Month: September 2009

The old man was a bit claustrophobic. He compared the MRI process to being shoved down a sewer pipe and having somebody bang on it with a wrench. Like father, like son – I wouldn’t normally call myself a claustrophobe, but that did it.

In fairness, I hadn’t really considered it. My only other MRI was an “open” one two years ago, and the place I picked (because it was close to work) was pitching “non-claustrophobic MRI” on their website. Then I was given earplugs, laid on a very narrow bench (which cause my shoulder to sag and exacerbated the pain which brought me there in the first place), had something plastic snapped over my face within millimeters of my nose, and then got slid waist-deep into the sewer pipe, the upper part of which was so close my eyes crossed trying to focus. And of course my head was braced in such a way as to be immovable, and my arms were pretty much stuck, and well, paralysis plus sensory deprivation plus no way to gauge the passage of a half hour equals HELLLLLLLLLLLL NO.

I guess I wouldn’t have been as affected if it hadn’t been for two things: one, the fact that they specifically billed it as “non-claustrophobic,” thus catching me out with the bait and switch (a MAJOR trigger for me), and two, the notion of sitting there for a half hour with nothing to hear but the ringing of my ears and nothing but a wall of plastic directly in my face and unable to move. I don’t recall how it went at the last place two years ago, but I seem to remember it was kind of brisk in the paper gown and I nevertheless started to drift off to sleep. And really, I’m OK with that, especially if it’s going to be two sessions to get neck and shoulder alike.

In summary: Palo Alto Imaging of Palo Alto, CA, is at best disingenuous in their salesmanship. At worst, they are liars, and they can eat a bag of dicks. Meanwhile, I will be enjoying a relaxing trip to Sunnyvale Imaging Center on Thursday. The moral of the story: always defer to the people with whom you have a pre-existing relationship, and – as always – don’t get cute.

So it looks like the People Against Marching were foiled again, and the District got hit with another waves of yokels out to stick it to the Man by taking it to the streets in numbers an order of magnitude (or more!) less than what they claimed. And oooooh, they have signs and omninous warnings of their power like “We Came Unarmed (This Time)!” OOOOOH OMG O NOZ FEAR!!!!!!!!

Right.

I would like to take a second to remind the mouth-breathing trailer-park proctologists of the Old Confederacy: your team lost. Your boy and your Congressional majority lost because your team shit the bed for eight years running. As a result, we are now engaged in a long hard slog to try to clean things up. Your boys had the run of things for quite some time, and the result was utter and comprehensive failure, from Afghanistan to deficits to Katrina to I don’t know what all. And right now, all I’m seeing from the opposition is the same dog-vomit of tax cuts, bigoted scaremongering, and fantasyland pig-ignorance that the GOP’s been running on for the better part of two decades, ever since George HW Bush and Lee Atwater decided all’s fair in politics. There’s not even a coherent theme there – except that there is, and for all the talk about government power and health care takeover and everything else, this is what it boils down to: we can’t stand the fact that we got beat, and by a Negro.

You know what? The hell with it. Let’s go. We all know you’ve wanted a rematch since 1865. Do it. Rise again. Get out all your M4geries and your cheap Norinco AK-knockoffs and your precious Kimbers and SIGs and let’s just do the goddamn thing. Obviously you’re not going to be happy until you have an actual shooting war and get to rise up against the horrible fascist socialist communist oppression of a government that’s about as radical as potato soup. So let’s quit pissing around. Stop jacking off to your Sarah Palin pictures, put down the jug of high-fructose corn syrup, and lock and load and find some fucking cover. Either we’ll pummel the shit out of you and go back to having the United States, or we’ll finally flush this country down the bowl and make Mike Judge’s movie come true. Either way I’m just tired of the bullshit, and it’ll be worth it just to stop the fucking yap-yap-yap from the radio and the TV and every half-wit with an AOL account, not to mention the constant hemming and hawwing and false-equivalence ass-kissing from the chickenshit whores of the DC press.

You want to “defeat totalitarianism”? You want to “take your country back”? Do it. Take your best shot. TRY IT IF YOU GOT THE SACK.

