(Maybe when a country’s parades consist of a bunch of Pink Floyd video rejects, euthenasia is the best option.)

Up until a couple of minutes ago, I was under the impression that it was some kind of global policy that no country just dies anymore. Like not since Israel or whatever. I mean, how do we justify all those Canadians sitting up there, all unconquered with twice the land and Anne Murrays, and one-third the highways*? Anyway, according to British news, I was wrong.

No!! Belgium!! Chocolate and Audrey Hepburn and jazz harmonica aficionado Jean “Toots” Thielemans! All will be without a national home!

If we’re being honest, I haven’t thought about Belgium since last I gave a shit about World War II history. And you can blame stupid, whiny 90 year old veterans and Cuba Gooding Jr. for the loss of that enthusiasm, by the way. But, I did some research and found out that nothing good has come out of Belgium since Jean-Claude Van Damme and even that is super debatable, depending on how many guns you own.

What the hell is a Flemish? Is that like some kind of outer manifestation of an STD native to flautists? Or, like, one of those knock-off Muppets they use for Broadway plays and after school specials? Perhaps an energetic yet affected gesture from a gay with a nasty head cold? I mean, I’ve already been to Wikipedia once today, I’m not some kind of library scientist. (By the way, for those who have been to Flanders, I have to ask… why, Comrade?)

The dissolution of Belgium raises a whole mess of hard but necessary questions. Like, do we just let it die, or do we shoot it out of a cannon? Or take it out playing minivan and shopping cart chicken in the Walmart parking lot at 2 a.m., like we used to do as kids, and is in my will in anticipation of some mortal illness? I think they would have liked it that way. Since Belgium is rocking the rotating EU presidency, and Belgium dies while the EU is there, does that mean Ireland dies too? Also, who will work our chocolate mines? Either way, we have to figger this soon, because I am not about to give up the great nation – excuse me, Kingdom (what is this, 1267?) – and ancestral home of cartographer Gerardus Mercator** to a bunch of overly articulated puppets with herpes.

*A fun fact I learned from that paragon of television entertainment, VH1′s Pop-Up Video, and its excellent exploration of Canadian pop-rocker Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is A Highway.” Where are we as a species when quality television experiments like that are allowed to die peacefully? Also, true story, I went to the Anne Murray museum on a childhood vacation to Canada, and there’s this electronic board there that lights up when you press buttons to show her lineage, and presumably the evidence of inbreeding that led her to being Anne Murray and Canadians to erect a museum about her. Grab some Horton’s (Canada’s insulting imitation of Dunkin’ Donuts) and check it out.

** Students, you are welcome to cite Scumbag Style in your term papers. Tell them we have JStor or something. They love that.

(Yes, Hunny, I did come out here to escape the shrine to nasty you set up there, but I was also committing suicide, so… maybe you should just go.)

Bruce Jenner looks like a serial killer cut off his own face, and then let Michael J Fox stick it back on with liquid plastic so he could wear it as a mask. Yet he chooses to walk around in public and subject us all to his repulsive visage. So it is amazing that I can sympathize with him when he considers something aesthetically unpleasant. But here we are, agreeing that a picture his wife Kris hung in their bedroom of her sasquatch Kourtney Kardashian goes so far beyond the line of distaste its doing laps around Glee.

Jesus, somebody take a hammer to the light bulbs in that room. Nobody should have to see Kourtney in her spawn-day suit under any conditions, let alone when she’s infected with a tumor that makes her look like a starving African child with Michael Douglas jowels. Sleep tight, Bruce, the second ugliest demon mongoloid of the family is watching you while fondling her pregnant naughty bits. I don’t know where this ‘pregnancy is beautiful’ movement comes from, but I vote we shoot the under-dressed afflicted on sight before stretch marks and well-cooked-lobster-tail vaginas become a regular public sight. This is quickly becoming more of an epidemic than those glamor shots of naked fathers with their naked infant sons.

Golly, the line between art and child abuse used to fall at sailor suits. They hang these things in the mall with the brazenness of an inexplicably rich woman with pictures of her lactating daughters.

