The Seed Of The Jackass

The liberal branch of the Democratic Party has of late seemingly followed the path of its Stalinist roots-take two steps forward, one step back. Although the narrow passage of the House version of the current medical reform bill is seen as a big victory, it came at a huge cost for the liberal Democrats. Thanks in large measure to the input of the Catholic Church, federal funding of abortions under the new plan would be off the table.

Step back and chew on that for a minute, then digest it fully, because it is more comprehensive than it sounds at first glance. Not only can a patient not use the government option to invest in abortion coverage, but-and here's where it really gets sticky, and seems ripe for a court challenge-they also can not use any tax credits they might receive in order to purchase abortion coverage, not even from a private plan. If I understand it right, if they purchase abortion coverage, they lose their tax credit. Period, end of story, no ifs, ands, or buts. No exceptions, in other words, for rape, incest, or life and/or health of the mother.

That is remarkable. It is a sure sign that the current Howard Dean strategy of attracting conservative candidates in order to make the Democratic Party more competitive in red states, while it has met with more success than any might have imagined, seems to have had unforeseen consequences.

Here's the part where it really gets complicated. No one is surprised in the least that conservative Democrats would use their clout in such ways as to limit if not outright end abortion on demand, but no one saw this coming. They should have, but they didn't. I should have too, but I didn't see it coming either.

In this case, the Catholic Church has sided with the more conservative, Blue-Dog Democratic constituency and it's congressional coalition. Talk about strange bedfellows. The Catholic Church voters within the Democratic Party, after all, make up one of its more liberal, progressive wings.

They are adamantly for peace, for environmental protections, for minimum wage, for all kinds of liberal social programs, they are steadfastly against the death penalty-and, if all that is not enough, they are even for a liberalized immigration policy, for God's sake. If it weren't for their positions in staunch opposition to abortion and euthanasia, you would fully expect to see them raising their voices in support of a single-payer universal health care system. Wait, come to think of it, I think they did that, though as luck would have it, even the clout of the Catholic Church has its limits. There is no denying, however, that it is considerable.

Remember when Joseph Stalin sneeringly asked how many divisions the Pope has? What foolish old Joe never realized was-he did not have a chance in hell of being elected Pope, whereas the Pope-well, he doesn't exactly need a battalion, does he?

Does this mean abortion is on the way out? No, of course not. There can never be too many conservative judges in a country as divided as ours. And I mean that quite literally. There can just never be enough, let alone too many. There are far too many moderate judges to swing either way, and when it comes to the abortion issue, they tend to swing left, be it ever so slightly. It just doesn't look good for such a prospect for now. But the times-well, they are a changing.

The way the wind is blowing lately harbors a lot of sentiment in the direction of a constitutional amendment, whereas the growing strength of the Blue Dog coalition, and the ever-growing clout of the Catholic Church in both mainstream political parties, makes that scenario sound not quite so far-fetched.

It's gotten to the point where even an influential member of the Kennedy clan-none other than Representative Patrick Kennedy, son of Ted-is openly criticized by the Church for his support of abortion rights. It has gotten so bad between he and the Bishop of Rhode Island, the Bishop canceled a scheduled meeting between himself and the Rhode Island Congressman, ostensibly arranged to try to work things out between the two of them.

Now, I sure didn't see that one coming. Is this by any chance a portent of things to come? Could this be a harbinger of the glad tidings of a coming split within the Democratic caucus? Could this in time lead to yet another Democratic Party exodus to the ranks of Republicans? Or could the Democratic Party itself possibly be in the process of undergoing a change in social philosophy, if in no other area than in the contentious area of abortion rights? Could that actually lead to a migration of liberal voters to some other political entity, such as the Greens?

Probably no, on all fronts. It bears repeating that abortion rights gets the short end of the stick for no other reason than the influence of the Catholic Church, which, again, tends to be very liberal on most other social, political, and economic policies. They might carry the day on a major piece of legislation such as this one, where it is pertinent, but this is unlikely to amount to much in the way of a major ideological shift within the Democratic Party beyond this issue. In fact, it has not amounted to such a shift now. It is nothing more than a single-issue defection, but it is a defection which threatened to torpedo a much desired and agonized over body of work-such as it is.

I guess not all Democrats are taken with the idea of butchering baby Democrats, even if those babies parents are, in great measure, from the more liberal wing of the party. For now, those that look upon abortion rights as a sacred humanitarian duty to uphold, and upon Roe v Wade as the closest thing to sacred writ they could ever imagine, don't seem quite to know how to deal with the unseemly dilemna. The Catholic Church, the oldest predominantly liberal (of late) organization in the world, has in effect committed what they must look upon as a heresy of the worse magnitude. And they have done so, hand in hand with a coalition of politicians who are the closest thing the Democratic Party could possibly produce that could hope to pass for conservative.

The moral of this story-whether you are a liberal Democrat, or a Blue Dog Democrat, you are, politically and culturally speaking, just one more suicidal ass.

Berlin Wall 20th Anniversary-The Big Picture

World leaders from across the globe have recently attended ceremonies in Berlin to mark the occasion when the Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago.

It was an historic event, to be sure, and certainly one which is worthy of world recognition. For more than twenty-five years, the wall stood as a symbol of oppression, and when it finally fell, it marked the beginning of a new era, a day when, at last, citizens of the all-but-extinct communist Soviet satellite state known as the German Democratic Republic-better known by most as East Germany-could finally travel freely past the border that had previously marked the east and west boundary of the German nation, bringing with them their hopes, dreams, and plans for the future.



Now, once again, we have a united Germany, by God. And don't you forget it.

V Is For Vacuous

Sorry, I just don't see what all the fuss is about. It's not that V is a terrible show. In the great scheme of television programming, it's just ordinary, and all the references to the Obama Administration in what has to be seen as an obvious attempt to appear topical and relevant, is not going to change that.

So buying into the advertising hype and the concomitant critical appraisals, I watched the opening premiere episode. It started off with a series of ever more ominous, threatening, and intensifying earth tremors, all leading to the revelation of an approaching group of interplanetary vessels, of huge size and of obviously advanced design, all eventually hovering over the major cities of the earth.

The leaders of the Visitors, played by Morena Bacarrin, pictured above, formerly of Firefly (as well as the spin-off feature film Serenity) somehow managed to address the entirety of the earth's population at once, in each of earth's major languages, simultaneously, assuring a worldwide captive audience of their peaceful intent and promises of sharing their advanced technology.

Now, if you're stupid enough to buy this premise, I have no doubt that you were probably inclined to go out and mindlessly purchase every item presented to you in the first round of advertisements. As it happens, by the time that first set of commercials was over and the next segment of this premiere episode aired, most of earth's population seemed ready to embrace the visitors and their line of smooth talking bullshit-just like that.

If you hadn't been paying attention up to this point, you might well have assumed the "aliens" were little more than a group of Mexican smugglers who just raced their marijuana or cocaine-laden van past a border checkpoint.

Actually, most of the earth's inhabitants as portrayed in this series don't even seem to display as much concern over the more fantastic scenario actually portrayed as most folks would betray over such a group of illegal earth style aliens. By the time the episode was half over, the Vatican has even issued a statement to the effect that the Visitors, as everyone calls them, are also God's creatures and should be treated with trust and understanding. Seeing as how everybody already seems collectively enthralled by the aliens by now, the Vatican's position seems to be somewhat unnecessary-even pointless.

But of course, there are a few characters who distrust the visitors. One of them is a Priest who tells his superior that "rattlesnakes are God's creatures too". There are others as well who are determined to resist the Visitors and the snake oil they are selling. In fact, few people seem to be aware that the Visitors are, in fact, snakes, come to earth for the sole purpose of first enslaving man, and then devouring him (assuming this pointless remake adheres to the plot of the original nineteen eighties series).

