Larry King finally did it. After spending weeks sitting in his studio talking about the Elizabeth Smart case, he finally got his crinkly, multipley bypassed heart out to Utah to interview the few remaining members of the Smart family who haven't been interviewed by Ashleigh Banfield. She's there too. Remember her? Climbing to fame by being one of the first people on the scene of Ground Zero, dyeing her hair black and wearing scarves in an effort to fit in while reporting from Pakistan, then interviewing grieving Palestinians and Israeli's after every traumatic event, she was getting some cred by going from hot-spot to hot-spot. She's now in Utah too, covering the Elizabeth Smart thang. Guess with all that's going on in the world- encroaching invasion of Iraq, collapse of the American corporate system, the President and Vice-President being caught with the cookie from the cookie jar- the most important place to be is Utah. To follow the kidnapping of some blonde, rich white girl.

You know how much I care about the Smart case? Nothing. Nada. Couldn't give a shit.

Yeah, I feel bad for her and her family and yeah, it's a shame, but I just don't care. Didn't know her. Don't know her family. Don't know anyone who knew her. And whatever happened and will happen to her will have absolutely no impact on my life. Not one thing.

Know something too? Unless you know her, her family, or people who know them, her kidnapping doesn't mean anything to you either. Doesn't affect your life one bit either. Oh, you might feel more paranoid about things and think that would could happen to her might happen to you or your kids, but there's a really serious chances that it won't. Great chance it won't happen. In fact, statistically, most child abductions are done by people who know the child.

Yet, once again, the media is all in a froth on a story about a kidnapped girl. And yes, another white, rich girl (as opposed to say, a poor hispanic one). Because the media oh so loves a story about a kidnapped rich, white girl. And isn't it great timing that this happened too? The Jon Benet's story is way old and the Chandra Levy cases has probably run it's course, or will until they figure out what happened, so that left the press with nothing. Just boring stories about corporate crime, been there done it stories about the crisis in the Middle East, and way too boring science items about global warming. Booring. So bring on the kidnapped rich, white girl.

Remember after 9/11, we all sat around and talked about how we were about to go through a great awakening? How we were suddenly going to learn about things in the world and how the press would no longer get caught up in insignificant, overly sensationalized stories? How everyone pointed to the Chandra Levy thing as the absolute nadir of what was wrong with the media?

Guess not.

Lying in bed reading and got this sudden urge to turn on the TV. Don't know why, but just get that feeling. So I turn it on for a sec, just in time to catch the latest Breaking News off of CNN.

Goodbye Teddy Ballgame.

It's such a shame that the people running baseball are doing such a good job fucking-up something you helped make so great.

Lately, there's been a lot of ads in the Chron sports pages for movies on the Playboy Channel. Makes sense, guys read the sports pages and guys like watching porn. The movies are the usual soft-core kind of stuff, starring actors named Steven St. Crois, Nici Sterling, or Dasha Gwen Summers, but the thing that always gets me is that in the left-hand corner of the ad, there's this headline "Director's Cut."

And I'm, of course, wondering, just what is the Director's Cut for one of these movies and is it that big of a deal. Have people only seen the cut, original one and now might be excited to see the Director's Cut? Is it like the Director's Cut of "Blade Runner" or "Apocalypse Now" where the director had a huge vision that got cut for commercial reasons and they're re-releasing it as a "Director's Cut" so they can finally show their full vision? Like the Director of "Wife Taker, Part 1" originally envisioned a three-hour epic, based on the all the collected works of Mila Kundera, and felt that the original version aired on the Playboy channel short-changed his vision? Will we get a fuller examination of the human condition by watching the Directors Cut or just more lesbian action?

And yes, this is all just an attempt to get more people to read the blog because most people who check it out are looking for porn. And no, I do not have any naked pictures of Anna Kournikovia.

Little late to this, but, well, you know. It's in honor of tonight's big Fu Manchu show.

My favorite rag, the Bay Guardian has been in high form lately. While I'd love to get into it, I think I'll respectfully decline out of last week's big issue, the one about "Queer Pride 2002," mainly because I'm not gay (not that there's anything wrong with it). I will only say that if words like "assimilationista" or "heteronormativity" are part of your discourse, you need to get out more.

