Grill in Silver Spring, MD. A couple days after that we'll all find out if he's the new singer for INXS.

You can never...tear us apart.....bom bom bom bommmmm......

The face of hope

This is the face of hope and charity. Note the smooth Star Wars iron on t-shirt that the face is sporting.

My friend Gary in the picture over there is a better person than I am. He works for the Red Cross, he goes to Mass, he visits his parents regularly and at most times in my life has had money owed to him by me and hasn't busted my sack to get it back on an even remotely timely basis.

We've been friends since we were six years old. At first we hated each other because we both had eyes for Ms. Goodwin, our sultry teacher, but after a playground scuffle where he beat my ass we were told by Ms. Goodwin (that harlot) to be friends or go to the Principal's office. Being that we were both raised in the houses of Air Force officers we were geared towards respecting commands from authority figures, (at least at that time), so we followed orders and have been friends ever since.

Gary has always looked out for me as I stumbled idiotically through life. From running into an emergency room with no pants on when the Mrs. was in the operating room and I was badly freaking out to getting into a fight that I started in Dave Grohl's moms English class and getting tossed out of school for a bit he's been the guardo camino deluxe to me. I have foisted terrible stupidity upon him over the years and aside from the occasional charlie horse and throwing me over a coffee table covered with champagne flutes he's been amazingly tolerant and supportive. Maybe he's secretly in love with me. I mean, look at me. It's not THAT hard to believe.

A good Gary moment - Once when I was at the end of my rope in Hollywood I called him from a pay phone, collect, and rambled at him for several hours about how I was going to die from my sadness and the total and horrid conditions that I was living in. Of course none of this predicament that I was in was my fault. I chalked it up to circumstances cast upon me by a cruel and unforgiving higher being that was jealous of my hair and rock star potential. Oh it was a sad lot indeed let me tell you and I was full of enough narcotics to talk about it all night long. Gary as a college student actually doing something productive with his life at the time and could have been sleeping or studying or masturbating while eating pizza or whatever it is people in college do at night, (I certainly wouldn't know) but he stayed on the line as long as I was able to babble. I think the cost of that phone call was roughly equivalent to his first year's tuition but aside from the occasional telling of this embarrassing story in bars where I am working my ultra-cool routine he's never really given me shit about it. Gary has been a rock and continues to be for the rest of the world with all that good Samaritan stuff he's into, what a guy.

So here's to you Gary, no matter if you are a jackbooted fascist that has a weirdly affectionate obsession with Theodore Roosevelt you're A-OK in my book. Keep up the good work at the Red Cross because people in need need people like you. Mean spirited assholes that enjoy histrionic rantings with little basis in actual knowledge need people like me!!

Donate you bastards, let's keep hope alive, (and Gary employed as I'm already sixty bucks in the hole to him and will probably need to hit him up for a bar tab in the near future).

Breaking news!!!

"Mike Brown resigns as Director of FEMA"

In the "wow, no shit" file that story resides in you can find these other compelling headlines.

"Drinking bleach is bad for you"
"Coldplay is so boring their music causes herpes to die"
"Doctors discourage patients from sticking broken lightbulbs up their privates"
"Rosie O'Donnell's head is bigger than most peoples asses"
"O.J. really did it!!!!"
"AP Poll - 99% believe that people that think they're cool for drinking P.B.R. are fuckheads"
"George Herbert Walker Bush autopsy reveals brain was size of a cashew"

More later, I have to go read his resignation statement.

You're doing a heck of a job Brownie!!!

The Blame Game

Last night after putting the wee ones to bed The Mrs. and I were canoodling and taking a gander at the Larry “the Lizard” King show on CNN while he was interviewing the elder Bushes. Of course the story of the day with Big George and Babs was the aftermath of Katrina and their meetings with evacuees and all’a that. They were defending their son as parents are made to do and I can understand that being the super parent that I am. Still I found plenty to get peeved about by 41 and 41 and a half, (that’s a damn big half too, she’s Butkus in a cotton jumper that one). I never really found the elders as distasteful as their offspring, that is until last night. Now they really kinda nauseate me.

