A bird in the hand is worth another pic of Bush

"On the side, up high, down low, you're too slow!"

You know, given his embarrassing, drunken antics in China this past week, these fun with captions just don't carry the same chuckling power as they once did. Thanks a lot, Bush.

Well, he was a cheerleader.

"Go, energy, go! Drill that hole!"

Kids say the darndest things, the little bastards

In this topsy-turvy world of bloodthirsty tyrants hellbent, not for leather, but world domination, where supposed upholders of the law haughtily claim that it's not always a crime when such laws are broken and when your favorite sports teams fail year after year to win one of those shiny trophies -- wait, none of that is topsy-turvy at all! That's status quo! -- joys can seem all the greater even when they're small.














"That's what she said! Wooooooo!"











"Guess what came in the mail today?"








"Do I even want to know?"
*rifles through contents of envelope*
"Dude! Artist, do you know where your mother and I will be on Tuesday, September 23? At the House of Blues in beautiful downtown Cleveland to see the mighty Opeth."







"I hope you guys don't get shot."

Mind you, this was said, in direct contrast to my childlike exuberance, with the deadpanned nonchalance of an ex-con who knows something that you don't know, namely that you're going to get whacked.








"Well, we don't plan to."







"No one plans to."

I thought about throwing 'no one plans to have children either' back in her face, but I've used variations of that so often that the edge has dulled like a stick of butter that's sat out too long. So I told her that there are only two weeks left of summer vacation. Worked like a charm.

All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me

"Oh, shit, it's that time already?"

Ecstatic that our psycho offspring will soon be going back to school, I'm dreading that since I'll be doing the same I'll have to flip l'interrupteur français on once again -- whaddya mean this class isn't being taught in English? -- so, between that and using 90% of my USDA daily allowance of 0.3 joules of energy towards writing that fucking book, the remaining 10% to yelling at said psycho offspring -- my better half and I never yell at each other, merely scowl in between bouts of birding -- my brain is as soft as Johnny Mac's bowl of tapioca as it melts into runny, rancid liquid while he snoozes ever so sweetly underneath the blistering sun, exhausted from a long day of state fair pig squealing with Cindy.











Hey, dcap, I'm just fine, thanks, how 'bout my Cavs?
Mo Williams, less problems!

Talk amongst yourselves, stick bananas in the exhaust pipe of local Republican vehicles, get baked, bake some cookies, copulate, play bocce ball, play with yourself. Just don't do that last one in public, okay?

I think I'm going to take it easy, like it was Sunday morning.



Behind-the-scenes footage from the last Straight Talk BBQ.

"John! Wake up! I read the news today, oh boy!"
















"John! John! Did you see this report? We'll be the minority by 2050!"

















"Cindy, my friends and I are not plastered trollops."

When there is ass to kick, we'll be there

In the rarefied air of expert ass kicking, there are those who do so with a stunning, gravity-defying flair and a bloodless, poorly-dubbed wounding such as the man below on our left, a legend we should never forget:


















Ouch!














"I know you didn't forget me."

No, sir, Mr. Norris, that would be crazy talk.

Of course that movie still was photoshopped.

Please have your beard, and all the fists it contains, back off.

Someone who decided that I also shouldn't be left behind like American schoolchildren -- and Chuck Norris, yes, sir, I remember, I've evolved, oops, moved beyond such forgetfulness -- is one of my favoritist bloggers clogging the tubes with her patchouli and stolen reading materials, fellow book geek and head of the EPA in the next presidential administration, Liberality. We'll overlook her weirdo filthy hippie vegetarianism just this once.

Man, I sure could go for a thick, juicy burger.

Oh, dreaded awards posts with your pros of virtually writing yourself and your cons of trying to narrow it down. Though I'm sure everyone at some point will get one, all of us being denizens of the lefty anarchist bomb-throwing echo chamber that we are, never attuned to the reality of the real world and all its realness and realistic realism, instead locked up in our basements with our illegal stashes and homemade wine as we pen angry screeds against The Man, this veritable hell of empty hedonism and self-flagellation barely illuminated by a single bulb whose filament is about to burn off, so reminiscent of that last joint, everything turning to ashes in our mouth as even our pen runs out of ink, one more brilliant manifesto unfinished, soon to be kindling for the fire to heat our crypt since we, in a further fit and start of defiance, refuse to pay our bills to our corporate oppressors.

Rage, rage against the dying of the bulb!

The rules, chumps:

1) Choose five other bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
2) Let them know that they have received an award.
3) Link back to both the person who awarded you and also to http://www.mammadawg.com/
4) Visit the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky and leave a comment. And don't forget your non-refundable deposit of $9.95 for your t-shirt. You should receive them in 6-8 weeks.

And now, the Mighty Five. Pass the vodka.