I credit Bruce Jenner with the restraint of a monk that he didn’t just blind himself outright with one of those neon tampons the girls have been pimping. Then again, “no” doesn’t seem to be a word he gets to say in his marriage, so maybe he deserved this ocular torture. The only way this could be more uncofortable is if his gynocratic overloards keep his allowance in a safe behind the picture to remind him where the family fortune comes from: the syncronized periods of everyone else that lives in that house.

(This is the part where Marissa Tomei humps the sheets because Hoffman is planning to rob a store or train under Yoda or some shit. If you care, you missed the point.)

I must not have any friends, at all. Because if I did, one of them would have told me three years ago about a little film called Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead. I picked it up the other day because it stars two of Hollywood’s true geniuses (Albert Finney and Phillip Seymore Hoffman) and one of its sickest jokes (Ethan Hawke). But what should have got the Western World’s undivided attention is the most shining example of casting and contract writing I have ever seen, a symphony of film making ingenuity all directors could take a lesson from.

I’m speaking, of course, about the choice to put a clause in co-star Marissa Tomei’s contract that must have read something like, “Nair those pits, hunny, you’re going to be naked and mid-coitus through 90% of your scenes.” While the rest of you imagination deficits have been beating your slim jims to flashes-in-the-pan like Alba, Berry, and the morphotically deformed Jolie, Marissa Tomei has been a babe since before she was legal to even think about whilst going #3 on the can when your wife had a headache. Remember your confusion at how aroused you were watching her alarmingly and hysterically stereotypical portrayal of a big haired 1980s New York Italian chick in My Cousin Vinny? Nothing has changed, except now there’s no doubt why your pants are a tad tighter. That’s like thirty years of running through discerning pervs’ minds wearing nothing but thigh high fishnets and impossibly high heels. It didn’t even take a decade for Angelina to become a boring, saggy mess, not that you’d know from the way you charlatans talk about her.

Devil plunges into its opening scene without offering the viewer lube, with the fireworks of Hoffman’s pale,  doughy ass going to towns on Marissa’s nekkidness from behind. No foreplay for you, dear audience, just a fat guy plowing a hot brunette, which is pretty much how all porn should be. Nothing is hotter than a chick lowering her standards for our viewing pleasure. As far as I can tell, the implication of such is the only reason to watch King of Queens.

You don’t need to pause either, when the sexin’ is done and she finally turns over for the camera and gives a tantalizingly brief view of the immortal nips of a 19 year old. Don’t worry, you’ll spend fifty percent of the film completely missing dialogue as she performs her part topless with a clinical lack of obtrusion. I’m not even sure what the movie is about, if we’re being honest. What I do know is that Marissa Tomei is the most talented actress of all time. What you know, dear reader, is that you always have a friend to turn to when Marissa Tomei gets nekkid, so you’ll never have to feel the betrayal I felt this week. How many Breyers had to die for my recovery? The world may never know.

(If you liked it then you should have put a Ring Ding in it.)

So, from what I gather, Jersey Shore miscreant Snooki’s hairdresser boyfriend Jeff Miranda is ready to settle down and make meticulously coiffed meatball litters with her. I can’t believe you haven’t locked that piece down yet, brother. It would only have taken a bait pizza and an extra-wide hamster cage. I guess her stunning mutant apple cheeks and top heavy midget build finally won him over. When he was a kid, he probably pictured his future wife as a chubby fame whore with a criminal record and thighs that could double as viscous troll clubs. At least we know she can take a domestically necessary punch, right? I’m not saying he’s a male golddigger without a concept of shame, but he ain’t messin’ with no broke  drain on society. Maybe it was her meteorological talents that won him over, but whatever the reason, it’s clear a proposal to solidify a totally real-and-not-overtly-ambitious love between two pillars of the Italian American community cannot be an ordinary one. Here’s what Jeffy-boy landed on:

Has ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ already been repealed? Put your shirt on, homo. Are you proposing marriage or auditioning for a modeling job in Abercrombie & Fitch’s line of camouflage short shorts with Greasy written across the bum? The only thing more hilarious than Jeff’s method of proposal was Snooki’s response, after about a week of silence on the issue, on Twitter:

“Just want to set the record straight. I’m single and I’m not going to get married!”

