Time for a Good Ol' Fashioned Filibuster

So our dumbass president--wait, not "our", I'm not taking ownership of him--YOUR dumbass president decided that loyal and unqualified wasn't the way to go this time, and chose to nominate a good, safe conservative wackjob for the Court. Samuel Alito, step forward and tell us how to plan to roll back civil rights and liberties.

Actually, so far, the most distressing things I've read about this assclown are that he voted to uphold a law requiring women in Pennsylvania to notify their husbands if they were going to have an abortion (not necessarily a horrible thing on the merits, but a harbinger of things to come), and that he was against allowing Congress to extend the assault weapons ban. Sure, there's some evidence he might be fair minded. But the fact that Phyllis Schlafly and other assorted right wing nutjobs say he's a-okay with them is enough to make me afraid. I mean, they said he was on "their list", meaning they'd already seen enough of him to feel confident he'll do his best to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So in other words, he's no good. Of course, we don't have a heck of a lot of recourse unless one or two of our good Democrats decide to filibuster him. I don't even know exactly how that needs to work, but I think it's a good chance for Kerry to redeem himself. Show the nutsack you should have had during the election. Convince McCain to cross the aisle and help save us.

Oh, and if I find out that the anti-"W" bumper sticker on my truck was intentionally removed by someone at the golf course yesterday, someone's getting cut!

The Power of a Good Weekend

Life is pretty fucking good. It's sort of sad to admit that I'm still somewhat surprised when I actually feel happy. Guess it's the Zoloft finally kicking in. Or maybe it's just that instinct that being bitter and cynical is cooler and funnier than being happy about stuff.

I just had a really good weekend. First of all, getting to spend some or all of your time with a partner who you really love and who really gets you and who mainly wants for you to be happy is just really cool. My wife rocks, and coming home on Friday night and knowing that the whole weekend is ahead of you, well nothing beats that. So then even though yesterday was miserable, cold and rainy and just a reminder that fall is going to turn into winter WAY too quickly, we made it a really great day by a) sleeping in till noon, covered in dogs, b) going to breakfast at Denny's even though it was 2PM (Moons Over My Hammy is the best), and c) spending the afternoon shopping at Lowe's and Target (two of my favorite places to blow a paycheck). Even though I had to go to work at 10PM to run our end-of-month reports, the night wasn't lost, and we got to watch The Adam Corolla Project on Tivo (my favorite new show). Got home earlier than expected, got an extra hour of sleep thanks to stupid daylight savings. Today was a nearly perfect fall day, and I went to play golf for the first time in 3 weeks, and ended up shooting my best round of the year (100 for the record, not quite ready to go pro). I credit the weather, practice last week, and probably the Zoloft too. And then on the ride home, I threw in a CD I'd burned from iTunes recently, some of my favorite new stuff, and just cranked it the entire way home. It's just true that nothing gets the blood flowing like driving fast with great music blasting.


So that's why I feel good tonight. Plus whenever I come home, my schnauzer Lucy sings me a song. If you've never heard schnauzer song, you haven't lived.

Now that I've fulfilled the name of my blog by blathering on for a while about nothing, I'll add a few more random things. Part of my enjoyable weekends was looking at some very funny chick blogs with the wife, and I saw that people seem to like posting those sort of personal polls that you used to get in email all the time. Seems like a good way to solicit comments. Plus, I felt compelled to share some random shit, so here goes, in no particular order.

10 Great Songs I Downloaded from iTunes that You Should Listen To
Everybody's Changing - Keane
Run - Snow Patrol
Perfect Situation - Weezer
Amsterdam - Guster
Take a Picture - Filter
Dakota - Stereophonics
Feed the Tree - Belly
Pictures of You - The Cure
High and Dry - Radiohead
Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode

Watch The Adam Carolla Project, if you even think you might find it funny. He's hilarious when he's just being himself, but even better is the bunch of idiots he's got working with him on this show. Watching regular people who are actually funny is funnier than watching actors trying to be funny.

If you like U2 even a little bit, and you have a chance to buy tickets to one of their remaining shows, GO! I went to Boston in October, and I'm going again in December, and I CANNOT WAIT! Admittedly, I've been a fan for almost 20 years, and I love everything they do, but even if you're not a huge fan, you cannot help but be swept away by the emotion of it. Not only can I not wait to see them again, but I can't wait for the wife to see them this time (went with buddy David last time). I mean, they're just amazing, and being part of an audience of 20,000 people singing along is almost overwhelming.

