Thank you Canada

Thanks for a great 21st winter Olympiad Canada. You cats pulled it off nicely and with great aplomb. But to those countrymen and women of yours who were disparaged the games coming to your fine country, I say, "Up yours, eh."

Congratulations on a fine set of games, all those gold medals you finally won on your home soil, and for being such gracious hosts. You folks did it up right. Sochi, Russia will be hard pressed to top your games.

Tired of letting Pat Robertson have all the fun of placing blame for natural disasters...

...other religious leaders have decided to speak out on the earthquake in Chile.

The pope sez: "Those priests and parishioners who still cling to 'liberation theology' are to blame for this disaster."

The Dalai Lama sez: "Pull my finger Santiago! Hee, hee, just kidding. Actually, all suffering from this earthquake is an illusion. And so is the earthquake."

The late Billy Graham sez: "Hey! I'm not dead yet god damn it!"

The Great Spirit sez: "Earthquakes are natural disasters that are caused the shifting of the tectonic plates that the continents and everything else on the surface of the earth rests upon, they aren't punishment for a damn thing you small minded morons."

Moron Jesus sez: "If only those Chileans had accepted me and Mormonism, then this would not have happened. It's all written down on some golden plates somewhere, they're the ones I didn't let Joseph Smith see."

Scientology Jesus sez: "This is what you people get for rejecting me, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and our sci fi religion. If oyu think this earthquake and Pinochet were bad, wait til you see what I do to you apostates next. Hail Xenu! Hail me!"

Poor guy...

...his name must be Public Option.

Motel of the week (Bonus edition!)

Click here for the bonus motel of the week.

Rev. Pat Robertson on the earthquake in Chile

Leader of the Christians, Pat Robertson, today released the following statement of blame for the massive earthquake in Chile:

"True story, in 1973 Chile elected a Communist to lead their government. The earthquake was punishment for that. God hates Communism. Also he is punishing Chile for electing a woman president, for not making their citizens speak English, and for having a country named after a food. And the queers too. The queers in Chile brought this on their country. Every time a hot young full breasted woman kissed another hot young full breasted woman right on the lips while their tongues snaked around each other and their heaving bosoms heaved while their soft hands caressed each other...hang on...what was I saying? Hmmmmm. Oh yes, this was all brought on by men having butt sex with other men. And the Commies. Yeah, that's it. Jesus hates that stuff."

The USA's greatest ever winter Olympian

Sure Apolo Ohno has the most winter Olympic medals but in my book he's not the greatest American winter Olympian. And no, it's not Bonnie Blair either.

The greatest winter Olympian the USA has ever produced is speed skater Jack Shea.
Yep. He's the greatest ever and most of you have never heard of him. What makes him so great you wonder, well hang on and I'll tell you.

Young Jack Shea was a member of the 1932 American speed skating team and the winter games that year were held in his home town of Lake Placid, NY. Jack trained hard year round and was roundly mocked for it. But his training paid off in spades when the speed skating races began. Shea smoked his competitors in both the races he was allowed to skate in. If he had been allowed to skate in the other speed skating races, American Olympians were only allowed to compete in two individual events back in the '20's and '30's, most assuredly Shea would have won those as well. His training regimen was legendary and his skating was flawless. And not only was he a fast skater, he was a nice guy as well.

But winning two gold medals back in the 1932 games alone doesn't qualify him for greatness. It's what he did after those games that make him the greatest American winter Olympian ever.

In 1932, as you'll remember if you know the slightest thing about American history, our country was mired in what was known as the Great Depression. And back then there were no endorsement deals for Olympic athletes, in fact if Olympians had any sort of job at all it was frowned upon. So after the games Shea had to go to work. And work he did, while raising a family that loved it's winter sports.

In 1960 the winter games came back to the USA, they were held at Squaw Valley in California. And in those games on the USA ski team was the son of Jack Shea. Sadly he didn't win a medal but he did have the honor of competing for the USA just like his father had.

So he won two gold medals and his son was an Olympian as well. No bad. But we're not done yet.