These people exist like this! If I ever get burned by Snooki, let alone via Twitter, I think I’ll hang myself with my laptop power cord out of shame. His neck might be too thick for strangulation, but I don’t believe for a minute he can’t be killed. He should look into that, when he’s not too busy with his swingers parties he likes so much, and makes us all feel safe he’s ready for a long, sub-Hollywood romantic commitment.

“Jeff loved these parties and he really saw himself as a ‘ladies man’. His favorite party trick was to pour alcohol on naked bodies of women and then lick it off.”

You must be some kind of fucking magician, man! Who needs a deck of cards when you have drunk, ambitious sluts, right? Move over Criss Angel, there is a douchier, almost less talented contender for your darker than dark purple throne.

Haha! If you look close, there’s a coat check at the sex party. Next time you should have an electrical tape check, then you can see how little these girls are excited by your “tricks.” I can see that second chick’s uncomfortable, weirded out smile through the privacy pixelation. She probably doesn’t want your porcupine quills getting lodged in her marmite motorway. Yeah, you should totally get married to the big haired troll of the Jersey beach.

Oh, by the way, I wish you losers would stop referring to yourselves as Guidos. You’ve ruined a perfectly good racial epithet for the rest of us. I’m going to switch back to Wop, but I want you to know I don’t appreciate having to settle for a less precise insensitive term. Also, I’m sure black people hate that it didn’t work as well for them, so try to be sensitive to that.

(What price carbonara? Resist!)

Is anybody else tired of tolerating these Olive Garden commercials? Like they are OK or something? It hurts to think these cultural abortions are influencing anybody to do anything other than drown kittens, let alone eat some linguine. Nobody likes an endless pasta bowl more than my ample ass, but seriously? Olive Garden commercials make me so angry I want to puke tainted blood all over amputee orphans with cancer. In what universe did you earn those ’80s  family sitcom finale belly laughs? Several of them. Not just one offense, but years upon years of disrespecting the consumer by trying to sell a delicious product with lazily written insults to the intelligence of severely, saddeningly retarded people.

Why would you do this to me, Olive Garden? I love your food; your chicken parm, your unreasonable number of varieties of alfredo sauces, your baskets of bread sticks that appear on my table like Jesus himself was in the kitchen zapping things with his multiplying ray.  But on principal, I cannot patronize your establishment until you put a fuckin’ puppet on the teevee singing about spaghetti. I can’t. You have lost a customer, through no fault of your product, but because if some advertising executive duped your stupid asses into thinking this decade long campaign was a good idea, your food can only be poison. Until you stop these commercials, I will tell everyone I know that there’s salmonella swimming around in your tortellini because you have no sense of self-preservation, whatsoever. Oh, and I’ll kill a smiling, nametagged, collared shirt-wearing hostage an hour, so don’t take too long rectifying this. Thank you.

Olive Garden has pulled all their ads from Letterman in response for his jokes about Sarah Palin and her kids.  (here)

Oh. Fucking. Wow. I… didn’t even want to make this political. You didn’t have to try that hard, Olive Garden, I would have hated you if you were performing free abortions in a gay club while distributing free health care to anchor babies in San Fransisco. Your despicable advertisements were enough. Congratulations, Letterman fans, I guess. You’re safe. Hey, Olive Garden! Palin’s family is a disgusting mess of genetically distributed hatred, greedy soul selling, and retarded arm candy! Will you remove your ads from my life?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Geico, yes, you took it too far. Which one? Pick one.

(Man, I hope she pees. Empty the pool!)

That’s right, as of today, people have lost their lunches ONE MILLION TIMES to the horror, the depravity that is SCUMBAG STYLE. For its short nine month existence of selling nothing but bad attitude, that is huge-and-a-half, and – at risk of sounding trite – it could not have been done without you, our faithful minions. Thanks for coming back, time and again, to get your daily fill of guilty belly laughs and vitriolic ammunition to hurl at your stupid friends.

We in the office will be taking the day off and celebrating, and we invite you to give your bosses and professors the finger, and do it Scumbag Style, with a delicious and refreshing Boston Julep, the preferred adult beverage of the sophisticated, discriminating scumbag. Here’s the recipe:

Mix one metric fuckload (approx. 3/4 of your cup) Seagram’s Lime Twisted Gin with whatever Mountain Dew will fit afterward. Stir and proceed to beat your wife with the abandon of an Irishman that’s been given access to a full handle of gin. Repeat (easy if you’re Mormon).

