I Hate Snow

Apropos of nothing - I do hate snow and we got some untimely mother fucking snow today:

Either Google News is drunk ... or I am.

I'd put my money on me. Employees of large corporations find it hard to get drunk at the same time. It's a scheduling thing.
In fact, I'd wager the rest of my whisky that I am the one who is loaded.
Admittedly, there isn't much left to bet with.
If it were not for my Google News page, I would know very little of the world ... until I watched the Daily Show.
If I only got my news from the Jon Stewart I'd very likely turn out to be a smart-ass liberal Jew.
As everyone should know ... I'm a smart-ass liberal athiest -- until I get myself into trouble in which case I'm a smart-ass liberal agnostic.
Actually, if being a smart-ass liberal Jew would get me in good with Jehovah I'd give that a shot. I might get more stand-up comedian work. That Woodsy Allen guy was funny before he fucked his step-daughter.

(note to self: don't fuck step-daughter)

Oy Vey. I feel like a schmuck but look at several of my Google News headlines. This is the kind of news I have delivered to my computer every morning. I'd like to think it is the fault of Google but ... quite frankly ... it is not. I chose the news I receive.
I'm clearly a douchebag.

Here it is:

Obama: McCain just making 'stuff' up
Inquirer.net - 6 hours ago
MIAMI - White House frontrunner Barack Obama lashed his Republican rival John McCain on Tuesday, accusing him of just making "stuff" up as time runs out before election day in two weeks.


Zac Efron Turns 21; Can Now Legally Drink, Gamble and Be Groped...
Dose.ca - 20 Oct 2008
Zac Efron turned 21 over the weekend. And while the dreamy-eyed king of the OMG crowd is finally old enough to bootleg for his High School Musical pals, Zefron is still as squeaky clean as ever.


Anyone for squid Jell-O?
Vancouver Sun - 23 hours ago
Academic Honours I The first step in raising a leatherback sea turtle in captivity is to stop the endangered creature from continually hitting its head on the walls of its tank.

Mistrial in Spears Case
New York Times - 1 hour ago
After four deadlocked jury votes and eight hours of deliberation preceded by two days of testimony in Los Angeles Superior Court, a mistrial has been declared in the case of Britney Spears’s driver’s license, The Associated Press reported


Nunziata denies kicking ex-wife's boyfriend
Toronto Star - 3 hours ago
Former Liberal MP and one-time mayoral candidate John Nunziata has been charged with assault after what he describes as an altercation with his ex-wife's boyfriend.


Maple Leafs say talk of second team in Toronto just speculation
The Canadian Press - 11 hours ago
TORONTO - The Maple Leafs are dismissing talk of a second NHL team in Toronto as little more than speculation.

Answers to the headlines?

Yeah he is, but John McCain is desperate. I hope America doesn't pat itself on the back too much if it elects a minority leader. They are still behind the curve. African nations have had white leaders for ages.
Still, I don't think McCain is lying when he says Barrack Obama is a gay guy who freaked out, shaved his head and kicked
Michelle's ex-boyfriends while banging turtles on the head and wanting to place a new hockey team in Toronto.

Who is Zac Efron? Is he on that Scrubs show I like so much? Good for him for remaining a (lady) virgin. They don't count as visitors if they come through the back door.

No squid Jell-O for me. Well ... I'll try it for fun if there is vodka involved. Squid turtle head Jell-O shots anyone?

Leave Britney Alone. I said it on YouTube and I'll say it now.

I always thought John Nunziata was a freak. In journalism school I once had the opportunity to interview him in a tree outside of his ex-wife's bedroom. Wait. That was Toronto city councillor Case Ootes.
Same principle.

Put the hockey team in the City of Hamilton first. They need something to take their minds off Jack Layton's recent poor showing and the bloody awful smell of their city.

