She says 'monkeys' like it's a bad thing

You be careful Miss Jar Coochie.

He's really crushing your head

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow is Monday.

Here's something you don't see every day

The snow, she fall all the night long

As of 9:00 AM we had 5" of icy snow here in and around Monkey Central.
It's alternating between spitting big flakes of snow and sleet for the rest of this morning.
We won't be driving anywhere until maybe tomorrow afternoon.

Thankfully, winter will be over in a few weeks and I'll be able to taunt you people who live north of me.

Brunette of the week

Mrs. Gideon.

Tsnow-nami 2010

We're expecting to be hit with a big snow storm later today. They say we could get as much as 11 inches of heavy wet snow before it's all said and done. We went to the grocery store and stocked up a bit and I'll go out again around noon to get a few more things, which means the snow will pass us by. Either way we'll be vigilant.

Here's hoping you will be as well.

Reaction to the State of the Union address

"I was disappointed to not hear much gnu stuff in it. How much longer will your President ignore the good gnus?"

"We don't have TV out here on the border so we didn't hear the speech yet. In a few days former boxing champions Larry Holmes and Leon Spinks will come by and interpretively dance the speech for me and my wife and kids."

"That negro scared me! I couldn't watch. How come they didn't let that nice Palin woman give his speech for him? I like her. And I like custard and things that have strong smells too."

"We wanted to hear more about inter-species romance in it. But over all it was a sop to the right wing."

"Loved it. Now eat me, would ya."

Douchebag of the Union

Idiot jurist Sammy "The Bullshit" Alito had the gall to sit there and shake his head and disagree with the President when Obama called out the Supreme Court tonight on their awful precedent shattering decision on corporate money in politics. President Obama rightly said that their decision that corporations can spend what ever money they like on our elections means that foreign corporations can now influence elections. But like the true conservative he is, Alito refused to listen to the truth and he shook his head no and muttered that the President's comment wasn't true. I guess in the dream world where Alito lives only the nice and super sweet American corporations will pour money into our electoral process and the mean and nasty foreign corporations will sit out the whole process. And pigs will fly, blacks will willingly go back to the plantations, and the gays will stop pestering people for equal treatment under the law, in Alito's world as well.

I long for the good old days when Supreme Court justices weren't such douchebags. And when they actually followed precedent and didn't just make up new laws and doctrine based on pleasing those who appointed them to the bench.

Goodnight Howard

America's greatest historian has passed away at the age of 87. Howard Zinn taught us that history is more than just the story of the rich ruling elites and the machinations of the military industrial complex. He showed us history from the view point of the people who got trampled by it (black folks, native Americans, the poor, the working class), who tried to correct it (socialists, radicals, feminists), and perhaps most importantly, he didn't just sit on his bony academic ass and and write books and teach history, he went out in the streets and made history. He was a crucial player in the early civil rights struggles, his anti war activism took him out of his cloistered office and into the fight against the travesties we know as the Vietnam war and the wars of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was a voice for those who thought they had no voice. He was a pioneer in telling the story of this country not through dewy eyes that were shaded by rose colored glasses, but through the clear strong lens of truth. And most of the time that lens showed us that the Untied States of America wasn't this do gooder nation that we heard so much about in school, it showed that our country was in fact an empire that was responsible for death, destruction, and despair for those who crossed us or who didn't see things the way we saw them.

There was no one like Howard Zinn before but I hope now that we have his works and his example, there will be many more like him. Goodnight Howard, rest in peace sir. You will be missed.

John McCain quote of the week

I'm listening

The disappointment I have with the job President Obama has done so far is mind boggling. It's boggling my mind that he's done nothing on

• 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'
  
• ending the wars of terror that are bankrupting this country,
• stopping the Bush era assaults on our civil liberties,
• amending and eventually repealing the Patriot Act,
  
• and his marked lack of leadership on the health insurance reform issue.

And pile on top of all that his new plan to freeze discretionary spending.

I'm not psyched about his State of the Union later tonight. I expect he'll say all the right things that right wing and the media pundits inside the beltway want him to say. And he'll give us who worked to elect him the cold shoulder once again.

But I'll listen to what he's got to say. However I am not optimistic.

