So I'm Thinking of Going Home This Weekend

But I drove my van for the first time in four months today, and wouldn't you know it I'm low on oil and need to get it fixed up. I could afford it if I skimped on some vice or another, but it does raise the question, if I only made the three hour drive to North Platte say, once every three years or so, would that make me a bad son?

I'm thinking in particular of the Christmas of 06; my dad had ordered the new version of "The Longest Yard" on pay-per-view to watch with my sister and I while my mom was at work at the liquor store. I have a fair amount of respect for the old Burt Reynolds version. It certainly doesn't have the artistic quality of a "Godfather" or "French Connection", but it does have that same sort of August afternoon wariness, the sort of anti-authoritarianism and hangover-urine bitterness that made 1970's American cinema something we can be unabashedly proud of. It goes without saying that the Adam Sandler version does not fit this mold.

I remember when my mother came home Dad said with pride that "we had watched a funny movie together and had a good time." He actually believed that it had been a true bonding experience.

There was a point in the movie where I was flipping through the World-Herald and started laughing at a story about a Sudanese restaurant that was forcing baby monkeys
to fight each other for the amusement of its customers, and Dad must have thought I was laughing at one of Sandler's zany homoerotic shenanigans.

There was a point in the movie where actor/wrestler Goldberg was shirtless and triumphant about something, and my father muttered "What a man" to himself.

I've said before that there is no such thing as a man having a non-sexual appreciation for the masculinity of another man, and I stand by that statement. If you are not indifferent to another man's biceps, then you want to nibble at them, it's as simple as that.

And I suppose that I shouldn't be the least bit surprised at my father's latent gayness. He has all the attributes of a closet case; an obsession with proving his manliness at every opportunity to a point that a twelve-year-old boy would find silly, transparently insincere peons towards tolerance of gays, "I have no problems, with gays, I've just never seen a met a homo that was really happy," (I'll spare you his thoughts on lesbians.) and an obsession with the traditional masculine ideal of the father protecting his family from enemies that goes far beyond absurd. (We were visiting Lincoln when I was a boy, and while driving down a darkish section of O street he mentioned that he was driving faster to avoid the gangsters that were surely hanging out in the shadows, when I grew up I learned that this darkish section was Wyuka Cemetery.) This fantasy of his (There's no other word) with killing the intruder clearly indicates some deep hidden frustration that must be unloaded on another man with violent abandon.

But than it's all well and good to speak of the warped psyche of the rural American male in the abstract isn't it?" This is my father I write of, and I've already said far too much.

Chicago D

The sprawl isn't as bad as in the urban areas of California or Texas. By the time you reach the inner suburbs, Brookfield, Cicero, the neighborhoods very much take on the look of any midtown. Somewhere in Chicago proper is a massive junkyard, slightly to the northwest of where Jurgis Rudkis's Packingtown was. The line comes into Union Station along a large stack of tracks with chunks of industrial brickabrack lying all about the ground. Not an impressive enterence to the Loop by any means. But still, there was the Sears Tower.

It was the afternoon rush hour when I got off the train; 5:30 P.M. but damned if this place isn't well-designed, it's easy to move about quickly even when it's crowded.

The Art-Deco architectural touches are very nice, but beyond that the place has the same generic anywhere look you could find in any major metro train station, airport, or shopping mall for that matter. The corned newsstands with Cigar Aficionado and The New York Times on display, the food courts with the mix of national and somewhat less than culturally defining local chains, a little bar whose "Irishness" was denoted by green neon lighting and servers wearing green vests under their jackets.

But the cultural sterility has a strange sort of appropriateness here. Union Station is the pituitary gland of the Midwest. It is because of the railroad that Chicago was able to beat out St. Louis to become the great interior metropolis. The wars between competing lines are the reason why the California Zephyr meanders so; competing railroads drawing random lines from Chicago to Des Moines, St. Louis, Omaha, Kansas City, Twin Cities, Denver. If one line took the most direct route than simply make one up of your own, create towns out of thin air (Crete, Dorchester, Exeter, Friend) and send out flyers telling immigrants that the land is filled with milk and honey. So you end up with the ultimate all roads lead to Rome scenario; the highways follow the railroads after all. before the interstate was built there were about half a doezen driving routes from Denver to Omaha and no choice was more than half an hour shorter than any other. Drive east on O Street, down hwy 34, across the Plattesmouth bridge, and through Iowa, you'll eventually role into Chicago on Ogdon avenue.

I bought egg rolls and a soda for supper from a group of Salvadorians who spoke Spanish to each other and the customer in front of me before switching to English with me. I could tell they were Salvadorians by the baseball hats.

I stepped out onto Jackson Street knowing only that I could never dream of affording a room in the Loop, beyond that I didn't know where I was going to stay, plus it was St. Patrick's Day, and though I had arrived too late for the parades the fact is that I was a fractionally Irish man in one of America's great immigrant cities, and this would have to be celebrated. But first the library.

You do Realize

that my content warning makes me even more badass than I was before right?

Chicago C

As one comes closer to the Mississippi River the landscape changes; well, it changes noticeably if you're rolling at thirty miles an hour anyway; I don't know that you would notice it or not if you were driving on the interstate. There's occasional tall hills and even some wooded space along with the corn, and it has a lovely stark effect on a cloudy day; but like I said, you've got to be going damned slow to notice.

Burlington Iowa is a very pretty town, with the richest families living in the best houses on the ridges just above the river. The line meanders through all sections of the town in some sort of eight hundred degree loop, so you actually get to see the nice parts of town in addition to the rear-ends of lumber yards and the potholes that had combined into a single creek leading from the industrial section of town to the river; but than I'm sure you already know about the dead zone in the Mississippi delta.

The river is truly sublime, even before it takes in the Missouri and Ohio it's still wide enough to envelop your vision, and with the spitting rain falling all over the Midwest that week it was very much like being underwater.

Heavy rain and snowmelt raised the river past flood stage last week and a barge going up the elevated river ended up hitting the Santa Fe/Amtrak bridge. I must say that I wish I had taken my trip than; the extra eight hours of detour though St. Louis or wherever the trains went would have been worth it for the sake of being part of a minor disaster; and oh what a thrill it must have been for the pubescent boys of Burlington; to see a destructive event whose lack of carnage was more than made up for by the scale. It is easy to imagine the drunken teenagers drowning themselves trying to reach the wreck on some wretched home-made canoe, and it warms the heart like Christmas.

