"So it's decided then, right?"

"Yes, we'll bomb North Vietnam and then we'll go get some hookers and blow with LBJ and Billy Graham."

Rest in peace

Rod was a poet laureate of our house when my mom was still alive.  She adored him, his poetry, and his music.  Thanks for making her hard life a little brighter Mr. McKuen.  You packed a lot of living in to your eighty one years.

Great moments in 1970's asshole-ism

Capitalist propaganda

Consumers must be trained on how and where to spend their slave wages.

Dig in to the mid century buffet

Sarah Palin responds to all the critics of her rambling incoherent speech from this past weekend

Oh, hey, don't ya know it?  The lie-brul hate America first latte sipping drunk driving three martini nattering nabobs crowd is after me again.  But hey, at least Trip didn't eat that dog or maker a belt out of him.  So take that PETA.  Yeah and you Mr. New York Times what with your fancy grammar and big words that people in fly over states like me, like us real Americans, because you know, the real America is where ever they worship Jesus and eat meat that they grew in a butcher shop where government didn't get in your way, where the grass smells sweet and there ain't hippies and their Jewish blood libel, and while I'm at it, gosh darn it, I'm not ashamed to say I support Israel and I will right up until the day Jesus comes back to smite them for not accepting Jesus in their hearts and minds.  Also, yeah, I love guns too.  And that Michael Moore, he better not come sniffing around Bristol or any of my other kids because Jesus reminds us that in all things we better be moderate until we see the white of their eyes and then he who is without a sin gets to fire the first shot and by golly, that had better be me.  So there!

It's a true fact

Sad.  But true.

Bad ads (1980's prom edition)

It's always a good idea to put a guy in tights in your prom dress ad.

Let the spastic chick wave at her buddy, it's cute.  Right?

This year's prom theme is anorexia in the desert. 

A cute lil' doggie in the picture takes attention away from the meth addict in the left.

Pick the worst looking dresses in your shop and use them in an ad that looks like you made it on a stone age computer.

What have I been binge watching lately?

Agents of S.H.IE.L.D.-I just finished season one on Netflix and boy howdy is it good.  I love how they incorporated some old school Marvel universe stuff with new characters and made this exciting show.  It's not deathly serious, like most DC Comics shows are.  I also love all the strong female characters.  Bill Paxton makes a great villain. And I could watch Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennett, and Elizabeth Henstridge all day every day.  I can't wait for season two to hit Netflix.

Packed to the Rafters-We watched all six seasons of this Australian family dramedy. The characters are usually always enjoyable which makes the family melodrama/sopa opera aspects of the show easier to take.

Chickens-Very funny period comedy about three men who for different reasons can't go off to fight in World War 1.  It's got a few historical errors, but the humor more than makes up for them.

The Americans-We're nearly done with season two of this show about Soviet spies living and working as Americans.  It's just as intense and great as the first season was.  So far the thing that this season has going for it that the first one didn't is they're showing the beautiful naked backsides of Keri Russell and Annet Mahendru.

Hey black folks and Baptists, what's pissing you off these days?

"Nobody really 'gets' performance art anymore.  That shit pisses me off.  Also, it's cold in here."

"I asked my woman for a little head and this is what she gave me.  That's pissing me off."

"We object to the gratuitous use of Negroes in this blog post.  We feel like we white people should be the butt of the jokes, japes, and jibes presented herein."

"We were pissed about Obama and what he's done to our country, but then we smoked a big fat joint and now we don't give a shit.  Hey, you got any tortilla chips or fruit pies on you?"

"Union thugs and mailmen who sleep in the noon day sun."

"I'm pissed off over how those atheists are only being 'decent' people because they want us Baptists to think they're good folks.  Once they lure us in to believing that kind of thing, BAM, they're going to load us persecuted Christians into box cars and ship us off to get gay married to some Communists.  It's a disgrace!"

"We're pissed that our fancy TV remote stopped working and now we can't watch Matlock or that nice Paula Deen.  We're reduced to talking to one another in between bouts of giving and receiving mind numbing amounts of oral sex."

"I'm wearing shorts made out of chains, so you tell me, what do you think I'm pissed off about?"

"Police brutality, police banality, and police bestiality."

"Dia-beetus."

This blog also needs more female teen models in boxer shorts

I've been scanning issues of Seventeen from the mid and late 1980's.  Lots of pretty teen girls, lots of color, and lots of now horribly dated fashion.

This blog needs more Phoebe Cates

Phoebe Cates, all day, every motherfucking day.