1. Border Explorer, because unlike the majority of Americans who so easily get caught up in the feverish wave of Teh Other Haz Scaree, she doesn't. The real pimps and prostitutes aren't roaming the streets outside a RNC-sponsored event, they're agribusiness lobbyists roaming the halls of Congress with more say than you or I could ever hope to have in our fondest dreams.

2. The Dean's Office, because I have to, if I ever want to get off double secret probation. Plus he writes with acuity and verve on all kinds of crazy crap, and who doesn't dig that? Oh, Stones are still better than your precious Beatles. Nyah nyah nyah!

3. Little Bang Theory, because the cunning runt's a picture taking fiend, and boy, are his pictures of the natural world stunningly beautiful, almost enough to get me to sell my teevee and move closer to nature. Maybe in between football seasons.

4. phantsythat, because susan vividly animates, both verbally and visually, slices of this crazy passive/aggressive, manic/depressive joyously psychotic existence we call life. En plus, since she's an artiste, creative types always get big-time bonus points.

5. Perspective of an American Hill Billy, because the man is attempting the connect the dots, and The Flying Spaghetti Monster knows there's a hell of a lot of 'em to sift through. If only he posted more pics of scantily-clad celebrity babes roaming around his Latin American home.

Birds of a feather

Concrete roads and Bush is coming,

Just months before President Bush leaves office, his administration is antagonizing environmentalists by proposing changes that would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether subdivisions, dams, highways and other projects have the potential to harm endangered animals and plants.

Bears are finally on their own.

In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

This summer I hear no advising,

The proposal, first reported by The Associated Press, would cut out the advice of government scientists who have been weighing in on such decisions for 35 years.

More dying on the globe.

"Over the years, the Endangered Species Act has become a regulatory nightmare that kills or stalls even the most well-crafted land-use projects," said Rob Rivett, president of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a group that supports property rights and limited government. "The economy suffers, people suffer, rational environmental planning suffers. Some careful streamlining is long overdue."

You're all an interminable string of vulgar epithets.

What do you think, Republican Jesus' Secretary of the Interior?

















"Dirkie, you're doing a heckuva job."

The Sentencing

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really, it was, at least until the rain finally stopped for a moment, leaving behind memorials in the form of countless pools of polluted water on top of which floated a flotilla of flakes of ancient rust stained the color of raw umber -- since retired, so we'll have to come up with something else but not its wild strawberry replacement, so eat it, Crayola, you atomic tangerine motherfuckers -- torn off the decrepit, cobalt blue building by the howling gusting of winds or the occasional hellfire stroke of lightning.

His combover blown into oblivion by said aerial cacophony, the manager managed to hand me a stack of rain-spattered video cassettes.

"I need you to take these to the second floor. That's where we put the deposit box, so get to it."

Knowing this made absolutely no sense since 1)no one puts a deposit box on the second floor except Ludovic Vaclav, proud yet crazy owner of Vaclav's Video Vignettes, and 2)we had yet to finish moving the rental operation from the shithole it currently resided and into our new digs next door in a McDonald's abandoned after the horrible e.coli outbreak of 2005 which the authorities assured us, with all the assurance of a veteran insurance salesman, was clean, I grabbed the tapes anyway and, muttering under my breath, the keys rattling in the wind with all the Dickensian fright they could muster, entered the building, its weathered brick sides pockmarked from too many drunken electric funky Satan grooves or however it is kids get their kicks these days. Since the entire structure -- once one of those pristine, gabled McDonald's, not those cheap-ass, single-floored 1970s models dotting dying American suburbia -- was ringed by a wreath of broken windows, it was a good thing I remembered to wear my shoes to work this time.

Pushing a hastily constructed mountain of broken chairs away from the staircase towards the dining room tables caked with years of dust and Big Mac grease, I trudged up the steps with the dexterous aplomb of a hallucinating sloth. My left foot landing on the penultimate step at the base of the second floor, I heard, emanating from beyond a door bearing a copper nameplate struck with the letters R. CHE and a thick smudge of reddish-brown filth obscuring the rest, a muffled noise reminiscent either of a few people mumbling to each other as if their mouths were stuffed with octopi, or zombies munching on some trainees McDonald's had left behind.

Overcoming my excitement at the impending hot sex action, which is what was obviously waiting behind said door, my hand trembling with anticipation ignored the rumble of sloshing gore and muzzled screaming to grab the knob and twist --

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Fucking alarm. I hate work.

Well, no, that's wrong. Work is where I craft most of my wondrous blogging, but imagine if I could work from home. I'd be able to git r done and save on gas, and what is more American than weening ourselves off of fossil fuels controlled by Evil Islamist Jihadists?

"Don't you take public transportation to work?"

Shut up.