To be fair I guess I should give them a whiff of kudos for at least being at a relief shelter shaking hands and getting their asses kissed. Whatever their intentions at least they were there. It should be a good karmic boost to counteract the years of covert assassination, gun running, class warfare and enthusiastic donghuffing of repressive Islamic regimes perped by Big George. He is “all about education” though as evidenced by his fantastic work building up the School of the Americas down Southern way back in the 70’s. You want to learn economics go to Yale, you want to learn how to torture someone for information via an electrical charge up the banghole while you and some classmates gang-rape his wife…..S.O.A. ALL THE WAY!!!!

Anyway…

As far as I could tell before yesterday Babs’ only major crime against humanity was her fashion style and penchant for birthing scarily stupid children with a prevailing belief that they’re ace homies in Jesus’ posse (yo). She seemed to me like a semi-kindly battleaxe that would make wonderful Xmas dinners where everyone would wear sweaters and give each other very nice wallets while the help poured cocktails and made sure the peas and onions were in good supply. She also seemed to me like the kind of woman that would be abominable to service workers, unconsciously stare at mixed race babies and drive 54 M.P.H. in the left hand lane. If I were to damn her for that mindset I would have to damn the large majority of the people in the county and accompanying metro suburban area where I live. Even I don’t have that much damnation in me so I just chalked her up to being a well-to-do world famous shrew who liked to be called “Mother” and would “speak her mind”, and according to her family during Barbara Walters interviews would, “get her dander up whoa boy”, which is all simple parlance for excusing rich people for being nasty shits. When middle class people act that way they’re called “straight shooters”. When poor people do it they get booked on Jerry Springer and are handed folding chairs for opinion expressing by way of blunt force trauma.

I had that impression pretty firmly set and was admittedly not a huge fan but damn if she didn't manage to shock and awe me yesterday. I thought she had a few knives in the cranial drawer about things despite the Aunt Bee image that she works up but after this whole Gulf Coast fiasco and her blathering away about her impressions of the situation I can honestly say that woman is just plain fucking dumb. There in the heart of the evacuation center yapping into a microphone with the Lizard King in suspenders interviewing her she managed to transcend in my eyes from an arrogant den-mother to a fool.

There she was, a complete aristocratic loudmouthed asshole in baby blue spewing forth the sort of country club horseshit that has defined the Fed’s demeanor through this whole debacle with a dumb smile on her massive face and no notion whatsoever of how insanely patronizing and offensive she was being. When it comes to her little boy George it’s easy to see that the decidedly stupid apple has not fallen from the asshole tree. Her impression of the tens of thousands of people that are now left homeless, jobless, and truly screwed?

THEY’RE DOING GREAT!!!!!! HAPPY TO BE HERE AND BOY WHEN THEY WERE ON THOSE ROOFTOPS AND GEORGE FLEW OVER IN AIR FORCE ONE IT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THEIR LIVES!!! THEY”RE PSYCHED LARRY!!!! THEY HAVE FAITH, ISN’T THIS IS A GRAND DAY FOR AMERICA!!!!

You don’t believe me? Here’s a real quote from the grand-dame of the Bush dynasty, one Mrs. Babs Bush, (I made up the last one) –

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said during a radio interview with the American Public Media program "Marketplace." "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

What…the…fuck.

How can you say that shit? No matter the thickness of elitist goop that runs through your massive varicosed veins can you actually believe that the people are going -

“Hey thank god we get to live in the Astrodome!!! Y'know the Bad News Bears played here! WOW!!!! OK, everyone together now....ready....1-2-3....

LET THEM PLAY LET THEM PLAY!!!!

Man once we get over this toxemia we should totally thank Jesus some more and play flag football. If my brother is alive I'll get him to play QB, he's got a great arm! GO BUSH!!!!”

Sure, I imagine that being on a cot in the Astrodome is preferable to being neck-deep in filthy water in your attic getting your face chewed on by water rats that are out for a swim and a snack. Duh. Does that mean that all these “cute” people are thrilled to be washed out of their homes with no foreseeable timetable or prospects for getting on with their lives? Well since they were, “underprivileged anyway”, I suppose they don’t have the same range of human emotions as regular people and they’re just happy as pigs in shit to cool it in a dirty gray baseball stadium while the Government gets about the important business of rebuilding Trent Lott’s front porch.

