Sunday: It was the fortieth anniversary of the Stone Wall raid, and somebody at the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission made a big, big mistake. Half a dozen police officers and about as many TAB employees conducted a “routine inspection of a newly-opened gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge,” in Forth Worth. Some of the officers allege that bar patrons made sexually explicit gestures, and accused one man of grabbing an officer’s crotch. Chad Gibson, 26, “fell” and is, as of posting day, still in the hospital recovering from a fractured skull and internal bleeding. I’m in no position to blame the officers or call this a “gay bashing,” but you’d think someone might have wanted to reschedule this particular check up.

Monday: “Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the ‘Ellie May,’ a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.” That, my friends, is the winner of the San Jose State University’s annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Written by David McKenzie, 55, of Federal Way, Washington, this sentence was deemed the worst possible opening to a novel. The prize, “is named after Victorian writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his 1830 novel ‘Paul Clifford,’ with the much-quoted, ‘It was a dark and stormy night … ‘”

Tuesday: Kari Huus, writing for msnbc.com, interviewed Farah Pahlavi, the widow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and former empress of Iran. Living in exile since 1979, she gives a unique perspective to this whole ordeal. Read the interview here (interview)

Wednesday: “Mexican authorities say two professional wrestlers found dead in a low-rent hotel in the capital may have been drugged to death by female robbers. (AP)” This is misleading. These men weren’t just any luchadores, they were La Parkita (Little Death) and “Espectrito Jr.” What kind of drugs, and in what dose, must these women have given these robust men to kill them? Well, uh… they were midgets. “Midget wrestlers.” Not my word, it was in the headline. Apparently prostitutes and drug traffickers in Mexico use this tactic a lot, but most of the time the men just wake up a few hours later in some crummy hotel room. Unfortunately, this robbery proved fatal. RIP, little warriors.

Thursday: Oh, so you got a shiny, fancy new iPhone, huh? What about when it gets stolen and now some thief has access to your twitter and gmail? Apple is thinking ahead, and created the Find My iPhone App, which can allow you to track your stolen phone and erase the data on it. Maverick Mobile has an app that allows you to send a text message to your phone to activate a loud alarm. Something tells me iPhone thieves aren’t so much after your passwords as they are the crack money they can get for your gadget.

Friday: Unless you have grown and/or raised it yourself, there is no such thing as organic food. And the USDA knows it. It was revealed that over 90% of “organic” baby formula contains synthetic additives that, three years ago, were banned from foods carrying the label. “The government’s turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff (Kindy and Layton, Washington post).” Also, Kraft owns Boca, and Coca-cola owns Honest Tea. Quit wasting all your money on this organic fad.

Saturday: Hey, Honduras! How’s it going? Hey, look, I, uh… gosh, this is hard to say, but, um… look, we really like you and all. Remember that summer in Roatan? Good times… Look, it’s just that the UN is really kind of pissed off, and the OAS isn’t too happy, either. I mean, they said they might kick you out if you don’t let Pres. Zelaya back in. I’m not going to pretend I know the whole story, but… with Iran and all… could you just, kind of, knock it off? No, no, not knock HIM off, I meant… Listen, we’re bringing a bunch of our soldiers back from a desert, and they really don’t want to head right back out to the tropics, you know? Can’t you just, you know, vote, or write a petition or something? (PS: Make up your own opinion of the domestic struggle in Honduras, at the moment I prefer to let the country work this out on its own.)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.

Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.

Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.

Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if  they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly.

He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him,
and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson
home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire.. The home was destroyed,
and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed.

The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying.

Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests
and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.

So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It’s not much to ask for the price they paid.

Naturally, this annoys the everliving fuck out of us.

However, rather than deleting good comments from asshole spammers I’ve decided I shall take a new approach. I will take an approach that, at least for me, is more… fun.

Take a look over to the right, in the comments field. When you see a comment with the name of “Spammer Commenter,” you’ll know it’s from someone that we felt was promoting an product other than a simple comment upon the issue. If you see “Dubious Assbag,” it will be from someone who didn’t leave a spam comment per se, but instead left an agenda comment of sorts. A good example of this happens any time we post a political article and someone chimes in with a comment that has nothing to do with the subject in question. They’re not a spammer, but they are most likely an assbag.

So, that’s that. Let me know what you think. Oh, and one fnal note- we are an equal opportunity mocking site, and as such it doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you come from- if you’re an assbag, we’ll note it.

Out.

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she will resign from office July 26.
Her spokesman wouldn’t say why Palin decided to step down, but the announcement stirred speculation that she would focus on a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination for president.

Being a bit of a headline-first-story-later news maven, my initial reaction was something like, “oh god, we’ve finally pushed this woman over the edge.”