Even the FBI seems more determined to hunt down a terrorist cell than to concern itself with the fact that an interplanetary race of highly advanced beings of humanoid appearance has just appeared over all the major cities of earth and promised the inhabitants, in effect, the moon and the stars, in exchange for seemingly nothing but the right to grace us with their presence.

But of course, as fate would have it, this terrorist cell is actually a small group of people who are determined to resist the alien incursion. Some of these people include: a female FBI agent who is worried about her son's infatuation with the Visitors, which he has entertained to such an extent that he has, along with his best friend, signed up as a youth ambassador at the behest of an attractive blond visitor; a television news anchor, played by Scott Wolf (who bears a striking resemblance to Michael J. Fox), who is concerned about the Visitor's insistence that any interviews granted him must not ever portray the Visitors in a negative light; the priest; and finally, a black man, who in reality happens to be one of the "good Visitors", and, having fallen in love with an earth woman, is determined to save mankind from itself and it's fatal infatuation.

What do all these seemingly disparate characters have in common, other than the urge to fight to save humanity? Unfortunately, that would be the fact that they are all precisely the cliche' ridden, cardboard characters they sound like they are. The dialogue of this show is also standard hackneyed claptrap. Frankly, I could toss a bunch of Scrabble letters around and probably end up with better dialogue than was written for this episode.

What is worse, there was absolutely nothing that happened that made me care about what I just saw, or inspire me to wonder what was going to happen next. In a series where the laws of human nature are ignored, and where the accepted standards of natural reaction and common sense behavior seem to have eloped off together to parts unknown, it becomes obvious that as time goes on, no one else is much going to care. The truth is just too far out there, and not in a good way.

The series will air for four episodes during November sweeps, after which it will return for the remainder of its run in March of next year under new management. If it doesn't change drastically by that time, I have an idea most viewers will have lost their ill-founded infatuation with this series long before the fictional earthlings of this vapid program have recovered from their delusions about the Visitors.

Islamic Terrorism? Let's Call It What It Really Was-Treason

That is what I would designate the recent attacks at the Fort Hood Texas Army base committed by recently promoted Major Nidal Malik Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, of all things, apparently due to be stationed in either Iraq or Afghanistan, a future deployment which may have in fact been the major motivation behind the psychotic onslaught against his fellow American soldiers.

And make no mistake, Hassan was an American, born and raised in this country, though a son of Palestinian immigrants and a lifelong Muslim.

Yet, a perusal of his records is enough to make one wonder why he was promoted, and for that matter why he was not given a general discharge. That in fact would have been a kindness. He was obviously unfit for duty. I am not so quick as some others to ascribe political correctness for the reasons many of his antics were overlooked. Frankly, there is a heavy shortage of Arabic speaking soldiers and translators, and he filled a need he had no desire to fill.

But that is just the beginning. This is a man noted to engage in pro-Islamic diatribes against Americans and against his fellow soldiers, a man who applauded the actions of a recent Islamic convert in the shooting deaths of two Arkansas Army recruiters. This was a man who expressly stated at a public meeting that non-Muslims deserved to be beheaded, or set on fire. This was a man who stated that Muslims should strap suicide belts on and pay a visit to Times Square in New York.

This was a very seriously disturbed individual, and claims that he was harassed by his fellow soldiers due to his Islamic faith, even if true to some extent, does not by any stretch of the imagination begin to excuse his actions.

In fact, this attack might have been in the planning stages as far back as May or this year, when a blog entry was written by a man who used as his screen name Nidal Malik Hassan. In it, Hassan compared the recent heroism of an American soldier who jumped on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow American soldiers as an act of heroism akin to the actions of a suicide bomber who kills American soldiers in order to save Muslim lives.

Although the journal is currently being investigated, there has yet been no definitive proof offered that it is the same Nidal Malik Hassan. Still, it is a chilling document. As for Major Hassan, he is now paralyzed as the result of the bullets which put an end to his rampage, and he languishes now on a ventilator. He might well possibly spend the rest of his life in that condition, which will make any trial of him problematic at best.

That is too bad, as there needs to be a trial, a trial on charges of treason. Whether the death penalty is implemented, although it is certainly warranted, is not of major concern. It is actually a lesser issue in comparison to the need to set the example that this type of activity should not be allowed to stand, or be excused, or explained away. It should be designated exactly for what it is-the actions of a demented, depraved individual who abused the rights and privileges of his position of power and responsibility, and dishonored his country and his uniform, all for the insane tenets of a barbarous seventh century Middle Eastern style Orthodoxy that is best left to the confines of a museum, or for that matter, a zoo, albeit one not fit for any of nature's nobler beasts.

I do not fault any of the major news medias, at first glance, for failing to report the facts of Hassan's Islamic faith, even though the mere reporting of his name made it seem painfully obvious as to what was going on. I would assert that it would have been quite legitimate for the question to be raised. Having said that, I can certainly understand why they would feel compelled to not jump the gun or, as the saying goes "rush to judgment", even if the judgment was in fact staring us in the face with fingers flapping about the ears while a big long tongue stuck out at all of us. Obvious assumptions are not facts until they are confirmed as such. I get that. I just wish they would be consistent about it. For example, I would wish they would be willing to report the facts when they are confirmed as such, as opposed to filing them away when it is convenient to do so. These are what you call crimes of omission, and you can include among their numbers the crime I alluded to earlier which occurred in Arkansas, when a Muslim convert gunned down two Army recruiting officers. You never heard this story reported in the mainstream media. If not for the blogs, it would have been all but unknown. Thanks to the dereliction of the media, it is still a relatively obscure story.

This of course was a story that was not so easy to ignore, and so now the people of CAIR and other Islamic American organizations are worried about a potential backlash, expressing shock and condemnation of Hassan's crime while at the same time insisting we should not be so quick to judge this as a case of Islamic terrorism.

Other Muslims have followed suit on individual levels-here, for example-expressing disapproval and dismay at Hassan's actions, while one even went so far as to assert a potential correlation with Guy Fawkes Day, pointing out the crime at Fort Hood coincided with the anniversary of that British holiday.

As one might expect, there are numerous military blogs, official as well as privately owned, and run the gamut of personal opinions dealing with what potentially might have been Hassan's motivations.

As for me, like I said, whatever the facts or theories of the case, I'm fine with treason. Let's go with that, and set an example with this piece of shit, and any others who might be tempted to follow his path, of whatever faith they try to wrap around their useless, meaningless lives.

Living With Death

It is beyond belief that someone could get away with the acts that Anthony Sowell committed for so many years, from the time he was released from prison in 2003 after serving the entirety of a fifteen year prison sentence for a very violent attempted rape, which from the description sounds like it was probably also an attempted murder, on until the time he was finally apprehended-on Halloween of this year, appropriately.

Eerily enough, the crime for which he was initially arrested, and which lead to the gruesome discovery of six decomposing bodies in his home-along with the skeletal remains of four others and the skull of yet one more past victim-was yet another attempted rape committed near the Autumn Equinox.

Nevertheless, he was finally apprehended, and later denied bond by a judge who described the crimes for which Sowell is being accused as beyond anything he had ever faced.

Indeed, you have to wonder what kind of individual could live alone with the stinking, rotting, and decomposing bodies of six human corpses. The stench was so overpowering, the neighbors assumed it must have either been coming from the sewers or from the neighboring pork store, which was next door to Sowell's residence.