What's been bugging me lately is other, little snippy comment's they've been making. Pop cultural-related comments.

First there was the dissing of one of my fave, not really well known bands, Fu Manchu. In a review for a local stoner rock band, High on Fire, they held up Fu Manchu as the epitome of corporate-rock stoner rock suckiness. Typical rock snot move of praising one band by dissing another in an attempt to prove just how cooler the other band is.

Quote: "Unfortunately, most bands model themelves after that logo-rock Fu Manchu bullshit." Later, the critic writes High on Fire exists- it's one of a crop of bands redeeming stoner rock's tarnished name." Tarnished where? Oh, that's right, I missed the great Stoner Rock craze that swept the nation way back in '01 when MTV and Live 105 filled the air with Stoner rock bands like Fu Manchu and Nebula. Most people have probably never even heard about Stoner Rock as a genre, but yet apparently, it's name has been tarnished.

Apparently, the local band is that much cooler than the Fu mainly because they're such a hard core stoner rock that they've released a CD with only one or two songs on it- all jammy and laden with mythological underpinnings. In other words, a band like Man O'War (who DO rock), except cool because the guys in the band don't wear mullets and are made up of upper middle class snots like the critic.

Granted, Fu's last album is no great shakes, but whatever, dude.

Oh yeah, in a search for that article on the Bay Guardian Web site, I found a number of reviews and mentions of Fu Manchu on there. Guess what? They're all glowingly, fawning and good. In fact, I think I first bought one of their album's because of a review in the Bay Guardian. Guess having a single get played for like a week on Live 105 is just enough to damn them to corporate sell-out hell.

Then there's last week's Lit Section. In the front of the section, before all the scintillating reading about the latest in gay literature, is an attack on Michael Moore. Moore is, of course, one of the only few lefty types who get any press or media coverage and right now has a best-selling book.

I quote: "Meanwhile, who else has hopped on the memoir bandwagon? None other than the ruler of liberal sellouts…..After his ode to political corrections became a runaway bestseller- gee, why would a book about white men by a white man ever become popular?…..Maybe with his fat royalty checks, Moore will open a book-writing factory in his now-infamous hometown of Flint, Mich.?"

So, according to the author, Moore is a sell-out. Why? Because he's actually read. Because that stupid Moore wrote a best-selling book and made a bunch of movies when he could be making little or no money at a free alternative weekly that nobody would even bother to pick up if it wasn't for the fact it was free and nobody really reads except for the sex advice columns. Not to mention cranky, bored unemployed people. And damn that Moore for being a white male. Doesn't he know you can only truly be an authentic, hard-core, non sell-out leftist if you are a lesbian of color?

And once again, I did a search through the Bay Guardian Web site looking for the article, but could only find a bunch of columns the Bay Guardian printed by him. In agreement with the paper's politics.

Now, if only he just wrote the free weekly's and never, ever dared to try to be read by a larger audience.

Just got this as a subject header in my in-box:

"Memebership confirmation for...."

If you're gonna send me spam mail, at least fucking proofread it first.

And now, the Sweat Pants Phase-

Wake up but don't get out of bed. Watch TV for an hour until I've realized that there's absolutely nothing on, so get up. Go online for an hour, think about showering and getting coffee, but not motivated enough to do it. Read all my sites within an hour, curse myself for reading half of them last night out of boredom, and decide it's time to move on. Take a shower but stay in there too long because I can't think of a reason to get out. Finally get out, throw on random t-shirt and shorts, get coffee and the paper, head back home and read the paper. . Think about lunch but can't figure out what I want to eat so I don't eat. Not that hungry anyways. Think about what I'm gonna do today, but what. Could see a movie, could go to the Y, could read a book, could write. Could hang out with other unemployed friends, could go hang out in an outdoor café. Or I could not. Spend all day watching TV instead. Spend most of it hoping something new happens on CNN or MSNBC that I haven't seen over the past couple of hours. Watch MTV of VH-1 to see if they show anything interesting. They don't. So I watch SportsCenter for the third time in the past 24 hours. Spend hours online, reading message boards but don't feel like posting anything. Enjoy all the nasty comments about Kyle, though.