(Wait! Don’t Go! You haven’t told us how to properly stone pregnant women!)

Geraldo Rivera, who will give a one-foot-clearance walrus ‘stache ride to the highest bidder, was the first television personality to tackle the Glenn Beck speech, that I could tell. He had guests ranging from a smattering from FOX’s stable of pretty bubble heads, to Beck pal and civil-rights traitor Alveda “What’s Context?” King, to the blind, flailing activist boxer himself, Al Sharpton. The poor, silly reverend was lambasted with questions about why, in the weeks leading up to the 6 to 500,000 man (depending on who you ask) asskiss, Sharpton and his progressive ilk would rail against the rally. After all, Beck didn’t touch on any political hot buttons, any racial lightening rod topics — he didn’t actually say anything at all. Hey, Seattle Tea Party youth group, glad you got out of bed for the 3,000 mile bus ride to vacuous homily?

Now, unknowingly, Al Sharpton is a puppet of the right wing media, an ignorant talking head  to add to a panel on FOX News to speak for progressives and make them all look stupid. Not the kind of guy we want for the job, but under the circumstances, he comported himself well. He made the point that he wouldn’t have made a big deal out of it all if he had known the message Beck planned to give: a muddy, convoluted argument about something that sounded like “equality and justice for all.” Nobody disagrees that this is important. How could Sharpton have known the speech wouldn’t have been a call to violent revolution, the culmination of all the hate speak and fear-mongering Beck’s two shows are known for? But given a couple of days to think about this, Sharpton might have found something real to bitch about.

Glenn Beck is now a full-on, Hebrew Scriptures prophet. His ass is Jeremiah, motherfucker, and if he sees any backlash to his intentionally tame and cowardly speech on 8/28, he’ll be happy to level up and assume the mantle of Job. He’ll say otherwise in the next week, but the crux of his speech is that he has God’s ear, and God speaks to him. He prayed to God for money for a politically safe cause, and without telling anyone else, ‘received’ $600,000, and more is still pouring in. Wherever did it come from, if not from God? It’s called your bloated paycheck, shithead. It’s the blood money you accrued scaring gullible Americans into arming themselves against the other 3/4 of the country, perpetuating false narratives about Islam and health care, and the birth/theology of the president.

But that’s only a small point. Any televangelist can threaten damnation if a monetary donation isn’t received. On the surface, his hour long tirade that phrased the same point in a hundred different ways, is seemingly innocuous. It’s simple, and it isn’t new. “America needs to put its faith in God.” What’s so bad about that, other than the obvious predicate, “… my God”? We all need to square ourselves with Jesus, and embrace a faith-rich America in which we all agree that some problems can only be solved by “our creator” who is also considered by crazy people like Beck “the founder of our country.” Here’s your first amendment rights, Beck, you’re entitled to them, and we’ll even throw in a free crucifix. Get up on it, and get out of our faces.

The argument sets a dangerous precedent for his all-white, all-protestant audience. It’s a precedence of laziness and violence, permission to shoot from the comfort of your favorite porch chair. The philosophical idea of the terrifying ‘other’ that will eat a society alive, because there will always be that other to punish for the problems of the whole, exactly what this American experiment was designed to avoid. Being right with Jesus is unquantifiable and worse, unobservable in its purest form. We may never be able to tell just how square-with-the-lord every white protestant is, but there’s one thing we can be sure of: people that aren’t white protestant are not part of the solution. They’re part of the problem, and until atheists and members of other religions are eradicated, the United States will never be the shining beacon of peace, liberty, and tolerance we all want it to be. Try to defend new mosques and gay marriage in the face of that! And Shredder would have been perfectly happy to let the Ninja Turtles exist if only they would exist as turtle soup in his tummy. He was so misunderstood, and that scar was probably really itchy, the poor guy.

Of course, being a member of a recognized batshit cult offshoot himself, he’s generously deigned not to pick nits about which white Jesus loves you. I guess being a Mormon, he learned from the best. I bet if you got Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, and Glenn Beck in the same room, the Universe would implode with the concentrated spiritually manipulative powers.

