I turned 35 yesterday. This is momentous for several reasons. First of all, according to my teenage self I was scheduled to die in a fiery car wreck before I got this old. Though this is good for you, my flock, who would be lost without me, but I had to come to terms with yet another instance of my gross inability to follow through. 

Secondly, and probably of greater import, I can now run for president. And I am announcing my candidacy here today, with all of you as witnesses.

It's been a long time coming. As you should know by now, I fucking hate politicians. Hate them. I say so often that "the people who seek power are exactly the kind of people you wouldn't want to have it" that it has taken on the weight of a mantra.

"Why the hell do you live in Washington, DC then, Bozo?" one might naturally inquire, and "Why the fuck would you want to run for president if you hate politics?" The answers are simple: One, I feed and grow fat off of hate. Secondly, I think am better than you and everyone else. 

Thusly, I think it would be a shame if I wasn't elected president. And looking at my competition, I think I've got a pretty good shot at this thing. On one side you've got a flaccid penis and on the other a penis kept continuously erect by drugs and money, despite the lack of testicles. I guess what I am saying is that I am a penis that knows when to be erect and when not, and that is supported by enormous, elephantine balls. 

Will that fit on a campaign sign?

Perhaps I should be more pithy:

I Am a Giant Cock. Suck Me.

There, that should fit.

Now, I realize that I'll need a bit more substance (just a bit, mind you) in order to gain access to the sweet ass White House theater, so I've begun designing my Presidential Platform. Here are some of the salient points:

1) Chicken Fried Steak for all. This is compulsory. It is the new national food. The RDA will be redesigned to reflect this. 

2) No more unending, conceptual wars, like the War on Drugs or War on Terror. Only actual war. If there's a war on something, we go and kill it. End of story. And we shouldn't fight drugs because they are fun and the country is missing out on a massive revenue stream here.

3) That brings me to Friday night stoner movies at the white house. Good times. Different foreign dignitary invited each week, along with notable members of the legistlative and judiciary branches as well as whomever I find skulking in the alley that day. Good mix of social classes, but only the highest class of weed will be provided. First up: Grandma's Boy. Hu Jintao, you're invited! 

4) I shall be referred to not as Mr. President but as Lord Mufti of the Americas, Guardian of the Earth and Master of the Universe.

5) I will have a magic sword.

6) Congress shall be handpicked and appointed by me. Congress shall do what I tell them to or there will be hangings. All bills must fit on one page like a resume or they will be summarily rejected. Anyone mentioning Kennedy or Reagan will be shot. Both the 60s and the 80s will be abolished. I will have an 8 year old child in both houses of Congress. If the child falls asleep while you are talking, you will be drawn and quartered and the opposite of whatever you were talking about will be made law. Also, no more bullshit social or moral issues will be allowed to be brought up in Congress. Enjoy your abortions and whatever sex you want to have people because this shit is so boring! Also, legislative recess will coincide with RennFest.

7) There will be lots of hangings, shootings and drawings and quarterings.

8) Though there will really be no further need of the judicial branch, as my judgement is impeccable, we will keep them around because they are kind of funny and I want to know what they wear underneath those robes. 

9) No more debt crises or other financial nonsense. We are going back to the barter system. How many sheep for an Ipad? Probably a lot. I hear they love sheep at Apple.

10) NASA and the Defense Department will be forced to switch budgets. I want heavily armed men on mars by 2030! 

11) The vice-presidential candidate will be chosen through melee combat. You win and you're in.

12-45) These all have something to do with funnel cakes. 

There you go. It's a work in progress. I have some things to say about education, the environment, trade agreements, human trafficking, etc., but frankly I am pretty hungry right now. 

Lord Mufti, 2012.

If you grew up in the the 80's, it is almost certain that at least a part of your imagination has been dwelling on one central question for the last 25 years: Who is Cobra Commander? He's the dark shadow that stains the pristine clarity of your sunniest days.  He lurks, skulking, yelling, full of enmity, standing at the corners of your fondest dreams.  His malicious omnipresence prevents all true joy from taking root. 