Look for a job, but can't find anything. Call the Temp agencies, but nothing's there. Don't care anyways. Don't want to temp, don't think sending out a resume will matter anyways. Realize I need to do something to shake things up, but don't know what. It's too much to think about anyways.

I have achieved the perfect balance of apathy, ambivelance, and ennui. I am zen-like in it. I could meditate on it, be one with one it, achieve harmony with it. But I'm too bored too.

At least the Buffy Musical is on tonight.

Ahh, there's nothing like the anticipation of waiting for something to come from Amazon.com. The waiting, the counting of the days, the dreaming of the goodies ordered and how it'll all change your world. And then it comes- the box, with everything you've ordered inside. Everything you've waited for is right there, in your hands, ready to become of your world. You want nothing better to do but put on all the CD's at once, to take it all in, to absorb every note, every groove, every chord and know it intimately.

And then there's nothing like the "eh" that comes when listening to the brand new CD's and realizing there not as good as you thought they'd be.

Sometimes in the morning when I wake up and flip through the channels, I occasionally catch part of one of those religious type shows. You know the kind I'm talking about, the kind with a bunch of people with bad hair and thick southern accents constantly talking about "Jeeee-sus."

The other week they had a special segment devoted to the cause of trying to convert people in India. Because, as they kept on mentioning, there's over a billion Indians who aren't Christian! Instead, they follow some other, whacky, idol -worshipping religion and are thus damned to an eternity in hell for following some silly religion that's been around way longer than Christianity. To help convert those billions of Indians, money is, of course, needed.

To help motivate the viewing audience, they showed footage of just what things there cash, money-orders, and credit cards could help do. The hosts of the show interviewed some Indian guy who has been converted and now is going all over India trying to convert all those foolish Indians. He'd go to the poor sections, of course, because or parts because Jeeee-sus so loved the poor and because they also have pretty much nothing else to do but accept whatever's given to them. So this guy and his followers give them some food and water, and as a reward for accepting their food and water, are made to watch a movie about the life of Jeee-sus. To help those unknowingly damned Indians understand the life of Jeee-sus, the people who set up the program made the film themselves, filming it India and using Indian actors (Jeeee-sus, of course, was a very famous Indian prophet).

Of course, I had to watch clips from the movie and couldn't help notice just how much parts of the movie looked like a Bollywood flick. Same look, same feel, same kind of actors. And since Bollywood is the established norm for Indian film-making, I kind of wondered if wasn't just a movie about Jeee-sus, but a Bollywood version of Jeee-sus.

In the movie, does Jeee-sus burst into a trendy, Indian dance song upon seeing Jerusalem for the first time, with the Apostles shooking their booty like extras from a Britney Spears video? Would there be one of those great romantic duets between Jeee-sus and Mary? Probably not, which would have been a shame. That would have rocked.

And I began to wonder too, just what would happen if that movie is successful. What if, as the person on the TV show kept tantalizing the audience with, if all those poor billions of Indians who have yet to be saved were actually saved and became Christians (praise Jeeee-sus). Would that be a really good thing?

Think about it. What is India known for? It's exoticness, it's foreign airs and mysterious spiritualism- for the Karma Sutra and yoga and yogi's and belief in reincarnation and Ganeesh and Vishnu. Where would India be without all that? It'd just be one big huge area full of poor Baptists. Like West Virginia, except with more people and hotter weather.

And where would we be if India became like the South? No more yoga techniques. No more meditiation retreats. No more artists going to India for spiritual guidance. No more bougie white people going to India to get in touch with their spiritual side.

We can't allow this. India can't allow this. After all, if it turns into one big, huge Christian country, who would want to go there?

Fucking Missionaries.

In honor of the Ox, we here at Hooray for Anything are wearing our rockingest clothes (well, actually shorts and a fleece, but we're wearing it with plenty of rock n' roll attitude) and listening to live Who all day. Because there will never ever, ever, ever be a better live band. Ever.

But while we rock out and honour the man who gave us Boris the Spider, we still have some time to look at the news, cause there's some crazy shit happening.