I chatted with a couple of the people whjo live in the area; a woman from Mt. Pleasant Iowa and a middle-aged grease monkey from Galesburg Illinois, and I noticed that they both had this sort of breathy, nasal accent similar to what you hear from a very old Nebraska farmer. It's certainly distinguishable from the "generic American" that is, urban Midwestern accent, which is much the same in Chicago or Omaha r Kansas City. The sample size is, technically, far too small for a mere Bachelor of English to pronounce the existence of an upper-Mississippi Valley accent, but I talked to a couple of people about it; this guy I met in the city who used to be from Moline and this very lovely girl on her way home to Iowa farm country from DePaul, and they both said, "sure, why not." So I do declare it. Perhaps someday I'll actually look it up on the internet just to make sure that no one has claimed to discover the upper-Mississippi accent before I did.

Illinois consisted of more corn; and villages that were even smaller and more ragged than those in Iowa; I was starting to see "Old Style" placards hanging from the main street pubs. Finally, at about four in the afternoon, we rolled into a place called Samonauk, and the sight of a "Kohl's" "Supertarget", and "Bennigan's" assured me that we were only seventy miles or so from getting somewhere.

Oh Gary Indiana

I didn't happen to swing your way when I was in the Chicago area, no particular reason, its just that there's so much ghetto south of thirty-fifth street, too much to explore in just a day or two.

But anyway, I was just wondering if I ever told you how beautiful you are.

"http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/county/#INDEMMAPPRIMARY1">

Red-Headed Stranger

My God, every time I hear this album I'm ashamed of myself for somehow forgetting, if not on a conscious level than certainly an emotional one, how unbearably glorious it is. I writing this as a personal letter to all my Neko Case-loving cats; in case you were wondering who her artistic father is, now you know.

Hearing "Hands on the Wheel" again was the most life-affirming experience I've had in several weeks.

And oh for fucks sake won't you look at me gush away? Fuck everything, there that's better.

N 27th Street Shuffle.

I walked to campus without a jacket, and got caught in the cold front.

I was a little slow to move when it was time to go home, I needed to resist the urge to take an afternoon nap, I needed to finish "Pride and Prejudice" and start my paper on it, and pick up cat litter and groceries for myself, and stay awake, and keep working, and keep working.

It was forty degrees and cloudy. I stepped on the Uni Place bus at a quarter to four knowing that it would eventually head eastish. We were caught in the normal crawl along R from Greek row to the Lied when the car in front of us stopped suddenly, forcing the bus the to do the same. We all jerked forward in our seats, the sound of every heavy-duty break in a 5-ton machine to an instant stop was similar to the crunch of a collision.

The teenagers in the back, white and black, from T-Town or Clinton judging by their dress and manner:

"Holy shit, holy shit did you see that."
"He fucking hit him dude"
"Oh fuck, I thought that was it."

50ish woman behind me; plastic sequined dress, face consisting of makeup, teeth, makeup, and something resembling eyesockets behind the makeup.

"Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up!!"

A white girl in a Walmart-tee from the back suddenly stood up and spoke to the driver

"Why don't you watch where your fucking going you piece of shit?"

Well he was watching where the fuck he was going, little.... miss, let's see you try to stop a bus on a dime, you mouthy little.... girl.

Makeup woman:
Jes--sus! Shut the fuck up!!!

The kids in the back began chattering, and they were not going to stop, they were excited at being excited, still young enough to be giddy at the fact that their words and emotions have influence over those of others. They're not going to shut the fuck up for at least five years.

"Shit dude, that was like Final Destination right there!"
"hahahahaha"
"Did you see that shit, that was like Final Destination"
"hahahahahaha"
"Dude that shit was like Final Destination!"
...........
...........
Yes, nearly hitting a vehicle not one tenth the size of ours at five miles an hour is the ultimate near-death experience.

(On a side-note, I must say that I agree with the sentiment that the mere mention of "Final Destination" is unceasingly funny. I now understand the true genius of "The Family Guy" and now intend to make my living as a stand-up comic. My act will consist of reading off a list of films released in the past twenty years for two hours.)

The centrality of the illusion of control in America. True, a large reason why *normal people (* The minority with a stable source of food, transportation, and medical care) don't ride the bus is because of "those people," I have my class biases the same as anyone else does, but as much as I do go on, the fact is that "those people" are actually quite a bit less irritating than the typical *normal person.
But never mind, those people are mainly just an excuse. The real reason we don't ride the bus is that we feel safer in little clown cars or big manly-looking SUV's with the balance of broken teter-totters that we PERSONALLY CONTROL than we do riding in buses that could survive a small bombing that are driven by someone else. This illusion of control extends even to the lower classes, to people who are supposedly used to not having control. A fourteen year old girl got to yell at an all grown up city employee, and of course she liked it.

At the 11th and N shop a woman got on who worked at McDonald's and lived with her mother, and her siblings, younger and older, and her aunts and her first and second cousins.

There are cultures in which where even the poor and uneducated have means of emphasizing the importance of some particular point besides shear volume. Ours is not one of them.

"JESUS CHRIST, IT IS NOTHING BUT DRAMA AT MY HOUSE."
"MY MOM"S SICKMY AUNT WHO USUALLY HANDLES THIS SHIT IS OUT OF TOWN. JULIE JUST BROKE UP WITH HER BOYFRIEND. MY BROTHER HAS ALL HIS WANNABE GIRLFRIENDS CALLING. AND WHO DO YOU THINK HAS TO HANDLE IT.

I'll spare you her stories about how rigorously the hand-washing policy at McDonald's is enforced. In all honesty though, if you actually eat at McDonald's than a little Salmonella or anything else that will make you lose a quick ten pounds can't help but be good for you.

I stepped off at 25th and P. I had learned nothing I hadn't known. Just some more damned noise is all.

Chicago B

Memorial Stadium, Schram, Harper, State Fair Park, Cornhusker, Havelock, 84th U-Stop, Waverly, Greenwood, Ashland Gretna, the same Lincoln-to Omaha jugular that we could drive blind. I'm sure your perfectly free to commute from Lincoln to Omaha via Amtrak, just pay fifty dollars to leave Lincoln at 4:30, and get dropped off right under the Dodge Street bridge around six or so.

