Got Subtle?*

Screen capture from the McCain ad that ran after Obama's 30 minute ad last night:



Anything in the text jump out at you? Stay classy, John.

* Apologies to N*88 for the use of the Dairy Council thing.

Vote Early, Vote Often!

Well, I just voted for Obama.

It's not that I'm not racist, it's just that I really REALLY hate old people.

I'M ON YOUR LAWN, McCAIN!

I Don't Care If I Never Get Back

We’ve suffered enormously since the events of 9/11. Certainly none more than the families and loved ones of those who perished in the attacks, but as a nation, we have seen ourselves divided and have allowed ourselves to be brought to live in fear fueled by the lies, propaganda, and outright illegal acts of a tyrannical regime. Thousands of brave soldiers have lost their lives fighting unnecessary wars, and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have lost theirs as well. We have accepted torture of our enemies and domestic spying as needed practices.

Some of the wounds will never heal. Nothing will bring back lost lives, and the abhorrent acts of that day should never, and will never, be forgotten. But we’ve made many mistakes since then, and many are in our power to resolve.

It is my sincere belief that in 8 days, the world will breathe a sigh of relief (though not quite unclenching its collective teeth until 1/20/2009), and we will begin a slow process of rebuilding our stature in the world as a beacon of hope and an example of how a nation can treat its most unfortunate with dignity and respect.

This will not be a quick recovery, and evidence of progress will not be immediate. There is, however, one thing that can be done right now, that virtually every American will rejoice over. There was one knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 that may have seemed right, and even patriotic, at the time, but can only be looked back upon with horrible revulsion. It is a shame upon us all that it persists to this day. And yet, it will take the action of only one man to remedy it – one man making a decision, one phone call, one email … it’s really that simple. He can restore lost dignity to something that is universally acknowledged to be the embodiment of America itself, rivaled perhaps only by apple pie and the love we have for our mothers.

So I beg of you, sir, with every fiber of my soul, with my very essence … please, PLEASE, for all that is good and right and just, for this generation and all that follow: Mr. Selig, PLEASE STOP THEM FROM SINGING “GOD BLESS AMERICA” DURING THE STRETCH. Please, sir ... please ... make it stop. We've suffered enough.

Just … just … just buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Please.

Joe The Senator

Here's an interview by Barbara West of WFTV (Fl) with Joe Biden. Comedy gold. Biden seems to actually think it's a joke about halfway through:



Zowee.

What Were You Eating Under There?

I stopped at Target after work today and got some new boxers, among other things. A couple of tips concerning underwear:

1) Always buy at least one set of duplicates.

2) Make sure that your significant other knows that you have identical pairs.

This establishes, when you don't change them for 3 weeks, plausible deniability. "Well, of course these are clean, silly sweet-cheeks sugarplum! I did laundry two days ago! The ones I was wearing yesterday were my OTHER pair!"

This has been the latest installment in my ongoing lecture series "How To Stay Single."

Now THIS Is Music

Just for N*88 ...

Saturday Afternoon Music Club

Some good tunes for a lazy Saturday afternoon ...



The Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy

Oh, The Tangled Weblogs We Weave

As we all know, the main purpose of a blog is to provide a vehicle for the spewing of venom and hatred. Sure, we may try to mask it by predominantly posting about our take on current events, or using it to alert others to something we find amusing, or to let distant loved ones know how our lives are progressing. It’s all a grand misdirection, however … an e-sleight-of-hand, if you will. The brutal truth is that we all just want to hurt others that have hurt us, to scream out and let them know the suffering they’ve caused, but social norms and general guidelines of decency (and the occasional restraining order) keep us from doing so directly. And so we keep these things bottled up inside, simmering, building pressure, until eventually, something has to give.

Enter: the blog.

I find it somewhat akin to a diary, but not just one in which you write your innermost secrets and then stuff back under the mattress. That may delay your eventual meltdown, but ultimately, you’ve just transferred your frustrations to the physical world; on paper, tangible, outside your psyche … but still only yours. No, a blog is like a diary that you know your stupid sister* knows about, but doesn’t know that you know that she knows. Think about it … you can write anything – anything – about her, knowing that she’ll read it, knowing that the words will hurt, knowing that you’re inflicting wounds that may never heal. The best part? It’s her fault for reading it. My god, it’s ... it's perfect.

Hypothetically, for example, if someone like, say, oh, I don’t know, Susie McGraw was reading this, I could write something like “she thought she was so cool in 10th grade, even though she wasn’t really all that hot, and that stuff I said in that note I didn’t really mean, and I didn’t really have a crush on her, I was just trying to make her feel better, and even though she was a cheerleader, she was still fat. And ugly. And stupid. With a stupid laugh, even when she was laughing at a joke her stupid boyfriend told and not at other people who might have feelings. Oh, and BTW, Bart cheated on her with her best friend Jenny Stevenson one time like right before homecoming.” I mean, I know that would devastate her, but hey, I didn’t ask her to come read this blog. It’s her own damn fault if her life is now in shambles. Right? Right. Stupid Susie McGraw.