Beck wants to play the victim. He picked his topic wisely, so that he’d be perfectly shielded behind the 1st Amendment and common decency. He will at once play his peaceful religious freedoms against his own intolerance. He’s already started, in his exclusive post-rally interview on FOX. In his speech, he placed himself firmly in the camp of the benevolent Christian God. Then, in a question that simply had to be fed to him on a tiny, plastic Big Bird spoon, he was asked to clarify his earlier statements calling Obama a racist. He said he regrets that statement, and amended it, saying, “I don’t understand Obama’s theology… Liberation theology, which is oppressor and victim.” Outside of his complete misunderstanding of the term – a violent twist that, by the way, calculatingly emphasizes his social-justice-is-unamerican bullshit from a few months ago – is it not retch-inducingly obvious that his speech was not innocuous but a foundation for a new agenda? Let’s do this as simply as possible:

Glenn Beck is a good Christian, and so are you —> Christianity is the only salvation for America —> Glenn Beck understands Christianity, and so is a good one —> But he doesn’t understand Obama’s theology —> Obama’s theology cannot be Christian, and is therefore the enemy ‘other’ Beck alluded to in his speech yesterday —> Oh, and that 20% of Americans that believe the president is a Muslim might not be pulling it directly out of their asses.

This is, of course, all reinforced by Glenn Beck being a prophet, which he totally is, because he subconsciously led you to reach that conclusion about him. How humble he is in the face of that honest-to-goodness miracle of shrewd financial jockeying! How honest and trustworthy, espousing the ideals of Jesus Christ ahead of his own ambition! This guy is a scumbag genius of early pope proportions. Robert Tilton and Ted Haggard are small fries compared to the televangical cunning of Beck, because they didn’t have the foresight to build a political following based on fear before they used God to rape innocents of their cash and dignity. Oral Roberts University’s football team can suck several and varied dicks next to Beck University’s gridiron army.

Did you know, most Canadians are unaware of the ‘theology’ of their leaders? That’s because they don’t care, because they realize a good French Catholic can kill a black hooker in a seedy hotel room as epediantly as a Jew. Sure, publicly announcing your religion can help your constituents assume you hold a set of values that can quickly be looked up in a book (if those values aren’t contrdicted on the next page), but doesn’t that flatten that politician to a 2-dimentional, boring pushover? Again, laziness is encouraged in the political system. FSM forbid you have to learn the specifc ideals of the candidates you are charged with electing. If we all, as Beck suggests, rely on faith on those issues that are just too complicated for us puny humans to comprehend, who the hell is ging to do anything? Justified laziness! If the economic crisis isn’t solved, if more people are killed in hurricanes, it must be because some unworthy American is indulging in sodomy somewhere we can’t see. It can’t be that we just had to buy that hummer, and that government regulations are lax. Do we want a country of politicians and civilians with no sense of personal responsibility, believing God will solve very real problems on Earth? Eat the hairiest, dingleberriest part of my asshole, Glenn Beck, and let me know what your God tells you about those hideous shirt and tie combinations you seem to like to pair with jeans so much. And if you, dear reader, are still planted firmly in Beck’s camp: Do you really want Canada to win?

Got the best hate mail ever yesterday. Thought we should all share in the response. Laugh at this idiot’s expense! Laugh with me, minions!

Scumbags,

You’re. Not. Funny. I have been reading your ‘zine religiously for some time, but I won’t be anymore. I can’t figure out how, but when I do, I am unfollowing you on Twitter. My first public unfollow, I’m telling everyone… I’ve outed myself as a person who doesn’t like to see animals mistreated… You’re [I hate you] husbands are free game still. Technically males still class as humans. Scum enjoy other scum, I guess.