The line wonders listlessly through the Omaha metro, from Gretna to the industrial area between Ralston and Millard, Ralston, South O, under the freeway bridges, the station, back south along the river, Bellevue, Offut, and than finally crossing into Iowa at Plattsmouth, a solid forty miles within the Omaha area.

The track wraps around the west edge of a new subdivision near Gretna, the residents tend to have very big back windows, we were rolling at no more then thirty miles an hour. It was about 6:30 at this time, and I could clearly see women organizing their purses, men straightening their ties, parents serving their children breakfast.

This is what you get from the ludicrously slow California Zephyr, intimacy. No generic Days Inn and Burger King tourist strips here. Instead it's backyards and dogs and professionals getting ready for the day and endless lumber yards and filthy gravel pools of water that the eye can follow to the point where whatever is leaking out of the wood and junk piles flows into the local stream, abandoned hotels, decaying wooden long buildings, junkyards from every curve and angle, like the one the one between Ralston and South O, the one that covers acres, the one I'm not sure that even the locals are fully aware of, or the one between Naperville and the inner ring of Chicago suburbs, that covers at least a dozen square miles.

It was cloudy and gloaming when we reached the Omaha station, so it was impossible to tell whether it was officially sunrise or not. 6:50: It was a ten-minute long "smoke stop" the others coming at Osceola and Galesburg. Other than that it was two minutes at some market town in Iowa or Illinois, a Casey's a Dollar Store, churches, lumber yards, and polluted runoff. The landscape consists of this and corn, five hundred miles of corn, unchanging until you reach the Chicago metro. the idea that the parched matchhead yellow of the western Nebraska hills is less interesting than the true flatness of the eastern plains is nonsense. Here is true dreariness, it was cloudy and rainy and no more than forty five degrees for the entire trip.

The line goes right down the banks of the Missouri, and the illusion of the water dancing in and out of your line of vision is fascinating. There were only two other people awake in my car, playing with their cellphones, shining white light on their faces, the darkness of the night lingered in the car for the entire trip.

I went to the dining car and got the cheapest proper meal available, seven dollars for rubbery scrambled eggs and "breakfast potatoes." (cold, unhashed hashbrowns.) I had my camera primed for the Missouri crossing, right next to the US 34 toll bridge, but then it came, and I realized that this had to be the ugliest Goddamn major river crossing in America. Western Iowa was corn and powerlines.

The Pope on Pedophile Priests

“It’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children,”- Benedict XVI





Are you sure you want to phrase it that way, Your Holiness?

Family Guy Fans

It's strange, because I talk to these people. By that I mean, I'll ask a Family Guy fan a question, and he will respond in a manner that pertains to the question. So I know these folks are smart enough to have learned the language of their own mothers.

I have also seen them react to stimuli, that is, turn their heads in the direction of a screeching car nearby, or blink when a light is shone in their faces. It could be logically assumed that if I threw a bowling ball at a Family Guy fan, he would have enough intelligence to duck.

But then I realize that these "people" think that the mere mention of Qubert is funny in and of itself, and I know that I must be hallucinating about the aforementioned abilities.

I knew this Girl in High School Once

Who listed "eat, drink, and be merry" among her favorite quotes for some project in theology class and attributed it to Dave Matthews.

The disturbing thing is that this was not and is not a stupid woman, quite the opposite. And the traditional, classical education offered by a Catholic school is at least theoretically better than what you get at a Catholic school.

The theology teacher was an ex-marine who had had a testicle removed due to cancer. Lance Armstrong is his hero.

We'll still run into each other about once every two years or so, and are pretty open about our mutual scorn, it's the most honest relationship I have.

Obama Slammed by Right for Speaking Blindingly Obvious Truth

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."- Sen. Obama

Response from Steve Schmidt, McCain adviser:

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

Yup, that's right. Any suggestion that there could possibly be anything wrong with the precious snowflake culture that is the AMERICAN HEARTLAND is "elitism."

The "average American" comment is especially rich. The fact that small-town Americans can possibly still imagine themselves to be America Incarnate after a century of rural flight is a testament to the power of human delusion. We are an empire of three hundred million people, hundreds of intermixed ethnic groups, dozens of finely delineated and contradictory economic castes, and innumerable shades of different religious beliefs, hobbies, tastes in art or music, understandings of the world, etc.

If there was ever any such thing as an average American, those days are long dead. Residents of south Chicago have just as much of a right to declare themselves "average Americans" as the Wahoo homecoming queen, and though
the right is rather overt in it's opinion that the inner-city poor are an aberration from the "real America" (Never mind that they outnumber the small-town snowflakes.) far be it for me to suggest that they are racist, or even "elitist"
for doing so.

Just willfully blind is all.


For a good time, read the comments at righty blog Hot Air:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-on-small-town-voters-bitter-xenophobic-religious/

Virgin Martyr Rollcall

St Lucy:

Born: Doesn't matter
Died: 304 AD

"Hereupon our saint disclosed to her mother her desire of devoting herself to God in a state of perpetual virginity, and of bestowing her fortune on the poor: and Eutychia, in gratitude, left her at full liberty to pursue her pious inclinations. The young nobleman, with whom the mother had treated about marrying her, came to understand this by the sale of her jewels and goods, and the distribution of the price among the poor, and in his rage accused her before the governor Paschasius as a Christian, the persecution of Diocletian then raging with the utmost fury. The judge commanded the holy virgin to be exposed to prostitution in a brothel" house; but God rendered her immovable, so that the guards were not able to carry her thither. He also made her an over-match for the cruelty of the persecutors, in overcoming fire and other torments. After a long and glorious combat she died in prison of the wounds she had received,—about the year 304. She was honoured at Rome in the sixth century among the most illustrious virgins and martyrs, whose triumphs the church celebrates,"


St Agatha
Born: It doesn't fucking matter
Died: About 251 AD

"According to these Acts, the Praetor of Sicily, Quintianus, conceived a passion for Agatha, who was of noble birth and great beauty. And when he could not make her consent to his wicked desires, he had her arrested as a Christian and turned her over to an evil woman, named Aphrodisia, to be corrupted. Of such methods of breaking down Christian hardihood, Tertullian wrote to pagans: Ye, by condemning the Christian maid to the lewd youth, rather than to the brute lion, do acknowledge that we more dread a stain to purity than any torment or death; but your cruel cunning availeth only to gain men over to our holy religion.

