March 31, 2003

who do you believe?

Jerry Rivers Geraldo Rivera says that he HAS NOT been kicked out of Iraq for doing dumbass things, such as drawing a map in the sand and announcing "WE ARE HERE!!!"

CNN and the US military, on the other hand, say that self-herald-oh is out like a bad tooth.

John Stack, vice president of newsgathering for Fox News Channel, said Rivera "has not been told to leave" and that nobody from the U.S. military has contacted the network to say that Rivera is being removed.

A short time later, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Qatar told CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre: "He is being escorted out."

"Mr. Rivera has been asked to leave his present embed for violating the media ground rules," Central Command added in its official statement. "He will be escorted back to Kuwait at the earliest possible time for the unit."

I would have dragged the self-aggrandizing bastard off to a quiet location and shot him after the Al Capone's Vault fiasco, then I would have sealed his dead body in the vault. That way, if somebody ELSE ever did a hyperventilating reopening, they would at least find some dessicated bones in there instead of NOTHING.

Maybe it's not too late to strap a bomb belt on Geraldo and drop him from a helicopter on some Republican Guard troops. With a radio link on the belt, of course, so that he doesn't even have to push a button to make it explode. We can do that by remote control, just to make sure he really blows up. We can give the Iraqis a Jerry-hiad.

You know why I REALLY HATE Geraldo Rivera? Years ago, people said that I looked like him. (My daughter still says that I do.) That's the main reason (other than being allergic to hair dye) that I let my hair turn gray silver. Now, I look like a short Ted Turner on one of his really bad days. But I prefer to look like Captain Asshole than to resemble that Rat Rivera.

When my hair was still dark, I also was told that I looked like Sonny Bono. I HATED that shit. But I can take comfort in one simple fact. Sonny is dead and Geraldo is being "escorted" from Iraq. And the world will be a better place as a result.

I am not impressed. I've been "escorted" out of better bars than Iraq is as a country.

my aching ass...

That snotrag Newsweek will interview anybody.

My British friend's head won't fit into the Chunnel anymore.

he got lost

I found zander. His server swap left him with a new URL, which is why his site still appears to be down if you visit the old link. Update to the one posted here.

Personally, I believe that the scheming little shit is just trolling for links by asking everybody to announce his new address. Zander may be young, but he ain't dumb.

If that's his plan, I fell for it.

Thanks to joni electric for telling me where to find the boy.

spotted dick

Loyal reader and frequent emailer Ernest Gudath sent me this link, which he shamelessly stole from no watermelons, a blog that I really should add to my roll. As an ex-boiler and turbine man who still knows how to sinc a generator and throw it on the grid, I like the power-plant stuff the guy often writes about. But I'm getting off-topic here.

He wrote about spotted dick, a topic near and dear to my heart after a nasty interlude a few months back with a grit-insulting Limey who forced me to defend my Southern heritage by insulting British food. I did a damn good, job, too.

Now, I read this:

It seems the British pudding with the saucy name has been the butt of one too many sniggers. We're talking of course about Spotted Dick.

Apparently sales of the traditional dish have been deflating according to a survey by the British grocery chain TESCO. It claims that folks are just too darn shy to ask for it by name. So they've been skipping the dessert altogether.

That's why TESCO is rallying to change the name from Spotted Dick to Spotted Richard.

Spotted RICHARD??

Why not just call it "Speckled Trouser Trout?" How about the "Mottled One-Eyed Monk?" Or maybe "Phreckled Phallus?" Even better, call it "Polka-Dotted Wonder Wood."

I could continue in this vein.... but I believe you get my point.

ugly morning, ugly day

The beautiful pine barrens, palmetto-scrubs and weed-choked sandhills of Effingham County were soaked with a pissy, drizzling, misting rain all day yesterday, then the temperature dropped into the low 30's last night. I left the Crackerbox this morning to go to work and found my goddam truck doors FROZEN SHUT. I had to pry my way inside, retrieve the plastic scraper I keep for such occasions and carve the ice off my windshield and side windows.

