Right. Like we'd ever open up anything remotely resembling diplomatic contact with Iranistan. That would be weak-kneed, Chambermaid appeasement. Mmmm, the naughty diaries of hypocritical society.
I meant Chamberlain.
Shut up.
Anyway, next thing you know, you'll be telling me those goddamn frogs are getting hip to American traditions.
Even if you couldn't be on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day on Monday to watch seven parachutists float down in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy, you can still celebrate the greatness of France with a new local tradition.
Eat a hamburger.
This is a bloody outrage, that's what this is! First you steal our beef stew and call it boeuf bourguignon -- made with wine instead of beer? How prétentieux! -- and now this. But go on and play your little game, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
"It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit - the subversive, even," said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant in Paris. "Eating with your hands, it's pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it."
Subversive? Mademoiselle, you don't know the first thing about subversive.
Take that!
And that!
And that!
Coups! Oil! Hippies! Negroes! Commies! Murder! Hulk smash!
Oh no! Must we resort to cheap and tawdry fisticuffs to get things done nowadays?
Whew! Much better. So, baby, your telephone, or mine?
"I think it's shocking, but at the same time the French are realizing that a burger is real food, it's good," said Boulud.
As us uncultured hand-eaters on the other side of the Atlantic say, duh.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to drag my knuckles over to my Senior Leader Intransit Pallet and chow down on this delicious French delicacy.
Hmm, some soothing music would make the perfect apéritif. Oh, friar?
Grave robbers, a curse of burial grounds for centuries, are back for new valuables: metal ornaments that can be melted down for quick cash as copper and other metal prices climb.
As ludicrously comic -- and impressive, in its own diabolic way -- as this is, I think some are taking their righteous indignation, stabbing it repeatedly until the blood splatters everywhere, wrapping it in a filthy cloak of hyperbole, chaining it to a big hunk of granite and throwing it overboard into the churning sea of You Can't Be Serious.
"I don't know what could be more sacred than protecting our cemeteries," said West Virginia state legislator Kevin Craig, who co-sponsored a law against scrap metal theft after a bronze door was stolen from a tomb at a cemetery in his district in 2006.
Yeah, I don't know either. What I do know is that since we've tried sending emails, writing letters, faxing, telephoning, cajoling, begging, mooning -- wait, my lawyer says I can't talk about that and neither can Mrs. Bush, so don't ask -- screaming for anyone with their hand in the Cookie Jar of Power to sort of maybe think about not being a paid shill for the plutocracy for five minutes, pretty please with the dessicating body politic on top, nothing has worked. Trust me, you don't want to see my failed attempts at cloning my man Dennis. So, we're down to Plan 9.
Most commonly, old graves are disturbed by people hunting for Revolutionary or Civil War relics to sell. In rare cases, body parts are removed by groups for use in occult ceremonies, said Nicholas Bellantoni, Connecticut's state archaeologist.
"It's kind of ghastly, but we've seen it," said Bellantoni.
Anyone know a good occultist?
"I'll show you how to rob graves."
"Hey Gein, no one wears the flesh of the dead around here but me!"
On a day -- okay, evening -- okay, morning -- that should have been saved exclusively for the Beer, Brats and Boobs celebration of AMERICAN over those effeminate Nationals from Old Europe --
"I think they're also American baseball play --"
Shut up you fucking communist. It's AMERICAN. Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted -- you guys know what to do, wink wink, nudge nudge -- in lamenting the utter lack of serious coverage this monumental event so richly deserves, a moment in time sure to become a touchstone in the annals --
"Hey stretch, he said annals. That's the butt, heh, heh."
Iran's national basketball team has been invited by the NBA to train in Utah and play against NBA and NBA Development League teams in preparation for the Beijing Olympics.
Evildoers who take pride in blowing up our women, children and frozen embryos are sending some of their tallest suicide bombers here? Just think of what carnage they can wreak from so high in the atmosphere as they bounce round balls on AMERICAN soil, a verdant, Christian soil that some would say is our Holy of Holies, Utah! (Hey, Willard loves the Lord as much as you or I do. He simply wears haute couture underpants.) What kind of precedent does this set, allowing these bloodthirsty anarchists from a barbarian land who indeed thirst, anarchically, for the blood of said women, children and frozen embryos to travel through The Shining City on a Hill without fear of arrest, of being thrown in a dark, dank stench of a dungeon where toilets are filled with the urine-soaked pages of the Koran, the tainted innards of the non-believer and the last, uneaten bite of two kinds of fruit, deservedly without hope of ever seeing again the saving light of Republican Jesus?
Are we really going to let the Axis of Evil win the day?