An anecdote: There was this girl in my freshman English class, back in high school. She sticks in my mind as being spoiled and stupid because of one answer she gave in class. One. Several people in class were having a hard time identifying with Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Our teacher asked us to imagine what it might be like to so openly share with an audience the most horrible experience of our lives. Some people in the room spoke about siblings dying or parents getting divorced, and this girl said, the worst thing that ever happened to her was when her father sold her pony (aside: who the hell really has a pony?). Word spread through the whole school within the week, and every move this girl made for the next six months was picked apart with the kind of cruelty that only fifteen year old girls can create. Junior year, one of my friends mentioned the pony story, and someone asked,
“Whatever happened to that girl?”
“She got all sad because everyone was picking on her. She changed schools or something.”
“Oh whatever. Who does that?”

The heartless teenager in me wanted this to be Palin’s story. The tax paying voter in me is terrified by that running for president bit. It is terrible, but I want Palin to fade in to memory. I am sick of seeing her face and her kids and hearing all of her stupid sound bites. However, as much as journalists resemble nit-picking schoolgirls, some politicians have moved beyond those kinds of games. Make no mistake, I don’t think Gov. Palin is as oblivious as everyone (i.e. myself) has made her out to be. I imagine she will be moved to some underground bunker to be groomed in to the SuperPresidentMom the GOP wanted her to be in 2007. I think of this, because that girl from high school is now married and helps run a successful family business.

Hell hath no fury, people. Watch out.

The above quote is from Gov. Mark Sanford, speaking candidly about his extramarital affair. But, in the style of most Americans, not quite candidly enough. So, what, they went to dinner and a movie? Cuddled on the couch? In his own words, Sanford described the tryst as, “a whole lot more than a simple affair… it’s a love story.” Did they dance by moonlight and look knowingly into each other’s eyes, kissing for only the briefest of moments before turning away. Were they, like Francesca and Paolo, seduced by reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, damning themselves forever to the second ring of Dante’s Hell? Inquiring minds, people!

The new angle, of course, is that Gov. Sanford may have been unfaithful, but he didn’t really cheat. Much like when Former Pres. Clinton claimed that oral sex wasn’t really “sex,” there seems to be some crucial barrier in the American psyche between intercourse, and every other possible thing. I refuse to allow my general distaste for Sanford to cloud my belief that a politician’s personal life is none of my business. I will criticize him for abandoning his post and coercing his assistants to lie for him, but I know just as well as everyone else that one can truly believe in family values and good Christian ethics and still screw up in a massive and very public way. My biggest worry is that these figure heads of abstinence-only education are really kind of missing the point.

Abstinence, as it was taught in my Catholic school by Sister Mary Trisha, does not mean just abstaining from penetrating heterosexual intercourse. It means choosing to avoid all temptations, even kissing with an open mouth. Everything that gave you any kind of erotic pleasure was sex, and experiencing that feeling with anyone other than your spouse (even if you were alone) was a sin. The only birth control we needed was a buttoned up sweater, as nothing should be progressing so far as to require crossing our legs. There was no fuzzy line at Our Lady of Mercy, where holding hands in the hallway could get you detention.

What is the great difference between flying halfway around the globe to meet a woman for coffee, a woman you admit to having great feelings for and whom your wife has expressly told you not to visit, and going to have sex with the same woman? Is one a greater betrayal than the other? Say you did go there to have sex, you were both naked, but it never progressed to intercourse. Does that make any real difference? For Sanford, the “ultimate line” is her bikini line, not the ticket line at the airport. A study from The Kinsey Institute, “based on a 1991 survey of 599 college students, found that women in general were less likely than men to consider oral sex or mutual masturbation as having ‘had sex.’ Of the women, 37 percent considered oral sex as, well, sex. Forty-four percent of men did. A second survey in 1996 asked ‘Is oral sex “real” sex?’ About 52 percent of the men said yes, but only 46 percent of women did.” (AP) There has got to be some connection between this cult of virginity (hey, if oral sex isn’t sex you can blow every guy in the state and still be pure) and the rise of a mutant strain of drug resistant gonorrhea (for real). It is, really and truly, none of my business what Gov. Sanford did or did not do in Argentina, but since he chose to volunteer this information to us, I’ve just got to say I’m disappointed. He may have done everything else buy have sex with this woman, but for all the trouble it’s caused him, he might as well have.

I havent slept more than two hours at a time in the past 4-5 days. Thus, I’m fucking exhausted.

But I will say this- if given the chance, I would go back in a heartbeat. It was wonderful.

Out.