I turned on the windshield wipers and the left one didn't move, being frozen stiff to the windshield. But the right one managed to free itself from the glacier in which it was embedded. Unfortunately, it left the wiper blade stuck in the ice and just the wiper arm went screeching across my windshield. I turned the wipers off and drove to work with the defroster going full blast and peering through a fun-house window until everything, including the old wiper blade, melted and blew off the windshield.

I put a new wiper blade on when I got home today. I wasn't about to attempt that feat this morning, in the dark, in the cold, on a suckweasel Monday morning. I also froze my Cracker ass off at work until noon, when I had to attend a three-hour training class in a room hotter than the gates of hell, and then interview two people applying for new hire positions in a room as cold as a walk-in freezer. If I don't develop SARS, it'll be a miracle. Today was NOT a fun day.

I just have one thing to say: GLOBAL WARMING, MY ASS!!!

It's supposed to frost tonight, then be 80 degrees by Thursday. Mother Nature is one twisted bitch.

March 30, 2003

back to the woods

I just agreed to go on a backpacking trip in May. I thought that I was through with that kind of outdoor activity, but Cop 3 wanted to do it, and he convinced my friend Don to go for his first time ever, so I signed up.

We won't do a LOT of packing. We'll hike in along the Chatooga River, set up a base camp and day-hike to the waterfalls and the scenic overlooks, then get drunk around the campfire at night. I'm bringing a fishing rod to see if I can catch some trout while I'm there. I caught three nice ones the last time I went, and they tasted great grilled on the fire with some rice and onions on the side.

I like campfire cooking, especially when I have something like fresh river trout to work with. In the old days, I made rice with Cup O' Soup mix in it, and it was delicious. I also ate rice with bullion cubes, sardines, salt-cured ham, Vienna sausages (Vieenies) and whatever else was in my pack. It would make a turd and it didn't taste bad when you were hungry. Rice is filling and it packs light.

Another WONDERFUL backpack food is Little Debbie's Star Crunches. Just trust me on that. You get chocolate for energy and Rice Krispies for carbs and the damn things taste GOOD. Pack at least a dozen and you won't regret it. Milky Way candy bars are good, too.

I'll chew tobacco again on that trip. I don't do that often anymore, but backpacking almost DEMANDS a nice wad of Levi Garret between cheek and gum. I like to spit into the campfire. I like to spit at the crazed salamanders that come scampering through the leaves to run right into the fire, too. Have you ever watched those creatures do that? They won't stop until they're cooked. Death wish.

I'm going back to the mountains with what I tote on my back. I intend to catch some fish, but if I don't, I won't starve.

I can eat chewing tobacco if I get desperate.

Grief and toys

Kentucky is out of the NCAA playoffs after losing to a pissant Marquette team that ain't fit to carry UK's jockstraps. But UK lost, dammit. I am in mourning.

So, I went to the Super Wal-Mart today and bought me a new toy. I have an HP copier/printer/scanner thing that I got on sale for $98 and it's already plugged in to my computer. The printer function works. Now, I need to read the instructions and figure out how that scanning thingamajig operates. I have some old pictures I want to post.

I also bought a bag of potato chips, a case of Mountain Dew a dozen tangelos and six pairs of underwear while I was shopping. I like making cashiers shake their heads and give me weird looks when I lay my stuff on the conveyor. I was going to say that I intended to put on my new drawers, stuff tangelos down them and then eat potato chips and drink Mountain Dew while I took pictures of myself and scanned them onto the internet. But nobody asked.

I was disappointed.

So, I'm going to put on my new drawers and stuff tangelos down them. I've got nothing better to do.

the results are in

I should have posted this yesterday, but I got busy doing other things that I don't remember now. I feel badly enough now to believe that I must have had a lot of fun. Anyway, the votes have been tallied in my 10 MOST LYING, PHONEY-BALONEY, HYPOCRITAL ASSWIPES OF THE LAST 50 YEARS.