Try intelligent humor,
Mz TQ

Dear Mistake,

I can only imagine that’s what your vanity plate internet moniker stands for. It’s a compliment, really, assuming the honesty of your dear mother. I can’t really tell with my dick in her mouth, but it looks like she honestly wants what’s coming, so…

I believe you’d be referring to SBS’s recent light-hearted exploration of the hilarity that is the bunny-on-kitten rape phenomenon, as the hate mail came later that day. Seriously, how much of a space cadet do you have to be to draw the line at that article? I was expecting hate mail for the recent 3 post discussion between our writers defending the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque,” a relevant issue that apparently merits less attention than cute animals gettin’ it on. Scumbag Style makes no apology about viciously mocking the suffering of people all over the world, of all walks of life: raped altar boys, deformed children, idiot rednecks. Real, actual people, with a memory span of more than three minutes. But it’s the classically hysterical inter-species interaction that made you drop us on Twitter? This is my pouty face.

Listen, Sarah MacLesbo, let’s drop the animal charity crap until the people in the world are taken care of. I don’t find husband abuse particularly funny, but you don’t see me sending hate mail to your p.o. box at the biker bar. And anyway, this isn’t exactly a case for PETA, bitch. It’s a Saget voice-over away from the $10,000 prize on ‘AFV.’ Cats aren’t supposed to be sexually victimized by rodents, they’re supposed to eat them (and noone writes hate mail to mother nature for that). It’s not my fault this feline failure got the long steel shaft of Darwin up its puckered asterisk. It’s not anyone’s fault, because no person was involved. In the meantime, the video exists; are we supposed to not laugh at it? Sounds to me like you’d rather this poor animal was violated in vain. What kind of monster are you?

As for your discontinued patronage, happier trails than the stomachs of your manly conquests, whore. We don’t need fairweather readers who bail after 300 posts because one offended them. Either everything is fodder for mockery, or nothing is, that’s how comedy works. That and the unexpected exchange of power, which is exactly why the bunny rape video is so funny. When you got your hack job Tijuanan sex change, you should have told them to be more careful to leave your sense of humor.

Jump in front of trains,
Scumbag Style

Got something to say, and need a new hole ripped? Clicky click, Mr. Sticky:

(You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not have a lunch hamper that exceeds 51cm x 33cm x 20cm)

Just in time to fill the need for a major distraction from a fresh sex scandal, reigning king scumbag Pope Benedict has stirred up some excitement about his upcoming visit to the UK. As part of the fun, his office has issued a list of banned items pilgrims are not to show up with. The Pope? Ban something? Why, that’s so unlike… Aw, shit, I sprained my sarcasm muscle.

This isn’t new, it’s tradition for the fake emperor to hold the souls of a nation hostage until a list of demands are met, and a getaway vehicle is provided with bullet proof glass and at least three child car seats in the back. It’s kind of like a rock star rider, except instead of a bowl of all orange Skittles and a bottle of Dom to pour on groupies, the pope wants your last vestige of dignity. Blimey!

Candles, animals, musical instruments [especially vuvuzelas], bulky hampers [that's British for picnic baskets, which is silly because they are the only people that would be caught dead with one] and alcohol are among items banned from the public events during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain next month because “they could pose a threat to others”. (Guardian)

For every bottle of beer the pope sees, one altar boy gets a facial. So unless you’re a Catholic and silently approve of that kind of thing, you’d better pregame. In a rare move, contraception isn’t explicitly banned, so the homily is probably a good time to bang and not grow another living tumor. It is unclear just how far the Pope imagines his jurisdiction extends, or indeed where he gets off banning anything in another country, but I suppose once you get used to something, its hard to kick the habit. Even less clear is what the punishment will be if someone does bring a banned item, but I imagine two ‘Hail Marys’ won’t cut it. It’s hard to take the chance when someone’s holding excommunication over your head all the time. Enough violations and the Pedo-Parade probably won’t come back at all in the future, and you don’t want that. Imagine how many jobs will be lost when the demand for anal-guards and mace drops to nil.

I’m surprised the British are down to be dictated to, considering their long, proud history. Normally you need to start your list of demands with something snappy like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” When in the Course of human events, a foreign dignitary representing a criminal organization has the balls to parade down our streets and demand shit of us, patient sufferance can lick our collective sacks. Now is not the time for your fabled politeness, mates. If nobody has the balls to kick this guy in the junk as soon as he steps off the plane, you better hope the UK’s supply of Vaseline will hold out for another decade or so, because nobody should have to see an 8 year-old’s ruptured anus. Somebody resurrect Henry VIII so he can remind his holiness what the English really think of the Catholic Church. “I see on your list you neglected to ban my size 13 boot up your ass.” Now that was a man that could demand a taint wash from uppity bitches in silly hats.