First, there's Smirkboy's response to all the corporate flim-flammery going on. His proposal? The main part is this- if an executive of a company that pulls something gets busted, he (I would say he or she to make it more PC, but we all know that when it comes down it, it's men who run all the major companies) "would be forced to forfeit their bonuses and other compensation. In extreme cases, they could be barred from serving as officers or directors for other publicly held corporations."

You can see CEO's quaking in their boots at the sound of this. What a punishment, having to give up half of their vacation homes. How about this? How about they GO TO JAIL.

Why is it if some cranked out kid holds up a 7-11 and takes off with 40 or 50 bucks, they wind up getting thrown into the slammer for a long, long time, but if some CEO in charge of a corporation bilks everyone for several billion dollars, they just have to give up all the money they earned? Maybe we should change the law so that the person who holds up a 7-11 just has to return the money they stole. Or maybe we should actually THROW WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS IN JAIL. And not a very nice one too. The kind where some guy named Bubba or Skull makes him their bitch.

And then there's this, the whole Supreme Court allowing mandatory drug-testing for students. I propose that any person who makes it a rule that somebody (a completely random, innocent somebody) has to submit to mandatory drug testing also has to be drug tested. Because it's so easy to be all high and mighty about drug testing when it's not you whose being forced into having to go piss in some cup.

And like Clarence Thomas never smoked a little reefer while hanging out and watching porn...

Finally, there's this, some good news to leave y'all for the weekend- the Bush twins are at it again, as my girlfriend Jenna and her sister, were spotted whooping it up in some Western bar in DC.

Rock on, Jenna, rock on.

Man, this sucks....

The Quiet One

Everybody calls me the quiet one
But you just don't understand
You can't listen you won't hear me
With your head stuck in the sand
I ain't never had time for words that don't rhyme
My head is in a cloud
I ain't quiet - everybody else is too loud

Still waters run deep so be careful I don't drown you
You've got nothing to hear I've got nothing to say
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But names can never down you
It only takes two words to blow you away.

John Entwistle (1944-2002)

Got a telemarketing call from MCI yesterday. Just wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh. I worked for those bastards too, way back when as a Temp. Laid everyone off. So in honor of WorldCom, this is something I whipped up a couple of days ago. It's not actually about WorldCom, but more about a certain high-level politician who seems to have avoided being linked with all the corporate hanky-panky despite the fact he was involved in some major corporate hanky-panky-

Oh, that Martha Stewart, accused of insider-trading and making a bundle of money on stocks. A thing, of course, in which nobody, but nobody, has ever done. Especially heads of major corporations. Yet, despite the fact every day there's another story about this corporation or that corporation going under and being investigated for all sorts of funny accounting flim-flammery, it's Martha's whose getting all the heat.


Why, it's almost enough to make you think, especially if you were of the paranoid conspiracy bent- that the Powers That Be saw that they were suddenly underneath the microscope and somehow figured out a way to frame Stewart so she'd be accused of the same things. And so, like that, she was thrown out to the wolves. Because we all know the press would go after the Martha Stewart story like a bunch of drunken frat boys at a Tequilla Sorority mixer. Especially when the alternative is yet another story about some boring white guy cooking the companies books and screwing over thousands and thousands of stock-holders, employers and tax payers while they fly back and forth between their Aspen estate to their Bermuda estate. Not to mention all the leg-work the press would have to do to follow the obvious money trail and have to explain to everyone how half of the corporate scams are the result of policy loopholes created by the buying off of every politician in Washington. Or how every attempt to close said loopholes are being stymied by lobbyists carrying buckets worth of change. That would just take too much actual reporting and writing to do and what self-respecting journalist would want to do that when they can go over, in minute detail, what Martha Stewart has done with her stock portfolio.

Of course, there is another celebrity involved in several funny (funny as in "yer all getting screwed by this funny" as opposed to "ha-ha" funny) corporate games. Well, not exactly a celebrity, but someone who has been made fun of on SNL. Of course, it was because he's the Vice-President and not because anything he did is being investigated by the SEC.

You, of course, have heard all about this, haven't you?

Basically, the company Cheney was running before he became VP, Halibutron is now being investigated for hiding millions and millions of dollars from it's shareholders. The Accounting firm that helped set this up, by the way, is Arthur Anderson. Strange how Arthur Anderson seems to be getting around these days.