Celebrate ... Good Times ... C'mon

A brief post:

I am now officially semi-full time employed.
I shan't name my place of employment for fear my employer will Google my name and see my previous posts about gobbling mushrooms and lawn jockey theft. I'd like to make it past the three month probationary period.
Suffice it to say, I'm tangentially involved in The Arts (screw you Stephen Harper) and feel ... well ... hopeful and happy. I don't have to sell anyone an extended warranty to make decent money.
Huh. Who knew? Not me.
Sorry to my Travian alliance (oh, don't ask) but I won't be online 18 hours a day any longer. Buck up Freakazoid43, you can still e-mail me. Keep building up your crannies and don't bother making troops until your production levels are over 200.
I think this job is pretty cool. Ask me again in six months. I think I'll still think it is pretty cool.
Then again, I get jaded pretty quickly.
But I'll bet you all of my Christmas presents this year that I will feel better about myself than I did last year at this time.
Cheers to me. Huzzah!

Nonsense 101: A Very Creepy Open Love Letter

I'm taking a different tack this month. I'm giving props to someone who pointed out other people's nonsense.
That's always impressive.
It was made more impressive by the fact she was nine-years-old at the time.
We might as well complete the impressiveness hat trick -- she grew up to be incredibly hot.

Ms. Emily Rosa should relax before she wastes a lot of money on anti-stalking security. My drunkeness, laziness and inability to enter the United States (as my Grade 13 essay on The Grapes of Wrath is still in my permanent record) renders me relatively harmless. I promise to worship you from afar.

Her physical beauty should not overshadow the fact that she debunked a bunch of quacks and New Agey wieners in the Journal of the American Medical Association before she entered high school. With that accomplishment on her resume, I'm sure I'd find her sexy even if she wasn't ... well ... so damned sexy.

But enough of my creepy perversions.

Emily, in 1996, was searching for a sixth grade science project. She happened to glance at the TV screen where her mother, a registered nurse, was watching a videotape about therapeutic touch. This is a practice where 'healers' interact with the 'human energy field' by passing their hands over the body of the afflicted without actually touching them. Practitioners of therapeutic touch, oblivious to principles of modern science, claimed this relieved anxiety and pain.

Emily found her science project.

She designed an experiment in which she and the healer were separated by cardboard with two arm holes. She then decided, by the flip of a coin, whether to put her hand over the healer's left hand or the right hand. The healer was asked to decide where Emily's hand was hovering. If the healer could detect Emily's 'human energy field', they could easily tell where Emily's hand was.

Right?

Emily was able, through her mother's connections, to recruit twenty-one 'healers'. Her mother posits they didn't see a nine-year-old as a threat.

Oops. I think you know where this is headed.

In 280 tests, the twenty-one healers identified the correct location of Emily's hand forty-four percent of the time. The Law of Averages states that if they had flipped a coin -- like Emily -- they would have been right about fifty per cent of the time.

Two years later, Emily (along with her mother and a science writer) published her findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Sadly, therapeutic touch is still enabled by the gullible in healing and medical clinics worldwide. It is still taught at prominent universities and schools of nursing.

Still ... Thank you, Emily.

And thanks to 'Penn and Teller's Bullshit!' (season six, episode two) for pointing me in the direction of my One True (I promise I'll never try to contact you) Love.

Okay ... I Count Ten ...

... Out of twenty-two.
Okay. If I'm being honest -- ten full-time, five part-time.
If we only count the full-time sins, I'm still at forty-five per cent. Not too shabby, if you ask me. Although one of my sins may be lying ... or ... drunkeness ... or simply watching Toronto vs Detroit on Leafs TV.
You never know.
Still, I dare you to beat forty-five per cent.
The way I see it, you may as well have nearly half of these attributes if you are going to end up in hell rather than just being ,,, say ... a simple money-lover and condemned to eternal damnation. Why not have a wank and be hypocritical while you're at it?
Try to guess which ones apply to me (hint: it isn't child molester but everything else is fair game).

He's Troubled ... But I Can Save Him. Part III : What Is With This Guy and Lawn Ornaments?

THIS JUST IN: SLAPPY HAS FOUND A PICTURE OF A YOUNGER, MORE ROCKERISH HIPSTER WITH JONATHAN SMYTHE-DAVIES SR.
DIG THE MEGADETH T-SHIRT AND PARIS HILTON LAZY EYE.