But the companionship of Aphrodisia in the brothel made Agatha only the more determined to live faithful to Christ. So the Praetor ordered her brought before him that he might try to turn her from Christian living, which he declared to be fit only for slaves. Then the Praetor gave her the choice of sacrificing to the gods or undergoing torture. And when beatings, the rack and branding with white-hot metal failed to shake her constancy to Christ, he ordered her breasts cut off. Whereat Agatha cried out and said that he who had suckled at a mother's breasts should feel shame to order such cruel indignity done to a woman. But that night, after she had been returned in irons and pain to prison, the Apostle Peter appeared to her and healed her wounds.

The following day she was subjected to new tortures. But an earthquake from Mount Etna, shook the town and terrified the people. Whereupon the Praetor, fearing a riot, ordered Agatha to be returned quietly to prison. And there, in the town of Catania, she died at peace, in prayer, on February 5th, and her body was taken and buried by Christians."
swikner.blogspot.com/2007/02/st-agatha.html

St Agnes

Died: About 303

"Agnes, whose name means “chaste” in Greek, was a beautiful young girl of wealthy family and therefore had many suitors of high rank. Details of her story are unreliable, but legend holds that the young men, slighted by Agnes' resolute devotion to religious purity, submitted her name to the authorities as a follower of Christianity.

The governor, following an edict against Christians issued in 303 by the Roman emperor Diocletian, threatened the young girl with torture. The threats did not intimidate the steadfast Agnes , however, and the enraged official sent her to a house of prostitution. Approaching her, the brothel's patrons would be seized with such awe at the holy sight of the girl that they could not touch her. One brazen young man remained undeterred, but as he neared her he was struck blind and fell to the ground; Agnes later restored his sight with prayer.

The governor, incensed by her youthful defiance, sentenced Agnes to an untimely death. It is not known whether the execution was by beheading or by the piercing of the throat, but the story tells of her ready submission to the sentence by offering herself to receive the death blow. According to St. Ambrose, one of her chroniclers, she “went to the place of execution more cheerfully than others go to their wedding.”


www.stagnes.cc/.../Main%20Links/St.%20Agnes.htm

St Marciana
Died: "End of the third Century"

Entering the city by the Tipasia door, Marciana saw a marble statue of the goddess Diana in the middle of a square. At its feet flowed clear waters in a pool also made of marble. The brave virgin could not bear the sight of that impure idol. She stepped forward and threw the idol from its base, broke its head and smashed the entire statue into pieces.

A furious mob dragged her to the Pretorium before an imperial magistrate. The Christian virgin laughed at the stone and wood gods, and glorified the true God she adored. In loud, eloquent words, she praised Him there in the Pretorium. The pagan judge handed her over to the gladiators to be infamously abused at their pleasure. Marciana remained fearless and serene. For three hours the gladiators were rendered immobile by an unknown terror, and were unable to touch the virgin. Through her prayers one of them converted and professed Jesus Christ as the true God.

Confused by this development of events, the judge remained firm in his hatred. Unable to dishonor the virgin, he condemned her to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. When the hour arrived, she entered the arena as to a joyful feast, giving praise and thanks to Jesus Christ. She was tied to a stake and a lion was set upon her. The beast, however, approached her, touched her breast with its claws, and then retired as though moved by a stronger force.

St. Marciana was not harmed by the lion in the arena
In admiration, the populace called out loudly demanding that she be set free. But a group of Jews who were part of the multitude, always thirsty for Christian blood, changed the mood of the crowd by calling for a wild bull. The beast gored the breast of Marciana opening a terrible wound. The blood poured out and St. Marciana fell to the sand in agony. Servants removed her from the arena, stopped the hemorrhaging, and nurtured what little life remained to her.

The judge, however, called for her to be tied to the stake again. She raised her eyes to Heaven, a smile illuminating her face marked by suffering, and spoke her last words:

O Christ, I adore and love Thee. Thou wert with me in the prison and kept me pure. Now Thou dost call me – O my Divine Master – and I go happily to Thee. Receive my soul.

After she spoke these words, a ferocious leopard tore her apart, opening the road of Heaven to her

www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j209sd_Marciana...

The Miracle of Life

We watched this sex-ed documentary in my eleventh grade biology class, if I remember right the title wasn't exactly "The Miracle of Life" but something similar; complete with vaginal-wall cam and uterovision. Perfectly graphic, nothing obscured or faded out. You may be surprised to learn a Catholic school would subject its students to extreme close-up views of a thrusting penis or the army of spermatozoa battling their way through the dead ends and black holes of the lady.

But it was quite deviously brilliant, if you think about it. It is impossible to watch this film and be filled with anything but loathing for sex and reproduction. I'm thinking especially of the aforementioned vaginal-wall cam and thrusting penis. My God; the sight of that mushroomhead suddenly appearing and hurling itself towards you; until your entire line of vision is enveloped by head-of-dick, and every pore and dent of head-of-dick can be seen perfectly by your Gulliveresque microbe eyes.

And then comes the orgasm, which is actually very comforting by comparison, soothing in the matter of mixing a cup of hot tea or staring into a lava-lamp after a six-day coke party, you see the blending of these contrasting fluids and think that perhaps there really is something beautiful about this union between the sexes.

But then comes the malignant-tumor zygote, followed by the hellish superterrestrial demon fetus, and the birth.

The birth.

You speak of the miracle and beauty of life. I don't believe that you've ever had the pleasure of seeing placental matter ejected from a nine-inch-wide vagina.

Perhaps if it were my own wife birthing my own child, I would learn to find this sudden vomiting of bloody flesh to be something more than horrifying. But I really don't think so; I mean, I really don't think so.

My ancestral faith teaches me that sex is a filthy and shameful thing; and in fact this is not completely untrue. The main problem with this idea is its narrowness; its failure to follow its own logical thread to where it must go. Because the fact is that all biological processes are profoundly disgusting. We bury our dead because if we left them out to rot it would remind us that we are all pollutants. Nothing but water degraded with nitrogen and carbon and cadmium and phosphorus and arsenic and lithium and every variety of comic book supervillain shit that makes a nuclear reactor seem pristine by comparison.