Out of the mouths of babes

There goes the neighborhood, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Blacks

It started slowly, first a few Black families moved into the neighborhood but quickly more and more of them came. 

People in the neighborhood didn't know what to think at first.  They'd heard the stories about how the Blacks were lazy, shiftless, prone to violence, into drugs, liked to drink, and were promiscuous.  But as time went along most of us saw the Blacks were normal folks, just like us.

They held down jobs, some owned their own businesses, they raised families, and had their problems, just like all other families did.  It was pretty common to see them out riding bikes, going to the park, and enjoying life when they could, and enduring things when life was bad.

 The Blacks celebrated Christmas and other holidays.  But some didn't.  It was no big deal.

Turns out the rumors of the Blacks being dirty and smelly weren't true.  Some of the Blacks kept their houses and families cleaner than others in the neighborhood did.

The Blacks didn't like the cold weather much but they did like New Year's Eve and a few even learned to put up with it and do stuff like skating.

And of course some of the neighborhood boys fell really hard for the Black girls.  But when some local girls fell for some of the Black boys, a lot of the folks in the neighborhood who said publicly that they had no problem or beef with the Blacks got out of sorts if their daughters dated any of the Black males.  But as time went on, even that become more and more accepted.

The Blacks always pitched in on neighborhood clean up day and they went out of their way to help out neighbors who needed it in times of crisis.

But sometimes at night, someone from outside of the neighborhood liked to throw rocks at the homes of the Blacks, and toilet paper the trees of some of the Black families in our neighborhood.  The vandals would scream at the Blacks and tell them to go back to where they came from.

 That kind of behavior drove some of the Blacks to drink.

And then some of the neighborhood folks started hiding their valuables when they knew the Blacks were coming over, which was kind of stupid because no one really wanted to steal their mingy shit anyway.

Then some uptight business owners didn't like that the presence of the Black families in the neighborhood caused outsiders to come in and destroy stuff, they began to resent the Blacks and some stopped serving them in restaurants and stores.

But that didn't stop the Blacks from continuing to move in our neighborhood.  In fact, so many moved in and made friends and intermarried with the other families that they became the majority and any business that didn't serve them soon went out of business.  And we started a neighborhood watch programs that quickly dealt with anyone that had ideas of messing with the Blacks and the rest of our neighborhood.

So considering everything, it's been great having the Blacks in our neighborhood.

I know, the suspense is killing you

Hospitals at best are steaming cauldrons filled with sickness, disease, viruses, misery, and corporate greed.  At worst, they're everything I just said they were with a shit ton of nonchalant uncaring employees thrown in.  And the Johnson City Medical Center falls in that second group.

I arrived early for my cardiac stress test yesterday and they got me in right away.  Some local yokel who has his folksy patter down took me back and stuck the IV in my hand.  I took the wind out of his sails by telling him I'm a veteran of these types of test, so please, save that patter for someone who wants to hear it.

After my first does of radioactive dye was injected and flowing through my veins, they took the first series of x-rays.  This went pretty quickly and the only annoyance was the x-ray technician who had no idea what the words 'personal space bubble' mean.  I asked him to move away from me when I was getting off the plank they make you lie on for the x-rays and he said, "Sure."  When I saw he wasn't going to move as I put my shirt back on I said, "You said 'Sure' and yet you haven't moved out of my personal space."  He looked at me like I was speaking Chinese or something.

Next up was the crowning achievement in patient annoyance, the self important tardy nurse who was in charge of the treadmill part of my test.  The helper monkey nurse got a bit confused while hooking me up to the electrodes.  She said she was going to put the belt, that held all the wires that hook up to the pads they stick on you, around my waist, and then she proceeded to hook it up around my substantial belly.  I didn't mind, it's just I was concerned for the poor dear, I wasn't sure if she knew the difference between a waist and a stomach.  After I got hooked up and wired up, everyone left. 

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally the helper monkey nurse came in and said Amber the nurse practitioner was going to be in in a few minutes.  So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Twenty minutes later the helper monkey nurse came back in and said that Amber was on her way, surely.  She noticed that I was a bit peeved.  She rolled her eyes and told me to hang on that honestly, Amber was coming.

I asked if she meant she was coming sometime this century.  So being a good helper monkey, the helper monkey nurse said she's give Amber a call on her cell phone.  As she hung up we had success!  Amber is on her way down from the 7th floor said helper monkey.  So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

About fifteen minutes later a woman, who was clearly in love with the idea of her own importance in the hospital universe traipsed in.  Helper monkey nurse chirped, "Oh goody!  Amber is here!"  