In 1980 the winter games came back to Lake Placid and Jack Shea was instrumental in bringing the games back to his home town. Unfortunately they weren't as a big a success that time around but that's not Shea's fault.

So he wins two gold medals, his son skis in the 1960 games, and he helps bring the games to Lake Placid once more. All great achievements but there one more jewel in Shea's crown.

In 2002 the games came to America once more, this time to Salt Lake City. And in those games Shea's grandson Jim rode his sled in the skeleton races. And he rode that sled with a picture of his late grandfather, Jack Shea died just before the Salt Lake games began, in his uniform. So not only were his genes in the last Olympics held in the USA, his image was as well.
And those genes did well in Salt Lake because Jim Shea slid to gold in the skeleton event and he dedicated his medal to his late grandfather, the greatest winter Olympian the USA has ever produced.

When Apolo Ohno's kid is in the Olympics, when he helps bring the games back to the USA, and if his grandkid wins a gold medal in those games then he'll tie Jack Shea for the title of 'Greatest USA winter Olympian' of all time. But until those days arrive, he can't touch Jack Shea's Olympic legacy.

Suddenly it was obvious...

...what was in the skeevy pervert's Big Gulp cup.

Score!

I picked this up for $3 today at my local comic book shop:
And yes, monkeys and apes figure into each story. It's classic!

Common sense

Pro lifers put up this billboard in the metro Atlanta area near a Planned Parenthood clinic:
Never mind the fact that's it racist, the fact is it's ignorant of the reality that for many low income and urban women Planned Parenthood clinics are the only source of affordable health care available. "Reproductive clinics are frequently a first line of medical care for women near the poverty line. According to Planned Parenthood's annual report, only 3 percent of its services are abortion-related. Like many family-planning clinics, the organization not only provides a full range of reproductive health care to women, it also provides basic medical care -- from physicals to flu shots -- for 3 million men and women annually. Despite what anti-choicers say, the prevalence of Planned Parenthood clinics in low-income urban areas has little to do with targeting poor women and women of color for abortion. Low-income areas are simply less likely to have multiple options for health care, and the organization is filling that void," this quote comes from this source.

So when you hear that the born agains want Planned Parenthood closed because it performs abortions, what they are really saying is they want it closed because it's a low cost health care option for the poor and for minority women.

So much Christian hypocrisy, so little time to point it all out.

The return of pop culture Friday

This week's pop culture question on the AV Club blog is, "What are your personal pop culture rules?"

Mine are as follows:

• I will never ever see a film with Adam Sandler in it. Yes, I've seen some of his films in the past and I regret it.
• I will never ever see another film that has been directed by or has Kevin Smith in it. To me he epitomizes the kind of self referential pop culture wanksterism that I so despise. He's under the impression he's talented and witty. However the reality is he's a fat blowhard who's fifteen minutes of fame were up years ago. Seriously Kevin, stop raping the corpse of pop culture and go get a job that requires you to give back to the world for a change.
• I will never ever see a film where the star plays either a retarded person or a racist who sees the light through the power of the love of a good man or woman or because of Jesus.
• If a film has a performance in it that's labeled 'brave' or 'fearless' I'm not seeing it.
• I won't buy Elvis Costello CD's that are jazz, classical, or Burt Bacharach inspired.
• If Julia Roberts is in a film, I'm out. Forget it. I will not see her in anything.
  
• I'm all in on films about con men and dystopian sci fi films.
• I'm all in on comedies featuring Steve Coogan, Dawn French, Ricky Gervais, and Peter Serafinowicz.
• I'll watch most anything with Olivia Colman, Jessica (Stevenson) Hynes, and all my adopted actors.
• Films made from characters from Saturday Night Live sketches? Never. Forget it. Not gonna see them.
  

See? I'm not so hard to please.

No, thank you

Accolades have been coming at me faster than Congressional and White House Democrats and capitulate to Republicans and corporate interests. And after ignoring them for so long I figured I better be a gracious monkey and accept these awards and thank the senders of them.