Here is the information from KXAN’s site:

Sunday: Vote tampering has been confirmed in the Irania election. Chatham House, a London based research organization, “showed that in two provinces where Mr. Ahmadinejad won a week ago, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.” (NYT) Also, check the list of journalists and politicians arrested in Iran and support however you can. http://tehranbureau.com/list-imprisoned-iranian-journalists-politicians/

Monday: Jon and Kate are getting divorced. Their one hour super special special episode special featured the kids getting playhouses (one was a haunted house, it was badass) and Kate picking a fight over where to put the playhouses. Also, Jon had both of his ears pierced and then the final half hour was just Kate pretending to cry in solo couch interviews. I have traveled to mid-state Pennsylvania to try and get a one on one interview with Jon (but mostly to visit you, Mom). I arrived in State College just in time to see Jon buy a round of flaming Dr. Pepper’s for the girls of Alpha Phi and toast to freedom. No joke. Spread the word.

Tuesday: A conservative off shoot of Simon and Schuster (I don’t know either) has offered Former VP Richard B. Cheney a chance to write his memoirs of his life in politics. I guess it makes sense, the only vice president to ever make any sort of impact whatsoever should probably get another word in. (“We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”) Or maybe not….

Wednesday: Until recently, I never had much reason to prefer Georgia to South Carolina. The roads are terrible in both states, it’s hot as hell everywhere, and both have peaches (SC has more, GA’s are better). However, Sonny Perdue never abandoned the state to fark someone halfway around the world. Thank you, Governor Mark Sanford! One thing: I do not believe the tears in your apology. The flight to Argentina is long. It’s really long. You had plenty of time to think of how much of a bad decision this was going to be. Also, who spends five days “crying in Argentina?” Who are you, Evita?

Thursday: Are you kidding, nothing at all happened on Thursday. Most boring news day in history. (RIP Farrah, MJ)

Friday: Oh, right, Michael Jackson died. Nothing happened on Friday either. Lots of people crying, some prisoners danced to Thriller. Watch the video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o)

Saturday: Saturday I sat on my uncle’s couch, played crossword puzzles, and read comic books, so I have no idea what happened. The answer 14 across was “Sidewinder.” The two-part two time US Open winner (7 down, 10 across) was Ernie Els. Hey, did the US beat Spain in soccer?

In my tire.  And of course no road hazard on the used 4runner I just bought plus the fact that its past 30 days since I bought the 4runner so the dealer washes its hands clean…

Good riddance. Your family and others may grieve, and they have the right to. From myself (and I know of at least one other person on the site who would agree with this), I say this…

Rot in hell, you sick fuck.

Out.

Michael Jackson has been taken to a hospital in Los Angeles after paramedics responded to a 911 call at his home. He was reported in cardiac arrest. Jackson was not breathing when they arrived. Paramedics attempted to revive him.

TMZ says he’s dead (here): don’t trust ‘em. They jump the gun on everything and fake apologize later.

MSNBC says not yet (here).

I’m watching Wolf Blitzer report on CNN, and he’s choosing his words very carefully. No one inside the hospital is reporting anything, and family members are en route.

I’m holding out hope, because I have to. He was strange, very strange, but he was (is) the King of Pop.

Long may he reign.

I’ll keep you posted.

—-

6:24 pm Eastern: from MSNBC.com

Official reports claim Jackson is in a coma.

“Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda told the newspaper that Jackson was not breathing when paramedics arrived at his home and CPR was performed.

The pop star’s immediate condition is not known, but TMZ.com is reporting that he may have suffered cardiac arrest.”

—

6:26 pm Eastern: from MSNBC.com

“The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson has died at age 50 after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center.”

—

6:29 pm Eastern:from MSNBC.com

“[Michael Jackson's] lifetime record sales tally is believed to be around 750 million, which, added to the 13 Grammy Awards he received, makes him one of the most successful entertainers of all time.”

—

7:00 pm Eastern:

CNN reports: The LA Coroner’s Office confirms that Michael Jackson has died.

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

—

he came into your apartment
he left the bloodstains on the carpet
then you ran into the bedroom
you were struck down
it was your doom

annie are you ok
so, annie are you ok
are you ok annie

A little tip. When trying to mollify a growing discontent and attempts at revolution, showing your people a three movie marathon built around a small group of people fighting insurmountable odds to defeat a monstrous ruler and winning might not be the best of choices.

Just Sayin’.

Out.

The first was a bonafide hero, serving in two wars for his country. He then followed it up with 50 years of being in our homes, serving 30 of them next to a legend.

The other was an icon in her own right, being the face (and body) that defined sex for a generation (or two) of men from the 1970s and 80s. Not only was she a sex symbol, but she could also perform as an actress better than many. She earned several Emmy nominations over the years and was well-respected, even when she played the “ditzy blonde” to the hilt.

A tribute to two television icons, for whom the broadcast waves are a little less funny for their loss.

Out.