Who is this screeching, high-pitched commander of doom?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to say I'm pretty sure I know: Vladimir Putin is Cobra Commander

Look at the uncanny likeness:

What other world leader dispatches his enemies with such elaborate schemes as radioactive poisoning and gangster-style contract killings.  Who else had this to say about democratic protesters:

"If you get (permission), you go and march. If you don't -- you have no right to. Go without permission, and you will be hit on the head with batons. That's all there is to it."

Now, to this point you might say, "well, any number of autocratic megalomaniacs might do the same", and you might be right.  However, I ask you how many of those same megalomaniacs wield crossbows? Putin does.  He also hunts, tracks and tags polar bears.  WHY? Something nefarious having to do with invading Finland by bear, I'm sure.  He's also seen almost exclusively without a shirt, intimidating other world leaders with his rippling physique.  Let's look at some pictures:

 
 

People! This is more than just a ruthless dictator!  This is a supervillain.  His powers for evil are unmatched We mortals must now hold out all hope for a crack team of American commandos led by a blond-haired frat boy and pray that Putin never gets hold of the Weather Dominator...or maybe he already has.  It has been a really hot summer, full of drought and famine, and the price of wheat is skyrocketing...

Someone check Putin's investment portfolio on wheat futures, and prepare the border to repel incoming polar bears. 

 
 

Hey, I don't know if you guys heard about this or not, but BP is currently turning the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana coastline into a giant, toxic cesspool that probably will not return to normal unless we measure time like geologists.  The livelihoods of entire communities are poised to be destroyed and the cost to the environment and wildlife populations is already catastrophic. 

But I think we need to look on the bright side. We've got to make friends with oil.  After all, given the vested business interests and their domination of government policy making, as well as the selfish shortsightedness of the general American populace, it's not going away any time soon!

So, let's consider the silver lining here.

All that oil is going to be great for those of us with dry skin! Climbing out of the Gulf after a great swim in the sludge, you'll be so soft and silky smooth, with that "just oiled" feeling. 

And our general mobility will be vastly improved! It'll be great for people with arthritis to be able to slide around like eels. This guy wasn't afraid of a good oil bath so why should we be?:

Ah C-3PO.  Once again a sexually ambiguous robot has shown us the way.

And admit it, you've always been jealous of the northern countries that get to have the aurora borealis.  No more.  The Gulf of Mexico on fire is going to light up the night sky spectacularly.  It'll be so magical, you'll almost forget the acrid smell.  Are those tears of wonder and awe or just that burning, stinging chemical feeling in your eye? I think you know. 

And sure, most of the wildlife in the Gulf and Louisiana wetlands stands a good chance of total extermination, but think of the new wildlife we'll be creating! Imagine how cool it's going to be when this guy crawls out of the Gulf of Mexico and starts a massive rampage across the country:

 

Of course, without a stalwart national hero like Godzilla, we'll have to battle the Smog Monster the old fashioned way - with big ass missiles.  So it's a win for the military-industrial complex too!

Which brings me to my last point: job creation.  Yes, the fishing industry in the Gulf is totally fucked, but we can put those people to work building a top secret, state of the art Smog Monster Fighting research facility and all the weaponry we will need to confront this vile new threat to our national security.  

The newly declared War on Smog Monsters will generate billions in manufacturing contracts alone.  

There you go.  Recession over. 

I don't understand why people are so upset about this. 

I really love teenagers sometimes.  They come up with the greatest ideas.  Take the latest youtube craze, vodka eyeballing.  According to Fox News:

Hundreds of online videos that originated in the U.K. show teens pouring vodka directly into their eyes, straight from the bottle.

This is fucking fantastic.  Why not? Apparently, the activity carries with it the risk of permanent blindness, but you get to be a total badass! And if you go blind eyeballing vodka, what a great story to tell your grandkids someday. Plus, the ladies love a guy who blinds himself in a drinking game.  Trust me on that one. They love that kind of commitment.

I'm going to start doing this immediately.  Plus, why stop with vodka.  What else can we squirt in our eyes? How about turpentine? Could call it "eyehuffing". Bleach maybe? Could call it "shineballing".

This is great.  Fuck the eyeballs - how about a full on vodka enema?

I gotta get a youtube account.