In fact, Sowell was described by one of the employees of the store, which he patronized, as a nice man who made him cringe due to the bad smell that emanated from the man, which the employee in question was ashamed to ask him about.

Despite assurances that the smells did not come from the store, and despite countless man hours of work done on the sewers in the neighborhood, there was no respite from the stench.

Nor did it even arouse any undue suspicions when a nude woman was seen either falling or jumping out of Sowell's window one time, which he explained away as the accidental result of a cocaine and alcohol binge. The woman in question said nothing to contradict this statement, to be fair, but still, this seemed to also set off no alarm bells for the Cleveland cops who, after all, were well aware that Sowell was a registered sex offender, one who in this instance openly admitted to illegal drug use at the very least.

It took all of six weeks for the last surviving victim to tell her story to the police, and for them to finally act on the information. But, after all, this was a drug addict and possibly a prostitute, like so many of the other missing women who have fallen through the cracks in the general vicinity of this East Cleveland neighborhood, many of whom are potentially past victims of Anthony Sowell.

Here is the link to another story told by a woman who claims to be yet another of Sowell's victims, a woman who survived, if the story is to be believed, merely by keeping her head and wits about her and appealing to whatever sense of humanity and reason Sowell, a former Marine, still had at his disposal.

The system let down a lot of people in this story, including even Sowell, a seriously disturbed individual who, while yet in prison, requested sex offender therapy which he never received. The women are another story. They have gone down the road they traveled for the most part of their own volition, in some cases never to return. This is not the fault of the system. By the same token, unfortunately, the system found it far too easy to disregard reports of their disappearance. They were drug addicts, alcoholics, and prostitutes. They were, simply put, not a priority.

Now the only thing it can possibly do to make restitution is tie up the loose ends that are the remnants of tragic, wasted lives.

No More Tears

Have a blessed and happy Samhain.

Attuning With The Dead

You can't really communicate with them, of course. If the dead exist at all in a spiritual realm, it is in the form of the pure energy which is the culmination of all their past hopes, fears, and other emotions. They are little more than creatures of instinct, reacting to familiar stimuli, yet incapable of progressing through the acquisition of new knowledge. Duh, like that would require a brain with brain cells, which they no longer have, right? As such, they can not carry on a conversation beyond what they knew in life. Forget about turning to them for advice or for the wisdom of the ages. Again, they no longer have the capacity to process new information, so any such attempt would be lost on them, even in the unlikely event they understood exactly where they were in relation to you.

Spirits exist on a plane of existence similar to a dream state, with about that much self-control, so learning anything from them is pretty much limited to what they knew in life, which may not be reliable. After all, memories fade. Try it some time. Rent a DVD of an old television series from ten, twenty, thirty or more years back, one you used to watch and enjoyed as a child. You will be amazed at how much you've forgotten and how much your memory changed in your mind. Some plot lines will now be seen as not nearly so important as you remembered them, while some lines will be totally different than you remembered them.

This is why any such information gained from so-called "spirit contact" is by it's nature unreliable, as is any alleged "past life" memories. People's memories change day to day, imagine what it must be like life to life. Only those things of vital importance will be carried over into a new life, a new body, and a new brain. Seemingly important matters in one life will become trivial matters at best with no place in even the deepest recesses of an unconscious memory.

How then does one attune with the spirits of the dead, and why?

You do it in honor of them and their impact on your life. Speaking to the spirits of departed loved ones, family members, and ancestors, is merely a matter of reaching down into the depths of that which made you what you are. And make no mistake, for good or for bad, no matter how many generations ago they might have lived, regardless of how trivial and unimportant their lives might have been or seemed, your ancestors did contribute in at least some small fashion in making you what you are today.

How much more true then is that of those with whom we have been close to in our lives who have now moved on, have passed away from this mortal veil.

In attuning with ancestors, and those dearly departed from our lives, that is what we are truly recognizing, honoring, and respecting and it is surely worthy endeavor for that reason alone.

Thanks for the picture goes to Danielle

The Nightwalker-Short Horror Film

The best short horror film I've seen so far, seriously scary and disturbing. If you ever seriously considered astral projection, or are now or have been seriously considering it, I promise you it will make you seriously reconsider it.

Seriously. Scary. Stuff.

Samhain Tarot Reading

HaHa bet you were expecting something cool, huh, like maybe The Devil, Death, or The Tower, but instead you get a mushy old love card, and for Halloween, for Samhain, a night of death. Is nothing sacred?

Well, yes, love is, or can be, and this card is a reminder of what the true meaning of Samhain is, which is to keep in mind all of those loved ones who are now departed but who nevertheless live in our hearts forever. They have always been a part of you. They will always be a part of you. You should attune with that, and appreciate that, and keep the spirits of their love alive in your heart.

Even if it hurts. Cos then, well, it maybe won't hurt so much anymore, and what's even cooler, it will help you to appreciate the love you have with you all the more while you still have it to appreciate. Nothing bad about that.

Astrological Aspects For A Blessed Samhain

A strange set of aspects due mainly to Mars in Leo, which is trine the Moon in Aries, and squared the Sun and Mercury in Scorpio-as is the Moon. It would seem then that the night is more auspicious than the day, which will be more hectic and bustling with activity and possibly some confusion, while the night will be more conducive to merry making and partying, as well as for ritual observances. This will be augmented by a trine of Venus in Libra to Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius, highlighting a chance to make new friends and renew old acquaintances, though as usual one should be aware of deception, especially that of the self-induced variety. Meanwhile, Saturn begins it's sojourn in the sign of Libra, encouraging a lessening of the restraints previously afflicted on a playful and wanton Uranus in Pisces. Yet, the sextile of Mars to Uranus advises against throwing all caution to the wind.

Me, I'm just making me a new ritual altar. Who needs a lot of drama?

The Devils In The Details

At least that's what Pat Robertson would probably tell you about the following peanut butter candy recipe, at least if you prepare it and/or eat it during Halloween. I guess any other time it's all right. Got that? Thanks be to Sannion for this timely warning, as it has strangely disappeared from the CBN website where it was first discovered.

Be that as it may, I now present the following recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge. If you decide to make it during Halloween or the current or any following Samhain holidays, do proceed with all due appropriate caution as you prepare the following.

2 cups sugar
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup marshmallow cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the sugar and evaporated milk in a saucepan and bring to a full boil, allowing it to continue at a full boil for five minutes, stirring constantly but gently to prevent sticking. At the end of the five minutes, remove from heat. Add the peanut butter, stirring until it has dissolved completely. Repeat this process with the marshmallow creme. Finally, add the vanilla extract. Pour into a shallow pan and allow to cool. Candy should gradually harden to a firm yet soft consistency, hard enough to cut into wedges or slices, and yet still soft enough to allow for the entrance of any demonic spirits in your immediate vicinity.

Enjoy this sinful pleasure during Halloween, or any other time.

Prison Break-From Death Unto New Life

When it comes time for a great television series to finally come to an end, it should end well, and Prison Break did that in perhaps the only way it could have. In the flash forward at the end to four years later to the lives of the major players, we see them all at the culmination of their individually wrought destinies.

Three of them would finally achieve the happiness and fulfillment they clearly deserved, while for two others, the ending would be more bittersweet. Still, in both these cases, love would manifest in new forms.

As for the others, their end would not be so lucky. One of them would have the rest of his life to sit and reflect on his mistakes and wrongdoings. Another would find himself forced to hopelessly try to steel his courage and resolve in order to face the judgment he had brought upon himself. Yet another would discover that finally achieving the authority, respect, and meaning in life he so desperately craved would necessitate his life turning full circle. And finally, one would learn that the acquisition of power and authority would never enable him to ever come close to escaping from his guilty conscience or fully making up for past crimes.

