more miscellanea

Advertising Tomfoolery
There's a new Lamisil (athlete's foot treatment) commercial where the locker room socks all become hand puppets bemoaning the fungus they battle. I want to see a Vagisil commercial where the panty crotches in the dressing room all come to life to trade yeast infection war stories.

That Ol' Taiwanese Whale Tail
Okay, so MSNBC ran this story three or four years ago, but I've been re-reading a few of my books lately and in that sprit, I say some stories are worth a second telling:

Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours.

The 56-foot-long whale had been on a truck headed for a necropsy by researchers, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode in the southern city of Tainan.

Once moved to a nearby nature preserve, the male specimen -- the largest whale ever recorded in Taiwan -- drew the attention of locals because of its large penis, measured at some five feet, the Taipei Times reported. "More than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to 'experience' the size of its penis," the newspaper reported.

I am not saying that there isn't something ironic about men (whose average height is not much greater than the gawked-over phallus) gathering to view the ginormous pecker served up on a platter of exploded whale...sperm whale, at that. But irony is upstaged by the reporter's/translator's choice of words, "men...gone to 'experience' the size of its penis." That just provides the wrong visual.

Anna Nicole Smith Autopsy Report
And in the continued spirit of old news, I would be remiss in keeping my two cents on this one.

I am fascinated by autopsy reports. And, predictable as it is, this one's begging for commentary. I know, I know, I'm just like one of the millions of sensationalism crackheads in this country. But how can you resist an autopsy report with such a litany of tattoos, plastic surgeries and drugs in starring and supporting roles? All you would expect from the queen of shallow tackiness. So it was somewhat disappointing to read this rude little line:

"The anus is unremarkable."

I'm just saying the medical examiners could have been a little more sensitive. Maybe "The anus is real cute but not tattooed or nothin'." or "The anus appears normal but we're sure it's seen its share of action." Don't treat the anus like an autopsy afterthought. Have some respect for dead assholes.

Election Whipping Hijos du Jour
It's no surprise to all but the dullest-witted observers that campaigns usually rely on some cultural boogie-man to con the shit-scared masses into voting conservatively. So I'm here to announce that we, The Queers of America, are temporarily passing the torch to the Brown People currently being used to whip simple-minded Americans into a frightened frenzy. Paper covers Rock; Rock breaks Scissors; Scissors cut Paper; and Xenophobia trumps Homophobia this year.

But never fear, oh, reviled immigrants, this is a relay race and the baton will come back around to us. Except for all you gay wetbacks...you, mis amigos, are fucked.

Speaking of Queers
It's gay, gay, gay month, once again. There's a group here called POMPOM (say what you want but those queens are clever) for People Opposed to Moving the Parade Out of Montrose. I can't imagine what dunderbrain wants to strip the last bit of local color out of Montrose by moving the parade. Pretty soon Montrose is going to be the legitimate offspring of Rice Village and Bellaire instead of the riotous bastard child of Pasadena and River Oaks. What a shameful price to pay for middle-class respectability.

The only reason to move the Parade is to take it on the road: this year to Kingwood, next year to Orange, then, The Woodlands, Vidor and maybe a few sashays through good ol' godfearing, Bush-dwelling Tanglewilde. Otherwise, leave it the fuck alone.

We'll be out there either marching or cheering from the sidelines. And checking out the sistahs and the drag queens and the fashion-plate guys and the baby dykes...oh, wait, they supposedly hate that expression. How about lesbianettes? Yeah, we'll be checking out the lesbianettes, too.

what was i supposed to remember again?

Happy Memorial Day, people...whatever that means to each of you.
Here's another happy eavesdropping moment from Overheard in New York:

Jesus-freak: ...And let it be known that if you disobey the holy book and God's laws, you are eternally damned.
Queer: So, what happens to me if I'm gay?
Jesus-freak: You're going to Hell in a hand basket!
Queer: Well, that hand basket better be fucking Prada, bitch!

--42nd St station

I've been too fucking busy lately...but not too busy to reflect on passing of Jerry FallDowntoHellWell. The Rude Pundit and Christopher Hitchens have so beautifully captured my sentiments I don't want to say anything more so as not to muddy up the righteous waters of their holy writ.

In other news, the city of Houston makes their street cleaning crew wear robin's-egg-blue and buttercup-yellow (<--that's buttercup-yellow) uniforms. While I applaud them for taking a stance against army green or industrial khaki, I think they've swung a little too far out on that color wheel pendulum. Those litter-stick-wielding workers look like the disgruntled section of the Easter parade.

Wish I could share more but I've got domestic chores calling me. Their voices sound just like Patty and Selma Bouvier.

malaprop delight

Grammatical sloppiness irritates me. Run spellcheck, proofread your word usage and make the extra effort to get your verbs to play nice with your nouns.