That bizarre dream capped my Sammy Hagar Edgar Allan Poe weekend of holing up for two days underneath a deeply overcast sky with headphones strapped to my skull, pen and paper on my lap and copious amounts of the best wine I could afford. No Ripple this time, chumps. I'm guessing the wife and kids were around somewhere. Maybe my sometimes-better-half screaming at me to get off my lazy ass -- hey, fuck you, I did some laundry -- was that godawful noise I had heard.


















Cooler than you'll ever be.

Hell, I didn't even turn the computer on and only found out this morning that Isaac Hayes had kicked the bucket, no doubt in a suave way.

Who's the white blogging dick
That's a sex machine to none of the chicks?
GRAVES!
Ya damn right!

Who is the man that would risk his neck
For no fucking man?
GRAVES!
Can you dig it?

Who's the cat that will cop out
When there's danger all about?
GRAVES!
Right On!

They say this cat Graves is a bad writer
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I'm talkin' 'bout Graves.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He's a complicated man
But no one understands him -- no, really
RANDAL GRAVES!

Hey, keep it down, people, I'm busy with art, dammit. Don't make me sic Mr. Hayes' angry corpse on you. He can still fuck your shit up. I can only fuck your shit up if you're not home and you've left your apartment unlocked. Six thousand words, baby, about 5,990 of them pointless. Boy meets girl. One scene, only ten percent of which is dialogue, zero percent of which is boy and girl talking. Don't ask. After rereading and rewriting numerous sentences both before and after grafting further explication -- or ripping some off like an angry Frankenstein -- to each, I couldn't help but think of something Flaubert wrote in one of his letters, I can't remember to whom:

"It is easier to become a millionaire and live in Venetian palaces full of masterworks than to write one good page and be satisfied with oneself."

No shit. I'm not sure how healthy it is to spend dozens of minutes either butchering or performing delicate surgery on a single sentence until it feels perfect and is able to walk upright, imparting emotion and wisdom that I probably stole from a writer who's actually talented -- but not Flaubert, I've never borrowed from him, the stupid hack frog -- given that it'll probably be one million AD before I feel good about any of them and by that time we'll all have mutated through centuries of nuclear fallout into beings who've lost all higher brain functions and exist only to feed, shit, butcher our neighbors for their stuff, sleep and die. Which isn't all that much different than nowadays, except we at least attempt to prettify the proceedings with our illusions.

You think I'm lazy?*

"C'mon stretch, I ain't gettin' up."

*hey, it's the weekend. See you clowns on Monday.

How to win a war

"My friends, what Russia is doing to Georgia is reprehensible. And although Cindy and I are too many states away to help, rest assured Atlanta, we will never forget you."

How cool a name does the NATO Secretary General have?

C'mon man, we're only down by one, jaap de hoop!

Rag & Bone

That's how the short-term financial future feels during -- and before -- and especially after -- the harrowing experience of back-to-school shopping. Get caught up on a series of medical extortions bills, liquor cabinet replenishments various car repairs and the utilities -- from the past nine winters -- and then this annual torment. Never fucking fails.


















"Well, you little bastards won't stop growing, so in addition to outfitting you in a swanky new wardrobe every August while poor ole dad is stuck with his closetful of ragged, moth-eaten t-shirts -- no it's not by choice, I'm very fashionable and you know it -- they didn't change the dress code again, did they, 'cause I'm not taking all this shit back -- I have to continue feeding you. It's a law or something, and unlike the President, I follow the law.












Here's a loaf of bread. No, it's white, organic whole wheat's too expensive. No, that's not it for dinner. There's butter in the fridge. Toss some PB&J on it if you want. Fine, have cereal. Just enough milk for one of you? Flip a goddamn coin, Texas steel cage match, I don't care.














Whaddya mean each student has to bring in an additional pack of pencils? Popsicle sticks just don't hold the same constructive charm? What the hell is your class going to do with 60 boxes of tissue? Contract the Black Death? The teachers are collecting the red pens? Why don't they buy their own fucking pens?"

At least our high schooler doesn't show any inclination like some of these kids do towards dressing up as if employed by the Vegas "burlesque" shows Republicans enjoy railing against in the presence of their constituents before they slink away to spend thousands at those same businesses in anticipation of railing against them once more when the cameras are rolling. I knew we were good parents. Must've been all that death metal and commie propaganda I made them listen to growing up while mom and dad were holed up watching "burlesque" shows in our bedroom.

Sniff.