And of course, there was the one who made the ultimate sacrifice, yet for all his mistakes and miscalculations, did so selflessly.

The background music is Lay It Down Slow by Spiritualized.

Haunted House

Gregory House MD is in this clip from season five haunted by the spirit of Amber, or as House used to call her, "Cutthroat Bitch", for whose death he correctly feels responsible. Years of Vicadin abuse has caught up with him, and he is currently a kinder, gentler House. Prior to his detoxing, however, things came to a head when his subconscious feelings of guilt, longing, and Gods know what other emotions manifested in the form of the girl whose death he caused, a former colleague and fiance' of his best friend, Wilson.

And so it goes. Our most important relationships live on in our subconscious minds long after the people themselves have left this mortal vale, or at least our lives. They don't usually manifest in such an extremely profound manner as this, but they can, and with very malefic consequences to our psyches, especially when they are manifestations of our most base emotions brought about by heavy drug use. In them we can see our shame, our guilt, our lusts, our hatreds, and our most dreaded fears.

When she first appeared to House, it did not take long for her, this subconscious manifestation of House's most selfish inclinations, to lead him into commiting the attempted murder of another colleague, Chase. He realized then what an unhealthy relationship he had been toying with. Unfortunately, as seen here, this was one ghost who was not going to away easily into that good night.

Well, it's time to take a stroll through The Pagan Temple's Halloween House of Horrors. I wonder whoever we shall run into as we journey through the haunted mansion. Let's take a look inside.

Shall we?

Well, what do you know? It looks like our host is stepping forward to greet us. What a nice, kindly looking genrtleman.


HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAThis house has been foreclosed BITCHES!

Er, well, moving right along, let's step into the master bedroom and see what wonders await us there. Why, what a big bedroom. It's almost as big as a house itself, and look at all the fun toys and stuffed animals scattered to and fro. This must have been the bedroom of a playful, loving child. Wait. Who's this we see? Why, it's-


Would you like to stay for some milk and cookies, little boys, or would you prefer some Jesus Juice?










Man, what a scary place this is. I think we got out of there in the nick of time. Let's just stay here by this warm fireplace and figure out where we go from here, and-wait, who is that young attractive lady coming through the window with a rope and knife? You wouldn't hurt us would you, young pretty lady?


Look bitch, I ain't got no mercy for you.









Quick, everybody, run! Look, here's a closet, let's hide in here and-Oh my God, who's that hanging there with a cord around his testicles?

Would you like to tie some nuts, folks?









WHOA I think we'd best forget about touring new rooms. Let's just sit here in the drawing room and watch the haunted television for a while. It's all right, it looks like it's just a commercial. But what's the loud-mouthed gentleman going to try to sell us and-and-why is his hand reaching out of the television?



ACT NOW AND I WILL PERSONALLY DELIVER YOU A SECOND LINE OF COCAINE ABSOLUTELY FREE!









Screw this, let's go to the kitchen. Maybe the kitchen staff will have a nice snack for us, then we can get the hell out of here. Hey, look at the funny looking gentleman with the pie? Hey sir, can we have a piece please?


SURE HAVE SOME RIGHT IN THE FACE MOTHERFUCKER HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA










That did it, I'm getting the hell out of this place, it's dangerous here and it should be reported. Right there, there's a strong looking man who looks like a person of authority. He looks like he might have even been a cop in San Francisco at one time, so you know he has to be thick-skinned. Hey sir, can you please help us out of here? We'll pay you anything.


Is that so? Let me see your Master Card, motherfucker. You will never leave here without it!









Fuck you Karl Malden, I'm leaving here, and not only that, I'm taking that poor, frail, sick looking woman over there with me. Come on, guys, let's get her and take her with us. Come on lady, let's-oh no, it's-

Why are your pants wet, young man? I made you cum all over yourself, didn't I? You know you want me.









Actually, that's where I pissed myself when Susan Atkins came through the window, so fuck you, hag. I'm getting out of here. Hey, guys, let's see if we can catch a ride with that elderly, distinguished gentleman. I don't give a fuck if he is dog drunk. Hey sir, can I please ask you for a big favor?



You bitches need a ride home? Hop right in.









Fuck that, I think I'll hoof it.

Everybody Must Die

The Not So Secret Fraudster

The three people who died at James Ray's Sedona Arizona Sweat Lodge weren't the first deaths to happen due to this activity, but they have to be the downright stupidest examples of such a tragedy. Usually, when somebody dies, it's an Indian elder who dies voluntarily. On some occasions, the deaths are accidental, due to poor health. But the incident in Sedona is probably the first time so many people died at the hand of one misguided (at best) individual who put himself across as an enlightened expert at something he didn't know anything about.

That's the worse part of this. The deaths of these three people and the endangerment and injury of so many others were senseless. The ironic part is Ray is right in one regard. In a sense, they brought their fates on themselves. They plainly should have known better than to trust someone just a little bit of research would have told them might be just a little bit full of shit, and that it might not be such a good idea to fast for three days, including going without water, before piling into a sweat lodge with numerous other people adding to the heat. Yes, they all acted stupidly.

Well, that's Ray's philosophy, as espoused in his venture The Secret. Bad things happen to good people and to bad alike because of their thought processes, their attitudes, their negativity.

That's why 9/11 happened, according to Ray. That's also why, to his way of thinking, the Jews were victimized by the Holocaust.

Strangely, so far Ray has avoided assigning blame to the victims of this tragedy. He's too busy trying to dodge the blame himself-for organizing the event, and abandoning the participants while his crew refused to allow anybody to leave after it became obvious many were sickened by the experience, to the point in some cases of unconsciousness. And just think, they only paid nine thousand dollars for this experience-this once in a lifetime chance for spiritual growth.

Now three of them have died, there is already lawsuits pending and more expected, Ray's publisher has put a hold on any further books by the self-styled guru, and the entire incident is now being investigated as a homicide.

All because some jackass managed to convince a bunch of foolish, deluded people that the answer to all life's problems can be summed up with platitudes about positive thinking while leading them into rituals for which he had no qualifications to perform.

I think I'll just go off in a corner now and think some good positive thoughts, about life, death, and justice.

A Little Sarah For Your Trick-Or-Treat?

Hell, why not? I have an idea for what would probably be an award winning Halloween costume. Sarah Palin, of course, carrying Trig, dressed as-wait for it-

A Blessed Angel.

Yeah, I know, I'm a dick. Of course to make this work you're probably going to have to rent a Downs Syndrome afflicted baby, which shouldn't be that difficult. Steal one if you have to, most parents probably wouldn't mind. Your Sarah can give him adoring looks, then disgusted ones when she's playing the part of thinking no one's looking.

You can go all out and make it a family affair. Have someone dressed as Bristol with a basketball under her top, and Levi Johnson in the act of undressing for a Playboy shoot. For that matter you can have a Willow tagging along, being stalked by A-Rod. You can have the youngest girl licking her hand and slicking down Trig's hair. See, the sky is the limit with this stuff.

Hey, give me a break now, it's Halloween. So what if she called Trig a blessed little angel or a retard? I'm like one of the commentors at Wonkette. Maybe the truth is a strange mix of the two versions. Maybe she actually called him a "retarded little angel", or a "blessed retard".

Who cares? I just think it's funny. But then again, I thought it was funny when Mount Redoubt erupted during the height of the Palin Alaska lawsuit ethics charges controversy, then stopped erupting not too long before she resigned as Governor. Hell I'm waiting for it to blow again. And bear in mind that when I say that, I am a Palin supporter.

