Bowels and Bras and Gas - Oh My!

Today the mind is wandering as I reflect on my porcelain friend and better days gone by.  How long has it been since we last danced cheek to cheek?  Three days?  Four? No.  Five.  Five shitty days of shitlessness.

And no, I don't need your sage advice.  I've tried it all: exercise, bushels of dried fruit, oceans of spring water, enough Activia to make Jamie Lee Curtis herself run for the can, Metamucil by the shovelful. 'Super Colon Blow'-level fiber in the diet. Roughage to the point where the contents of my stomach could be used to peel paint off your walls.

Nothing.

Liquid Plumber is next on my shopping list.  I'm usually full of shit on several dimensions but I try (and lately, fail) to restrict them to the metaphorical variety.  As you can see, at the moment I'm failing.

So in search of online diversion from my offline malady, I stumbled across this wonderful article on an invention that deserves more notice than it has gotten to date: the bra that converts into a functioning gas mask!  I almost shit my pants laughing.  If only.  Sigh. I wish I had one of those bras here with me now because although my bowels may be dysfunctional, it doesn't mean they aren't functioning at all (Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas).  All smoke and no fire.

But I imagine you didn't tune in to listen to ruminations on my digestive woes.

Indeed.

But I just let fly with whatever musings come running out of my head down onto the keyboard, happy I have the runs somewhere.

What really backs my pipes up is the shitstorm deja vous going on in Congress with healthcare.  I'm sick of the whole lot of them. The Democrats couldn't get a law passed against roasting baby kittens in public parks if they had a 100% majority in both houses.

Far too often the resistance is due to a bunch of unrelated pork that slips in.  But when the resistance is due to right wing rabble-rousing or even just philosophical differences (as is the case now), why can't the Dems just say, "fuck you, we won, deal with it!"  They're not going to get any support anyway so why not pass something useful?  But nooooo, that's just not their way, the weaselly worms.

A healthcare bill of some sort will pass in the end, without any support of the Republicans and without any of the provisions that would make the legislation useful (that is, actually providing healthcare to those who cannot currently afford it). The right-wing fearmongers did a great job in dredging up a small but vocal outcry by those who live in terror that any sort of government expansion means the drum of Soviet-style communism beats not far behind.  Strangely, these same folks have no fear of the expansion of the military (in their eyes, the DOD can't grow fast enough).   They know people in the military.  They aren't government!  They're 'us'!  All said without a trace of irony.  Yo, Charlie - the government is us.

I'm a libertarian liberal (some would label that an oxymoron but I've been called worse).  That means I believe there are hundreds of government entities that should be disbanded (many, but certainly not all of them, belong to the DOD).  That said, a public option for healthcare is both innocuous and essential, in my opinion.  I'd have some respect for the Dems in congress if they disagreed with me but the fact is they don't - they just haven't had the political spine to follow through on their own convictions.

I only wish Hunter was still around to riff on all this idiocy.  Guess I'll just have to be satisfied with Maureen.

But enough focus on these swine, time to watch Washington dismantle the Rudy-less Notre Dame Drunken Irish.  Go Huskies!

Who let the dog in? Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof

Michael Vick re-signs with Nike, eh?  They're obviously convinced he's rehabilitated. And they would certainly know. Because they're fair minded people.  Sure, they want to make a buck; however, they'd never compromise their core principles in that pursuit.  I believe that.  The problem, of course, is their core principles. It would be refreshing for them to compromise them for once, let a little good old fashion dignity in there. Or maybe just a little tact.  "But gosh, Steve," you say. "Michael made a mistake, America's all about second chances!"

A mistake?  Okay, sure.

Oops! Didn't mean to hold that dog's head underwater so long! Or the one before that and then there were those others - see the pile of rotting mistake carcasses up against the garage? 

Darn! The electrodes slipped!  I didn't mean to place them around Laddie's gonads with live current runing through them! Sorry, Rover. Excuse me, Rex.  Apologies, Rin Tin Tin.  Man, did you see those sparks?!?  Sniff. Sniff.  What's that odor?  Is somebody barbecuing?!?  Throw another dog on the grill for me!  Extra ketchup!