"In an increasingly turbulent world, it is rewarding to bring people together to celebrate teamwork, discipline and respectful competition on the court," NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a statement. "The NBA embraces the opportunity to welcome the Basketball Federation of Iran and the Iranian Olympic team in a demonstration of how something as simple as a game of basketball can promote understanding."
Stern!
Traitorous bastard!
Heathen criminal!
Didn't you get the memo? Iran is only permitted to survive for two reasons, and two reasons alone:
Speaking of Cartoon Supervillains, who the fuck are the twenty-eight percenters in this poll? Is there some new strain of Extra-Groovy Technicolor LSD sweeping the nation? I didn't think disaffected suburbanites would get bored this soon with blowing themselves up in their basement meth labs. And these are people who admit to approving Der Leader. You and I both know there are more who are simply ashamed to reveal such things in any forum, even an anonymous telephone conversation. So, best case scenario, the Wingnut Machine only needs twenty-two percent plus one to keep the White House. Well, seventeen, perhaps. One assumes at least five percent will consist of Diebold thievery.
And I haven't even mentioned the inevitable Really Bad Thing® that'll miraculously occur between now and November 4 to help bolster McCain's one strength among the unwashed masses. Sure, the economy is jury-rigged with spit and chewing gum and you have no health care, but look! Iran-funded Al-Qaeda underneath your bed!
Still think Obama is a lock? Underestimate the stupidity and paranoia of this nation at your own peril.
Since we're on the subject of stupid and paranoid nations, yes, that Border Patrol SUV is still parked out front of that Embassy Suites hotel. Methinks something big is afoot. For example, a not-all-that-discreet tryst. And no, this isn't the actual machine, which is much nicer and not as filthy. I guess we don't get a lot of illegal aliens and shipments of hockey sticks, SCTV tapes and weed crossing the invisible AMERICAN-Canadian border floating on Lake Erie.
Beat it, Froggy. And take your stinkin' Euro with you. It's our turn now.
"And zeez Yanks zay wee are zee rude!"
"Uh, you're the president. Sure, it's possible to have a bathroom break, sir."
I don't know what got into that Karl Marx-loving Randal, but we here at Randal's blog would like to apologize to each out-of-touch bourgeois real AMERICAN out there. And what better way to do so than to celebrate one of those most AMERICAN of pastimes, being afraid of actual free speech the smacking of a cowhide sphere with a big wooden stick, then running around on the grass like small children!
I know that in addition to Baseball, I'm supposed to mention
Mom
and Apple Pie, but in lieu (damn you, French, get out of AMERICAN!) of such clichés, I'd like to talk about something that's even more AMERICAN than those, in fact, more AMERICAN than nearly everything under God's blue sky save our undying love of the Lord and blowing brown people up.
I talk, of course, of second chances.
Last year, as the Indians were cruising to a major league best 96 wins, pitcher Cliff Lee was dealing with injuries, trouble with his teammates, a stint in the minors, and a career-worst 6.29 ERA. It doesn't get much lower than that for someone who was once a 200-inning staple of a starting rotation. Now that he's healthy and has eliminated the flaws in his delivery, he's tied for the AMERICAN League lead in wins with 12, his 2.31 ERA is second, and he'll be starting tonight's All-Star game in Yankee Stadium.
Another man that has taken full advantage of being given a second chance is Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton. Once the first overall pick in the 1999 MLB draft, Mr. Hamilton began to waste his God-given talent by becoming addicted to certain substances. He has since gotten clean, all thanks to, in his own words, Sweet Zombie Jesus and is now in the top ten in the AMERICAN League in batting average, runs, home runs, slugging percentage, OPS and leads all of major league baseball in RBIs with a whopping 95.
What lesson can we learn from second chances?
That even if you can't get the job done, everyone hates you and/or you love the booze and coke, you too can someday grow up and do something memorable with your life.
Wow, look at all the dirty Frenchmen and their trollops.
Here are some things we can do today, even if you, comme moi, are neither French nor in France like certainothers. But we hide our jealousy well, don't we. Those #%*@^&$! Voyez, cachée. On to the task at hand:
Spoon that sugar, imbibe la fée verte then write bare-the-soul verse to your love avant
eating some cheese, drinking some wine then kissing them à la mode française before
railing against the government, grabbing your gun then storming the local fortress where you'll surely die.
"I propose a hat-off, winner-take-all. Indy, you game?"
Yesterday, I ogled the naughty naked ladies in the new issue of Hustler read an interview with the great Umberto Eco in the new issue of the Paris Review -- oh my, was that elitist. Quick, pass the latté, I have some trees to hug before engaging in some loveless, non-missionary sex and post-coital potsmoking-- and though the entire piece was interesting, I absolutely loved, probably because I dig the same stuff for the same reason, the last line of the following question and answer:
"Your library here in Milan is a legend in and of itself. What kind of books do you like to collect?"