Motel of the week

From the 1961 edition of the William and Mary alumni magazine.

Highly suspicious

Those folks look a little too pleased about going to Minnesota on their vacation.

(I'd kill to have that booklet they're holding though!)

Bad ideas come in threes

A school system in California had banned the use of a dictionary in it schools because it has the definition of 'oral sex' in it. In doing so they also stopped kids from finding out what the words 'over-reaction,' 'idiot,' and 'sanctimonious jack asses' mean. But what's going to happen now is that the smart kids will seek out copies of the dictionary that has been banned and they'll look up all sorts of words and they'll actually learn a little something in the process.

President Obama is pandering to the right wing, which by the way will never ever work with him, once again. He's proposing a freeze in discretionary government spending...right in the middle of a recession...with unemployment running at 10%. Dude, not a smart move. This move is akin to putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound.

What we need to do is put a permanent end to spending billions on agriculture subsidies that pay farmers not to grow things and that pay farmers billions to grow more and more and more corn. We need to stop paying billions into the prison industrial complex and billions upon billions into the military industrial complex. Oh yeah, and let's save billions and billions and billions, by ending the wars of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan.

And finally, the idiot Governor of California
wants to outsource the only thing his state has a surplus of, prisoners, to Mexico.

With an idiot like that leading your state California, I bet you guys think back wistfully on the good old days when Gray Davis was governor. As much as I like some of you people out there, I thank my lucky stars every day that I don't live in your state.

Remember how bad 1987 sucked?

These two couldn't keep their hands, tongues, or meat and two veg off each other in public:
Computers were huge and dorky and the internet sucked:
Harry Hamlin was still allowed to make movies:
And Virginia Madsen hit the big screen in the film Slamdance:Yeah, 1987 was the best year EVER!

Stare at the fan

Just keep staring at it. Focus on it and nothing else. Good. You should be getting sleepy now. Your eyelids are getting heavy now. That's right drift off to sleep. Now before you fall completely under, tell me the PIN number to your bank account. That's right. Good. Now, ignore the vertigo and the powerful thirst you'll have when you wake up. And one, two, three, you're back wide awake.

And now here's a word or two from the Aluminum Council of America

Hey everybody in blogland, how's it going for you these days?

Good, good, whatever. Listen, you want to know how it's going for us? It's going tough as h-e-double hockey sticks, excuse our French. What with a sour economy and your recycling and reusing our foil and all the cans and shit our members make, we're not making the kind of money we used to.

And it's hurting our members. They're not able to vacation in places like Europe or Asia anymore, they have to settle for places like Canada and New Jersey. They can't buy cars made by Cadillac or Mercedes these days so they have to settle for Lincolns and Saabs. Our members kids may have to go to second tier Ivy league colleges or god forbid an ACC/tobacco road college. Trust me, you don't want that shit happening.

So what can you do to stop our economic slide? BUY MORE OF OUR PRODUCTS!!! Your house looks pretty shabby people, so why not cover that mofro with some swanky aluminum siding? How about you stop buying corn syrup filled sodas (or pop, depending on where you live) in plastic bottles and buy more of that stuff in cans? You know, studies have shown that all the companies who make plastic drink bottles give half their profits to the church of Satan and to the Communist party. It's true.

You can also buy more aluminum foil. I bet you all forgot how versatile aluminum foil was didn't you? Well, here's some tips on where you can use more foil in your lives:
That table setting would be plain, dull, ordinary, and plain old ugly without our foil. Martha Stewart loves our foil, so should you.
If every ironing board in America alone was covered in foil we'd be rolling dough. So get to it America, and you too Canada and Mexico! Foil wrap your ironing boards. We mean it.
And finally, no bedroom or nursery is complete with out foil. You could use it on your pillow cases, your kid's cribs, and you could even use it for a condom in a pinch!

Seriously though, we need you all to buy more aluminum products ASAP. We're asking nicely this time. Next time we won't be so nice. And if you think we're playing around here, we're not. We're totally ready to get medieval on your asses. Also, if you don't start buying more of our stuff we'll also send this guy over to your place
and he'll tell you all about his wonderful model train collection.

