How to tell if you're in a John le Carré novel

• You're a wealthy white person who dabbles in dangerous espionage related activities. 
• You went to Cambridge or Oxford. 
• If you went to Cambridge, you automatically think any one who went to Oxford is suspect, and vice versa.
• You're able to drink prodigious amounts of liquor and still drive, carry on sensitive spy work, and have sex.
• You have every style of rain coat known to man.
• You drive British made autos out of a misguided sense of patriotism.
• You reluctantly carry a sidearm but you've never fired it.
• You like to repeat yourself over and over.
• You speak several languages fluently and you're able to bluff your way through the rest, even dead languages.
• Your marriage is crumbling because your wife is sleeping with the mole in your spy agency you've been hunting for years.
• Everyone who ever lived in Moscow is either out to kill you or give you information which may or may not be accurate.
• You like to drink on the job.
• You see the world in various shades of gray.
• You like to repeat yourself over and over.
• Your overcoat smells like gin and piss.
• Your friends aren't your friends.
• Your memory is faulty but in the end you figure out who is trying to kill you and why.
• No one appreciates all the hard work you do keeping the Soviet spies at bay.
• Pretty white women want to bed you as well as kill you.
• You rarely eat.

This post was inspired by this post.

Hey Christians in the USA, how are you being persecuted now?

 "We're not allowed to stone homosexuals to death or to discriminate against the filthy Jews who killed our Lord Jesus.  If that's not persecution, then I don't know what is."

 "I'm forced to work outside the home in violation of Biblical laws.  If the government doesn't give me money so I can stay home and raise my kids to be as intolerant as me, then it's persecuting me.  Praise Jesus!"

 "I'm a Canadian who gets government run health care, so of course I'm not a Christian."

 "I believe God shat out the universe one day after he ate a bad cosmic burrito.  The local schools and colleges won't let me teach that in their classrooms.  That's how they're persecuting me.  I'm praying for God to smite them with his holy shit if they don't let me teach my side of the creation story."

 "I have to serve with gay people now.  Sure, I volunteered for service, but I never volunteered to serve with competent gay men.  I volunteered to serve with gays who speak in a falsetto voice, have limp wrists, dress in drag, and who want to have sex with anything that moves.  You know, just like all the stereotypes you hear about in church from your secretly gay minister who blows you at the glory hole but won't look you in the eye when he does it."

"I'm being persecuted for my faith in medieval science.  And because I'm an Anabaptist, those god damn Southern Baptists are making my life a living hell.  And don't get me started on those motherfucking freewill Baptists."

They just couldn't win

Encyclopedias from the 1950's and '60's we're charmingly racist in their efforts to not be racist.

It's time for another episode of: Where are they now?

 Those kids who used to make fun of you in the cafeteria are now making fun of you in the privacy of their own trailer park.

 That doll that haunted your dreams and gave you nightmares as a child is stealing children's souls and shitting out burnt pennies.

 Eli Whitney is roasting in hell when not getting anally raped by hoary hosts of Azaroth the Blighted One.

 The Mormon Tabernacle Fisting Nurses are still looking for you.

 The lesbians you made fun of in college are having fantastic mind-blowing tantric sex.

 Your old school bus driver is hopped up on Meth and battling the spiders who he thinks are trying to eat their way into his skin.

 All the cheerleaders you wanted to ask out are now fat, unhappy, and wishing that you had asked them out.

The Chinese women you sold in to sex slavery are plotting to have you killed.

And you thought Superman was a dick

Thanks Wings for posting this first.

Holy shit

Your cheery Easter message is here.  Seriously, click,  you'll be astounded.

"I've done the math again and again...

...and it keeps telling me if we want the finer things in life, we're going to have to sell our baby."

May I nibble your nut log?

We stopped at many of these on the interstate between Michigan and Corbin, KY when I was a teenager, mostly to go to the restroom.

Geography lesson of the day

Guests of this blog stay at the

Gettin' it done

Grr baby, grrr

Phyllis Logan, aka Mrs. Hughes on Downton Abbey.

Free at last #2

Free at last

Gomer Huckabee said that there is more freedom in North Korea than there is today in the USA under President Obama.  I now invite Gomer and his wife Gomerette to move to the DPRK and enjoy all the freedom there is over there.

Somehow, I doubt he'll get off his lazy lying ass and go.

Crazy huh

Sibling Day, yeah. 