Is Lord Vader gonna have to force choke a bitch? 

My loyal subjects, I have made an important discovery. 

I was at Churchkey on Sunday, trying to drink myself into an deep enough oblivion so I wouldn't have to kick my own ass for hanging out in hipster bars, when I noticed that one of the selections on their ever-rotating list of draft beers was described as "meaty". 

Being your work-a-day meat obsessed pirate, I naturally asked myself, "what the fuck does that mean?" Could they possibly mean it tastes like meat? "No way", I said to myself, "that's madness.  Too good to be true. They must just mean it's thick and rich or something."

Now, as the king of the blended steak smoothy, I'm no stranger to a meaty beverage, but to think that someone could combine my rampant alcoholism with my insatiable need for hickory smoked bacon seemed too insane to be believed.  I mean, this isn't a Disney movie after all - it's the real world. 

Obviously, I ordered the beer, which happened to be Pennsylvania's Victory Brewing Company's Scarlet Fire. 

As soon as it arrived in front of me, and its rich aroma hit my discerning nose, I knew the sky had cracked open and God himself had passed down this beer to my bartender's steady hand, and thus to me.  It SMELLED like Bacon.  It TASTED like bacon! Seriously people, do you have any idea how drunk I could get on a beer that tastes like bacon??????

And that's not even the best part.  This is a whole genre of beer! Rauchbier, or Smoked Beer has been a tradition of that sausage-obsessed people, the Germans, since the 1500's.  Beer Advocate has this to say:

The Rauchbier style is an old German beer style, its origins go back to the 1500's and to the district of Franconia and the town of Bamberg. It's typically of dark colour and has similarities of the Oktoberfestbier. Green malts are literally dried over an open fire of beech wood, imparting a unique smokiness ("rauch" is German for smoke), the usage of which produces beers of an acquired taste. Imagine a smokiness so robust, so assertive, that it tastes of spiced, smoked meat.

Yes, fuckers, imagine that. 

Now that I know this exists, I'm not drinking anything that doesn't taste like bacon anymore.

It used to be a metaphor when I would say shit like, "I'm drunk on bacon", but no more.  Now when I'm drunk on bacon I'm also just plain fucking hammered.

You know, romance is so hard these days.  You meet a nice gal and you want to impress her with a fun  and romantic first date, but modern women are too sophisticated for your average elegant dinner or night at the theater.  They've been there, done that.  They yawn and sigh professionally. 

But I've discovered the most romantic and overlooked date location in DC:

That's right.  That's Sibley Memorial Hospital.  Sure, at Sibley you can get top notch medical care with little to no wait times, but you can also find love. 

Walk into the lobby and you'll find yourself greeted by a player piano serenade and warm, inviting lighting.  It's a perfect place to have a pre-dinner cocktail made from a vending machine soda and whatever mix of liquors currently resides in your hip flask.  Conversation going well? Ask her to dance.  There's space right outside the gift shop.  Hey, doesn't she look lovely tonight? Get her a teddy bear. 

Then, as the night progresses, lead her downstairs to the Windows Cafe, which is the finest hospital cafeteria ever built.  Feast on reasonably priced entrees that change daily.  I can vouch for their stuffed chicken breast slathered in gravy and the baked cod.  Squeeze a little lemon on that cod and taste the rich subtleties of flavor that rise to the surface.  Sample the sushi or salad bars.  Grab a slice of pizza or deli sandwhich.  Get some ice cream or a soda to share.  Be romantic - only get one straw. 

Then, when the meal is over be a gentleman and carry her tray to the conveyor belt.  Take her hand and lead her to the elevator.  Don't forget to grab a Jumbo Honey Bun from the vending machine for later.  She'll be glassy-eyed with desire at this point.  Take her for one more twirl in front of the player piano and kiss her leaning over the shockingly classy information desk. 

You may need to call the nurse.  Your lady will be in cardiac arrest. Flatlined by love.

Sibley.  Romance. Tonight is your night, Bro. 

I don't know about you guys, but 8 out of 10 times when I want to shoot someone, I'm both drunk and in a bar, so I've been really excited to read lately how several intrepid legislatures in progressive states like Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia, have been working hard alongside the altruistic NRA to make it legal for people to carry concealed firearms into their favorite watering holes. 