How To Be A Prick For Halloween

You dress as the Swine Flu of course. If you really want to be an asshole draw a star and crescent on the costumes chest. Who says Halloween has to be nice and wholesome?

Chipmunk WIsdom

Yo, we are all connected

Somebody Please Help, There's Democrats On My Face

Rob Taylor of Red Alerts has dug up the horror story to end all horror stories. Seems that a company called Neocutis has started making dermatological skin care and anti-aging cream from the stem cell lines of aborted fetuses, according to Christian watchdog group Children Of God For Life, which through a spokeswoman issued the following statement-

“It is absolutely deplorable that Neocutis would resort to exploiting the remains of a deliberately slaughtered baby for nothing other than pure vanity and financial gain,” stated Executive Director Debi Vinnedge. “There is simply no moral justification for this.”

I have to agree with Miss Vinnedge, and like Rob, I am appalled. Okay you women out there who might be tempted to use this product, it's time for some straight talk. We all know that the vast majority of fetuses aborted in America today are the spawn of Democrats and other leftists. Think about that, and ponder the potential implications.

Talk about every day and night being Halloween. Sure you might look good for a while, but later on down the road, do you really want to look like one of the women in the following photograph?



You have been warned.

In Bayside New York, there is a City Council race under that might see the election of the country's firs pagan council member, Jim Halloran-who also happens to be a Republican. A conservative Republican.

This story from the Village Voice seems to go to great lengths to try to dissociate Halloran and his beliefs from the more ominous racialist aspects that have ingratiated themselves into the modern Asatru-Theodish movements, particularly within the American prison system, where white supremacist gangs have formed around a concept of the worship of the old Norse Gods, such as Thor and Odin.

The practices and beliefs of this most racist group of pagans, or heathens, are known collectively as Wotanism, and was formed by a man named David Lane. The Voice story goes into great detail in trying to draw a distinction between the two while acknowledging the existence of the racists within the separate movement, but in doing so has drawn a great deal of ire from many, including Rob Taylor from Red Alerts, and from Jason Pizl-Waters of The Wild Hunt Blog.

I don't know, they both might be right. I might be hopelessly naive in wanting to give the Voice the benefit of the doubt and assume the author of the piece is just going way overboard to be objective in pointing out to excruciating detail that Halloran is not an adherent to the more racialist oriented sects within the Asatru-Theodish movement. I can see where others would feel differently, given the Voice's pretty clear left-leaning bent, that he might be trying to throw a monkey wrench into Halloran's candidacy for the benefit of his Democratic opponent.

But really, once the story of Halloran's religious beliefs becomes more widespread (and how could it not, seeing as how Halloran himself makes no attempt to conceal his path, and in fact openly and publicly proclaims it unabashedly), people are naturally going to become more and more familiar with the racist elements that make up a a segment of the heathen movement.

The Voice might then be doing it's readership, and Halloran, a service by putting all this information on the table and going to great lengths to absolve Halloran of any but the most tangential connections to them.

It's really not much different from that old saw about Wiccans and witches being, in the public mind, "devil worshipers". It's not true, and it's not fair, and it needs to be hammered home. Let's not shoot the messenger just because he doesn't necessarily follow the word-for-word script we would like him to pronounce. It would be pretty disingenuous for a writer to do a piece on Wiccans for the benefit of a general readership intended to be objective and yet make no mention of such fallacious beliefs. Talk about an elephant in the room.

I wish Halloran luck, and hope he wins. It is a great affirmation to me for a pagan to run for and potentially win elected office running on a conservative platform. And he well might win. He is said to be running a strong race.

But if he doesn't win, it would be kind of misplaced to blame the Village Voice for his defeat.

You Will Never Escape

This is really such old news I have to wonder why I'm even talking about it, but I feel compelled to address to some extent the trends in some communities to ban scary costumes for school Halloween celebrations.

No vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, or anything remotely suggestive of any kind of weapon, murder, or mayhem. I mean, you can make a case for rules such as discouraging costumes that play on racial or ethnic stereotypes, to a point, and I at least can certainly understand the desire to discourage pre-teen girls, or even fully teen girls for that matter, from dressing as sexy French maids.

Still, as is usually the case, the worry warts tend to take their good intentions way too far, and in some cases are offering suggestions that would limit costumes to historical figures (presumably only the more wholesome or allegedly positive ones) or, in a suggestion that has got to be fraught with the possibility of sarcastic irony-wholesome foods and snacks.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not so sure if I had a twelve or thirteen year old daughter that I would particularly like the idea of her going dressed in a costume that looks like something that people like to eat, regardless of whether or not the food item in question was wholesome and nutritious, any more than I would want her to dress as Britney Spears flashing her vagina.

Let's just have a day, just this one day a year, where kids can have fun and be themselves by escaping from themselves and their mundane lives for just a few hours. Is anybody really so feeble minded as to think that a kid that dresses up as Jason Voorhees is a potential mass murdering psychopath?

Or has Halloween school celebrations become just another avenue for the indoctrination and brainwashing of American schoolchildren to make them adhere to the preferred social attitudes, mores, role models, and lifestyles of the day?

Don't they deserve a break from the bullshit every now and then? Don't we all?

A Beautiful Horror

The winner of this year's Halloween/Samhain photo is Tasca "Frantic Psycho" Sexton, of Paintsville Kentucky. I don't know whether she was actually trying to pose as a vampiress, a zombie, or maybe just a spaced out meth freak, but whatever it is, it works for me.

Her MyYearbook site. You might have to start a MyYearbook account before you can view her page, or anything else there, but hey, you should do that anyway.

When Every Day And Every Night Becomes Halloween

I recently had a discussion on Renegade Eye with a certain Daniel Hoffman-Gill, who insists that it is perfectly understandable why a person might choose to undergo gender reassignment, which of course is the modern euphemism for sex-change, doubtless an attempt to underplay the sexual components of the procedure.

Daniel, who seems to have taken to studying the Bible lately, insists that there are some unfortunate souls who are "born in the wrong body".

Of course, there is only one problem with that explanation. Daniel is-an atheist. Wrap your head about that one, if you can.

Now I'll admit, Daniel's views might be a bit more nuanced than I am giving him credit for-but I don't think so. As a general rule, a person who is an atheist doesn't believe in the soul. The body is all there is, and once that's gone, that's it.

That being the case, there is no possible way a person can be born "in the wrong body". The body is, in effect, the sum and substance, the total, of who he or she is.
To put it even more bluntly, a person who believes this, and yet also believes he or she was born in the wrong body is, in effect, suffering under a grave delusion that is almost akin to a psychoses. But hey-why stop with the atheists?

Daniel has stopped talking to me since I pointed all this out to him, but that's all right. He's studying the Bible now, after all. And in the meantime, should he ever find himself lonely and in need of female companionship, I have a pretty good idea as to who, and where-and to what-he might turn.



Well, we all want the things we can not have, right? If there is no other option, perhaps we can become that thing we most desire, as a last recourse.

Whatever the case, just remember, kiddies-once its gone, it can't grow back.

The WInchester Mystery

Of all the haunted houses in the world, none has a more remarkable story than the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose California, pictured above. It started out as a relatively modest eight room home, but when Sarah Winchester purchased the property in the eighteen hundreds, she added on to it continuously for more than thirty years, until her death in 1922.

She did this on the advice of a Boston medium who told her that she and the entire Winchester family was cursed by the many victims of the Winchester Rifle, developed and patented by her father-in-law. Driven nearly mad with grief over the death of a beloved daughter and then her husband, she turned to spiritualism as a refuge, and it became her prison. She moved to San Jose, purchased the property, and began construction, which went on around the clock, seven days a week. As soon as she died, construction halted immediately.