I have one sibling left. We never got along and when there was reconciliation it was always due to me. The last time I tried to reconcile with him he told me he wanted to travel, I told him to travel south, he lives in Michigan, to see me and I'd show him some sights and we'd catch up. He said he wanted to travel to Europe and Africa and he did, after embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from his last employer. He never did come to see me but he did see the inside of a jail cell after he got back from his international travels. The police took him away in handcuffs when he got back to the USA. So he'd rather commit felonies, steal tens of thousands of dollars, and do prison time than see or spend time with me. 

And that in a nutshell is why I don't get along with my only living sibling, he's a douchebag, a felony committing douchebag.  

Current belief level is:

Summer is coming

North Plaza Motel 

'Cincinnati's finest' 

And now here's a sock monkey with a joke

 How many people did Dick Cheney have to torture before one agreed to change his light bulb?

The answer is: none.  Dick Cheney didn't torture anyone, he's too much of a pussy to do it himself, so he got some asshole from the CIA to do it for him.

 Careful now, Cheney might shoot you in the face.

 My stars!  A talking monkey and an insubordinate woman.  I shall see to it that both are thrashed within an inch of their worthless lives!

Yes sir, I'll have the fellow who made the previous comment shot for being too lenient.  And I'll put the monkey and the insubordinate woman to death as well.  You're so right sir, the lower forms of life must not be allowed to mock the white males in power.  

A hipster chicken

Next stop Murderland

Clowns are always creepy.

Eternal questions

There are other ways

People think that because things are the way they are now they've always been this way and that's the way things ought to be done forever.  But that's not true, especially when it comes to the disaster capitalism they've inflicted on us ever since the Reagan years.

Things can be different.  Capitalism doesn't need need to be predatory.  Here's two examples of modern capitalism that show us a better way:

• Newman's Own.  Every penny of profit that Newman's Own products generate goes to charity, not to the pockets of investment bankers or Wall Street douchebags.  They've given away millions of dollars to charities.  MILLIONS. And you know what, people still buy their products knowing that all the profits from them will be given away.  I buy their salad dressing, their pasta sauces, their cookies, and other of their products as well.  I buy them even though most of the time they are higher priced than comparable products made by for profit companies.  I buy them because I want the profits from my purchase to be used to help others, not to enrich entitled white people.
• Rick Steves.  Mr. Steves is a travel writer and tour operator.  He produces a TV for PBS about his travels in Europe and gives those shows to PBS AT NO CHARGE.  He's said time and again that he makes enough money off the sale of his travel guides and tours that he operates to be able to give those shows away.  He doesn't need to make more money off his work, so he gives those shows to PBS stations to run free of any fees which means they can run them when and how ever many times they like.  Yes, in a sense it's free advertising for Mr. Steves business but that's beside the point.  The point is he's secure enough in his business model and business life to be able to give away free product that benefits a lot of people, especially the mom and pop owned businesses that he features in his travel shows.

There are other businesses and individuals out there who are changing the face and nature of capitalism.  We need many more to do the same if we're going to survive the rule of corporations and oligarchs. 

You know what's crazy mad fun?

Live professional wrestling.

You know it's fake, everyone else over the age of eight in the audience knows it's fake, but it's so much fun and such a spectacle, even the bottom of the ladder local matches I saw last night, you get hooked and you can't help but whoop and holler.

The performers do it for the love of performing, none of them is making any kind of money to speak of off it, so they really put their hearts in to it.  They interact with the crazy fans, who are just as much fun to watch as the wrestlers, and they put on quite a show.

I highly recommend going to see some live professional wrestling.  It's a piece of genuine Americana that you'll really love if you stop being such a snob and give yourself over to it.  It's in the same category as roller derby, once you go, you'll love it.

Abandoned in TN

Consider the source

The Pope said that marriage between a man and a woman shows us the 'face of God,' meaning that same sex marriage does not and a nun told a high school class that masturbation makes you gay.  Anyone who believes the kind of nonsense these idiotic Christians spew deserves to be beaten with the simpleton stick.  Remember these are the same people who told us:

• the earth was the center of of the solar system
• the sun revolves around the earth
• slavery was fine because it's mentioned positively in their bible
• autopsies are bad because their god won't reanimate sliced up bodies on Judgment day
• forks, coffee, vaccinations, and lefthandness are evil and tools of the devil
• child labor is a good thing
• science is a lie designed by the devil to lead people astray
• racial discrimination is a good thing
• marriage equality is bad.

Religion, always bad, always holding us back.

Treasure trove

You can find a cornucopia of great photos if you go to Google Images and type in 'found photographs.'

Image parade