Universal sterility; the extinction of the human race after my generation, why not?
You may speak of biological imperatives, but you know as well as I do that there's no such God damned thing. Life on earth is nothing but a funny quirk of chemistry; coming from nothing and leading to nothing. Reproduce, and in five generations your genetic input will be statistically irrelevant. Fathers be good to your daughters.

The extinction of the human race, why not? It is highly doubtful that we're ever going to be any smarter than we are now, and we're certainly never going to get any cleaner, do you really want to subject future generations to eighty years of wondering around and feeling so damned silly?

Kansas

With all the sincerity that my cynical, nonathletic, anti alpha-male sensibility can give, congratulations to our leaguemates.

On This Day in History

Well, never mind.


It's also my 27th birthday.

Chicago A

I had been drinking some the night that my train was due to leave; it was Spring Break and Lincoln was cold and quiet. I went home at one in the morning and ate leftover Dominoes for dinner. I had run out of groceries the day before and didin't feel like grocery shopping for two days worth of food; though I'm sure the cheap frozen processed shit I like to buy would have kept for the four days that I was gone. I showered, packed my briefcase with five sweaters, five pears of pants and underwear, toothpaste/brush, deodorant, astringent. I filled my backpack with Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres", a notebook, and the Sunday Times, and was out of my apartment at 2:45 for what was supposed to be a four a.m. train.

It was cold and damp and while not quite foggy the air was certainly hanging low. My van was the only sign of life on the drive to the Haymarket where sits the Amtrack "station".

Those who worry about federal tax dollars going down the drain for Amtrak should rest easy. It's hard to see where any money is actually being spent. Beyond the coasts, where large cities are packed in close to each other and maintaining the ludicrous ideal that the automobile is the horse of the modern knight is more of a headache than it's worth for many people, the Amtrak service is notoriously shitty. Cities like Salt Lake, Denver (Lincoln and Omaha) get only one train going east and one train going west per day, the California Zephyr, stopping in all of these places at odd inconvenient hours. If you take this as a sign that Amtrak money is going to waste instead of a sign that there is hardly any money involved to waste, well different minds work in different ways.

I arrived at the station and bought my ticket at three for a train I was now told would arrive at six, and then six thirty. I walked outside, realized that the nearest place to get coffee at this hour was eight blocks away, and stood dumbly for awhile, I was starting to feel quite drowsy but would have had to have been much more so to sleep on the narrow thin-padded chairs in the Amtrak waiting room. The thick air was carrying some kind of terrible smell from either the countryside to the west or the standing snowmelt in the Salt Creek floodplain. I eventually went back in and got a Mountain Dew from the vending machine, than I sat down with my Smiley book.

There was this hippy girl down the row from me, an honest to-God hippy girl with leisure hat and body-length walking stick with meaningless symbols carved onto it. She was talking to this long haired-fellow, Lincolnites may recognize him, shoulder-length hair with specks of gray and bifocals, portly, looks something like I might look like in ten years if I don't take care of myself/current trends continue. He was apparently an old pro at riding the train and was talking to the girl about the in's and outs of security, particularly how security guards usually didn't show up on the trains until at least the outer suburbs of Chicago and yeah that's where the people are and you have to protect the big cities but do we not count? I mean is that what you're saying? He told her that he was a power crystal connoisseur and that his biggest reason for travelling from place to place was to attend power crystal conventions.

And than we waited, a black man came in with his luggage in a garbage sack, and than we waited some more. The train came at 6:40 and I a group of five of us got on board and I sat in the seat behind the black guy.

God Bless the Children of Omaha

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Severed bunny head Christ, one of many Jesus/Easter Bunny combination














































and God bless you, World-Herald, for your complete obtuseness towards the absurd.

Am I Missing Something Here?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmY3MzNiNzVkZjUzYjQ1MzdiZTFjMTI1YjQxZDhmZjY=

My grandmother always cooks ham on Easter. (No mom I'm not coming home for Easter. Three months is not a remotely long time to go without seeing me. Why do you bring that up mom? The truth is that I wouldn't tell you if I was seeing someone nor would I tell you if I were engaged for that matter)

Anyways where was I? Ah yes, am I missing something here? Because my grandmother always cooks ham for Easter dinner, and I always thought that there was no universally recognized traditional Easter meat on the level of the Thanksgiving turkey. I knew that some people did have lamb for Easter but I never thought that this was any more significant than total strangers eating KFC on any given night.

My point is that I never associated lamb with Easter; never saw lamb meat as inherently Easterish. There may or may not be someone I know who considers a lamb meal to be central to their own Easter tradition; but if there is it has never come up in conversation, and if it came up in conversation I would wonder why they were bothering me with such trifle.

So here we have this woman complaining about a lamb-based meal in some mail order cooking catalog complaining about a lamb-based meal being described as a "spring dinner" instead of an "Easter dinner." Well.

If it were true that lamb was widely associated with the Christian holiday of Easter (and again, I could be wrong here, but I really don't think it is.) what then? Isn't Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, already fucked up enough without eating a literal sacrificial lamb to commemorate THE LAMB?

The fact of the matter is that early spring is the time for killing and cooking lambs in all cultures; I know that lamb is a centerpiece of the Sader, for example.

Has this woman not noticed that the major Christian holidays, just like the major holidays in most religions, just happens to coincide with the changing of the seasons?

Is this something that I'm not supposed to notice? Does it make me a bad person?

Never Forget!!!

Your Vodka and Cognac fueled hedonism shall always carry the bitter taste of the master's righteous indignation.

A Black Man Rocking Out to The Eagles

Was observed by this reporter on Thursday afternoon between 14 and 15th along Q Street in Lincoln Nebraska.

I don't know if he was listening to some classic rock station or if he had actually purchased an Eagles CD.

It's terribly sad all the same, because I sincerely believed that there were no black people who liked the Eagles, and had considered the Coen brothers to be creative geniuses chiefly for imagining such an impossible scenario.

Sally Kearns

My favorite part of her rant is when she says that homosexuals have "infiltrated" city councils. As an English major, I must point out that "infiltration" implies some manner of sneakiness or subterfuge, and unless the city councils of Pittsburgh or West Palm Beach have Republican majorities, I doubt very much that they are controlled by secret homosexuals.