"We've got a lot of rebuilding to do ... The good news is — and it's hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house — he's lost his entire house — there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) —President Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

Was he kidding? Of course he was, I'm not that dim. Was it the right time for the President of the United States to be cracking stupid one-liners about building magnificent houses with his white bread cronies while THOUSANDS of people are dying all around him? You be the judge. To me that's exactly the kind of shit that illustrates the totally transparent lack of empathy for the body public that our POTUS demonstrates time and time again. I have no doubt that George is very sympathetic to his “lessers” with his pious hand-wringing about the great tests of faith that “we” are going through, really I don't. But but deep down he can’t care seem to care, really care, enough to change his ways because he’s apparently not capable of understanding that those “we” are real fucking people that are in tremendous distress. They’re just a mass to pray for and hug when the cameras are on and to leave to their own devices when the rest of go back to obsessing about Natalee Holloway and who’s going to be the next Apprentice.

Speaking of old Senator Lott, (remember him, weird hair, look like he needs to take a crap all the time, got backstabbed Julius Caesar style out of his leadership position in the Republican Party by man of god Bill Frist. Et tu Jesus Freak, et tu?), you know things are getting pretty retarded when a shill like old Trent is waxing acerbic at the Federal Govt.

"FEMA and MEMA need to be saying, 'Yes' to Mississippi's needs, not, 'No.," the former majority leader said in a written statement. “Mississippians are homeless, hungry and hurting."

I mean for a gear in the machine like Trent Lott to say that shit is outrageous. It’s the system he helped build and the decisions he not only supported but lobbied for that put things in place to fuck up the way they did. You know the one and the same government that his great old party is fully in control of and the one that that he was a hyper-hysterical leader in during the gutting of FEMA, environmental regulation, EMS funding, levee control, public housing standards, education funding and the capability of the National Guard to respond in a massive and coordinated effort in our own country.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED TRENT!!!!! THANK JESUS WE CAPTURED SADDAM FOR KNOCKING DOWN THE BUILDINGS AND ALL THAT TIME WELL SPENT KEEPING THE SCARY GAYS FROM GETTING MARRIED AND TRYING NOT TO LET HER HUSBAND AND THE DEMOCRATS MURDER TERRY SCHIAVO BEFORE SHE COULD WAKE UP AND INVENT TIME TRAVEL!!!

Admittedly I still harbor a grudge against him from years back. I went to high school with his kids and he cut in front of me in line at the snack bar during a football game once. Elitist last hot-dog filching bastard!!!!

On a positive note for the administration director of FEMA Michael Brown is making Donald Rumsfeld look almost magnificent at his job in comparison. Keeping with Bush’s policy of rewarding criminal-sized total and abject failure by his trouser climbing buddies, Brown, (who should be brought up on charges of gross negligence and probably already has a plot by the river Hades full of snakes and lava reserved for him), got a kudos and scarily affectionate smile from lil’ George the other day –

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." –President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

Well depending on how you look at it, that could be accurate.

By the way George, in deference to the seriousness of what the fuck is going on can we dispense with the folksy nicknames? This isn’t Happy Days although I’m certain that Potsie could have done a better job of getting helicopters into the air and could even have crooned a dreamy ballad while he was at it.

But back to the elder Bushes. George Sr., (who as he gets more advanced in age has a very odd thing going on where his forehead is growing downwards towards his nose making his eyes almost disappear), was assailing, "the media blame game” about the disaster response all the while making sure to kiss Larry King’s ass as, “one of the good ones.” I guess he really doesn’t like those mean old “media elites” that were actually THERE. People like Anderson Cooper who have the temerity to tell brain-dead politicians that they’re utterly devoid of morality and deserve to be kicked in the face until dead. OK, Anderson Cooper didn’t say THAT exactly but I bet that’s what he was feeling!!

"Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard – maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating." –Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN's Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:

"I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap – you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"”

What an asshole! Doesn’t he know that they were like really trying super-hard?

According to big Bush this the "blame game" that is so patently unfair because little Bush really does care and boy is he committed and he is strong and we shouldn’t worry about him because he can sleep at night even though it’s hard to (PHEW!!!!). Why, while when they were having dinner in the White House dining room the other night when all the poor people were starving to death he was really impressed by his son’s faith. He made sure to point out to Larry that the POTUS believes that it's ‘TOTALLY FINE’ for people to have faith in their own way, (like being Jewish or Muslim even if they’re going to burn in the eternal fires of hell for not worshipping the baby Jesus as all us tight thinking people do. As long as they have faith in ‘some superior being’ they’re OK…..until they die….when they’ll all go to hell.)