Not to dwell on this, but in America, we put dirty clothes in our hampers, not things we intend to eat. Stop being weird, England.

By Sean “Panty Raid” Torrie
“…You react to my riposte.” – The wonderfully redundant Maximo Park

(Remember: You’re probably high, and “Penguins of Madagascar” is probably on.)

Follow the Irish discussion (read: drunken verbal fisticuffs): Post 1, Post 2

Our dear Mr. Hurley was rarely one I saw as an optimist outside of locations where India Pale Ale were available, but when I see someone else having a more negative outlook on something than I do: I worry. That or I explain that you can’t find the perfect guy because he doesn’t exist and someone’s going to have to pop your shallow little bubble one of these days, and it might as well be someone who does so in a realistic way and then points out that fairy tales aren’t real, and you can’t be a princess after your 21st birthday, unless you actually are royalty. Princess Diana got a divorce, no less.

Mark has always been a bit of a philanthropist in the best way he could be. I’m certain that in no small part this site operates as a means to vent and explain why most people are idiots to the other smart kids. This way we don’t feel stupid for not understanding why other people act the way they do. But when I see his view as our national experiment as a failure, I wonder how close to winning, and breaking our spiritual backs the terrorist efforts are.

I always go back to the Irish, because it’s the crutch I can walk on when I need a minority. I’m sure there were plenty of those scummy Catholics in this country before 1840, but after the potato famine, they were a major issue. The predominantly protestant nation was uncomfortable with what they saw as Rome’s foothold on our eastern shore. Worse yet, stubborn people that we are, I’m sure they were adamant about keeping and aggressively defending their faith and lifestyle as they carried the shattered remains of it to these shores. You can look at this as any other culture-shock our country has had to deal with, but with more booze and tubers.

It took at least 15 years and a civil war before they even kinda gave these pasty bastards a shot, and another 40 or 50 before the Irish transitioned to being just-another-group here. At least they don’t smoke all that opium like those Asians all do. All of them. All Asians smoke poppy resin.

On top of having been a major minority a decade ago, the Muslim population has doubtlessly exploded since… ya know… two or three of their nations have become unlivable after they were… invaded… and they needed somewhere ironic to move to. Despite my personal AIM screen name, and what it implies of my limited faith in humanity, I have a decent amount of faith in our nation’s ability to grow up, admittedly slowly.

What we’re really suffering from right now is entirely too much media, with entirely too much free speech. I realize how much hypocrisy there is in me typing that here. It’s the same problem that I’m seeing with the mosque at ground zero. There is an essential level of lacking good taste.

Good taste dictates that you don’t air assholes that will say ANYTHING for fanfare, and that you don’t give them television shows or websites to continue to spew complete crap. However, there’s a whole lot of money to be made out of bad taste. I use all the music channels as my example, and that’s without making a single Fox News joke, or making puns at the expense of Rachel Maddow.

Because of that, you’ve got media moguls out there that will air what ever they damned well please, because they’ve become so detached from reality because of the absurd amount of money they make that they simply don’t care what they force into the minds of lesser mortals. I have a remedy for this, as I had presented a remedy for the mosque issue: stop watching that crap. The only reason the world feels like it’s falling apart is because we’ve got 100 times as much news coverage as we did 20 years ago, and peace doesn’t sell, but human suffering sure as shit does.

The great Masonic American Experiment hasn’t failed just yet, it’s just bombed another semester. It’s cool, we’re attending a private university where your GPA can move around a whole lot, so long as you keep paying your extortionist tuition, and promise to make it up next semester. Oh, tuition goes up this year, by the way. We should have mentioned that, sorry.

All we have to do is prove that the experiment in the Middle Eastern lab we did on nation-building worked, and not invade any more sorority houses. Also not get caught with any more illegal substances. It’ll be a lot easier if our dorm mate Mexico could curb his drug problem. Maybe if we held an intervention for him it’d improve our overall campus rep.