But sometimes the (mostly unconscious) slap-happy use of an expression completely enchants me (from foundmagazine.com):

"No holes barred" is a bastardization of "no holds barred" which refers to a sort of free-for-all approach to wrestling/boxing that has been adapted to any activity that is free from restriction.

In this form (Oh, I do wish it was intentional!) it's sex trade offering tongue-in-cheek...Oh god, I kill myself. Okay, Okay. Find the malaprops/misusage in this:

As we close the physical year's books, we've scoured every crook and nanny for incontinencies and, for all intense purposes, last year's budget demonstrated the perineal financial health we have all come to except. No holes barred.

Language is endlessly delightful.

superhero delusions

Hats off to the Rude Pundit and his treatise on Delusionality. No really, the man is fucking on target and riotously funny.

And this from boingboing.net: Real Life Underwear Perverts in the News. There's too much funny bizarreness for me to focus on in this story. Several details from thesmokinggun.com, however, stand out:

APRIL 24--Meet Dr. Raymond Adamcik. The Florida man, dressed as Captain America and with a burrito stuffed in his tights, was arrested Saturday night for allegedly groping women at a Melbourne bar. Adamcik was part of a pub crawl in which participants wore costumes. While at the On Tap bar, Adamcik, 54, allegedly touched the genital areas of two women, according to a Melbourne Police Department report. "Because there were so many cartoon characters in the bar at this time, all Captain Americas were asked to go outside for a possible identification," notes the report.

In the police report, the boyfriend of one of the assaulted woman is identified as Kenneth Tingley. Tingley, for fuckssake. It's wrong, wrong, wrong that this makes me laugh.

On a more sober note, here are some video posts of veterans who oppose the administration's war policy. The first half-dozen are quite good.

comments that make me sputter

Here is a good example of the kind of feedback that makes me worry about being the lead story of the Weekly World News when I snap.

setting: Associate Creative Director of Ad Agency to Copywriter, asking to add unnecessary fluff to a basic banner:
"Add a roll-over state. People love roll-overs"
"Well, if that's the case, why don't we add puppies to the ad? Because everyone loves puppies"

In my opinion, the perfect response. Puppies can also be replaced with 12 exclamation points or anything with that dazzling sparkle star.

This from a site Adverbatims.blogspot.com that collects foolish quotes by and to Communications, Advertising and Marketing professionals. The Unholy Trinity. But I'm 100% sure everyone gets these kind of comments in their respective professions.

Thank you, Barry for linking to this site.

Fier & Imus

My buddy Eric forwarded this NYT op-ed piece by Harvey Fierstein on the Don Imus' craptacular exit. Here are the first two paragraphs:

AMERICA is watching Don Imus’s self-immolation in a state of shock and awe. And I’m watching America with wry amusement.

Since I’m a second-class citizen — a gay man — my seats for the ballgame of American discourse are way back in the bleachers. I don’t have to wait long for a shock jock or stand-up comedian to slip up with hateful epithets aimed at me and mine. Hate speak against homosexuals is as commonplace as spam. It’s daily traffic for those who profess themselves to be regular Joes, men of God, public servants who live off my tax dollars, as well as any number of celebrities.

Fierstein's points are good and important but I must add I really enjoyed the Rude Pundit's take on the whole Don Imus brouhaha. I love that word. Brouhaha It sounds so like an evil laugh should sound.

marketing isn't always evil

Pimping for the man has taught me some very important life lessons. This photo clearly points out the importance of location and timing.
(Jesus of the Week, I idolatrize thee.)

87? did i say 87? i meant to say 107. really.

The article is titled, NYC admits problems after rat infestation at fast-food restaurant

Here is a snippet:

On Feb. 22, [health inspector] Thomas documented only 87 rat droppings and didn't cite an additional 20, which would have caused the restaurant to fail the inspection and could have forced it to close immediately, the department said. The next day, video of rats scampering throughout the eatery surfaced.

Okay. Let me get this straight. Part of health inspector's jobs are to actually count (like a pharmacist?) each little piece of rodent poo and write that number down? Are the accounted droppings then gathered up as evidence or do they remain there on the crusty floor for diners to gaze at as they chow down on their drumstick-n-thigh special?

Second issue: Eighty-seven bits o' rat shit are simply not enough to close an eatery? Nope, seems that 107 is the magic number. Need 20 more or the frying continues. Wow. What if one turd breaks and "appears" to be two? That could throw the whole thing off. This shit counting is more complex than it appears. Time was a handful of rat shit was pretty much all it took.