Large amounts of rice wine can make a man do strange things.
It can lead to excessive politeness and bowing.
it can lead to really disturbing animation and overzealous work ethics.
Or it can lead to the kidnapping, repainting and subsequent return of a neighbours' yard decoration in a fit of self-righteous anger.

In my defense (not Slappy's - I have barely enough defense for myself) the lawn jockey was pretty damned offensive -- 1940's Warner Bros. cartoon offensive, in fact.
And we were quite drunk on the aforementioned sake. We were going through a pretentious phase. We wanted to get loaded but we had to set ourselves apart from all the other drunken man-children populating Central Ontario. No Black Label for me and Slappy, it had to be sake.
Don't judge. Drinking strange alcoholic beverages is just part of growing up. How do you think The Dr. McGillicuddy's Peach Schnapps Empire stays in business?
It stood to reason that we would steal a lawn jockey from the next door neighbour. We were two crazy non-conformists. We were drinking for SOCIAL JUSTICE! We were drinking for RACIAL EQUALITY! We were drinking because WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY POT!
What else were we going to do? Support our local sports team?
I'm not sure if we had the idea of painting this symbol of oppression -- whom we affectionately dubbed Jonathan Smythe-Davies Sr. -- when we emancipated him. We likely just wanted to keep property values artificially high ... but the binge continued. Barbara was surprisingly well disposed to our cries of "Fetch us more Japanese hooch from a licensed distributor of said beverages, wench." She's a trooper.
Especially since we were wearing her sun dresses at the time.
Slappy, being of an artistic persuasion, had some white paint lying around, I, being of a rockin' persuasion, had some Public Enemy discs lying around. One thing led to another ... and a political statement was born.
The thing that stood out most about Slappy's whitefication of Jonathan Smythe-Davies Sr. was the detail he put into the job. I tend to do non-work related things in a half assed manner. Slappy veers more towards the hilariously triple assed. He didn't just slap on some white paint. He changed the eyes. He changed the lips. He used texture and shading to change the cheek bones.
The man is a god damned artistic genius - although I doubt this made it into his portfolio.
We painted an 'X' on his cap (as was the style at the time) and "It's a black thing ... you wouldn't understand" on the back of his jacket. We put him back facing the neighbour's front door two nights later.
The next morning, Barbara, Girl Detective, was outside trying to corral the cat when she noticed a police car at the curb. She looked around the hedge and saw two officers talking to the aggrieved home owners. From this point on, all quotes are approximated.

Probably Racist Lady Next Door: "We wouldn't have called you but we thought it was part of something larger."
Police Officers "Larger? What do you mean larger?"
PRLND: "Well, we thought it might be gang related."
PO: (trying not to laugh) "Well, I don't know about that but they certainly did a good job."

At the time, there may have been fifteen people of African descent in Orillia. Slappy makes me look like Malcolm X and I am generally the whitest guy in any room I walk into.
Still, I was proud to be the vanguard of Afro-Canadian gang activity in Central Ontario. With apologies to The Simpsons writers, I'd have called us the Christ Punchers.

I worked at the local weekly newspaper at the time. It didn't make it into the police blotter but I was tempted to interview the bigots next door for a story about escalating gang violence in Orillia. Sadly, I lacked the follow through (or the cojones, your choice) and the story died.

J. Smythe-Davies was ultimately repainted black and placed behind a padlocked fence.
We should have freed him. Repainting him was a definite sign our neighbours were douchebags.
Unfortunately, Slappy and I eventually sobered up. It is one of my life's largest regrets.

I, Sarah Palin, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

God help us all.

An Excerpt From The Aging Hipster's Failed "Asian Adoption" Essay

Wait a minute. Don't judge me. You guys do worse to your cats?
Am I right?
I don't even know why I included this photo but... if you know a better way to keep your cat from meowing incessantly, please let me know.

I have to cater to this fuckng cat. I make sure someone (not me - I can't stand the smell) feeds him.

I give him affection (when I'm loaded).

I make sure he can go in and out the front door (which Barb is usually closest to) every five minutes, but still...

You're damn right I get him drunk every once in a while.
If not for me, how would he ever raise his little kitty cat self esteem?