She was told that the spirits would never leave her in peace unless she did this. According to some sources, they instructed her as to how to proceed during the course of her nightly seances. According to others, she designed the home in order to confuse the spirits, and in the meantime slept in different rooms every night to throw them off the scent.

There are stairs that ascent to solid walls. There are doors that open up to sheer drops. One closet has no floor, and to step therein would lead to one being dumped unceremoniously into the kitchen sink below.

There is a winding staircase made up of 43 steps that ascend all of nine feet. Even that, however, is secondary to her lunatic decision to install a window-in a floor, thankfully in a small area cordoned off by a banister.

So what is the truth? Was Sarah Winchester stark raving mad, or perhaps clinging by a thread to her sanity, her tenuous grip on reality further debilitated by a severe arthritic condition? Or was this condition in fact the only thing that forced her to retain some small semblance of sanity?

Or, seeing as how it is highly unlikely that Sarah Winchester was truly haunted by what she believed was haunting her, is it possible she was the victim of a cruel and deliberate hoax by demonic entities-or perhaps by more human agents?

Well, what would be the point, if the answer were the former? My guess is, Mrs. Winchester was the victim of a series of cons that pretty much amounted to the most bizarre transfer of a personal fortune ever recorded.

By the time she died, she had spent all of 5.5 million dollars on the house, over a thirty year period.

Of course, we will probably never really know the answer for sure, but one thing we do know. The house was quite advanced in some respects. It contained one of the few existing examples of the day of indoor plumbing, featuring steam heat and heated showers, as well as push-button gas lights.

More impressively, it sits on a floating foundation, which has allowed it so far to survive two major earthquakes.

As if that were not enough, there might even be a ghost in the basement.

What more could you ask for in the way of a haunted house? If you do ever visit it, however, you are strongly advised to watch your step.

The Thing With Two Heads

One of the best "so awful it's good" movies ever made, starring Rosie Grier as a convicted death row inmate, and Ray Milland as the dying, brilliant, and as fate would have it, racist surgeon who has managed to transplant his head on Rosie's body. Now, Rosie is wanted by the law as an escaped felon, and Ray is along for the ride all the way.

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube, in nine separate installments. I chose to use this one because it has one of my all-time favorite bad movie lines-"honey you get into more shit-"

This is seventies Blaxploitation movie making at its zenith, and a perfect Halloween drinking party movie.

Happy New Year

Well, that's what Samhain is to most pagans anyway, so this video seems appropriate in a things coming full circle kind of way.

By the way-a good time to get off those drugs, Amy.

'Til Death

This story kind of hit home, as I had a couple of ancestors back in the middle of the nineteenth century who married on Halloween. I don't know what big a deal if any that would have been in those days, or whether the planned date was intentional or coincidental for that matter, but I am reasonably sure in any event their nuptials were nothing like the story that follows.

If you can't have a Halloween wedding in Sleepy Hollow's Old Dutch Church, where can you? Evidently, the old three hundred plus year old Old Dutch Church wasn't having any of it, and when they found out just what the couple's (pictured above) plans were, they pulled the rug out from under them. Or so it would seem.

Elmsford couple Jim Nieves and Lisa Panensky, who planned a Halloween wedding at the Old Dutch Church on Saturday, are looking for a new venue after plans for their union unraveled over the weekend.

Nieves e-mailed a music request for the ceremony, which included traditional classics and, in the spirit of Halloween, theme music from "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters."

But the Rev. Jeff Gargano, the church's pastor, said the "fun gothic" tunes were not allowed in the historic 17th-century church.

Evidently, it didn't help the couple's cause that the bride planned to wear a black cocktail dress with a black veil and flowers decorated with miniature skulls-fake ones, we assume.

Look, this is an old, conservative, traditional church in a rural part of New York State. The fact that Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and actually mentions this church somewhere in the story, should not be construed as an indication that this is an anything goes type of environment. A good rule of thumb is, when you are planning something off the wall, check around first.

Not that I don't feel for the couple. They are obviously upset that their hopes are dashed, and now they are stuck with preparing for a wedding to which dozens of invitations have been sent out. But they, not the Old Dutch Church, bear the onus of responsibility here.

What's more, Reverend Gargano even offered to marry the couple in the Church's historic old cemetery. He's probably bending over backwards doing that, and he has offered to refund the couple's money. They have refused on both counts. It's hard to feel too sorry for them.

Dedication

For she who walks between worlds

The Pagan Temple-Nominated For Next Year's Nobel Peace Prize

Well, since Obama has won the latest Nobel Peace Prize for virtually and literally doing nothing but talking about peace-and frankly, not even talking a lot about peace at that-it has got me to thinking, damn, I deserve the prize myself. I at least deserve a damn nomination.

I have been trying to make peace between two fellow bloggers, both of whom I consider somewhat to be friends. Unfortunately, Agent Beakerkin of The Department of Homeland Security is having none of it when it comes to my attempts to bring to an end the long-standing, bitter feud between himself and Trotskyist and former wrestling promoter Renegade Eye, whom Beak refers to as the "Lunchroom Lenin" and the "Cafeteria Commissar".

Click on the link I provided to Beakerkin's blog, which is a post in which he explains in his own fashion his utter contempt for all leftists in general, but communists especially, and most especially for Renegade Eye, and you can see I have my work cut out for me.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Sure, I get it that these two are never going to be friends, and they are never going to make peace with each other, nor is Beak going to get over the many ways in which he has been slighted and assaulted by certain people whom he insists were acting at Ren's instigation-nor do I fault him for that, to tell you the truth.

But let's be frank here. Obama is not going to make peace between any of the warring factions of our globe, any more than he is going to make peace between Democrats and Republicans-or between Democrats and other Democrats, for that matter. Did that stop the fucking Nobel Committee from nominating, and awarding him the prize? Hell no. They had to go and do it anyway, just because he-well, talks the bullshit they like to hear.

Well, by God it's my turn. For trying to bring about peace between Beakerkin and Renegade Eye, I hereby nominate myself for next years Nobel Peace Prize.

I want that fucking million dollars and I want it by this time next year, by God.

Palin Endorsement Bucks GOP In New York

If you really, honestly, REALLY want to know the REAL reason Sarah Palin is the target of so many vicious assaults, you need look no further than this article from the Kansas City Star's Prime Buzz, which tells of her endorsement in the New York 23rd Congressional race of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Party candidate Dede Scozzafava, whom many conservative Republicans accuse of not being truly conservative enough to run as a GOP candidate.

In other words, Scozzafava is a typical New York Republican, much like the inside the beltway crowd of country club, so-called moderate Republicans who went quietly but obviously ballistic when fellow RINO John McCain chose Mrs. Palin as his running mate. And let's face it, despite the fact that Palin breathed a kind of life into his campaign that was neither warranted nor deserved, the two of them had very little in common. McCain was not conservative enough. Palin, if anything, is too conservative, certainly too conservative for the chattering classes who run the present day GOP and whose main area of conservatism is a concern for tax breaks for their wealthy friends and government welfare for their corporate buddies, especially those within the military industrial complex (for those out there who insist that is conservative, which I don't buy for a minute).

Palin's statement in support of Hoffman is as follows-

"Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty," the former Alaska governor wrote on her Facebook page. "Political parties must stand for something."

Contrast that to the meandering, mealy-mouthed statement of Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, considered by many to be Palin's chief rival for the 2012 GOP nomination, when he was asked whom he would endorse-

"You know I haven't been following that, I haven't studied the race at all," he said. "It's not that I would or wouldn't, I just don't know anything about it. I haven't taken the time to study their positions, their records, so I haven't taken a position on it."