"I own a total of about fifty thousand books. But as a rare books collector I am fascinated by the human propensity for deviating thought. So I collect books about subjects in which I don't believe, like kabbalah, alchemy, magic, invented languages. Books that lie, albeit unwittingly. I have Ptolemy, not Galileo, because Galileo told the truth. I prefer lunatic science."
Immediately I was struck not by any further unspoken ruminations on those words nor by the fact that I have at least forty-nine thousand less books than that bastard has, but by the notion that so many Republicans also adhere, though on different and very wrong grounds, to that exact phrase. They too, love the lunatic science.
Oh, politics, what must I do to wash your foetid, omnipresent stain from my soul? The bard almost got it right. Just switch that last word with something else. Begins with P.
"'Cause I'm Big Trollop, yes I'm the real Trollop All you other Big Trollops are just plaster pinups So won't the real Big Trollop please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?"
Now, that wasn't very Proustian, was it? No, the sentence length, not the Metallica, though that isn't either. On the other hand, Miss Faithfull probably has a few novelfuls of interesting memories tucked away in that English noggin. Anyway, here are a couple of songs that are Proustian, L'heure exquise and Tyndaris, sung by Ninon Vallin and played by the composer himself, Reynaldo Hahn, a close pal of Marcel. Don't tell The Maverick®, but I think -- shhhh! -- they were real close.
If you're one of those weirdos who isn't merely fascinated by memory the way some are fascinated by dinosaurs so they watch stuff on the National Geographic channel, but are obsessed by the idea of it, the inherent power and control it can have over our lives, whether voluntarily submitting to its will or simply being subject, by definition, to its whims that lead us to other, heretofore hidden paths lined by long-limbed boughs of remembrance shadowing our every step, whatever our state of mind at the time, a state that might shift us off those roads and onto yet more occulted ones that seemingly spring fully formed out of the ether, realms concealed from conscious view, then there simply isn't anything better than À la recherche du temps perdu and if you haven't read it yet, what the bloody hell are you waiting for?
I love a run-on sentence, but now I'm tired. Here, look at some purty pictures whipped up by another famous dude who shares the same birthday, Camille Pissarro. Don't tell The Maverick®, but I think -- shhhh! -- he was a commie pinko.
Edge of the Woods or Undergrowth in Summer, 1879.
Le Boulevard Montmartre, effet de nuit, 1897.
To close out on a completely unrelated subject, my hometown, save for lazy and supposedly car-less New Orleans, has lost the most folks of any big city this decade (ignore the optimistic crap at the end, it only ruins the theme of this paragraph). Even when we suck we're still not number one. Well played, looters, well played.
On the credit side of the column, as I strolled, smiling as I always do each morning in anticipation of helping my fellow patriots, past an Embassy Suites hotel in beautiful, alluring, yet not overtly swanky in a cheesy Old European way downtown Cleveland (okay, City Hall, where's my fucking check?) I noticed, parked in the loading/unloading zone, a brand spanking new white SUV of US Customs and Border Protection, a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security, headed by a man whose gut we all know and love like a brother, Michael Chertoff. This sleek, clean-burning machine of sturdy American craftsmanship even had one of those fancy logos that Barack Hussein X stole for his own nefarious Muslim use. No, wait, that was the Presidential seal. Even more heinous!
My point is thus: we obviously have Al-Qaeda #3 cornered, so it's safe to leave your homes and stimulate the economy. Surely you haven't forgotten that 'the priority mission of the Border Patrol is preventing terrorists and terrorists' weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from entering the United States.'
Citizen vigilance (one of our strengths here in Northeast Ohio -- ahem, Mr. Mayor) along with the muscle of DHS, has once again thwarted a plot to blow up something red, white and blue. You're welcome.
Postscript: editorialist, you aren't helping with our image:
No matter what this or any other law says, Congress has few practical means to force an end to hostilities. Its most obvious lever -- withholding the money -- is distasteful and could endanger U.S. troops.
Got that kids? Withholding money from bloodthirsty warmongers ranks quite high on the Distaste-O-Meter along with cannibalism and voting Republican. En plus, all those soldiers will chance getting killed as they scramble to find their own way home, constructing rafts out of smouldering wreckage and tightly packed sand that may or may not float on the unpredictable currents of the Gulf of Hormel, the Indian and the Atlantic.
Or, to put it more succinctly, Congress is icky, but doing stuff is ickier.
Opeth going a-viking through the States in the fall with High on Fire opening up the festivities? Why yes, darkest lord of dark naughty evil, I will sacrifice more virgins in praise of this decision for such coast-to-coast diablerie!