See the fast food rat here.

larry jerkhead

I hate to blow the soon-to-be abused clever little nickname for Anna Nicole's babydaddy on a blog title but I couldn't figure out how to make Birkhead rhyme with smegma.

Everything repugnant about modern society captured in the triumphant pump of a fist, cheesy thumbs-up and humble "I told you so."

"I won the million-dollar baby! My sperm rocks!"

One particular unprotected, sloppy romp with shit-for-brains/tits-for-days and Mr. Classy is golden! His 15-seconds of ejaculated fame.

Okay. We can all agree that this little girl didn't have a chance in hell of a tragedy-free life since zygotehood. Her mother was trash and everyone poking the trash was repugnant. The thing that reeks of Americana in all this is not that Anna Nicole was vapid and fucked up. It's not even that all the men surrounding her could have only wanted sex and money from her, despite her sterling command of the English language. It isn't even that three men and a goat have come forward with claims of paternity in the legal orgy following her death.

It's that all of this crass, tragic, shallow behavior is not being camouflaged in the slightest way by respect for a dead mother, a dead brother, a rejected/disturbed but grieving grandmother and last, and evidently least, an orphaned infant. No. Not even a nod in the direction of discretion. Not even a hint of humility at the challenges of new fatherhood. This is the look of someone who has just had his pony cross the finish line first. This is the face of a man who just watched the fifth Lotto ball drop in his favor.

If I were the judge and had the power, these two photographs would cancel Larry Jerkhead's claim to fatherhood. Permanently.

5 a.m.

Woke up this morning at the end of the drowning dream. Kept swimming furiously to the surface as it receded and my lungs felt filled to bursting. I fucking hate that dream. Jaw clenched and mind racing, I couldn't get back to sleep (it's Saturday, damn it all) and then, a thunderstorm came through. Two rounds of lighting and the rumbling of thunder and I slipped back into unconsciouness. Ahhh.

is that mollusk running out of your nose?

An acquaintance was telling me about his sick niece and remarked that she was miserable in part because she had crustaceans all around her eyes.

I laughed so hard my arthropods flared up.

(This just in: Jesus had a bad case of the crustaceans once, too.)

blag, blag, blag

When you invert the first two consonant sounds in a word or phrase sometimes it means something else or just sounds good. Like kitchen and chicken. Or crooks and nannies instead of nooks and crannies. Well, lately I've been calling my blog, my glob. I like the way it sounds. Bloggers are getting a lot of shit for being so trendy and/or full of inflated self-importance. It's good to poke fun at blogging even though, you know, I'm so not like those other globbers.

I think this guy is funny. Unexpectedly science-math-nerd poignant funny.

I'm not a high maintenance kind of woman...

...Sometimes a clever statement is all I need to resurrect a crapulent day.

My brother-in-law, the one that once sent me nunchucks anonymously (bless his divine humor), saw this and sent it to me yesterday:

Creationists should not be allowed to burn fossil fuel.

See? All better now.

finally, a hobo name to be proud of

I'm not saying that I will never have another hobo name but this first one will always hold a special place in my heart:

Inside-Out Mathilda

A long-awaited epiphenita, this one.

The origin comes from a more-often-than-normal tendency of mine to leave the house with an article of clothing on inside-out, backwards, mismatched or missing. This happened when I was a kid. A teenager. A young adult and it happened last month and again last week. A sign, I sigh, of my lifelong inability to give enough weight* to appearance. It's not that I don't care. I just don't care as much as most people. I can say this, because I rarely see my female or male coworkers with mismatched shoes, inside-out t-shirts, skirts spun around, etc. And I'm always looking for comrades in carelessness.

The Mathilda is a conglomeration: Tom Waits song, my ancient aunt and any name that hides the word math. So there you have it. From Inside-Out Mathilda who loves stew and swearing, too.

*pun gleefully intended

in awe of the rude

My friend Bryan made a comment on my last blog that referenced The Rude Pundit. He included a warning, because the Rude Pundit is not for the faint of heart or anyone who thinks George Bush is not laps ahead of Nixon and Harding in the race for the all-time worst president this country has ever had. I love the creative fucking ballsiness of it all. Statements like "no one...would have given a happy monkey fuck about the damn thing" leave me wheezing. I live for expressions like happy monkey fuck.

When my normal breathing resumed, I read this snippet and wondered if my old inhaler was still functional:

In answer to a couple of whiny questions about yesterday's post regarding the Fox "News" website's home page headlines being nearly completely devoid of anything remotely related to news, listen, you wads of fuck:

1. It wasn't photoshopped. If the Rude Pundit were going to waste his time photoshopping a Fox web page, it'd have a headline like "Rupert Murdoch Raped By Angry Wallaby"...

I am also partial to "wads of fuck" and references to wallaby sex.