Otherwise, go back to your manufactured home, sit your ass down, turn on your NBC lineup and shut your fucking hole.

I would give two toes off one foot to have been on the line when Joe Wilson (Douche-SC) called the White House to apologize to the Prez…and found himself on the phone instead with Rahm Emmanuel.

Seriously, if they ever start a show called “Inside the Cusser’s Studio”…

There’s something they need to know at 1600 Penn – yes, the last guy was a disaster, the sort of guy who couldn’t find a slut in an Auburn dorm if you spotted him a bottle of tequila, and it’s no wonder he couldn’t nail Osama Bin Laden given that everything he did turned to shit.

But the thing they need to know is this: I don’t care.

The man behind the attacks is still out there, and he still needs to be dealt with. So President Obama…you’re now on the clock.

Bill Simmons, during his NFL preview column:

Chicago fans have been wondering why I dumped them and adopted the Packers as my NFC North team and Super Bowl pick du jour. It came down to one thing: I didn’t want to root for Jay Cutler. Has he had a likable moment yet? This year will be his coming-out party as the most despised player in football. Every time they show him on the sidelines, he looks like a pissed-off trust-fund kid who can’t believe the valet scratched his Escalade hybrid. And you know what? He makes the league more fun. I like rooting against him the same way I liked rooting against Rick Barry, Bill Laimbeer and the Iron Sheik. We need more Jay Cutlers in sports. Not everyone was meant to be liked.

You know what? I endorse this 100%. #6 needs to start wearing his sunglasses all the time, even on the sideline of games. He needs to start calling himself “Hollywood Jay Cutler.” He needs to play up the whole Vanderbilt angle (despite being from Santa Claus, IN) and be the spoiled punk-ass rich brat who nevertheless has undeniable talent can throw the ball through a battleship. He needs, in short, to be a heel.

It would be the 80s WWF all over again. Come on, it’s the Chicago Bears, it’s going to be 80s anyway. He could be Jim McMahon turned up to 11 and sprinkled with glitter and cocaine. Seriously, if Jay Cutler goes down this road, I will pile all my Redskins S in a big heap and light it on fire and become a 100% Chicago Bears fan.

(And if he wants to throw to Earl Bennett every down, well, I have Easy Earl on my fantasy roster, so let’s go!)

You know, there really is something to be said for getting away from it all. I spent a long weekend down the coast earlier this summer, followed last week by a long road trip that included quality time out on the Oregon coast and in upstate Washington state – hell, about as upstate as you can get without a passport, and in fact, you have to have one anyway because you can’t get there on land without crossing borders. In short, I have spent a good amount of time in places with little enough Internet access and if anything less cell signal.

And honestly, that’s fine. I have been surrounded by fog, mist, cloud cover, marine layer, weather that basically looks at August and laughs and demands a jacket anyway. I have walked out on cold, cold, COLD beaches that have rocks as often as sand and where you would have to be insane to consider sunbathing. I have set up in the blogger’s pit at the beach house, looking out at the sun setting over the Pacific, and spent the whole time reading and writing rather than surfing and watching.

I was fine missing out on the email. I was fine missing out on the social networking, for the most part. I was certainly not sorry to skip the RSS feeds, and the steady stream of bullshit made worse by a Net-enabled world. I actually read text from a book (albeit on an iPhone, often as not) and got through a whole bunch of socially unredeeming but generally amusing stuff. (I would bet real money that “Harry Turtledove” is a series of shell scripts connected to emacs, but I finished the Timeline-161 series anyway.)

I know I’ve said before that I can get by for a week with only the iPhone. I could have gotten by for 10 days with only the iPhone if not for my fantasy football draft – as it is, if you set aside the draft and occasional blogwork, I only pulled on it two or three times the whole way. There’s still no acceptable way to use the iPhone for long-form text entry. But I could scale it down even more. Give me one of my basic phones for emergency contact and maybe the Twitter feeds of my friends (the promotional feeds I can skip), a good stout notebook and a couple of pens, all the Economists and New Yorkers I haven’t gotten through yet, and maybe half a dozen books, and I’m good to go for the long weekend. In a real pinch, give me the iPod shuffle with all the podcasts I’m behind on, and I’ll use that on the trip down or something.