Canadian babe Laura just gave me this award:

It's so sweet, isn't it? A bit ironic considering my irascible personality but still, it's very sweet of her to give it to me. Thanks Laura.

I in turn award this award to all the Canadian females on my blog roll. You ladies bring me sunshine 365 days a year.

Wings and Calvin both gave me this award at different times in the past few weeks:
And that proves yet again that great minds think alike. Thanks guys, your blogs are pretty darn spiffy too.

I pass this blog along to everyone on my blog roll with the exception of the ladies who got the first award. It would be unseemly to give you ladies two awards at once, your proprietary heads might swell a bit and we can't have that. But to everyone else, well done! You truly deserve this award!

Canadian of the year

Bronze medalist in Ladies Figure Skating
Joannie Rochette is Canadian of the year up to this point.
After losing her mother to a massive heart attack on Sunday she went out and skated the lights out on Tuesday and almost skated flawlessly last night. She skated her way to the bronze medal and she skated her way into our hearts here at Monkey Central.

Well done Joannie, well done indeed.

You be the judge

Computer date fuck up or gangbang waiting to happen?

Warning: this post may not be suitable for minors and prudes.

Some people are idiots

There was another fatal killer whale attack at Sea World in Florida yesterday. The whale, not the one pictured here, killed one of the people who was 'training' it.
The lesson we need to take from this case is: STOP TRYING TO TAME WILD ANIMALS. NO SHIT, SERIOUSLY, STOP IT.

Seriously people, it's not that hard of a lesson. We seen this kind of thing hundreds of times before. Lion tamers get attacked when they try to make lions behave abnormally. People who mess with tigers get attacked, same goes with those who mess with elephants. Chimps and monkeys attack eventually. And why do they keep doing it? BECAUSE THEY ARE WILD ANIMALS. No matter how you dress them up, no matter if you live side by side with them, no matter if you give them a name and imagine they love you like you love them, THEY ARE NOT DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND THEY WILL FUCKING KILL YOU. That goes for whales, jungle cats, wolverines, Tasmanian devils, bears, wolves, coyotes, some species of birds (don't get me started on people who keep birds in cages), kangaroos, and most every animal known to man that is not a dog or a cat, and sometimes those animals will kill you too.

It's just insane that we keep trying to 'train' or 'tame' wild animals. The desire is nothing more than human hubris rearing it's ugly head once again. And where did this hubris originally come from? You guessed it, from the people who brought such things as original sin, papal infallibility, and the virgin birth, it came from Christians. In their book of fairy tales it says that man is supposed to have dominion, or in other words, control, over the earth and all it's creatures. And that dominion is granted by their god and since their god loves them then he must have made all the animals to love them too, so it's totally okay to rip an animal out of it's natural habitat in order to dress it up like a human or to make it jump through flaming a hoop so it can eat food that it didn't hunt and kill.

Well, guess what's wrong with that picture, I'm sure you'll figure it out pretty soon, unless you're an idiot who has a raccoon as a pet or who thinks it would be totally cool to make a badger and a a cat mate so you sell the offspring or make them fight the hobo's who live near the underpass. What's wrong with that picture is that wild animals don't want to wear trousers and a bowler hat and they don't want to be hand fed by someone who has a MA in English lit but doesn't have enough common sense to keep his or her hands out of the mouths of wild fucking animals. Whales really don't want to live in above ground pools and do four shows a day where they get to balance balls on their noses, they want to roam the ocean where they can live freely and interact with their own kind and they want to hunt their own food. Chimps don't want to ride bikes and shit in diapers, they want to live in the jungle and throw their shit at each other. Tigers don't want to be fawned over by a couple of Germanic gay guys who wear more sequins than the entire group of this years Olympic figure skaters, they want to prowl the badlands of Asia and to hump other tigers. Lions don't want to be poked and prodded by some asswipe in a top hat, they want to stalk their prey in the savanna in Africa. No matter what some book written in the Bronze age says, we don't have control over the animals who we share this planet with.