First, here is MY list:

1. Jesse Jackson, the Human Seagull

2. Bill Clinton, the human cesspool

3. Lyndon Johnson, the worst thing ever to come out of Texas

4. Robert McNamara, the butcher of young men

5. Ralph Nader, the sickening bastard

6. Walter Cronkite, your lying grandfather

7. Jimmy Carter, the worst thing ever to come out of Georgia

8. Ted Kennedy, a drunk, bloated asshole who should be in jail for vehicular homicide.

9. Sara Brady, the misguided, gun-grabbing, wounded-husband vulture

10. My ex-wife, the bloodless cunt

I received over 100 responses to my poll and it took a lot of work that I didn't feel like doing today to put all the votes together and rank these assholes. All you people who voted for Joe Stalin are SOL, because he died on march 5, 1953 which puts him out of the 50-year range by a couple of weeks. If he had died later, he would have made the top ten. If he had died sooner, millions of people might still BE alive. So it goes.

Anyway, here are the TOP TEN MOST LYING, PHONEY-BALONEY, HYPOCRITICAL ASSWIPES OF THE LAST 50 YEARS as selected by my highly-intelligent readership.

1. William Jefferson Clinton This wasn't even close. He won in a runaway, with 90% of respondents including him on their list. There's your legacy, Bill.

2. Jimmy Carter He was the only person to come close to Bill, and some of the comments included with the votes were WORSE than what people said about Clinton. Take THAT, you grinning jackass.

3. Tom Dashle I was surprised by the rancor my voters feel for that prick. I thought it was just me.

4. Jaques Chirac I didn't put this posturing pissant on MY list because I don't think he amounts to a fart in an Iraqi sandstorm. I am out of touch with my readers on this issue, because they want to feed him his own testicles, which isn't a bad idea, now that I think about it...

5. Hillary Clinton Why am I not surprised? I left her off my list because I experience physical pain when I think of her. I try not to do that. If I see her, I always think of Dorthy looking out her bedroom window in the middle of the tornado and seeing the woman on a bicycle turn into a green-skinned witch. HILLARY!

6. Jesse Jackson I cannot believe that this lying, hypocritical, phoney-baloney asswipe didn't score higher than #6. Jesse set the goddam STANDARD for hypocritical, lying, phoney-baloney asswipes. That's MY humble opinion, anyway. Look where I put him on MY list.

7. Noam Chomsky I don't think Noam deserves such attention. He is a little man, with little ideas and a little dick. If I weren't an honest man, I would have thrown him off this list. But you people voted for him, so I put him where he scored. That's not where he BELONGS, mind you, because I know of a country outhouse that's perfect for him, but he scored #7 in the voting. So there he is.

8. Richard Nixon Goddam, people. He's dead. Leave the poor bastard alone. Besides, he looks like a fucking angel compared to Bill Clinton.

9. Chairman Mao I disagree with this choice and all the people who voted for the man. He was a murdering, insane communist, but he didn't LIE about it. I believe that Mao was one of the most evil people who ever shit between two Chinese sandals in the history of the world, but he wasn't a PHONEY-BALONEY HYPOCRITE. He was just a piece of conscienceless crap. He never tried to sell himself as anything else the way Bill Clinton did.

10. (Tie) Yasser Arafat and Al Gore Where do I begin? If I were casting the tie-breaking vote here, I would have to go with Arafat, because the Nobel Peace Prize-winner is a scumbag that the world would be better off without. But Al Gore is a pretty self-absorbed asshole, too. The main difference is that Al doesn't encourage people to strap on bomb belts and blow themselves up in public places. At least not yet. But he may declare JIHAD on SUVs any day now. Maybe a tie is the right thing.

Others receiving much attention: Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader, OJ Simpson, Al Sharpton, Robert McNamara, George Bush Senior, Nelson Mandela, Michael Moore and Kofi Annan. Three people voted for ME, too. I hope all three of them drown in shit.

If you didn't vote, don't bitch about the results.