And, oh the irony. Like how Cheney told people during the campaign that unlike all those slackers in Washington, he was creating jobs as a CEO when in fact, due to his brilliant work as said CEO, he actually laid off thousands of employers. And there's just so much more good stuff like that out there .

The best description of what's been going on comes from one of my fave columnists, Frank Rich from the NY Times. In his column, Sacrifice Is for Losers, Rich writes:


"And then there's Dick Cheney, who has achieved a trifecta through his official dealings with Enron, his stewardship of Halliburton during alleged accounting irregularities and his on-camera appearance in a 1997 Andersen promotional video touting the firm's "good advice." (It's too late to find a Rosemary Woods who might erase it.)"


Yeah, yeah, I know, we're in a war right now and it is bad form to do all these kind of sneaky political type things during a War, especially when Cheney is the ventriliquist to Smirkboy's dummy. But still, it makes you wonder what would of happened if, for instance, Al Gore was running some company that possibly pulled some sort of accounting scam that defrauded everyone? Whitewater was about what, exactly?

Sigh.

At 5:08 this afternoon, after I had long given up in a huff and gone out, I got the call. Interview tomorrow morning at 10:30. Couldn't help notice too that the person left a message saying she was calling to confirm the time, as if I had known beforehand what exactly that time would be.

I was livid. Upset. Pissed off. How dare they? The nerve. I was gonna make my stand, I was gonna change the rules, I was gonna take the power back. Thankfully, a friend talked me off the ledge, reminded me that when you tried to stick to the Man, the Man usually wins. Or at least doesn't hire you. Once again, I'm a potential employers bitch.

Called them back and gave in. Told them I'd be there, bright and early and ready and raring to go. Person I talked to, my new best friend and somebody who doesn't give me a lot of confidence, told me where to go. Then double checked just to make sure and told me, oops, she was wrong and I had to go to another buillding completely- a building that a friend's husband who works there later told me he never heard of. When I asked for more details about the job, the person asked me whether I got the e-mail she sent me a couple of days ago with the job description. I didn't. She said she'd send it out a little later. Still haven't got it. Want to call her back and make sure she's got the right person.

Tomorrow's gonna be a long day.

And yeah, what can I say, once again, the whole job thing got to me. Got my snark on. On days like this, I kind of wish I could go all Dark Willow- vengency and big bad like, making everyone feel my pain and wrecking havoc throughout the world.

That would be kind of fun.

4 o'clock. Still no word. Lamedy lame, lame, lame. Looks like I'll be finding something else to do tomorrow and if they tell me it doesn't work, they can fucking kiss my ass.

Speaking of kissing my ass, here's what's gonna be the big story of the next few days:

Yep, as if we don't have enough things to worry about, some Federal Judge here in SF ruled that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. That whole "under God" thing (did you know that the "under god" thing didn't even exist in the pledge until the 1950's when it was added to help fight the godless Commies?).

And just as expected, fireworks are exploding everywhere. Heard that in protest, Congress took time out from whatever the fuck they do these days (not reforming the financial system, not finding out what happened to cause 9/11, not fixing healthcare, etc) to stand up and recite the Pledge. You go! And you can be sure Smirkboy will have something to weigh in on the subject, although if we're lucky, he'll try and say "indivisible."

What it means is that I won't be able to watch any news channel for the next week or so as it'll be full of all the usual blowhards and windbags getting all huffy puffy about something that every school kid in the country has to recite simply because they're told to. I know whenever I recited it, I thought of the importance and deeper meaning of each word- each phrase- and would never even dare to use that time to do something frivolous like stare at Katie Noble's breasts or ways to cheat on my math homework. And we'll get all those wonderful man in the street interviews with people who'll say how outrageous it is, and how it's another sign of the decline of the country and how it'll make our country that much closer to being nothing more than a country full of exploitative reality TV shows, dope smoking teenagers, and profanity spewing musicians (whoops). Maybe we'll get really lucky and get William Bennett to go on TV and tell everyone how it shows once again that everything wrong with the country is all the fault of a bunch of dope-smoking hippie liberals. Not only that, if we could make a drinking game out of how many times a politician, in reference to the decision, will mention 9/11, we'll all be spewing our guts out like a Freshman in high school after her second wine cooler because if 9/11 taught us anything, it's how important it is to recite pledges every morning before history class. After all, if we don't recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, the terrorists will have won.