The problem here is animal based amusement parks and circuses. Let's be clear here, animals are not here for our amusement, that's what the tea partiers are for, animals are here because they play a crucial part in the life cycle of this planet. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for zoos because I think they are important learning centers and they do great work in saving endangered species. Zoos are not the problem. It's stupid people who insist on believing the antiquated notion that we can bend wild animals to our whims who are the problem.

When I lived in Knoxville I remember reading about some idiots who were visiting the national park in the Smokies. They were out hiking and they saw one animal attack another and they became enraged so they started throwing rocks and sticks at the attacker. A park ranger was nearby and he stopped the idiots and he asked them why they did such a thing. They told him they didn't want to see the small defenseless little animal get hurt by the big mean bully animal. The ranger then explained to them all about how animals in the wild operate. He told them that's how meat eaters survive, they hunt and they kill other animals and they eat their flesh and bones. I'm sure the idiots had a hard time understanding his point when you consider they probably grew up on a diet of Disney cartoons where all animals are cute, funny, and oh so human.

It's sad that some people haven't evolved enough to understand that animals are not human and they don't really exist to amuse and entertain us. And honestly, the people who don't understand that deserve to be eaten, mauled, and maimed by any animal they try to train or tame.

Fun couple of the week

Dude, put that thing back in your pants!

Artists can do anything. And they always get the hot chicks.

Damn artists.

A Monkey book report

I recently read this book:

This is the second Phillip K. Dick book I've read. The first was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which I loved, but oddly enough I despised the movie version of it, which you may know as the film Blade Runner.

This novel, The Cosmic Puppets, came out in the 1950's but it's not very dated at all. The reason it's not dated is that in it Dick writes about the constant struggle between good and evil. The story is about a man on a road trip with his wife who decides that he's got to visit his hometown in Virginia. When he gets there everything is changed and nothing in the town is as he remembers it. And the reason for that is because his town has become ground zero in the battle between two gods who use the towns people, insects, and vermin as their proxy fighters.

This book has all the hallmarks of a Phillip K. Dick novel, the battle between good and evil and skewed perceptions of reality. It's not as trippy as some of his later work, which means it's not packed with things that have double and triple meaning.

It was a quick and enjoyable read. I highly recommend it, especially to those who never have or don't read science fiction, because this book is not actually a sci fi book, it's more of a religious allegory.

Motel of the week

10 things that make me happy

I stole this meme from Samurai Frog. So here in no particular order are 10 things that make me happy:

1) My significant other and our close friends.

2) Making art.3) Blogging and the internet in general.

4) Even though it makes me crazy, politics.
5) Worldwide sporting events like the Olympics, Grand Slam tennis tournaments, and the World Cup.

6) Great design. Be it graphic design
or fashion design.
7) Books. And that includes comic books and graphic novels. I'll also toss in libraries and book stores in this one as well.
8) Beer.
9) Cooking and gardening.

10) British comedies. Nobody does great classic timeless comedy like the Brits.

My list changes from day to day but this one is pretty representative of what I'm diggin' on these days. Please feel free to tell everyone what you're diggin' on on your blog and not in the comments section of mine. And there's also no need to tell me if you hate or disagree with any of the things I put in my list.

Brunette of the week (bonus gold medal edition!)

Ms. Tessa Virtue is
the first ever second brunette of the week.
She's also the one half of the gold medal Canadian ice dancing team.
I'm giving her a gold medal for being 'Hubba hubba!' and for not wearing one of those cheesy flesh colored t-shirts under her oh so striking dress, there's nothing like a bare back, especially hers. She's not only a gorgeous ice dancer and graceful artist athlete, she's also a gracious competitor.

Over and out

So CPAC's anal gathering (pun intended so don't leave me any comments telling me I made a mistake) is over with and all the angry rich conservatives have gone home with their belly's full of meals prepared for them by the undocumented workers they hate and their minds full of red meat tossed to them by the vast array of lily white speakers at the event. And of course, their new de facto leader, Glenn Beck,
left them all with a warm fuzzy feeling inside their cold small hearts.

