Posted Aug. 22. I guess I have to start noting the time now that Gustavo set the precedent in my absence: 3:40 p.m. 2ish enough for you?
WELCOME BACK ME!
So I let that Arellano kid take this virtual bird-cage liner over for a week and what does he do: he shows me the hell up, that's what he does. Blogging at all hours, linking to anything that moves, using complete sentences—folks, how the hell am I supposed to compete with that? He's made me look so bad that he's left me no choice but to do the obvious: call in Jim Gilchrist.
https://ocweekly.com/ink/05/39/news-ziegler.php
Hey, Minuteman! Isn't that supposed to work as well as Hey, Culliganman? No? Not so much? Whatever. All I know is, in explaining my absence to leave cold, drizzly OC (swear to God, last Monday, Aug. 15, was cold and drizzly here. In the middle of fucking August!!! Who says global warming isn't screwing up the weather? Oh yeah, everyone from our own barely knee-boardin' congressman
http://rohrabacher.house.gov/
to that lone atmospheric “scientist” from Bumfuck, Iowa, or The Art Bell Show—you know, the dude the Right trots out every time they have to counter overwhelming scientific evidence of man-made global warming
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=11680&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported
) for cold, drizzly Baghdad by the Bay, Mr. G.A.
mailto:ga*******@oc******.com" data-original-string="MczcPzmeRz1wSTWFB1WwiHnOYtukgf2UMB2vUp2K3CA=" title="This contact has been encoded by Anti-Spam by CleanTalk. Click to decode. To finish the decoding make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser.
insinuated that I was haunting the Bay Area, looking for opportunities to go all Tonya Harding on the unsuspecting lower legs of members of the Oakland A-Holes, to increase the postseason chances for your (and my) Anaheim California Los Angeles Angeles of Stanton, Ventura and Lower Cucamonga
http://www.angelsbaseball.com
. Since, no, you did not read anything about an Athletic Supporter going down, I do feel it is my duty—and alibi—to likewise rule myself out as a suspect in the mysterious death of San Francisco 49er Thomas Herrion.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050822/ap_on_sp_fo_ne/fbn_lineman_dies;_ylt=AkpUJFJcjfonty7QiFomrlas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3cm82NXAwBHNlYwM3NTU-
I swear that I never laid an oven mitt on the dude. Furthermore, every season when the time comes that my beloved Oakland Raiders
http://www.raiders.com/default.jsp
are eliminated from the playoffs (which has been happening earlier and earlier I'm afraid), I quickly switch allegiance to my second-favorite team: you guessed it, those Niners! (Check out their opening page
http://www.sf49ers.com/
.) Unfortunately, they've been getting eliminated even earlier than my Roiders, which means I don't watch a lot of pro football in January. But I've still got 'SC
http://usctrojans.collegesports.com/sports/m-footbl/usc-m-footbl-body.html
, the second-best pro team in all of Southern California (behind Mater Dei
http://www.materdei.org/
. The biggest difference between Frisco and here? I'd say it was the bumper stickers on the backs of cars. Saw a lot of Kerry-Edwards and Fuck Bush This and Fuck Bush That stickers up there. Driving up Fairview to work this morning, I had a car in front of me with FOUR!!! black W. stickers on the back and two identical stickers informing me to “Save Social Security” by reading up on the issue. (Funny thing is I have, and am not convinced Social Security needs fixing). In the lane next to that car was a Bronco with an “Offroader for Bush” sticker. Fucking A-Hole fans, no doubt.
TEAMING WITH TEEMU
In other sports news (you can see which section my head's been at on holiday), it just broke that Teemu Selanne is coming back to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Bell Gardens and Lower Etiwanda.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050822/ap_on_sp_ho_ne/hkn_mighty_ducks_selanne;_ylt=Aog0rPVg5DuAdQsBNCucyN2i24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Which brings up an interesting story. I enjoy hockey somewhat, go to a game or two each season and follow the standings in the paper, etc. But I wouldn't call myself nutso over the sport. For instance, watching hockey in person vs. on TV, I'd compare to having sex with a live person vs. having sex with a live person encased in glass. Blurry glass. And maybe the person isn't alive after all. Which is weird because when you watch hockey in person, you're watching it through glass. But it's better. Okay, enough with these digressions, the point is I was chatting with someone who is really, really into hockey. Ducks hockey. And to keep the conversation going, I mentioned how I liked the fact that the non-Disney Ducks at least seem to be building a team that plays to their roster's strengths, which as I understand it would be best summed up as meatheads who skate well. In other words, they'll be fast and brutal, leaning more toward defense than offense. At least someone their at the Pond is honing in on one focus as opposed to the scattershot teams of the recent past, I reasoned. So this hockey fanatic starts going on and on about that, and brings up all these roster moves in Anaheim and elsewhere, and what that all means in the grand scheme of things when I ask, since I've been away from the local rags, if Selanne, as I swear I read somewhere, was thinking of rejoining the Ducks. The guy comes back at me with a blank look. “Where'd you hear that?” he says, like I'm insane. “I never heard that.” Actually, I said, fumbling and stumbling, the story may have been Kariya and Selanne were thinking of returning, but I do distinctly recall a possible Teemu Act 2. Again, I get the I'm crazy look. We switched subjects to dry walling. Well, who's the crazy mofo now, Zamboni breath?