Now, get off those asses and go shopping.

Do it.

Do it.

Do it.

Sincerely,
The Aluminum Council of America

It's time for a 'Dave' update

Yeah, what about Dave??

Spotlight on the performing arts!

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw how the store owners had posed these mannequins in their antique store was, "Oh look, the road company of the female version of Bent finally made it to town."

Fixer uppers of the week

Who doesn't love a bargain and a challenge?

Canada, land of family fun and calisthenics

Who doesn't love vintage tourism ads?

Hey you...

...why are you giving booze to that baby?Because we like to see him get hammered. He's funny when he's hammered.

Oh, okay then. Carry on!

Are you bored this weekend?

Well don't be!

You could

or

Conversations during the telethon for Haiti

Me: Do you recognize that guy playing piano for Beyonce?
Sparky: Nope.
Me: He's that douchebag from Coldplay who's married to Gwyneth Paltrow.
Sparky: Why is he a douchebag?
Me: Because he's in Coldplay.


Then later when Madonna was singing
Me: I wonder why Madonna never adopted any poor black kids from Haiti. The country was full of them even before the earthquake.

Pulp of the week

Attenion citizens of Vancouver, Canada!

The winter Olympics in your fair city begin in just a few days. To sure you're all at tip top condition and putting the best face on your fine city please make sure you can answer all 12 of the following questions in the affirmative for the duration of the games.

The world is watching you Vancouver, so please be the best North Ameri-CANS you can be, and don't be grumpy unclean North Ameri-CAN'Ts!

Graphic novel round up

I read this recently:
Wow. Great well written, well drawn, action packed graphic novel. It's a Viking tale that's believable and very atmospheric. The battle sequences are graphic and bloody but not gratuitously so, same goes for the sex scenes. I've really hated the way Vikings were portrayed in most comics, and films and TV shows for that matter, so I was very happy to see that someone in an entertainment medium finally did them justice.

My only quibble with this graphic novel is the language. They use modern words that would never have come from the lips of Vikings. I could forgive them the use of the word 'fuck' because it's one of those words that just fits but for one of the characters to say that another is a 'dictator' was just too much to believe. Seeing it used in this graphic novel was like seeing a jet plane in a western, it just didn't fit.

I just finished this graphic novel:

I'm someone who absolutely hates superhero comic books and graphic novels. I didn't used to be that way, after reading them for years and then not reading them for years it's just hard for me to go back to enjoying them when on the odd occasion when I do pick up a superhero title. They've been done to death and all the established superhero characters are dull as dust to me. But, having said that, I really liked this superhero graphic novel.

The superheros are a group of kids who were born mysteriously to women who didn't know they were pregnant. The kids who were lucky enough to survive these miraculous births are gathered together by an eccentric mad scientist and his chimpanzee sidekick who is actually a highly intelligent physician who just happens to be a chimp and they are melded into an unlikely superhero squadron. They all have wildly diverse personalities and powers and they don't always mesh and get along with one another and that's what makes the story so good.

The story telling is superb and the funky chunky art is swell as well. It reminded me of the comic book art of Bill Sienkiewicz. Evidently the guy who wrote this series is in the band My Chemical Romance. But I had no idea who he was since I'm not an angst ridden emo teen who wears pounds of black eyeliner and who feels things waaaaaaay too deeply. However don't let the fact that the writer is in some crappy band that the kids love so much stop you from reading this series, he's actually a pretty good comic book writer.

I recommend both these graphic novels highly.

German paperback cover of the week

The United States of Corporate America...

...is brought to you, in part, by these activist judges:

Precedent? No thanks. Decisions by these guys are based solely on whether the outcome will be beneficial to their pals on the right wing and in corporate America.

If you thought corporate America already controlled out government, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Old women of the week

You just know those two old women facing the camera are up to no good. And that's why I love them.

Are you bummed out over the election results in Massachusetts?

If so,

then wipe your tears away,

brush the weak willed no spine Democratic party out of your life,

and savor the minty fresh taste of the Green Party!

Remember, the Green Party has never let anyone down because the two major political parties in the USA do their best to keep them off the ballot nationwide! Live green and vote Green from now on. I know I will.