Perhaps Nike is branching out yet again.  I mean they make everything from golf equipment to clothing to watches.  Maybe they're coming out with a whole new line of Nike branded merchandise:

• The 'After Party' Canine Corpse Handling Gloves ("keeps the blood - off your duds")
  
• Loser Doggy Drowning Tubs, with attached swoosh emblazoned leather head brace!
  
• High voltage Maimed Mutt Electrode Testicle Teasers! 
  

"Need to put a few Rovers down?  Have fun as they fry or a blast as they drown!   Shoooossshhh!"

A mistake?  There are certainly more than enough of those to go around.  Were his crimes that heinous in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps the effect was fairly low on the totem pole of atrocities.  But the intent was right up there with the worst of them.  And in the end, in my book, that's what counts. 

Hey, PETA, time to dust off those Nike signs of yore ...

Okay, I'm done with ragging on Vick.  You can only beat a dead horse so long, so-to-speak.  But a dead dog?  Well, just ask Mike ...

[Postscript: Vick, it turns out, didn't re-sign with Nike.  Nike simply gave him free clothes and equipment for the honor of having him use and wear the stuff, cause God knows you want your brand associated with sadism. Which changes nothing, since it means the same from an ethical point of view (it simply means they not only have no morals, they have no spine either).]

Charlie Don't Surf

I'm watching this lame Manson docudrama that's been playing quite a bit on the History Channel. I can't help but compare it to the vastly superior 1976 TV-Movie Helter Skelter, based on prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book of the same name. (Speaking of Bugliosi - man, talk about defining one's career around a single specific event.  This guy continues to milk that cow as though the heifer wasn't dead, dry and rotting. He grabs onto any anniversary or parole hearing or what-have-you to spout the same eerily encyclopedic recall that he unloaded into his original book and has continued to spout on the talk show circuit ever since. I have no ill will toward the guy: he did society a good service by locking these swine away.  But find something new in your life, Vince!)

The 70's Skelter movie was brilliant on many levels and for my money the first and last word on this twisted story.  We don't need to keep regurgitating the thing.  Yet here I am watching this low rent History Channel "reenactment".  I guess anything that mixes psychedelics, cultism, insanity, hippies and mass murder is bound to be a ratings grabber in 2009, much as it was in 1969 and 1976 - probably more so, with the nostalgia factor at play.  But no more of this crap for me, time to lift up anchor and surf on to another beach (Ooh, Dr. G is on!).

Steve Railsback did Manson better than Charlie himself in the '76 treatment.  He looked and acted more "Mansoneque" than the real deal ever could, try as he might.  So having some other joker on the History Channel attempt to inhabit this lune doesn't do anything for me.  It's like Ned Flanders doing Stanley in the Springfield production of Streetcar.  Ned's fine, but he's not quite Brando. Grab the Skelter movie DVD and watch Railsback if you want to see evil personified.  Or turn on Fox News and catch Glenn Beck. Your choice. But do yourself a favor and skip History Channel's Manson.

Let's flip on Dr. G - but first, of course, some commercials ...

Speaking of commercials, let me give props to one advertisement out there in La La Land: the most creative casting award goes to the Tony Stewart Burger King spot with Carrot Top and Erik Estrada!  I especially dig the Estrada shades - gotta get me some of them.  E.S.T.R.A.D.A.  Yeah.

But it's back down the green-gray cadaver corridor, in through the double doors to the fab lab with today's stiffs on the slab. Doctor Garavaglia is in and she's got a couple of real live ones today - just kidding, they're dead, natch, and in fact so were their back stories.  The methods by which the dearly departed on Dr. G's table slipped off this mortal coil are key to the show - if they're pedestrian, the doc can only do so much to spice things up.  The catch is that you don't actually know the sorry truth about their demise until the end of the segment (when you can then reflect on the half hour of your life you'll never get back).


I surfed back and forth between this and UDub's stunner over #3 USC, finally settling in on the latter. Alright, Huskies!!

Well, well, well.  Looking back, this is a pretty meandering and all together pointless post.  As they often are, alas.

All Apologies.  I click off the tube and crank up Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York on the stereo, another night in the books.