To all the people who are about to go ballistic about it. And even to the people who first issued the law-suit (because, really, when our civil liberties are slowly getting chewed up and spit out more and more, day by day, what really does saying "under God" have to do with anything?), I say this.

Whatever.

Repeat after me:

"It just doesn't matter! It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!"

I will vote for any politician who, when asked about the thing on like "the Larry King Show" or "Crossfire" just turns to the camera and says "you know, who really cares."

I can dream, can't I?

Been three hours since the last post. Still no word from Supermonstorous Corp. about my supposed interview that's supposed to take place in less than 24-hours.

How long does it take for someone to call someone back and say "we can meet with that person at such and such a time?" Why is that such a difficult thing to do? Why do I have this feeling they have the time set, but they just haven't gotten around to telling me? And that I'll get some trite apology about it all as if it's no big deal I've been sitting around all day trying to find out when I'm supposed to go in. And why do I have to take it as oppososed to me telling them "you know, it's not enough time for me to prepare for my interview and I don't like how you've been putzing around about this, so how 'bout this, I'll come in on Friday at 11. If you don't like it, well, go piss off."

Think I'll call them back around three, right after Pardon the Interruption

Stay tuned, especially as some juicy news story just hit the wires.

I know you're all waiting for it, because I know y'all love it, but, here it comes....

More Fear and Loathing on the Unemployment Trail

Got a message from Supermonstorous Corp. on Tuesday. Wanted me to come in for an interview on Thursday. As in this Thursday. This is the very same Supermonstorous Corp that two weeks ago called me for a phone interview on a sunday afternoon right in the middle of my nap time.

Since I was in the shower, I didn't answer the phone. So I called the lady back and left a message. No call back. At all. Starting at four, I called the lady every ten minutes hoping to get her. You have to do these things you know, because you can never trust anyone in HR at any company that has more than say, oh, ten employees to actually return a phone call. Finally, at 4:50, I reached her. She said she got my message, that Thursday would be fine, but that she hadn't called me back because she hadn't reached the Managers of the Department I'm supposed to talk with to set up a time. She then said she'll call me back as soon as she gets word.

Now, if you call someone saying you want to interview someone on a specific day, shouldn't you figure out what time of that day would work first? Shouldn't she know this already? Especially considering said interview is only two days from the point you called to set up the interview?

And considering it's 11 o'clock and I still haven't heard back from them, I have to wonder this: whaaaaa? Now, once again, I have to spend all day waiting by the phone, waiting to find out what time I can come in.

Got a bad feeling about this.......

Flipping through the channels, I finally caught snippets of Bush's big speech about the Middle East. It's Pale-stine. Not Pale-stein.

Just sat there and I could think about was seeing every Palestinian watching it yelling "Palestine, it's Palestine!" like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein.

Jesus-frickin'-Christ.


Anyways, Made the mistake of buying Fast Food Nation today and I can't put it down. For those who don't know about it, it's basically an expose on the Fast Food industry- how they operate and how they've fundamentally changed America and the World. And not for the best.

I knew I shouldn't have gotten it because I've been warned, but I got it anyways. Just as I thought, it's pretty scary.

Among other fun little facts that I've read so far, I found this-

-In 1947 GM and a few other car manufacturers bought up most of the major trolley companies then completely demolished them so as to pave the way for more roads to be built. Which, besides more cars, also meant more busses were needed (made by GM, of course). They were all indicted for anit-trust measures, but the judge fined all the CEO's of the companies a whopping $1.

-Due to lobbying pressure from the meat industry lobby, government can recall any number of defective products, but can't any sort of contaminated meat. Which is how we get e-coli outbreaks.

-Due to a lack of school funding, many textbooks are written by major corporations. Suprisingly, a study guide sponsored by the American Coal Foundation dismisses Global Warming and another one sponsored by Proctor & Gamble teaches kids that clear-cut logging is a good thing. Oh yeah, all these textbooks are, of course, tax deductibles for the corporations.