I'm doing him a favour. If it were not for me, he'd be stuck in some little kitty cat rut. He'd spend most of his life thinking he will never achieve his little kitty cat dreams.

Without me getting him loaded, he'd never dream of writing the Great Kitty-American Novel.

If I didn't get this cat drunk, he'd never get any pussy! Get what I mean there? You see the pun I included?
You did? Good.

If I didn't feed him liquor he would never dream of being the first kitty cat rock star - those fucking cats who meow Christmas jingles don't count.

Fucking sell-outs!

You think so too?

Well ... Good. Please consider my request to give me one of your excess children. I will even take a girl. I promise I'll raise her to be an obnoxious socialist busy-body.

Gimme an Asian Baby,

Yours in Christ,

The Aging Hipster

The Fall Fair Baby Competition is Decadent and Depraved

(Editor's note: The following crossed our desk after being rejected by all of the major media outlets in the Orillia-Barrie-Midland Triangle. While we have yet to locate the author, billed only as Hunter S. Thompson's non-union Mexican equivalent, The Aging Hipster felt his story needed to be told.)

It was somewhere around the sheep display when the drugs began to take hold.
Damned good thing too -- all that hay was kicking the hell out my allergies.
The air was full of foul carnival music and barkers promising Def Leppard mirrors and giant combs to any man who could knock over three ill-weighted milk bottles with a softball. I elbowed my way through a sea of ugly hillbillies and their spawn getting their annual compulsive infusion of cotton candy and blue ribbon quilts. I was already late for the baby photo contest and I needed to be there for two reasons. First - it was an important story. Second - one of the mothers was paying me to heckle the other babies.
I arrived in the converted roller skating rink -- where these babies were to be judged -- and scanned the area for a bar. After five minutes I found a snack bar in the corner that sold domestic beer and boxed wine in plastic cups. I took one of both and thanked the Gods I'd brought a thermos full of mint julep for emergencies.
An odd mixture of yokels and soccer moms were gathered around a booth - the back lined with pictures of lily white babies. Most of the photos seemed professionally taken. Clearly against the rules, but it seems parents who hold their infants up to public scrutiny for their own personal gain have little regard for rules. The pictures were numbered and each had a corresponding Pringles can. The numbered can with the most money took home the prize. It seems my client's money could have been better spent but it was too late for that. I'd already spent the money on mint, bourbon, powdered sugar and a thermos.
Still, I had a job to do and I am nothing if not a professional. "Good Lord," I yelled. "The one on the left looks like he was chewed up by a rat terrier." Stifled laughter from all but one of the soccer moms and outright guffaws from the yokels.
"Does baby nineteen look drunk to you? What kind of monsters get their baby drunk ... AND TAKE PICTURES OF IT?" Even the well-heeled ladies weren't bothering to hide their laughter.
Some kid was dressed in a cowboy hat and bandana. "I'll wager he's never roped a calf in his life," I yelled in a thick southern drawl
"God damn buddy, you a funny guy." said some farmer, slapping me hard on the back, spilling half of my drink on my American flag Chuck Taylors.
"Fuck off BUDDY," I murmured. "I'm working here."
At this point the story becomes very slippery, with many loose ends and dark shadows. I continued taunting infant children to the amusement of the growing crowd until the pageant organizer arrived and pulled me aside. Forty-years-old, paunchy with glasses - he looked like an elementary school vice principal. He looked like something a six-year-old would draw if you asked him to illustrate the concept of humourless.
"What in the name of HOLY FUCK do you think you're doing?" he hissed. "Making fun of all these children who've yet to do you any harm?"
"Just doing my job, sir."
"Do you know what we are going to do to people like you when Stephen Harper gets his majority. Your kind will be locked in cages and forced to fight each other with machetes on the CBC. Now shut the fuck up."
I was shaken. This was a bit heavy to lay on a man with a head full of Benadryl and mint julep. I reacted the only way a reasonable man could.
"Baby 42 has the beady eyes of a paedophile." I yelled.
That's when the rousties came.

I woke up in a ditch on Hwy. 12. I was badly beaten and missing one thermos. I never found out which kid won but I'd bet it was that little bitch dressed up as a pumpkin.