Yeah, 99.9% of you don't care, but I don't care that you don't care. Hell, let the bombing start in five minutes! (after the concert, évidemment)
"I'm going to blow all of you longhaired bastards up."
I'm one happy motherfucker this evening so enjoy some happy music!
Opeth, The Leper Affinity. Bang your head, but progressively.
High on Fire, Devilution. Groove on that schlocky 70s horror vibe!
"Pickles reads newspapers and she told me Iranistan tested missiles in the Gulf of Hormel. I didn't know they owned a body of water. They make some good chili!"
"Blowing up brown people keeps the Coke flowing. And if that doesn't work, there's always smokes! Pass me a napkin, trollop!"
"I have no time for questions about the Great Satan. Can't you see I'm listening to the new Beatles album? Yes, music is slow to get here. But not bras and bull semen!"
Oh, ye of little faith, drowning in Envy of other great cities of the world, verily shall a Cleveland Sporting Franchise triumphantly march towards a championship!
Be humble and cast away your Lust for victory, good citizenry, and listen to the Word of the Lord! Surely youdidn'tthink it would be this collection of large ruffians, a group that has more than mastered the art of, as they say on the continent, mauvaise chance:
Still your miscast Pride! Or this association of rim-clangers:
Dost thou not know by now the sense of humor of the Lord? For He has given you a minor batsmen and assorted pieces in return for thy ace! The want of a professional of the majors would only reveal your Greed, a sin so deadly, a sin to lead thou into the Lake of Fire!
Rejoice, Cleveland, Rejoice, for it shall surely not take another two score and four years to win another trophy! Shining and bright like the Word, it can be thine if only thou repent! Repent, for I can smell the stench of Gluttony upon thy body and thy soul, gorging on foolish, earthbound wait-until-next-years!
The "spiritual" effects of psilocybin from so-called sacred mushrooms last for more than a year and may offer a way to help patients with fatal diseases or addictions, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
The researchers also said their findings show there are safe ways to test psychoactive drugs on willing volunteers, if guidelines are followed.
In 2006, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues gave psilocybin to 36 volunteers and asked them how it felt. Most reported having a "mystical" or "spiritual" experience and rated it positively.
(what's with the extreme righteous holiness you ask? Aside from yours truly being an obvious child of Sweet Zombie Jesus -- oh, Cthulhu, I kid, please don't eat me -- The Flying Nunly has returned!)
Including chimps, apparently. Je vous remercie, cruelinternetsdenizens, for reminding us that The Worst President Ever® was hatched by the vile Babs on yesterday's date hundreds of years ago. Hey, you explain his long-discredited medieval worldview. Anyway, today let us celebrate a birthday worthy of such partying down excellence.
No, that's not Charles Xavier, but Christoph Eschenbach leading the Orchestre de Paris in the first movement of Gustav Mahler's first symphony in D major.
Since Mahler wrote beautifully Cyclopean pieces anywhere from four to eighteen movements totaling seventy-two hours each -- I exaggerate -- slightly -- here's the second part of that movement.
When one trots out that tried-and-true line of "I've got nothin'," whether with a creative act offline or yet another blogpost for the intertubes -- which, I suppose, is also a creative act, but I digress -- that actually means that someone does in fact have something, just nothing -- ha ha -- that one would deem worthy of sharing with others, or at the very least, touting as something that posterity would either love or enjoy casting aspersions at until we are all vaporized in the inevitable global thermonukyular war. Thus, we cobble together bits and pieces from various mediums, formulating a collage of images and enough windy blather to make it appear that we put forth at least a modicum of effort.
Therefore, I present to you The Ugly, something that you likely already know about, the death of world-class hypocrite and first-rank fucking asshole, Jesse Helms. I wish there was a hell for you to suffer in, you neanderthal fuck.
Yeah, I know all about the 'my mother taught me' shtick. I thought that was pretty goddamn nice considering, don't you?
Ugh. Why should we waste our beautiful minds on something like that any more than we have to? Since I'm currently tweaking -- revamping sounds far too much like a 5-year orange barrel Ohio Department of Transportation project, and I hope it doesn't take that long -- the part of my story that takes place in Argenteuil, here's The Beauty, a painting of that area done many years ago by a famous dude.
Claude Monet, Le petit bras de la Seine à Argenteuil, 1872.
To recap: 1. Scan the news wire for an interesting item. 2. Find related photo, preferably comical. 3. Ramble. Insightful commentary optional, swearing not. 4. Find unrelated item not subject to news requirement. 5. Find related photo, preferably serious. 6. Ramble some more. Swearing optional. 7. Publish.