Do "homosexual controlled" city councils all dress up in pink polyester shirts for their meetings and demand that good Christians serve them strawberry margaritas on their knees on pain of death? Are certain "chosen" children decked out like bear daddies and placed in elevated social positions amongst their peers?

"You know Eureka Springs, with the Passion play, someone told me their city council has been taken over by homosexuals."


"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPB7bTdz2xQ&feature=related"

Getting to Know You

Hi! We're Tilly and the Wall. We heard that there were still some people out there who didn't know we were from Omaha, so we decided to pose in the snow and look affected.

William F. Buckley

"William Francis Buckley was born in Manhattan on Nov. 24, 1925, the sixth of the 10 children of Aloise Steiner Buckley and William Frank Buckley. His parents had intended to name him after his father, but the priest who christened him insisted on a saint’s name, so Francis was chosen." From today's NY times.


Yup, that's right, Buckley's parents were good Catholics who LET THEIR PRIEST TELL THEM WHAT TO NAME THEIR OWN FUCKING SON.



It does reveal quite a hell of a lot, doesn't it? I mean here we have a boy who could have accepted the fact that he was spawned from voluntary slaves; or he could have spent his life trying to destroy that portion of society which doesn't live on its knees.

And no good Catholic boy goes against his parents.

Fuck the church.

What was I talking about?

English Lesson of the Day

"Mad as a March Hare", a phrase common in the early 20th century in reference to one who is particularly eccentric or unstable, refers to the Southwestern Desert March Hare, known for its tendency to drink twice its weight in fortified wine, call its ex-girlfriend to blame her for its personal failures, and threaten suicide if she doesn't come back.

Boy Scouts

I've been thinking of the Boy Scouts refusal to allow homosexuals in their ranks lately. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the similarity to Catholicism, the inherent contradiction of an institution that is both authoritarian and homophobic.

Because look, I know I'm beating a Mr. Heartland horse here, but if you think that respect for authority and reverence for tradition are good and necessary things that must be taught to children; you're probably gay. One cannot love a great father without, at some point in life, having loved a big daddy.

Robert-Baden Powell, the British war hero who founded the Scouts, was known to take photos of his early charges while they swam in the nude. When he was 55 he married a girl of 23 named Olive St. Clair Soames who kept her hair short and enjoyed wearing military-style uniforms. The psychological pain Powell suffered as a result of their close-eyed, as-many-clothes-kept-on-as-possible sex caused him serious health problems until the couple had produced sufficient heirs and he was able to take a separate bedroom.

I just thought I'd mention.

There's a movement about to legally force the Boy Scouts to accept homosexuals, and while this is well-meaning, the fact is that sexual repression and denial are the essential pillars of scouting and that the organization would cease to be without them.

So no, I can't support the movement to integrate the Scouts. What I will do is strongly advise you against signing your children on to this cute little fascist dress-up game and promise myself that no theoretical child of mine will ever be a poor deluded Boy Scout.

I'd rather see my son as an alter boy. At least then he can get raped indoors, with running water and all of the comforts of modern civilization.

I had a Friend Once

Who insisted that Steve Winwood's "Give me Some Lovin" was about running a drug house based on the lines "but you better take it easy/this place is hot."

He's in the pen now.

Some Quick thoughts on Mrs. Obama

I myself am not proud of America. For this I make no apologies. I have the same instinctive love for my home that everyone else has but I feel no need to sanctify it. We do not love our country because we believe it is good any more than we love our families because we believe it is good. We love these things because we love ourselves, that is all. There is no nobility to it nor is there any need for nobility. I believe that I have some moral obligation to leave the society I was born into better off when I leave it, but I firmly disagree with the idea that it is necessary for me to believe that I am working on behalf of an inherently good society in order to inspire myself to do so.

Let's be very clear. Those who believe that pride is inherently good are moral cowards and emotional weaklings. If you are unable to act for the common good without the stimulant of pride, that is your problem. Do not assume that the rest of humanity shares it.

The talk-radio knuckleheads are of course taking Michelle Obnama's quote and running with it. Hannity, O'Reilly, and et. al. will usually take a minute to say of course this country isn't perfect but.... and than the predictible claptrap about how it is impossible to criticize society without directly insulting each individual therein, (Especially, of course, the respectible, mainstream families of America's suburbs.) and how a failure to take pride in the nation is to reject the polio vaccine, the defeat of Hitler, the moon landing, the internet, the fall of the Berlin wall, etc.

Pride has never been the solution to any problem, and never will be. The only way problems get solved is to focus on what is wrong with us, to embrace the muck in utter defiance of that old closeted psychopath Teddy Roosevelt.

I'm Josh Beran. I am not proud to be an American, and you all can eat my dick.

John Stuart Mill Knew his Shit

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
JSM

Conservatives will often try to pass themselves off as the true populists due to the mean ivory-tower liberals who use big words like "rhetorical fallacy" or "willfully obtuse." Liberals are often derided for our apparent scorn of the "common people*" out of touch with the "real America*"

* Please note that the "real America" is restricted to settlements of fewer than 100,000 people and their environs, while the honorific "common people"is restricted to high-school educated substance level workers (WHITE!/oh shush you) who begin producing multiple children in their teens and early twenties. Please note that approximately three-fourths of the American population are ineligible to be either common people or part of the real America.

Part of this contempt for simple thinkers is nothing but snobbery, and I am as guilty of that as many others. But is this contempt completely unjustified? Are we to accept the more amusing conservative beliefs as valid simply because they are honestly and sincerely felt? More to the point, are liberals justified in considering ourselves smarter than conservatives? This is not for me to say. I can not give an unbiased judgment on the matter, and in all likelihood neither can anyone else. All I can do is point out the following.

* If you honestly believe that their was no crystal meth problem in the Midwest before the Mexicans came, you are probably a conservative.

* If you also believe that said Mexicans (Yes yes, you have nothing against LEGAL immigrants, nobody's buying it.) are nothing but a horde of leprosy-addled pedophiles in league with Al-Quida, Fidel Castro, and Magua, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think having to press 1 for English is an unprecedented corruption of cultural purity, you are probably a conservative; and you seriiiiousssly need to get out and see a city larger than Lincoln or Omaha.