Oh, my friend David and I were talking about his new girlfriend while playing golf today, and he mentioned that she was worried about her parents and whether they'd approve. I'm thinking it's because she's newly divorced and he's not quite divorced, or something like that. So I ask him why, and he says "Duh, color, dude". And I'm like, you're fucking kidding me. By the way, he happens to be black (or more mocha than anything, Cape Verdean really), but the idea that anybody even thinks of that, at least in Rhode Island, never even occurred to me. I guess I just need to give people more benefit of the doubt when it comes to their capacity to be racist and ignorant. Not that her parents necessarily are, but apparently this comes up a lot for my friend, which in and of itself points out a problem.

Okay, so here's my first shot at some interactivity. If it sucks, well, then just don't answer. I seriously doubt this has any psychological insight.

Copy the questions and paste with answers into your comments
1. What's the last thing you saw in the news that pissed you off?
2. What one year would you choose for an in-depth "I Love the 80s" episode and what would you definitely want to see?
3. What band or singer do you love that you think most people have never heard of?
4. What song would you least like to admit to singing along with on the car radio?
5. What makes you happiest in the course of a normal day?

Thanks for hanging in there. BTW, I'm planning to start pimping my wife's blog. She loves a whole bunch of chick blogs, and I think she deserves to be part of that circle. So if you're part of that group, or know anyone in there, you should help me get her blog linked up (saintfranny.blogspot.com). Thanks.

Laugh or Cry, so hard to choose

My initial reaction this morning when I read that Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination (I kid you not, I read it on CNN.com while sitting on the toilet--love my Treo!) was to laugh out loud (again, awkward since I was in the shitter). I mean, the whole thing has been such a farce, nominating someone totally unqualified. And it was fun to see the Christian right turn on Dumb-Dumb and I was even entertained by Trent Lott calling her a rube. But when I thought about it today, I realized while it's still a bit funny, the unfortunate part is that now he'll probably nominate someone who really is going to get confirmed, and who's really conservative and set to overturn Roe v Wade and appease the jesus-freaks. And unless the Dems really nut up and filibuster it, we'll be stuck with this person for 20-30 years. So it's really not so great.

Okay, I mainly started this post because I hadn't posted in a week. But I find myself extremely distracted by I Love the 80s 3D (we're on 1987 right now). I'm sorry, even after 3 times around, and the formula is totally obvious, but I just can't get enough of it. So really, I need to just stop now and enjoy the rest of this show and the Daily Show and acknowledge that until something really happens to piss me off, this blog is just going to suck.

Bowlful of Ass

In keeping with my latest theme of trying to add to the common vernacular, I'm throwing out my favorite phrase for feeling sick--"I feel like a bowlful of ass". Which is appropriate, since I've been sick for the last three days, first real cold of the season. I hate that first day when you're not really sick, but you feel it in the back of your throat, and you just KNOW that tomorrow you're going to wake up with a cold. That was yesterday, and it sucked, and although today is a bit better (throat no longer sore, just stuffed up and headachey), I still feel like a small bowlful of ass. If yesterday was a big soup bowl, today is like a little cereal bowl.

What a repugnant phrase, you might say. Well, good. That was the point. This one harks back to college (like most of my favorite stupid phrases). I honestly can't remember who first said it. I won't take credit for it necessarily, could have easily been Mario or Steve or John or someone. And I think it started with hangovers, waking up the next day feeling like the floor (covered in beer and smelling like crap). And like everything in college, we overused the phrase and came up with all sorts of variations. Sort of our own Saffir-Simpson scale of rating how crappy we felt--an average hangover or a cold would be a "bowlful of ass", but the worse you felt, the larger the body of water would get. Next up was a bucket, then I think we jumped to Lake Lagunita (the little pond on campus), and from there it was on to the Great Lakes (we could never agree on whether Erie or Ontario was bigger, but we definitely used Huron and Superior a lot), and big parties would leave us feeling like an "Atlantic Ocean of ass", or the granddaddy of them all, the "Pacific Ocean of ass". Used that one a lot during senior year.

As we grew older, it was less for hangovers and more for just being sick. I just think it accurately expresses how truly crappy one can feel. My wife's not so crazy about the phrase, makes her make that "you're such a disgusting BOY" face, but what can I do? I'm just repeating what I was taught.

Roy

Okay, I'm going to make this catch on. "Roy". Say it. It feels good. Okay, now I'll explain.

Roy is a name that makes me laugh. Just now, watching the otherwise annoying Amazing Race Family Edition (don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Amazing Race, but this family version ain't it), the blackjack dealer said his name was Roy, and the kid said his name was Roy too (which is sort of sad, because he's named after his dad, who was killed at Daytona Speedway, but that's all tangential), and I just laughed. Diana looked at me and chuckled, and I said "Roy" (savoring the "oooyyyy" sound), and laughed some more.