Oh, and to my distant loved ones: things are going well!

* Neither of my sisters are stupid. They're way WAY smarter than me, which makes it rather obvious how they found that stupid diary and how they knew that I knew that they knew. Also, they would know to use the singular "is" rather than the plural "are."

Weather Or Not ...

The Live Acorn told me it was going to snow today, and I told her she was crazy. Because, you know, she is. But the Weather Bureau National Weather Service seems to back her up on this:



I guess the NWS is the go-to authority on such things, so I'll be waxing my boards tonight (no, that is NOT a euphamism ...), but I think Tom Waits nails it as well:

And a line of thunderstorms was developing in the early morning
ahead of a slow moving coldfront, cold blooded
with tornado watches issued shortly before noon Sunday
for the areas including the western region of my mental health
and the northern portions of my ability to deal rationally
with my disconcerted precarious emotional situation

It's cold out there

Colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre, on a Saturday night

Flash flood watches covered the southern portion of my disposition, yeah
There was no severe weather well into the afternoon
except for kind of a lone gust of wind in the bedroom

A high pressure zone covering the eastern portion of a small
suburban community with a 1034 millibar high pressure zone
and a weak pressure ridge extending from my eyes down to my cheeks
cause since you left me baby and put the vice grips on my mental health
well, the extended outlook for an indefinite period of time
until you come back to me, baby, is high tonight, low tomorrow
and precipitation is expected

I'd like to see Tom Waits, Steve Earle, and Aimee Mann play at President Obama's inauguration ball.

Surely that's not too much to ask.

It's Funny 'Cause It's True!

Ah, what better way to start the day than by waking up with the significant other of your dreams and sharing a mimosa on the deck, marveling at the splendor of the sunrise? While this is obviously a rhetorical question, for those of you who don’t cotton much to the rhetorical, the answer is “There isn’t one, Dead Acorn. There simply isn’t one.”

As not everyone is so fortunate as to wake to such heavenly bliss, I’d like to suggest a somewhat more realizable eye-opener: the funnies. My favorite currently drawn comic strip is Pearls Before Swine, though I never leave the house without also reading Frazz and Get Fuzzy (links to all three over there on the right side of the page).

A number of Pearls Before Swine strips have poked fun at the phenomenon of blogging that’s exploded over the last couple of years. It is a sublime exemplar of irony that no one will ever see these strips by reading them here:









And while mimosas are perhaps not the most fitting drink for sitting in front of the computer at 6:30 a.m. in your underwear catching up on the antics of Pig, Rat, and Goat, it's not at all unreasonable to go ahead and take a slug off that warm half-full Schlitz tallboy you left on the coffee table last night. Go on ... live a little!

Now THAT'S Italian!

Well, no major home projects were initiated tonight. I did walk into a wall, and some drywall may have been compromised. That happens sometimes. Instead, I opted to make my famous spaghetti sauce:

Ingredients:

2 lbs Italian sausage
8 28 oz cans tomato sauce
4 14 oz cans tomato paste
4 packages generic spaghetti sauce mix
2 onions
2 red peppers
2 green peppers
1 stalk celery
1 bunch green onions
1 clove garlic
Italian seasoning
Oregano
1 75 pound bad dog

Steps:

1. Brown sausage in large saucepan.
2. Drain fat, place ½ of the sausage in 10 qt. pan.
3. Add half of sauce and half of paste, mix in 2 packages of mix.
4. Chop each vegetable, saving ½ of each in large salad bowl (remaining ½ of sausage can be place in bowl as well).
5. Add spices as desired; simmer for 1-2 hours.
6. Spend time in yard or garage, or become wrapped up in presidential debate on television, instilling sense of inattention in dog.
7. Repeat steps 2-5 using other half of ingredients after dog jumps up and pulls full pan of sauce off of stove. Do not repeat step 6.

Conversation I had with myself during sauce-making:

Dead Acorn: (This is nice … like making a meal for a big Italian family.)

Dead Acorn Internal Antagonist: (Yeah. Nice. Except that you’ll eat your big Italian family meal one meal at a time, all by yourself, loser.)

Dead Acorn: “Why do you always gotta be such an asshole?”

Dead Acorn Internal Antagonist: (Dude, you said that out loud, and there’s no one here.)

Dead Acorn: (Yeah … thanks. I kind of need to watch that. There have been some stares at the bar.)

Dead Acorn Internal Antagonist: (No problem … I got your back. Hey – you should ride to the bar! You don’t smell like garlic and onions at all!)