There’s a lot of bullshit out there. Sometimes, instead of trying to reason with it (or add to it), the best thing to do is punt and go have some time for yourself to get your head together. And amazingly, I did the whole thing without pulling out one cigar. Don’t ask me to total up the coffee, though…

Van Jones had to go. Period, paragraph. The whys and wherefores of September 11, 2001 are pretty straightforward, and “asleep at the switch” does not equal “knew date, time and details and still punted.” Basically, if you subscribe to any shade of 9/11-Truther-ism, your place in the political world is out on the curb passing out mimeographed flyers.

Yes, it’s one little slip. I don’t care. So is being caught in an alley getting a Jeff Smoker from a sophomore coed. Either way, you’re out.

Obviously I don’t care if he called Republicans assholes. Let’s face it, being an asshole is one of the core values of being a Republican in the age of Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh. Being an asshole is as important to being a GOPer as being a chickenshit is to being in the TV news business.

Eat shit and die in a fire, you fucking retarded hillbilly.

I thought that the “death panel” shit was the stupidest thing to come out of anyone’s mouth in the last month or so. Then, last week, I heard somebody say that Boise State’s win over Oregon puts them in the driver’s seat for a BCS berth. To which I can only say…

WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING DAMAGE?

What does the rest of Boise State’s schedule look like? Let’s see:

Home to: Miami of Ohio, UC-Davis (!!!), San Jose State, Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico State.

Away at: Fresno State, Bowling Green, Tulsa, Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, and Utah State.

There’s not another ranked team on the schedule. There’s not another BCS conference team on the schedule. If you want to punch Boise State’s ticket for New Year’s based on the assumption that beating their best opponent of the year means they’ll run the table, and therefore deserve a seat on the starship, then you’re entitled to your opinion.

BUT.

If you argue that case, then you must now concede the point: strength of schedule has no meaning. Which we knew anyway, when the BCS system itself reverted to a system based on the votes of corrupt coaches and random dilettantes. But Boise State is on ESPN or ESPN2 SIX TIMES this year. They have somehow managed to milk a miracle win by two gimmick plays and the seat of their pants (over the most overrated and bed-shit-tastic team of the 2000s in the Chokelahoma Sooners) into the idea that they are somehow America’s Scrappy Uncrowned People’s Champion and if only given the opportunity to play with the big boys would somehow put the smack down on entire conferences.

Horseshit.

Boise State might get by in the Big Least. Every other BCS conference in the country would send them limping home in shambles by the middle of October. Just imagining them sliding through, say, Cal-USC-Oregon State or Florida-Georgia-Tennessee or even Maryland-GaTech-BC…well, forget it, Johnny, it’s not gonna happen. The usual suspects will whine “but nobody will play the Boise States of the world! Nobody will give them a chance! They’re all scared!” I’m here to tell you the truth: there is no profit in playing Boise State. People in Alabama don’t want to see the Tide play Boise State, they want to see them play Texas and Georgia Tech and Miami and Penn State and Nebraska. If you beat Boise State, big whoop, everyone expects you to beat a team from the WAC and never mind the ranking. If you lose to them, you’ve just shot your undefeated season in the ass, and for what? Do you think Oklahoma’s going to get a pass because they lost to BYU? Do you think people will say “Well, they did lose to a ranked team from a conference with three ranked teams in the top 25 to start the year?” No – what they will say is that Texas and Colt McCoy are now safely in front of the “Big” 12 and Heisman races and that OK/Bradford are no longer in the mix.

Because ultimately that’s what it boils down to. It doesn’t matter who you play, it doesn’t matter how you play, all that you need is plenty of press coverage and the big shiny “and 0” at the end of your record. Boise State is now in line to have that. If you’re going to set them up in Tempe or Miami or New Orleans as a result, then you WILL admit the point: who you beat for the “and 0” is of no consequence so long as you have it.