I mean, you never know when someone is going to disrespect your woman or step on your new snakeskin boots.  Sometimes, someone will just look at your wrong and you just shake your head and slur to yourself, "Motherfugger, IschwearI'llfuggin'killyou, jush you wait." And now you won't have to wait, or even worse, be forced to resort to such kitsch as a broken bottle, barstool to the head, or barbaric fisticuffs.  I mean, this is the 21st century, and we are stylish vigilantes!

But, let's look at this another way, because, like Gandhi, I don't always want to shoot every motherfucker in the room.  For those who worry that allowing people to carry firearms into bars, airports, schools, dentist offices, churches, funeral parlors, petting zoos, nursing homes or PTA meetings will turn society into a violent, lawless pandemonium like the wild west, let me be the first to tell you that the old west wasn't nearly violent enough.  It's all talk. Even infamous Tombstone, Arizona had strict gun laws demanding that folk surrender their firearms.   And that was the problem! In fact, it was these fascist, anti-american, anti-gun laws that led to the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  If that's not an argument for letting people carry guns wherever and whenever the fuck they want I don't know what is.  They don't call 'em peacekeepers for nothing.  Yahoo!

So, either way.  If you're pro shooting people in bars or con, you still need to support this important legislation, because when I'm half in the bag, slurring, stumbling, angry and ready to shoot someone, if you try to take my gun away, it might just be you! 

Actually, I don't really give a fuck because when I go to bars I take my claymore and then you know you're shit out of luck! 

For a long time now, I've been hearing about how great Radiohead's music is.  I hear a lot of words tossed around: brilliant, challenging, intellectual, symphonic, post-modern...blah, blah, blah.

Well, kids, I'm here to tell you it's a sham.  Radiohead sucks.  I remember first hearing them when I was a teenager.  They've always been a pretty whiny band, which is annoying in and of itself ("I wish I was special, you're so fucking special, but I'm a creep"), but over the years they've devolved into something even worse: monumentally pretentious. 

Call me old-fashioned but what I want out of music is something that sounds good and possibly lets me in on a feeling or truth that I hadn't perceived before.  I like to be friends with music, not have in kick me in the balls and try and rape me with a metal corncob. Music can be sad, it can be happy, it can have as its only object the causation of dancing, it can challenge me, make me think, make me cry or laugh - but it shouldn't be shrouded in layers of obfuscation and be the sound equivalent of a cynical temper tantrum.  It shouldn't want to make me bleed. It has to be tuneful and honest, and frankly it really should be about girls.  Bu above all it needs to have the hot blood of humanity pumping through its every beat!! That's key.

Sadly, Radiohead, who certainly could use their powers for good, seems to feel that music should actually annoy you.  It's like a performance art fist to the face.  I don't need the same jarring electronic sound forced into my ears while Thom Yorke screams at me in falsetto about obscure paranoid garbage.  I'll say it again: listening to Radiohead is like being raped by a robot with a metallic corncob. It's painful and alienating.

You know who would like Radiohead?  Hamlet.  That's right, Hamlet.  He'd love it.  Radiohead's music is moody, narcissistic, paranoid, cynical, insane and grating.  It's relentless in its navel gazing.  In fact, let's look at the uncanny similarity right here:

 

Let's look at what Radiohead and Hamlet think about a variety of topics:

1) Radiohead:  

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love

But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run

And it wears me out, it wears me out
It wears me out, it wears me out 

Hamlet:

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world. 

2) Radiohead:
 

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals...calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Hamlet:

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

3) Radiohead:

Flies are buzzing round my head
Vultures circling the dead
Picking up every last crumb
The big fish eat the little ones
The big fish eat the little ones
Not my problem, give me some

Hamlet:

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.

 

You see? Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Radiohead are serious artists and probably even smoke cloves, just as Hamlet is a great play and Shakespeare a genius...however, Hamlet himself is kind of a dick and I wouldn't want to have to be friends with the guy.  And Radiohead sucks and I wouldn't want to have to listen to them.

Radiohead makes cold, alienating, robot-music and I fucking hate it.