Dead Acorn: (You’re such a dick.)

Dead Acron Internal Antagonist: (Let’s ride.)

A Hole In My Life Wall

I think I’m going to cut a hole in one of my walls tonight. The wall is between the living room and the kitchen, and a window will open things up a bit and ease some of the crushing isolation that being alone in the kitchen can induce allow more interaction between people in the two rooms. Plus, a little destruction can be therapeutic … a Skil saw, a load-bearing wall, some Courtney Love blasting on the stereo … ahhhh, feel the anger melt away. My doctor says I swallow a lot of aggression … that, and a lot of pizzas!

Another plus is that I’ll add to the list of half-assed, half-completed projects that have come to exemplify my existence. Torn out walls in the future master bathroom? Check. Bedroom painted but trim not replaced? Check. Picture frames glued but not sanded and stained? Check. Gaping hole in the middle of the house? Soon …

The Season Of Romance

The eastern sky was pretty spectacular this morning. It was just before the sun came up, and the clouds were an amazing mixture of pinks and purples. The trees are turning, too, and I’m reminded that there are few things as romantic as walking hand-in-hand in the foothills, surrounded by the indescribably brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of nature’s autumnal masterpiece.

I wonder if the cheap hookers call girls escorts temp agencies have special rates for just holding hands.

Maybe I’ll ride home through Garden City …

AC Come, AC Go ...

I’ve always found the circumstances surrounding the death of Bon Scott a little curious. I find it hard to believe that someone can actually drown in their own vomit. My skepticism is based, in part, on the sheer number of cases I’m personally familiar with in which an extremely inebriated person woke up just fine, albeit usually sporting a dandy headache. I know that the absence of cases in my personal circle of acquaintances doesn’t preclude it actually happening to someone somewhere, but still, if it really does happen, odds are that I’d have known at least one victim.

It was nice, then, to receive an email finally providing a logical explanation. A friend forwarded on one of those “Miss So-And-So said something bad about jeebus and OMG SHE CAUGHT THE BLACK PLAGUE AND GOT BIT BY A BROWN RECKLESS SPIDER AND DRANK SPOILED MILK AND DIED 24 HOURS LATER!!11!!1ELEVENTY!!!1” messages. You know the ones – a list of famous people who dissed the G-man and subsequently came to an early death (my friend wasn’t implying that there is any truth to the alleged causal relationship of diss:death; she was forwarding it as an example of the intelligence level of her coworkers). Included in the list was the aforementioned Bon Scott:

Bon Scott (Singer)

The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:

'Don't stop me; I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell'.

On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.

Well, of course! Choked by his own vomit! I can picture it so clearly – him lying unconscious on the carpet, still clenching the bottle of Jack Daniels, his hair drenched from lying in the pool of his own regurgitation … but still alive. As we all know, however, shag carpet acts as a battery for static electricity. I suspect that Mr. Scott twitched a bit in his sleep, thereby producing a spark that, not unlike the random lightning strike billions of years ago that brought life to the primordial ooze, brought life to the vomital ooze in which he lay.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the foul soup must have begun to ripple, then splash, as it brought itself together, first extending upward from the carpet, forming itself into a trunk-like column, then extending two crude appendages, grotesque arms which then became more defined, eventually sprouting hideous fingers, freakish digits that found their way to the throat of Satan’s own vocalist, fingers that squeezed, tighter and tighter, until finally, his lungs burning for air, the blasphemous Bon Scott must have woken to realize that yea, as ye sow, so shall ye reap, just as his black demon heart beat its last.

The God of our fathers is a vengeful god.

So take heart, all you drunken lushes ... drink, drink, and then drink some more, and concern yourselves not with such a fate ... but for the love of God, put on an Amy Grant CD first.

The Amazing Invisible Sky Fairy

I don't really much believe that there's a god, but if there is, and I get a chance for a quick "howdy" before I head downstairs, I'm going to tell him that he can be something of a prick.

Because, you know, he can be.

Fox News

So there I was, riding my bike down the green belt this morning, when lo and behold, out jumps Br'er Fox, right in front of me! It was at a point on the path where the fences on both sides are close for a good stretch, along with a bridge, so he didn't really have any way out. Sly as a fox, my ass ... what kind of incompetent buffoon gets himself into that type of situation without a rational, well-planned exit strategy?

Anyway, he trotted along, about 10-15 feet in front of me, for about 200 yards. It was kind of cool at first, but those who know me know that I live to work, and he was slowing me down. Those numbers ain't gonna crunch themselves, you know. So I sped up, pulled off my frame pump, and whacked him on the back of the head. One less threat to the henhouse, the way I see it.

Note to PETA: The last 4 sentences are not true. Please do not throw blood on me or blow up my car (or is it the ELF people who blow up cars?).