* But only if you are able to do so without being so terrified of the teeming hordes or rapists, murderers, and junkies known to inhabit the big city that you are unable to notice or appreciate anything. If this proves too much for you, you are almost certainly a conservative.

* If you believe that global warming is nothing but a massive conspiracy involving the entire scientific and academic worlds to take away your automopenis, you are probably a conservative.

* If you believe that, since World War II was justified, every war the U.S. chooses to fight forevermore magically becomes World War II, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that the East Coast is being rent asunder by roving gangs of pink-pistol bearing Lesbians, you are probably a conservative.

* Yes I know, we all wish it were true.

* If you think that anyone wearing a T-shirt bearing an Arabic phrase should be kicked off a plane; since we all know that Arabic is a language composed of nothing but terrorist threats, with no words for things like "tree", "sunlight", "house" or "lunch" (To say these things the Arab must revert to a degraded form of English, the true language of God) you are probably a conservative.

* The actual language of God is of course Latin. But then if you're able to read at all you certainly already knew this.

*If you think that Christmas would be utterly ruined by the removal of the three-dollar, blow-job-faced angels surrounding the courthouse wall, you are probably a conservative.

*Indeed, if you believe in an emotionally weak God who would be utterly shattered without the official approval of your government; definitely a conservative.

* Remember the old Pentagon story about Pat Tillman single-handedly holding off the Taliban for two hours before he ran out of ammunition? If you saw nothing funny about this story, if you honestly believe that one American has the strength of fifty foreigners and that our military is composed of a million pocket Roland's, you are probably a conservative.

* If you still don't know that Tillman was a Chomsky-admiring atheist who opposed the Iraq War, you are almost certainly a conservative.

* If you think that a tax hike (on anything, for any reason, ever) is a bigger threat to your liberty than making social pariahs and bogeymen out of those who question authority, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that would-be dictators are obsessed with taking your guns; when they have in fact removed any need for doing so by taking your brain, you are probably a conservative.

* If you know nothing about the nation of France beyond their recent losing streak to the Germans, (Such as why elitist, freedom-hating Americans tend to move there whenever your ilk take over) you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that Ted Nugent has been able to achieve an erection at any point in the past thirty-five years, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that a country-music singer who loves Jesus and America to the point of conflating the two is a "rebel" for drinking himself to death, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that Hillary Clinton is a two-faced, loud-mouthed bulldyke bitch-cunt; but you have no problem with powerful women and don't-I-dare say you do, you are probably a conservative.

* If you think that Barrack Obama is secretly a Muslim, or if you ever believed that baby-sacrificing Satanic pedophiles were running loose in your town, you are probably a conservative. (Seriously, you're in church eight times a week, you should have some idea how hard it would be to secretly practice a religion.)

* If you have ever even considered taking John Wayne seriously, at all, well enough for now.

You see what I'm getting at here. It's not that there aren't left-wingers who believe dumb things. I'll grant you the 9-11 truthers and the Kennedy conspiracy theorists. (Though, in all honesty, the JFK theories aren't all that stupid until you get into shot by the driver without anyone noticing/secret Freemason ritual territory, and this is really politically neutral lunacy isn't it?) It's just that there aren't nearly so many stupid beliefs that are considered acceptable within the liberal mainstream. The logical leap that the conservative must make in order to believe himself both divinely-ordained master of the universe and terribly put-upon victim is truly sublime. I have a powerful lust for the day when we can vote these knuckleheads out of power. Than we won't have to worry about having the nation's nuclear arsenal in the hands of children and we can all sit back and laugh at the joke that American conservatism has become.

Valentine's Day.

My last girlfriend got angry when she told me not to buy her anything for Valentine's day and I did anyway.

The one before that got angry when she told me not to buy her anything for Valentine's Day and I took her at her word.

It's a terribly strange pretense for a holiday. Romantic relationships are not inherently good, nor are they necessarily of any benefit to society at large. The idea that "having somebody" is more likely to lead to happiness than remaining single is Puritanism, nothing more. At any rate, couples do have their own personal anniversary's. It's very much like having a personal birthday for one self and than having a big public "Life Day" or some such nonsense.

To sum things up as politely as possible; a woman who takes Valentine's Day seriously is a bigger turnoff than AIDS.

Interstate Batteries Presents Lent

Don's know how old this is, it's still first-time funny for me.

400th post

You chose to dance with the tyranny of deserve, and now you blame me, if it's gratitude you seek children, seek not to be a master.

Anthony Torrango

Anthony, my childhood best friend, died of alcohol poisoning in Norfolk last week, just two days before I myself got noticibly more intoxicated than I had planned to at a party.

I was planning on telling people about this incident, but didn't know exactly what to say. Now, I really have no idea what to think.

Jessica Bronson-McBush

This is Jessica Bronson-McBush, second cousin to and last surviving female relative of Charles Bronson.

She was born to Stevie and Wanda Bronson on March 6th 1975 just six weeks before her mother was bludgeoned and sodomized to death by a gang of Puerto Rican coke dealers. When her father weakly suggested that the matter be left to the police she was sent to be raised by her older cousin Charles, who quickly avenged her mother by ritualistically slaughtering ninety-seven Gotham street urchins in forty-eight hours.

Jessica suffered a rough childhood. Besides burying her sisters, grandmother, and female cousins after horrifying ends, she was also kidnapped no fewer than twelve times before the age of seven. It was during the last of these incidents when Jessica first tasted human blood for herself, stabbing a Cubo-soviet-Black nationalist death agent in the back after cousin Charles had dispatched her other three dozen tormentors with a Kalashnikov.

Jessica attended Our Lady of the Sorrows High School in White Plains,New York from 1989-1993, narrowly avoiding a brutal rape at the hands of her first boyfriend, "Edger Jennings", who turned out to secretly be Jose Pelligro, illegitimate grandchild of Manuel Noriega. After high school, Jessica attended Wellesley college, graduating with a Bachlor's in textile design despite witnessing the slaughter of her entire sorority house by a crack-addled two-bit thief released from prison early by a bleeding-heart judge.