Yes, Amber was indeed finally there.  She was there and she offered no apology for keeping me waiting for so long, nor did she offer one to her fellow employees.  She obviously had a medical emergency that she'd been attending to because she kept braying about some poor fellow she had just administered her super human care to.  After going on and on about the great job she thought she did on her last patient, she took some compliments on her shoes, then she plopped down in a chair and began making calls on her cell phone.  When we actually found the time to do the treadmill portion of my stress test, she spoke to me as if I was a hard of hearing four year old.  Her words to me always dripped and oozed condescension, as if to say, "You tiny peon of a patient, how lucky you are that I'm taking my precious time to be with you."  

As if you couldn't have guessed by now she was a disrespectful unprofessional attention whore who seemed like I was there purely to annoy her and to keep her from her soon to be Nobel prize winning nursing.  She added 45 minutes to my visit and offered nary an apology.

Once that horror show portion of the test was done I got shot up with another round of radioactive dye and about an hour after that worked into my system they took the last set of x-rays. Thankfully this time the x-ray technician didn't try to get all up in my business like he did on the first go round.  

Seriously, you JCMC nurses, especially cardiac stress test nurses, need some people skills training.  People like me, we've got heart disease, we're not fucking deaf, so use your indoor voice with us.  Also, try treating us with some respect and not like you're pissed off we're there interrupting your quest to bang the new hot Jewish doctor.  And finally, turn your cell phones off.  There is nothing so important that it can't wait until you're done with the patient.  After all, you are there to serve patients, we're not there to serve you, chit chat with you, tell you what a great medical provider you are, or to entertain you with jokes and witty japes.  Of course no one at the Johnson City Medical center will ever read this or make any kind of adjustments to their way of treating patients because they work for their bosses in the insurance business. 

Oh, one more thing, fuck you Amber.

Stress relief

I've got a cardiac stress test today, so I'm going to look at these women and try to remain calm before I have to go deal with the staff at the Johnson City Medical Center.

I feel better already.

I am not Charlie

Movie Reports

Two friends have an offbeat hobby, they make cheesy low budget sci fi actions films.  One of them, the black guy, gets super serious and dreams of making it big with their films so they buckle down and try to make a thirty minute low budget sci fi epic.  Once they screen the film they're kind of shocked that audiences find it funny and not some amazing action epic.

This is a fun little documentary about how dreams can get the better of you.  If you like films about film making, then this one is for you.  Catch this one on Netflix instant.

This creepy claustrophobic film is about a house owned by a couple of Argentine men who worked for the military dictatorship of the 1970's.  They've grown old now but they still love to torture and maim young people.  Some sexy young people stumble in to this house of horror and things get explosive.

I quite liked this one.  It's on Netflix instant.

 George Takei has led a remarkable life.  He was interred at one of the interment camps that FDR ordered during WW2, he went on to become a well known actor, who was a role model for many young Asians who grew up seeing only white people on TV, a politician and a public servant, a player in the LGBTQ community, and a true showbiz legend who has used his fame and celebrity to make the world a better place.  This cute documentary tells his story from several different perspectives.  Takei's husband is a big part of this film and rightfully so, he's a huge part of Takei's current success and Takei admits that without him, he'd be a mess.  Their relationship is a shining example of what marriage should be, people who love one another who work, play, and march through life together.

I highly recommend this sweet documentary, it's on Netflix instant.

An uber wealthy pampered woman's life falls apart after her husband's dubious business dealing are uncovered.  He goes to prison where he ends his life and she moves out to San Francisco to start all over with the help of her poor but proud adopted sister.  She tries to fit in and become what we would think of as 'normal,' but her sense of entitlement and the memory of her wealth gets the better of her and she fucks up the new life her sister helps her build.

I had mixed feelings watching this one but in the end I really liked it.  I despised Blanchett's character throughout most of the film, as I think we're supposed to do.  I quite liked Sally Hawkins, she turned in yet another solid performance but for me, the performance that stole this film was the one turned in by Andrew Dice Clay of all people.  His working class roots allowed him to tap into the impotent rage that  his working class character has after he loses all his money in the financial double dealings.
This one if one of Woody Allen's better later films.  It works because Allen knows these wealthy New York types.  It also works because Allen isn't in it and none of the characters are a stand in for him.  I recommend it, and I bought it on Amazon's streaming service.