That's the kind of thing that passes for statesmanship in today's political climate. Guess which one the GOP establishment will probably pull behind in 2012, were it to come down to a choice between Palin and Pawlenty.

If you guessed NOT the one who fought the Alaska State Republican machine and legislature during HER all too brief tenure as GovernESS of ALASKA, well whatever gave you that idea? Oh, I know, that would be because you would probably be right.

When a politician-strike that, when a public servant is feared, despised and reviled by the key operatives of both political parties, I can't think of a better reason to give such a person my unvarnished support.

I just wish she would come to her senses and stop standing in the way of Democrats aborting their (future Democratic voters) babies. But well, nobody's perfect.

The Things People Will Pay For

Just on a lark, I typed "dick sucking whores" in the Google search engine, and what did it get me? Possibly the most misogynistic website on the internet.

You've been duly warned.

Backdoor Conversions

Father Peter was growing sick and tired of the controversy. All he wanted was acceptance for he and his live-in male partner, his beloved Dick. He thought that since the Episcopal Church had decided to allow the ordination of homosexual priests, they could be happy, and gain the respect, recognition, and acceptance the two so greatly deserved.

But it turned out to be no bed of roses. While it was true that many of his own parishioners within his little church, and in the general Episcopal Community at large, welcomed him and his partner, there were a great many who openly reviled and rejected him.

Now, there was a danger of a threatened split in the Church. Peter and Dick prayed over the matter endlessly, and agonized constantly, wondering how it would all turn out. Then, one day, he heard the news which he was certain would be the answer to his prayers. He delightedly informed Dick, and the two decided to celebrate. After a lavish candlelight dinner, they decided to share the good news with the rest of the church, and so the following Sunday, as the parishioners seated themselves for the service, Father Peter announced that he had good news.

"I just recently learned that we may soon be invited to join the Roman Catholic Church and have Holy Communion with the Roman Catholic Church, a community where homosexuals have been accepted for ages as Priests, though not openly encouraged or acknowledged as gay. Well, it seems that the good Pope has decided to recognize reality and join the twenty-first century. Me and Dick are so excited it's all we can do to keep from constantly jumping up and down with excitement. I invite you all now to join me in a prayer of hope and thanksgiving that this blessed news may soon become reality".

As Father Peter bowed his head, one of the parishioners in the front row turned to the other.

"Do you want to tell him or should I?"

Jay Leno Is Ruining People's Lives

And it just so happens that millions of television viewers are leaving NBC in droves, which is causing problems for local NBC affiliate news broadcasts. While NBC is saving money on the comedian and former king of late night talk, local NBC affiliated stations are plummeting in the ratings during the eleven o'clock time slot, which are making the owners, and the local news anchors, very unhappy.

And really, it's good enough for them. Seriously, who would even notice a difference? Local stations follow the same basic formula. You have the handsome and/or stately distinguished gentleman and the attractive female co-anchor, the jovial meteorologist, and the sports nut who is more of a cheerleader for the local teams than an actual sports journalist.

And of course, there's the bantering and gibes, designed to illicit the down home, kitchen table to living room atmosphere that oozes plastic sincerity. Is it any wonder most people don't bother to change the channel back to their regular local news broadcast? How are they supposed to notice any kind of difference?

Jeez, I've seen some of these clowns get all misty-eyed over an untimely death or a murder, and the next thing you know they're yucking it up over some trivial bullshit before they put on their serious face over some other tragedy, all in the space of two minutes.

Let's face it, most people only watch this shit for the weather, some for the sports. Jay Leno isn't their fucking problem. They are their fucking problem.

Checking In

Halloween, or Samhain, is coming up soon, so I have an idea. If anybody is interested, send me a link to a picture of a sexy ghoul, witch, zombie, etc., etc., and I'll pick a winner. If I choose your submission I'll plug your blog, though to be honest, it will probably be so far down on the days posts a lot of people that come here might not scroll down far enough to see it. Naturally, I'll include the submitted link as well.

I might be offline for a while until then, because I'm trying to catch up with a lot of housework, such as painting, some repairs, and some other projects that are going to take up loads of my time. But I'll still try to check in every now and then.

Until then, stay safe, and don't take candy from a stranger that isn't wrapped.

We Are Living In A Sick Fucking Society

And Richard Heene and his misanthropic family are the poster children for it. You are all aware of what an infection is, I'm sure. There are many different kinds, and they can come from a variety of sources. They can poison a person's entire system, and even kill the person. Heene is nothing so out of the ordinary as he appears at first glance. He's just the boil that erupts to the surface periodically, serving to inform you, if you are paying attention, that you have a serious problem. You have to lance the boil, but that's not the end of it. You have to take a series of antibiotics to make sure the disease is eradicated from your system.

Well, the Richard Heene boil has been spotted, and it will soon hopefully be lanced, but I doubt we will really learn anything from it. These jackals appear only because they perceive that there is a need they can fill. We as a society search these people out and encourage them, and then pontificate when they come along and give us what we ask for.

This is a man who has allowed his children to grow according to nature's inclinations, with minimal guidance, while subjecting them to the insanely obvious dangers of such things as storm chasing-and now this.

And for what? For no other reason than for "a show", according to little Falcon, who is the six year old boy at the center of the controversy. His family falsely reported his aerial descent in a makeshift "invention" of a helium balloon decked out to look like a UFO-or as the sheriff's department in their present Colorado community more aptly described it, a "contraption".

The problem was, the bizarre "invention" was it turns out incapable of lifting off with the boy, who was actually hidden in the rafters of a structure on the families property while his mother and father falsely reported that he was in the device as it buzzed through the atmosphere, setting off a flurry of emergency tracking and rescue efforts and commanding the attention of all the cable news channels for hours on end.

This bunch has a rather sordid history. The father of Falcon and his two brothers has appeared with his wife, the boys mother, on the "reality" television show "Wife Swap", has been in the process of pitching another reality tv show (with no success thus far), allows his children to behave like the little animals they are by nature, and insists that he heard alien voices speaking to him after an episode at a fast food restaurant where he got sick and passed out. He now insists that humans are descendants of intergalactic aliens and much of his life revolves around proving this rather unoriginal and improbable theory that, in the case of he and his family, would seem to be more suggestive of Planet Of The Apes than Battlestar Galactica.

Is it really a surprise that they left their rented home in California owing two thousand dollars after doing several thousand dollars damage to the property?

I have a great idea for a reality show. It involves three little boys going into the Colorado Family Services system, and from there to a foster home where they will be taught the respect and discipline and given the guidance and nurturing they need, while their mother gets intense psychological therapy while being taught not to be such a fucking doormat as to support and enable the childish fantasies of a man who never really grew up to be anything other than a third rate con man who unfortunately seems to believe his own delusions.

As for Richard Heene, his role in my proposed reality series would be that of an inmate in the Colorado, or maybe even the Federal, penal system. While there, perhaps he can invent a technique to shove his little UFO balloon up his ass, which he would soon enough have no problem doing, and where it might come in handy.

Ciao

CNN Jeopardy Fact Check-Wolf Blitzer Is A Stupid Dunce

I started to title this post A Sad Day For Journalism, but as soon as that idea popped into my head, another took its place-it's really par for the course. Here you have a CNN segment featuring a dissection, or a "fact-check", of, of all things, an SNL comedy sketch featuring Fred Armisson as President Obama.