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BUSH LESS LIKED THAN DICK
Sad news from the Nixon Lie-brary and Fiddlesticks Center of Yorba Linda:
http://www.nixonlibrary.org/
It seems that new polling shows that the Trickie Dickster has been surpassed by George W. Bush. Yep, sports fans, that's correct: Dubya's popularity is now lower than Dick's was at the height (depth?) of Watergate.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Or should that be: Oh, how the fallen are mighty! Whatever. All I know is that with numbers as bad as these, there must be a lot of folks on the Right who have had it up to here with Bush. United States Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), COME ON DOWN!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050821/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq;_ylt=Ag5urBf.ulf5ouSwxCayiZas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Hagel says Bush's made-up war has destabilized the Middle East and created a quagmire that's looking increasingly like Vietnam. Without the killer weed! Although the hash is righteous. And speaking of neighboring Afghanistan, it can't help those low poll numbers that four more U.S. troops were killed in that piece of un-paradise.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050821/ap_on_re_as/afghan_violence
And it really can't help matters—including my GOP's retention of the White House—that the Army is now looking at a worst-case scenario of 4 more years in Iraq
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050821/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_chief_interview
Woo-hoo! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! Remember all the fuckwads yelling that at their National Convention and Monster Truck Pull? Who knew this is what they meant? To be fair, I must mention that while I was out, I did happen upon Charlie Rose's interview with Donald Rumsfeld, and that two things crossed my mind:
http://boards.charlierose.com/board/forum.asp?fi=24
Rummy kinda grows on you, like a more assholic Harry Truman. You can tell he really hates the media and politicians (as if he isn't one himself). The other thing was Rummy made some sense when he said that by going to war in Iraq, we've created a place to fight the war on terrorism, which before had been a war with no borders. So, by staging the fighting in Iraq, we've decreased terrorism elsewhere, most especially American soil. There's a certain amount of logic in that, I must admit. And it apparently makes so much sense that the same argument is now coming out of Bush's mouth.
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=9428251&src=rss/topNews
You know, maybe these guys aren't so wrong, maybe we should . . . hey, wait a minute: That's not how they sold this war in the first place. Remember: Iraqi ties to 9/11, then weapons of mass destruction, then evil regime change, then . . . And terrorism is as prevalent as it's ever been—my source? That other Dick: Dick Cheney!
http://www.usembassy.org.uk/terror593.html
—though thankfully not on our shores (although almost).
http://officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=8&id=25439
For insta-reaction to all this, I turn to the Rummy doll just inches away from my keyboard.
CLOCKWORK: Mr. Rummy, you new argument is that the war in Iraq was necessary to create a battleground to fight terrorism. But that's not how this war was sold. In fact, the reasons for this war constantly change. So why are we to believe you now?
RUMMY DOLL: Oh, it was your rhetoric that made you do it, and they did this before Bush came to office, well before the Axis of Evil speech. It's utter nonsense.
Uh, thank you Mr. Secretary. Guess that means Dick is Dead. Long live the new Dick. Is it worth mentioning that Rummy started with the old Dick? Yes it is. Maybe they'll give him his own wing there on Yorba Linda Blvd., between the Fountain of Fibs and Subverting the Constitution Tilt-O-Whirl.
THE HITS KEEP COMING
In scandalous behavior closer to home: your favorite Governor Not A Girlie Man has now been lumped in with Tom DeLay, Ohio Governor Bob Taft and retiring-in-disgrace Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego) when it comes to politicians using their offices for personal gain.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/22/politicians.scandals.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
Let's see: DeLay, Taft, Cunningham, Schwarzenegger: Republican, Republican, Republican, Cyborg. And remember all that shit Arnie talked about not needing to raise money because of his personal fortune. They have a word for that in Austrian: Lying Sack of Streudel! Oh, and speaking of Ahnuld, take a look here for some disturbing gifts our Govenator accepted
http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/2005/08/straight-guy.html
, courtesy of Mayor Sam's Sister City blog. You know, Sam Yorty taught Nixon everything he knew. Or was it the other way around? Or was it Dornan? Or both? I don't remember. I was teething then.