I didn't watch a second of the smug coverage of the event and I didn't read any of the long fawning articles about it that appeared in the corporate media newspapers but I can pretty much sum up the meeting despite my not knowing much about what actually went on or what was said. Here goes:

• They hailed the coward who flew his planes into the IRS building in Austin as an anti government hero and there's more than likely going to be a move afoot to make his remains a holy conservative relic like the Catholics of old did to their dead martyrs.
• Mann Coulter said something mean about John Edwards. And liberals. Then she smirked and tossed her straw like hair out of her face. When she got done speaking they wheeled her back in to her crypt where she feasted upon blood harvested from young Muslims and Mexicans.
  
• Glenn Beck cried and cried and then he cried some more. Then he gave a rambling talk about how progressives were responsible for World War 2, Communism, germs, and his little dick.
• George Will decried unions, the lack of child labor, and OSHA.
  
• Smug sanctimonious people of all shades of white from ecru to egg shell bemoaned the fact that their country is being taken from them. They bitched about affirmative action, which was made law under a Republican president. They complained about criminals having too many rights. And they whined about the fact that gays, women, blacks, and people who speak Spanish as their first language want equal treatment under the law.
  
• Many 'jokes' were made about teleprompters. And they were made by people using teleprompters.
• The speakers, attendees, and the staff of FOX Noise reporters who were covering the event all mocked the reality of climate change, evolution, and 'fancy book learning' in general.

Notice how two of the right's biggest 'stars,' Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, stayed away. Palin kept clear because she knows she be exposed as an intellectually barren harpy if she went and Huckabee stayed away because they went and let teh gay in this year.

Personally, I love it when right wingers congregate and spout off. Gathering like this shows their political philosophy for what it is, a racist longing for the past. And it shows them to be hypocritical blowhards who hate anything that isn't straight, white, and Christian.

Meet the newest addition to Monkey Central

I've named our new composter R2D2.

Brunette of the week

Sally Hawkins.

I'm not one to fetishize the 1970's or Las Vegas but...

...I loved the photo on the cover of this vintage Art in America magazine so much that I had to buy it. I got it at Book Lovers Warehouse on the Jonesborough highway, in the old Food Lion shopping center. That place is a treasure trove of cool and funky used books and vintage/retro magazines. Be aware though, that the owner, an old man with a wild and unruly beard who smells faintly of stale urine, is one of those guys who loves to make a comment about each and every one of the things you buy. He'll even stand there and stare at a book or magazine for a moment until he thinks up a 'good enough' comment about it.

The IOC can suck it

The International Olympic Committee, some of the biggest whores for corporate cash this planet has ever seen, tells ski goggle manufacturer UVEX that they can't say in their advertising that gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn uses their product.
What a crock of shit. Those bastards at the IOC would stomp a new born baby's head in if they thought it would bring them some corporate cash and more sponsorships. The stinking hypocrites must not be getting enough cash kick backs from Uvex so they want to stop them from cashing in a bit on Vonn's celebrity.

If you've read my blog for just about any length of time you know I love to stir the pot and to stick it to the corporate man. So this next sentence is for the asswipes at the IOC:

Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn uses Uvex ski goggles. She used them when she won both gold and bronze at the 21st winter Olympic games in Vancouver.

If you anyone from the IOC doesn't like this post then I encourage you to do something about it. If you'd like to sue me, then please, by all means, let's get it on.

Cool Britannia

Congrats to Amy Williams for being the first Brit in 30 years to win an individual gold medal in winter Olympic competition.
Well done you.

Maria hoped that...

...the missionaries would accept the gift of the little girl and leave her and the rest of the wild pigs alone. Pigs hate it when you try to convert them to your twisted religion.

All robins, no Batman

Our neighborhood was invaded by a flock of robins last evening.
There were about 150 of them.
I tried to catch as many as I could in some photographs.
However they didn't like me taking their picture.
So they shit all over Sparky's car.