-In an attempt to hook kids at an ever younger age to drink soft drinks, several major soft drink companies, licensed their logos to baby bottle manufacturers.

-And finally, that in 1998, more fast-food workers were murdered on their job than cops. And that most of the fast-food hold-ups are done by ex or current employees (which is what happens when you pay only 5.75 an hour and make 16 year old kids work til 1 in the morning). In 1998, a government attempt to make the fast-food places safer for their employers (by doing things like making the parking lot well lit) was foiled by intense lobbying in congress. Didn't want to have to spend money making sure their employees weren't shot by other employees. Naturally, one of the major lobbying groups against the workforce rules was everyone's favorite group, the NRA.

And I'm only on page 90.

Besides the fact I might never eat at a MickeyD's again, the book is almost enough to make me grow dreadlocks, stop showering, and start attending those anti-globalization protests.

Problem with watching Giants games, besides the fact this season is starting to have that things-about-to-get-really-ugly-feeling, is that half the time Bonds comes up in the later innings, the same thing always happens. Manager comes out and makes a brilliant strategic move of pulling the pitcher to bring in a lefty (because Bonds supposedly doesn't hit lefty's as well, which doesn't seem true cause he seems to hit everyone). Pitching change always means a break, so we go to commercial. Then the lefty comes in, faces Bonds, and.....walks him. Manager goes back out, thinks the pitcher's done what he's supposed to do, and brings in another righty. Another pitching change and we go to commercial.

All that manuevering, strategizing and time wasting just so some lefty can go in and do the same thing a righty could of done. Yawn.

So I'm walking past this movie theater today. On the wall of the theater is a poster for some movie called "Last Wedding" or "Late Wedding" or something like that. It looks like your typical boring arty, foreign romance- too foreign to be a chick flick yet not arty enough to be an art flick. Just a foreign romance that'll probably be only of interest to those who are into foreign romance movies just because.

On the poster for the movie, a poster that looks almost like every other movie poster you've seen- featuring the main characters kind of looking at you and a bunch of not quite so important characters in the background, is a little blurb about the movie. One of those "Ten Stars, I Love It" type blurb. Squib, I think they're called, but I'm not quite sure.

The big review, the one up top and with the biggest font-size says something like this: "This movie reveals a completely new voice in film…" then some blah, blah, blah, and then ends with this interesting little nugget of information "ifeaturing maybe the most realistic sex scene ever filmed!" So I'm thinking, that's interesting, that's an unusual thing to hype about a movie. They could have just left it at "completely new voice in film, great movie, makes Citizen Kane look like Glitter," but it didn't. It had to just add that little part about the sex scene. Since nothing is done unintentionally and not pre-tested, pre-marketed, and pre-committeed, I'm guessing that quote was left in on purpose. I guess because they thought they needed some sort of hook to get people in to see an otherwise typical arty, foreign romance flick, they might as well hype up the sex scene. As if that's the only reason why people will see the movie.

Think I'll check it out on Wednesday.

And no, I didn't actually stoop to watching Sorority Life, even if half the women in it were not just nubile, young co-eds, but nubile young Jewish co-eds. Turned it on for a few minutes and then had that voice come to me, telling me that, once again, maybe I need to get a life.

Is it me, or is Clarence Thomas SO Antonin Scalia's bitch?

Looks Like MTV is debuting a new reality show tonight- Sorority Life. Watch as college co-ed's try and pledge to a sorority at UC Davis and see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.

Can we stoop any lower? Is there anymore trash out there left to put created as a tv show? Just the sheer, lower common denominator of it all- the explotation, the vouyerism, the titilliation. Is there any reason for this show other than having guys tune in to watch young, nubile coed sorority girls? Is there any point to it other than the potential of showing scantily clad women having cat-fights?

And yeah, I'll probably watch it. MTV reality shows are TV crack and I'm a TV crack-ho.

Speaking of which, is it a sign of maturity that in catching part of Road Rules, I sat there kind of thinking that maybe we should borrow one of those Palestinian bus terrorists and use them to blow up the Road Rules winnebago?
What a bunch of loathesome idgits.