Elder Bush is being a team player and spouting the same company line of the “man of resolve and swagger”, happy slappy horseshit that Bush has been riding on ever since he stood tall with the bullhorn at the grounds of 9-11. Hey i give it to him, at that moment he was Presidential, he was a leader and he deserved the credit he got for rallying the country. But ever since then he's been a caricature of that one simple fragment in time. It's like if the guys that raised the flag at Iwo Jima went walking into bars huddled together in uniform with a flag trying to glom free drinks for the next thirty years and talking non-stop about climbing the hill. It would become cheapened and thankfully statues don't walk and I'm pretty sure they don't drink so I can stop worrying about it. More booze for me. The thing with the iron-spined leader with the bullhorn on the rubble, It's done. It WAS great, let other people decide for themselves how they should feel about it and preserve it's dignity by moving on and moving forward instead of trying to relive it by staring really hard and sticking out your jaw every time the cameras come on.

To keep harping on how much this "blame game" thing was bothering me; Bush's folks and his handlers seem to feel that the simple fact that lil' Bush “cares” regardless of his performance and the disastrous after-effects of his knuckle-headed decimation of anything in the Government not related to that which keeps him and his in power, namely scaring the shit out of people about terrorism, should keep him blameless. He cares and he prays so that should absolve him of the particulars, no harm no foul!!! Except for the harm part, that keeps getting in the way. From daddy:

"What can he do? He can just go out and do what he's doing today, showing that the federal government's involved, has been involved, will continue to be involved ... He cannot listen to every critic from the editorial page of The New York Times,"

Ummm, daddio maybe he should take a second and listen. In a brilliant strategy that supports Bush’s love affair with the gruel he gets spoonfed from his handlers he famously doesn’t read the newspaper. Maybe he should listen to someone other than Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and apologists like his father that perpetrate this, “resolve”, that’s nothing more than an inability to be culpable for his own failure and the failure of those he has put in place to serve the people of the United States but what fun would that be? It’s so much more fun patting each other on the ass all day and saying, “we’ll fix it” and, “it wasn’t MY fault” and, “now is not the time for politics” and “DON’T BLAME ME, I’M ONLY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!!”

Of course today they have the very Machiavellian diversion of:

“OOOOH LOOK, HEY LOOK, OVER THERE, REHNQUIST IS DEAD!!!! WAY TO TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM REHNQUIST!!!"

I half expect the POTUS to show up at a bible study in Biloxi wearing a ringer t-shirt that says, “REHNQUIST IS DEAD”, ala the nimrods that are wearing, “Vote for Pedro” shirts all over town. Seriously it wouldn’t surprise me.

But if lil' Bush doesn’t want to listen to the New York Times maybe big Bush could turn on the news for him and and they could have some father-son bondo and listen to the people at the New Orleans Convention Center saying hard to understand things like, “there are people dying here”, and, “our babies have no food”, or the super abstract, “please for the love of god help us…help us”. Yeah I know it’s a stretch but maybe it’s worth a try. Maybe lil' Bush should listen to that shit and swagger his ass off his fucking ranch and get some helicopters with food to the people that need it. Apples to oranges maybe but we started going to Afghanistan faster than we got to New Orleans after 9/11 and when you're the President all the fruit is in your basket. It's not WHAT he didn't do it's that he DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. He's the President. He has TV. He should have picked up his bullhorn and told Brownie to get off his fat ass and get shit moving to where the TV cameras were. It's not like politicians have a hard time finding TV cameras, we could have used them like drug sniffing dogs.

Biden - "There's the guy from CNN that sounds like the guy from the old 7-Up commercials, head that way! And for the love of god hand me a blow-dryer!!!!"
Pilot - "Are you sure Senator Biden, I don't see anything?"
Biden - "DAMMIT MAN HAND ME THAT DRYER AND HAUL ASS!!!!!! IT'S PRIMETIME!!!"

