January 14, 2015

Ray Lewis can kiss every square inch of my ass

The most post-season wins by any quarterback, ever. Three Super Bowl championships, with two other appearances besides. Surpassed Montana's touchdown count last weekend. On his way to his - Christ, I can't even remember - fourth straight AFC championship game this weekend, I think. But yeah, you dipstick, it's all about one play in the snow thirteen years ago.

Ray Lewis doesn't get mad. He gets stabby. The Ravens are the most reprehensible organization in all of pro sports, and Lewis is a fair piece of the reason why. He helped facilitate a murder, and then sold out his crew to save his own ass. Go fornicate yourself with an iron bar, Ray. Why you aren't in prison picking mealworms out of your gruel is an enduring mystery.

Ray Lewis: Tom Brady Is Only Known Because Of The Tuck Rule
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/01/14/ray-lewis-tom-brady-is-only-known-because-of-the-tuck-rule/

A human clown car with blood on his hands.

January 13, 2015

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That, right there, is the national hood ornament, the first thing you see, the first thing you learn, and the thing you remember forever after the first time you hear it. I have plenty of issues with the concept of "American Exceptionalism," but that, as a founding national ethos, is pretty damned exceptional.

Which is why, even in the age of the Affordable Care Act - somewhat helpful to many, to be sure, but it is for sure and certain the greatest boon to insurance companies in the history of the concept of insurance - I find the concept of health care in America as a multi-zillion-dollar for-profit industry to be among the most repugnant phenomenons going.

Without health, there is no Life...because you're dead from a disease you couldn't afford treatment for.

Without health, there is no Liberty, because you're trapped in a sick body and in a bed because you can't afford the treatments.

Without health, there is no pursuit of Happiness, because you're sick and broke from spending all of your money on trying not to be sick any more.

I hail from the great city of Boston, and know for a stone fact that this nation has the medical infrastructure, the medical equipment, the medical talent and the medical will to treat diseases that cost people all of their money when they become afflicted.

But we don't do it, because health care in America is a for-profit industry, just like petroleum speculation and pork futures, and that's just crazy...and a rank offense to the national ethos we hold so dear.

There is no Life, there is no Liberty, there is no pursuit of Happiness without health. Period, end of file.

According to the founding DNA of the nation, therefore, health care should be a basic right, a human right...and an entirely affordable right if we summon the political will to shave 1% annually off the "defense" budget.

Wouldn't that be something.

January 8, 2015

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire...

Parts Of The U.S. And Canada Are Colder Than Mars Today
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/canada-is-hella-cold?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgp#.wcxkJOv8M

January 8, 2015

...psssst...

If your God can't take a joke, He's not God.

...pssssst...

If you believe in your God, then you must believe He invented humor, because humor exists.

...pssssst...

Your God is not the problem. You are.

Asshole.

January 7, 2015

"Baptized in borrowed blood"

In this veil of tears in the aftermath of the Paris massacre, I wish to take note of a master of his craft.

Charles P. Pierce, in describing the Fox News hategasm that came in the aftermath, described the whole network as "baptizing itself in borrowed blood again."

Fuck my life. That, right there, is how you do that.

God. Damn.

I want to be Charlie when I grow up.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Death_In_Paris

January 7, 2015

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

"Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution - these can lift at a colossal humbug - push it a little - weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

-- Mark Twain

...in memory of the ten satirists and two officers butchered in Paris today because some people can't take a joke. Let the humor go on, if for no other reason than fuck them.

January 5, 2015

Had us a pretty nifty little ice storm here (pics)

January 1, 2015

Planting a Seed for 2015

(Image via Shutterstock)

Planting a Seed for 2015
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Thursday 01 January 2015

If there were such a thing as a Hall Of Fame Of Suck, the year 2014 would not only win first-ballot admission, it would have its very own wing.

Consider this abridged butcher's bill:

In January, a teenaged gunman named Darion Aguilar opened fire in a Maryland mall, killing two before killing himself. In West Virginia, a storage tank containing a toxic chemical ruptured, pouring massive quantities of poison into the Elk River, which is part of the Mississippi River watershed. Some 300,000 residents were left without clean drinking water for weeks, and the ecosystem of the river was obliterated.

In February, the Ebola outbreak began in Africa, eventually killing more than 7,000 people and infecting more than 20,000 others.

In March, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 souls on board. It was never found, and the US "news" media had a ghoulish field day for weeks on end. A building exploded in New York City, killing eight. At the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, a drunk driver bulldozed into a crowd, killing two and injuring more than 20. An oil barge in Galveston Bay collided with another ship and spilled a fair budget of the million gallons of crude oil it was carrying. Protests erupted in Albuquerque after video showing police killing a homeless man surfaced.

(snip through many months)

In December, the Senate finally released its torture report, which contained detailed horrors that beggar description, opening yet another round of flaccid discussion on why the perpetrators have never once seen the inside of a courtroom. Bradley Stone killed six people in Pennsylvania before killing himself. Another grand jury refused to indict NYPD officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico in the clearly-videotaped strangulation death of Eric Garner, and the national rage over police brutality and racism grew by orders of magnitude. Not long after, Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot and killed two NYPD officers before killing himself. In a despicable act of self-importance, police officers turned their backs on the Mayor of New York during one of the services for the fallen officers, thus joining the Westboro Baptist Church in becoming the only other group in the US with the gall to hold a political protest at a funeral.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, Shirley Temple, Sid Caesar, Harold Ramis, Mickey Rooney, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Maya Angelou, Casey Kasem, Tony Gwynn, Horace Silver, Bobby Womack, Paul Mazursky, James Garner, James Brady, Lauren Bacall, Jackie Cain, Ben Bradlee, Tom Menino and Joe Cocker all died.

And one of my best friends, Brian, also died out of absolutely nowhere in November. He was the soul and spirit of our group of friends, three times my roommate since 1994, and his absence from my life, from this world, is an open wound I doubt will ever fully heal.

Strangely enough, when I think about every terrible thing that scarred this long year, I also think of Brian, but not in the way you might assume. See, I do not believe in death. Brian the man is gone from us, but knowing him made me a better person. He planted a seed within me, and by being the better person he helped to make me, I plant that seed in others: my friends, my family, and especially my little daughter. In this way, Brian and every other person who planted seeds go on, and on, and on, spreading from person to person, from relationship to relationship, and those seeds reap a mighty harvest that makes the world entire a little bit of a better place.

In this way, my friend Brian, along with everyone else who has been lost to us, are eternal. I find that to be a tremendous comfort.

This is the time for New Year's resolutions, and I have a request of you: plant that seed wherever you find fertile soil. Be that better person. Help to gentle the cold brutality of this hard world within reach of your arm. Let us not do 2014 ever again. It is in the rear-view mirror now, finally. Let's try to keep it there.

Happy New Year.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28303-planting-a-seed-for-2015