Nonsense 101: To The Moon and Way Fuckin' Beyond Alice!

It's rare that you find a rocket scientist and an occult enthusiast in the same room.
It's downright weird to find them in the same person.

Jack Parsons was just such a weird, weird man.

Born in 1914, Parsons was a college drop out who hated authority. His diary claims he visibly invoked Satan at the age of thirteen. He also had a deep, abiding love for science fiction stories and blowing shit up.

Pretty much the same as myself - except I never got around to putting a man on the moon.

Fast-forward to 1939. Parsons was a member of the not-so-affectionally dubbed Suicide Squad - named for their series of increasingly alarming explosions caused at CalTech while trying to create stable, usable rocket fuel. Their goal was simple: put the human race into outer space.

This was also the year Parsons discovered the writings of famed English Satanist Aleister Crowley. He started invoking the god Pan before every rocket launch. Silly bugger.

Around this time, Parsons also found a new buddy and fellow Crowely enthusiast named L. Ron. You may have heard of him. He and Parsons started a boat dealing company named Allied Enterprises.

Parsons wasn't yet getting far with his rocket fuel experiments - things kept unexpectedly blowing up. He wasn't hurting for money though. In 1942, Parsons' estranged father died leaving him a mansion in in the nice part of Pasadena. Parsons rented out the rooms to "only atheists and those of a Bohemian disposition," according to his newspaper ad.

A man after my own heart, if it were not for the stupid occultism.

Noisy parties and police raids ensued. Parsons was able to win over the cops with his charm, good looks and reputation as a rocket scientist. But, from all accounts, things got plenty weird - lots of nakedness, magicks and substance abuse - over at the Parsons' spread.

An excerpt from a Parsons poem published in an occult magazine in 1943?

"I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine, I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain."

As I said, a man after my own heart -- if not for the stupidity and bad poetry. But what the fuck does 'hight' mean?

Parsons started becoming more successful with his rocket fuel experiments. He had a fulfilling relationship with his ex-wife's half sister Betty.
If you listen to devotees of this sorta crap, he was becoming more successful with his magicks. He and Hubbard allegedly completed the Babalon Working spell which ushered in a goddess who led the way to world peace and free love.

Recent events suggest this spell wasn't as effective as Parsons' acolytes may suggest.

Nevertheless...

His life was finally starting to work out, huh?
Uhh, No.
In 1947, L. Ron Hubbard buggered off with a boat, all the cash from Allied Enterprises and for good measure, Betty - Parsons' girlfriend.
L. Ron Hubbard eventually married Betty and started Scientology with the stolen money.

The official Scientology line is that Hubbard was instructed to 'infiltrate a black magic ring' by the U.S. Navy.
Horseshit! Go ahead and sue me Mr. Cruise.

As the '40s wound down things kept getting worse for Parsons. He was stripped of his security clearance and almost prosecuted for treason since he gave classified documents to the Israeli government, with whom he was negotiating for a rocket guru gig. Parsons was reduced to working for Hollywood movies, making tiny explosive squibs that mimicked a man being shot. But his rocket fuel eventually worked. Ex-Nazi/Future Upstanding American Citizen/Full Time Rocket Scientist Wernher Von Braun cited Parsons as the most influential rocket scientist in history.

Parsons never lived to see his dream of landing a man on the moon, but his rocket fuel discovery was instrumental in putting one there. Jack Parsons blew himself up in 1952.

One newspaper wrote that, "The explosion blew off his right forearm, tore a gaping hole in his jaw and shattered the other arm and both legs."

Some say Jack was killed because he had become an embarassment to the American government.

Some say Scientologists had Jack killed to cover Hubbard's shameful behaviour.

Most say Parsons liked fucking around with explosives and was far too sweaty and high. One friend noted in a Parsons' biography that "Jack used to sweat a lot and [a coffee can in which he was mixing Mercury Fulminate] just slipped out of his hand and blew him up."

Jack Parsons is rarely mentioned inside the rocket scientist community these days but the Parsons Crater on the far side of the Moon has been named after him.

Rest In Peace, you Delusional Genius!