Trust no one

Mind-numbingly bored at work exhausted from work and needing a break -- yeah, I know it's only 10am but you know what Sartre said about other people -- I tried to write something about, well, writing to no avail and thus it had to meet a mercifully quick end by my saddened hand -- trust me, it was shaping up to be an abysmal piece -- yeah, I also know what it says above, like you fuckers would listen anyway and no, that's not me in the video -- and aside from the feel-good, oooh that feels good campaign of Diva/Nunly, politics can go roast like a rancid Robert Novak skewered on a spit over Saint Ronnie's grill in hell before getting smoked for eternity, enveloped in the rotten egg stench of Tricky Dick's carcass, so feast your eyes on some funky vinyl:


















Gimme some of that future time religion!

Right?

Computerized missals that open to just the right page, flying robots that bring the booze and crackers to your seat, miniskirted corporals pressing buttons sexfully on the console. Wait, that was Star Trek.

Wrong!

Hold on to your ass, kids, there's a satan in your way and it's here to wield the flaming sword of truth and chop deception into a quivering, bloody pulp!


















Beware of false prophets sent by the Filthy Hippie Technoconspiracy!

Short and curlies, just short

"My friends, X in the center square. Winner gets Miss Buffalo Chip over there."

Even more how to run a campaign without really trying*

When we last left, well, us, we had, without argument, rolling eyes or condescending commentary from anyone (I get it, you all like chocolate cake, sheesh. Keep your knickers on and be patient, dammit), codified exactly half of our current, very important, vital, critical and delicious American message to you, the beloved American voter. It's the fourth quarter, two minutes left, 3rd-and-long and we need to hit a buzzer-beating home run to win one for the Gipper so we can at long last defeat evil as spine-chilling as this:






































Yikes!













And you thought this trio was evil.









"What's one thing that all caring, environmentally-conscious, good-hearted, non-evil people like?"








"Soulless Republicans without life sentences, but instead mercilessly hacked into a gooey pulp that's used as compost for victory gardens because the price of store-bought food is so goddamn high?"








"That's what I was going to say."








"Me, too."








"Wrong, wrong and wrong. Randal?"








"Rainbows!"


















Reading is fundamental. So don't make LaForge beam your ass out into space.








"See, unlike those dark age Republicans, we believe in real educational ref -- what the hell is that noise?"


















"Die, monster, die!"








"Oh, that's just MathMan taking his anger out on a roomful of NCLB directives."








"I think we should get back to food, because this is an issue that affects all Americans suffering under deregulated agribusiness behemoths every single day."








"Behemoths that pollute both the environment and our bodies, leaving our souls starving as well."








"Quite right. I'm tired to stretching my food dollar to buy what is essentially poisonous crap that makes our kids all pissy. And their bullshit is cutting into my toking time!"








"We need to think of something that's satisfies both the health requirements of parents and the delicious flavor all children crave. But what magical food contains both -- besides a pot in every chicken, of course."








"Why, o ye of little faith, chocolate cake!"


















Diva/Nunly '08 loves you, too. Won't you return that love by casting your ballot for them this November?








"You guys don't think it's too heavy handed, do you? I mean, everyone wants to be loved, even voters."








"Even Republican voters?"








"I stand corrected."








"We need to close our message on a positive, populist note. Not that clean food and water isn't necessary, but hell with that for a second. We need something visceral, something that speaks to the gut --"











"Did someone say 'gut'?"








"Get outta here, you goddamn fascist! Security! Do we even have security?"








"We hired that one guy, but it was difficult to find someone competent on such short notice."


















"Zzzzzzzz...."








"Grumble. This would be so much easier if we were evil. We could just employ Blackwater. Anyway, what's the number one want in American society, always has been, always will be?"








"Sex."







"Sex."








"Sex."








"Sex."








"Sex."








"Sex."








"Sex."








"Thus, something perfect for lazing around on a Sunday afternoon -- or at work, if only narrow-minded corporates would let us -- something that encompasses our core values of peace, love, understanding and slackery: happy underpants!"


















"Voting for Diva/Nunly makes my underpants very happy."**








"Lordy, mine, too. I mean -- gasp! -- dear wife, where is your modesty? Your chaste comportment? Wait a second, you mean right now? But I'm in a meeting -- well, wow, since you put it that way.

BRB."






















"Whew. Sorry to have made you guys wait so long."








"You were gone a minute, Randal. Now let's get back to work. Don't make me give Bush a call."
























"I'll be good."

They're sexier than the old white guy, the middle-aged black guy and the orangutan from a dystopian future.

Combined.

That's a lotta sexy.
Vote Diva/Nunly '08.












It's the hot thing to do.

*still preapproved by Diva. Paid for by yet another daring nighttime raid, this one on Rupert Murdoch's house.
**sorry Nunly, you know I'd get some eye candy in there eventually. Alright, fine, for those of you into manly men of manliness here's a a fine example of American dudesmanship relaxing in his skivvies after a hard day of toiling for The Man. Now stop asking. Don't make me sic the Lone Gunman Anthraxer on you. Oh wait, both patsies are dead. Nevermind.