One of the harsh lessons of adulthood is that no matter how much you might have in common with someone, nor how much you like and respect them, your humor Venn Diagrams may not intersect. Enough. With that disclaimer, I will say that I think that the Rude Pundit is too goddamn funny. And it's okay if you don't. It's okay if you sniff disapprovingly at me and my vulgar ways during high tea. Ms. Fussypants.

the peter principal, in general

General Peter Pace: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals[*] are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts." General Pace said he believed homosexuality was like adultery, the military doesn't condone either. [source]

Peter, Peter, Peter.

General Pace thinks the queers are immoral. No major surprise there (I am a pun-lovin fool). However, when in uniform, speaking as a military leader (not as Peter Pace The Everyman Self-Righteous Prick) he is not smart enough to keep his own holier-than-thou ideas private (make me stop).

Here's the obvious problem with aiming that moral flamethrower: there is no end to the list of things or people that an individual might label "immoral." So pretty soon, everything's on fire. And everyone's incendiary is pointed in a different direction. If PP finds adultery immoral and homosexuality immoral and behaviors worthy of military punishment, what's to stop him from throwing interracial marriage into the conflagration? Or gamblers? Or atheists? Or women who work while their husbands are at home raising the chitlins?

It's a Pandora's box old Pete is opening up and it's got teeth. I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to his own ignorant opinions. I just don't think he ought to be espousing them from the military pulpit.

*one more thing, and this is just my wordsmithing pettiness, but this phrase "homosexual acts between individuals" has gotten stuck in my craw. Does this imply that homosexual acts between groups are okie-dokie? Or is he reassuring us that that homosexual acts between, let's say, two fruitflies or two german shepherds are not a punishable military offense?

when i die, remember something funny i said

When a comedian dies, you just want to remember why they made you laugh. CNN had a few Richard Jeni quotes and these are my favorites:

On religion: "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend."

On Chicago: "I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.' "

rainy days and dst mondays

This was a tough daylight savings time "spring forward" Monday. At 5 a.m. (or so) a fantastic thunder and lightning storm opened up in Houston. About 20 feet above our roof, it seemed. Not only should you get to stay in bed when it's dark and thundering and you're short an hour of sleep but you shouldn't have to leave all that bliss to slog around in the rain.

However, let me set the record straight, I'm not blaming DST. I'm really pretty neutral on that hotly debated yawn. The only beef I have with the subject is when people talk about how great it is to get an extra hour of daylight. People, we're not getting an extra hour of daylight. We don't have that kind of power. We're shifting our workday to take advantage of the natural system of the earth's rotation blah blah blah, not the other way around. Stop mucking up the science with sloppy descriptions. For petesake.

country goodness

Just got back from the grocery store. I try and comfort myself with the cow-milking, butter-churning alternative to shopping but I still hate it.

Whenever possible, I try and buy free-range products. Like eggs from cage-free chickens. Barbara worked on a chicken farm in her colorful youth and her descriptions of that abuse make the extra dollar I shell out well worth it. So I bring home my reduced-guilt eggs. They are each stamped with, what one assumes is the mark of free chickens everywhere, a little red symbol. It seems a bit fussy but maybe the department of poultry rights insists on the labels.

What I really don't understand are the little bits of hen crap left on the shells. If they go to the trouble to stamp each egg, (and presumably the ink won't stick to dirty eggs) they must have to clean them first. My theory is that they take the pristine eggs, stamp them and then have a poultry poop sprayer that imparts a so-fresh-from-the-farm-they-still-have-chicken-shit-on-them authenticity.

Shit sprayers. The best metaphor for the field of advertising/marketing. I should know, that's where I work. Bill Hicks, rest his ranting soul, would probably agree.

which way to the pub, old bean?

Every month or so, it seems, there's a headline about a motorist's death due to driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Seriously, this is a regular story. And I find it incredible. One must assume the bulk of these fatalities have some drug-related factor to them (and for the most part, I mean alcohol).

It would be easy to understand, let's say, turning the wrong way on a one-way street downtown. It's a confusing grid if you're not used to it. But you don't tend to pick up enough speed for fatalities partly because the ability to spot oncoming cars from a distance is quite good. Which leads to the stranger fact that most of these accidents occur on the freeway. On the freeway.

Driving on the right side of the road is about as ingrained as gas-pedal-to-the-right, brake-pedal-to-the-left in this country. Shit, in the whole western hemisphere. So, even drunk, wouldn't you have one of those, "what about this just feels wrong?" moments? These are not soused Brits speeding willy-nilly southbound down I-45 north at 2 a.m., blissfully unaware of which side of the pond they're on.

It's not that I don't believe in the power of drunken misdirection. I just have never been so drunk that I thought going downstairs would lead me to the roof.