But wait a second, sending helimachopters full of food to feed hungry people at the Convention Center would have been unpossible!!!! According to the super-qualified ex-International Arabian Horse Association Director leader of FEMA those people were playing tricks like Frodo with the ring going invisible and PEEK-A-BOO they’re not even really there! Silly destitute starving homeless invisible people! Go join the Fantastic Four and let us get back to Trent's barn-raising!!

"I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." –Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005

Besides things were really going great, you know, all things considered. What do you expect?

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." --FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

And even if they were there (the crazy sillies) dying and jonx it was their own stupid fault for being poor and not having a swank SUV and somewhere to go.

"...those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, on New Orleans residents who could not evacuate because they were too poor and lacked the means to leave, CNN interview, Sept 1, 2005.

Yeah Brownie, great fucking job. You dick.

All snarking aside I’m really just fucking tired of it, all of the shit that makes “it” the unbearable “it” that “it” is. It’s one thing after another thing after another with no change in sight. I hope that this disaster will wake up the powers-that- be to the fact that very real people with very dead families and very destroyed homes are in very scary situations and that we need to change the way we prioritize. Stories about some lady reuniting with Twinkles the poodle at a shelter are nice and they offer hope and if the Bushes want to go hug people maybe that will divert them from royally fucking up something they haven’t found time to mess with yet so full steam ahead but I really just want to see something change and I feel that it won’t and that’s sad. "We" just want to feel better as fast as possible and fast doesn't equal change unfortunately. It's just about teh moment and right now the people that can do something major are carping about the "blame game".

So in simple summation kiss my ass daddy Bush and mother Bush and Dennis, “the bulldozer”, Hastert and Mary Landrieu and Trent Lott and Michael Brown and Dick Cheney (oh wait, you were abducted by aliens apparently) and Condi (I was just trying to feel their pain, they have no shoes so I figured I should go shoe shopping!!) Rice and all of the other demagogues that preach, “patience” and, “this is hard work”, and “we really care so much” from marble buildings and pre-arranged photo-ops and the 14th green. You want to impress me show some humility, show some accountability and show some real decency towards the people that you are supposed to care for and protect. Not me, not your influencers and your “base” but the people that need your help the most, those people that in your heart of hearts you know you wouldn’t want to come near your house in real life. Not that they would they want to come over to your place anyway, I mean look at the sweet set-up where they’re living now! Who would want to leave that?!??!?!

LET THEM PLAY LET THEM PLAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Laughter amidst the misery

"George Bush doesn't like black people."

Ha Ha.

That was so weird.

Damn

It’s easy for me to get all pent up and vent against the idiots in the Federal Govt., like Brown from FEMA who should be drawn and quartered in a public square for his asinine comments and attitude during this situation like -"to help those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..."

Get with it asshole, some people had no choice because they have no means to travel or a place to go if they could. Lots went to the Superdome where they were supposed to and that has worked out tremendously well!

I say to those "Bush can't control the weather" folks that if someone wants to vent go ahead and bash the shit out of Bush. Bash him without rational rationale or cogent thought. I could give half a rat’s ass if he can’t control the weather. He’s the President of the United States and we have an entire city dying and it’s getting worse by the hour and not better. How could he coordinate efforts better? Fuck if I know but he’s the man who stands up and says “follow the leader” and in this case the leader can’t seem to get food and water to his citizens that are dying on TV, y’know where the five thousand TV reporters are camped out talking to the people that are dying.

To paraphrase Bill Pullman in Aliens -”Game over man, game over…why don’t you put Wolf Blitzer in charge!”

So fuck Bush. Is it fair? Who cares, fair play and placing blame where it’s deserved hasn’t been a priority to him for five years so why should it be to me today?

Mostly though it's just really, really sad. Me and the Mrs. went to New Orleans in June and had a blast but the unbelievable disparity between the haves and the have nots very clearly along racial lines was stunning. The failure of our society to promote some semblance of a cure to generational and institutional poverty is playing out right now in New Orleans. People say “they” should have left, well where were these people supposed to go? What do you do whenyou already have next to nothing and then what little you have is destroyed leaving you with no home, no education and no hope?

A guy they interviewed said, "I just can't help but think I would be better off if I had drowned." How fucking sad and even sadder because he might be right is that?