It all started back when I lived in Manhattan Beach with Jason (and a bunch of other drunks). Jason was the sort of guy that you could always count on to come up with something totally random and funny, especially when we were out drinking, and what was even funnier was that HE thought he was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, even if no one else got it. His ability to crack himself up was infectious. Anyway, he shared his appreciation of blaxploitation movies with me (Dolemite was the best), and somehow he came to find the name "Leroy" very funny to say. Although when he said it, it sounded more like "Leeee-roooyy". Stretch it all out.

Soon enough, he began calling everyone Leroy--it was a happy (often drunken) greeting. Of course, being young, drunken idiots ourselves, the rest of us (well, Pat and I at least) joined in, and pretty soon we would actually all greet each other as Leroy and have entire conversations where every person being discussed was called Leroy (different intonations would indicate who was who). I think Jason actually got a vanity plate made for his truck after a while that said "LEE-ROY".

So on it went, and after a while, we started shortening it to just "Roy", which sounded even funnier for some reason. I suppose if we'd actually met someone named Roy, it would have ruined it all, but we didn't. The only real Roy we could think of was Randolph Mantooth's character on Emergency! from the 70s. "What's up, Roy?" became a slightly snarky greeting.

At some point, "Roy" turned for us. It wasn't that it wasn't funny. It had just become such an easy word to say, we found ourselves turning it to other uses. It seemed to fit to describe someone we thought was a jerk, a tool, an asshole. "What a Roy!" "That guy's a total Roy." "Don't be a Roy." Being that we lived in LA, there were plenty such Roys around there. "Roy" became that smarmy dickhead from USC we would see everywhere, a symbol of obnoxious guys everywhere.

I moved away from there 8 years ago, but I took "Roy" with me. I decided to just keep using it in conversation and wait for peope to ask (most don't bother). Diana liked it--she's even surprised me a few times by breaking it out herself. I still use it to describe tools I run into. But more than anything, it just makes me laugh to have real people named Roy appear. I keep hoping and hoping that Survivor or Amazing Race or Big Brother will have someone named Roy, but they have yet to deliver. Someday. Until then, I just keep waiting for random Roys to show up and give me a chuckle.

I do wish it would catch on. I think it would work. I submitted it to Urban Dictionary, but they didn't post it. What do they know? If you read this, please start calling people Roy. You'll enjoy it.

Hellooo

Bad blogger! Bad blogger! That's for me, a little self-flagellation. Can't believe I haven't posted in almost 2 weeks. I guess I let myself drift off a bit. Had a nice extended home vacation, though I got a bit of cabin fever by the end. Going on the 7th straight day of rain tomorrow--ugh. The dogs do NOT like going out in this, and Lady is way overdue for a walk around the block, but there's just no way in hell I'm doing that again now that we actually have a fenced yard. Three years of trudging around the block in all kinds of weather, 3 times a day--that was enough.

I knew I wanted to post something today, and though I wasn't sure what, I kept coming up with (what I thought were) clever titles. Have to remember the rest so I can reuse them. Although what I chose may seem meaningless, it makes me chuckle--picture Trump saying "Helloooo" to the folks in the boardroom when he walks in. He doesn't do it as much anymore, think he realized it was funny.

Anyway, you would think I'd be more fired up what with the burning wreck the Republican Party has become these last few weeks. I mean, SO many great opportunities to jump on them. The bungling of Katrina (hate to capitalize on suffering, but you have to recognize the failures there), the increasingly obvious cronyism in the administration, Frist and Delay's legal problems, and then this laughable Harriet Miers nomination. And the fact that Dumb-Dumb's approval numbers are lower than ever. But none of it feels that good. I mean, the whole FEMA thing just meant more death and suffering. Hiring unqualified people is wrong and shameful, but no matter how much we talk about it, I doubt we'll really be able to stop him. It is funny and amusing that Frist and/or Delay may be nailed and dishonored, but I'm really not that worked up about what either of them did. I mean, so they cheated on financial stuff--BFD, everybody does that, even our guys. Nominating his "work wife" for the Supreme Court--again, very funny in a sick way, but unfortunately, there's still a good chance she'll get confirmed, and now we have some Christian nutcase on the Supreme Court. Ha fucking ha.

And the worst part is, even if Bush's approval rating keeps dropping, it's not going to mean anything--he's there for another 3 fucking years, and no matter how much we hate him, we can't get rid of him. I'm sure some people have fantasies of impeachment, but really, I think they're dug in well enough that they'll never let something like that happen. Besides, then we'd just have Cheney in charge, and boy is that scary.

So it's just sort of depressing to look at all those possibilities and go "eh". Guess the weather doesn't help. Since when is October supposed to be rain rain rain. What happened to my crisp autumn days? I'm going to be really pissed if for once I'm finally home for the entire month of October, and AGAIN, I miss the leaves turning.

And to top it all of, The Daily Show is in reruns this week. Can nobody cooperate just a little bit here?