It was in college that Jessica met Trevor McBush; famed professor of chemistry at UMass and distant relative of the Kennedy's. Despite being twenty years younger than Dr. McBush, the couple became romantically involved and married in the spring of 1996. Her venerable old cousin Charles arrainged a great sacrifice for the wedding, dispatching of thirty-eight terrorists, sixty-five known communists, and legions of undifferentiated street punks. Why Jessica married someone so much older than her is easy to see; the girl had had a strong figure all of her life, and though his death-phallus was as virile as ever, it was clear that old cousin Charles had entered his sunset days.

The couple moved to a Boston flat after Jessica's graduation, where tragedy soon befell them. Jessica and her unborn daughter were raped simultaneously by one Tyrone Afrika, who had just had a grand-theft-auto charge thrown out on a technicality, in April of 1998. The fetus soon died of the abuse, and the McBush marriage nearly fell apart at the seems. Old cousin Charles had warned Trevor against moving his bride to the inner city, where the average life-span of a white woman is just under three days.

The birth of two more daughters brought the hope that Jessica could put her tragic past behind her, but she and her husband were forced to watch at gunpoint as illegal immigrants devoured them alive in June of 2000. The sight of her husband helpless, weeping, and wetting herself made their eventual divorce inevitable. Cousin Charles, now in his eighties and in failing health, was able only to slaughter those directly responsible, and did not have the strength to bring The Great Clensing that formally came with such outrages.

But despair not good reader, for before Jessica sent Trevor simpering back to his flaccid ivory tower he somehow managed to impregnate her with a son, who naturally took the name Charles. The boy was born in August of 2003 just as his legendary third cousin took to his deathbed. The newborn boy, with his sixteen-pound frame, exquisitely-developed manhood, and bearing the same steely gaze as his namesake , was clearly destined to be his heir, and so after barely a day of convalescence, Jessica willed herself out of her birthing bed, battled her way through the hospital staff to grab her child, who roared triumphantly with the knowledge that he was to begin to fulfill his destiny, and together mother walked out the door and drove through the night to be at the side of dying Justice Incarnate.

When they came to old cousin Charles' hospital room they found him breathing laboriously surrounded by six dead gang-bangers. Though old Bronson's eyes were already growing cloudy with death, they immediately glowed with their old fire at the sight of his namesake infant; yay, as much his son as if he had been spawned from his own loins. He bade Jessica bring the boy to him and she rapturously obeyed. Upon being held by the Great Old One, the boy let out such a piercing coo that twelve virgin lads at a nearby orphanage were struck dead by the concussive shock.

With the last of his strength, the Great Old One Charles took the severed head of one of the street-toughs and fed the blood from the dangling veins into the infant's mouth. "I dub thee Vengence" said The Old One, and with this, his face became determined, a great, contented sigh emanated from his throat, hailstones the size of lepers began to fall from the sky outside, and the Old One was no more. His mission completed, his deathly continuance victorious.

So who than can doubt the chain of events that came with the rape and murder of New Charles Bronson's preschool sweetheart, Victoria-Mae Sanctimonia? Oh how the rivers of blood did flow as the young boy took up his 44. magnum, and did exterminate both the criminals and their blood relations entire; yay, down to the fifth cousins and their adopted nephews. And how his mother did weep with pride that day, knowing that her life's destiny was fulfilled.

And how shall his mother, you may ask, spend her middle age? In all likelihood, of course, she will not. already she has been abducted six and raped seventeen times since the death of old Charles; and oh how terrible was the justice of her son. Yet whether Jessica is buried alive, sold into white slavery by Arab devils, or savaged by bull and leopard like old St. Marciana is of no consequence. She is our lady, the mother of our savior, and Jessica Bronson shall be remembered through the dying screams of the wicked ones until the end of days.

Juno

Unfailingly cute, at times too much so. But it still creates the oddest desire for a pregnant teenaged daughter. I recommend it.

Harvey Keitel

I don't know if I've blogged about this before;I've certainly talked about it, but I'm afraid that it's a significant moment in my life, and I must keep referring to it.

I was watching TV at my parent's house late one night two Christmases ago. The "Bonnie Situation" scene of "Pulp Fiction" was playing on Cinemax at the same time that "Bad Lieutenant" was playing on IFC.

And there was Harvey Keitel, saving the day as the ultra-smooth "Wolf" in California while his parallel self swayed a mournful dance of crack-induced impotence in some Manhattan hovel.

One man become the totality of human experience, the glory and the gutter. Stunning.

You remember PCU? That guy who was trying to prove that there was always a movie with either Michael Caine of Gene Hackman playing on TV?

Well, ever since the big movie channels expanded into various genre-channels, I have discovered that one can find "Pulp Fiction", "Scarface", or "The Neverending Story" playing at four in the morning every morning somewhere on extended cable.

Try it for yourself.

Kimball County Cops rob Utah Man, Brag about it.

"File photo of the Kimball County Sheriff's Department."

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pag...u_sid=10231335

Now, did this man get his $69,000 dollars doing something illegal? Probably, and I'm sure this matters a great deal to those who enjoy having Daddy hold them in his arms and tell them that everything is going to be alright. I personally have a laissez-faire view of the black market and couldn't care less how he earned his money. What bothers me are the archaic government entities along the I-80 corridor that support themselves by sucking up millions of tax dollars as part of some anti/meth/anti-drugs-in-general/anti illegal immigrant etc. crusade and then suck on the public teet some more to pay for the cost of jailing perfectly responsible smugglers. Counties that don't have a large enough tax base to support themselves and have to rely on trolling the roads for outsiders who have "suspicious money" available for the taking should not exist, and if there were any justice in this world this Utah fellow would come back with an Ivy League lawyer and a lawsuit and ruin those highway thugs from Kimball.

This is for John Wenz

Ronald Reagan


Bow to dementia messiah.

Strange Thing

I've had what might be called "chick music" in my head all day, specifically my mother's music; Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, Carly Simon, et al.

I cleaned my apartment today, and I think that might have been what set it off; This hopelessly effeminate act of preventing oneself from getting sick off of one's own filth.

But this is not a complaint, I actually like the female singer-songwriters from the seventies, I like their groove, I like their aesthetic, perfectly pleasant music for when your driving through the sticks with a busted CD player and have to rely on local radio.

The subject of "You're so Vain" is Warren Beatty. All reasonably intelligent people know this.

Pimpin ain't easy

Be generous with the collection plate, God rewards all good deeds.

You wannna take him out? He's taking the whole fucking building with him

Term limits can't touch this son.