Digest that if you can. A comedy show featuring comedians who by and large are supportive of Obama, eviscerate the President for failing to live up to his promises. Then, a 24 hour cable news network takes the comedy show to task for seeming to unfairly malign the President, pointing out in one instance that he actually did increase troop levels in Afghanistan by two brigades.

In other words, a bunch of left-leaning comedy performers try to hold Obama's feet to the fire for not delivering on his promises, after which CNN seemingly tries to prove their loyalty to Obama by playing the role of Pravda Lite.

And actually, they do this stuff all the time, albeit not to this obviously ridiculous extent. In any event, CNN is a network that has become less and less about investigative journalism, and more about establishing a facade of influence with elitist politicians and policy advocates, actually of both mainstream political parties, but they seem to be particularly enamored of the current administration.

There could be one understandable reason for that. When you experience buyer's remorse, the person you tend to be down on most is the seller. It just so happens to be second nature to snake oil salesmen to stand behind their product, but most of us can easily discern the desperation inherent in any such attempts to cover their asses.

Unfortunately for Wolf Blitzer and for CNN, this segment comes off actually funnier than the original SNL sketch, sickening though it is as well.

Who Wouldn't Pay To See That?

Just a quick observation about a movie I saw the other night on ION Television-The Departed. Watching this rather oddly edited film was quite confusing at first. The first thirty minutes or so seemed horribly rushed, with perhaps a few too many scenes left on the cutting room floor, and perhaps one or two left in the film that should have also been cut. All in all, however, it was a good film, with a compelling plot and story, reasonably believable dialogue and action, and excellent acting.

More to the point, however, it made me realize something about Hollywood actors and their public personas, and especially their stands on issues which seems designed to alienate half of their potential audience. Suddenly, I was gifted with a sudden flash of seeming insight. Maybe there's a hidden agenda to their irritating behavior.

If you get a chance to see The Departed, do so. I promise it will be money and time well spent. Let me put it this way. How often do you get a chance to see Jack Nicholson fall from multiple gun shot wounds, followed in fairly quick succession by Leonardo DeCaprio and Matt Damon getting their brains blown out.

As an extra special treat, you get to witness the satisfying spectacle of Martin Sheen plunging to his death from the top of a six story building to the pavement below. As if that were not enough, in a bit of unintentionally hilarious typecasting, DeCaprio actually bends down and checks his pulse.

Alec Baldwin somehow manages to survive the carnage. Rumor has it he was last seen during this particular period of time making his way for the Canadian border.

You Know, The Omelet Thing

Barak Obama, winner of this year's Nobel Prize. Why not? He deserves one every bit as much as Jimmy Carter. Or Al Gore. Or Yasser Arafat. Winning a Nobel Prize is meaningless anymore. Being nominated for a Nobel Prize has probably always been meaningless. Hell, you can nominate your Aunt Harriet on the grounds she broke up a fight between neighborhood kids once, cooked them brownies and convinced them to make up. All you need is a few people to sign the petition to the nominating committee. Actually winning the damn thing used to have some gravitas. It showed that you actually accomplished something substantial. Now it doesn't matter if what you accomplish is relatively substandard, as long as your heart's in the right place according to Nobel Committee criterion.

Former President and Nobel Peace laureate Theodore Roosevelt, the man who proclaimed the US should "speak softly but carry a big stick", the man who, as ex-President, lambasted then current President Wilson for failing up to that point to enter World War I, would probably not qualify by the standards of today's Nobel Committee. The fact that he mediated the peace talks that ended the Russo-Japanese War would be an incidental detail hardly worth an honorable mention. The man was an obvious war-monger at heart.

Now, Obama is going to face added pressure to not send those extra troops to Afghanistan, and to end the thing as soon as possible-or to neuter our troops to the extent that he might as well end it and get it over with. He certainly seems to be dragging his feet on making the decision to send more troops or not.

Aside from playing good cop to Jimmy "Killer Rabbit" Carter's bad cop over the matter of the supposed racism inherent in the opposition to his policies, and calling Kanye West a jackass for his disruptive behavior during the MTV Video Awards (in what was billed as an "off-the-record" candid remark that was obviously staged), I'm having a hard time coming up with a firm position the man has taken on anything that goes against his party line or his general base of support.

Isn't the Nobel Prize supposed to go to people that actually accomplish something that leads to peace? Since when does a few speeches read from a teleprompter qualify? And why is it that qualifications for winning the prize seem limited to supporting policies that always seem to insure that wars will drag on seemingly forever and with far greater long-term loss of life and destruction of property, and with no apparent end in sight?

I have to wonder if pacifists actually need these wars to drag on, just to have an on-going illustration to point to when they wax poetic about just how awful it all is, and how above it all they all supposedly are.

After all, if somebody actually put their foot down and ended the shit that goes on in the world, by any means necessary, sure it would be bloody and destructive for a while, but in the long term, it might actually bring peace, with less loss of life, less severe injuries, and less destruction of property and infrastructure, and at far less expense. There is a precedent for all that, actually. It's called World War II. Unless of course you honestly believe the world would have been better off had Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini met with no real opposition. Personally, I don't buy that for a second, just like I don't buy for a second that the firm resolve shown by Reagan against the Soviet Union, which led at least in large part to that evil entities long-overdue collapse, was wrong-headed war-mongering.

History has shown, over and over again, that in the face of provocative actions from a determined and relentless foe, sometimes it becomes imperative to use deadly force, and more often than not, to continue until the enemy's will is broken, his resources are exhausted, and his country is subdued. An advancing and determined enemy never sues for peace, nor will he until he is finally broken and beaten.

But alas, too much of that, and it wouldn't be long before Aunt Harriet would be a top contender.

Not Such A Laughing Matter

Now there's word out that Stephanie Birkitt, a former Daivd Letterman staffer with whom the Late Night host has apparently been carrying on a fling for some time, has written a slew of saucy letters, as of now not yet sent, which might contain salacious details of the affair between her and her boss.

These, along with an alleged diary, might well be the letters alluded to in the blackmail plot by former CBS "award winning producer" Joe Haldermann, who demanded two million dollars in order that he keep secret his knowledge of this affair-and perhaps a good many others.

Haldermann has plead not guilty to the charge of attempted grand larceny. I can almost guess at his defense. "Hey, I just told him I could make three million off these things if I took them to the Enquirer, I was just being a nice guy by helping him and me out."

And, who knows? It might work. Of course, he's got one legal hurdle to cross. According to this report, Haldermann cared far more about hurting Letterman than he cared about the money. He was jealous of Letterman's relationship with Birkitt, which evidently was on-going well after she and Haldermann broke up. But, seeing as how Haldermann had his own slate of financial problems, I'm sure the money came in a close second, at least.

Haldermann, however you read him, may not be in as much trouble as Letterman, all things considered. This is all out in the open now. Or is it? There have been others besides Birkitt. A lot more. Most of them are younger women, and junior staffers on Letterman's program. He was their boss.

Thus, the man who skewered Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, and Gary Hart for the same kind of behavior now at the very least looks like an unbounded hypocrite. But this is the least of his potential problems.

This could open up a veritable floodgate or sexual harassment charges, and even potentially rape. Although much less likely, it is possible that child molestation charges might be filed if any of the older women Dave had affairs with (there was at least one who was close to his age)had younger teenage daughters he might have had contact with.

Look for Stephanie Birkitt's letters to eventually find their way into the domain of the tabloid press, probably after the inevitable judicial gag rules have served their purpose.

It's going to be one embarassing mess after another. Look for some wag to come out with a "Letterman's Top Ten" list.

The man is sixty-one years old. Letterman can joke about this now, but the joke is going to leave a bad taste eventually, one that will never completely go away. Maybe it's time for him to just ride off into the sunset.