Shakedown in Oaxaca

There's a war on journalists, literally, in Mexico. Fuck Judith Miller, who may have actually been the original source of the Valerie Plame leak. South of the border they're being attacked and intimidated for publishing the truth.
 

An amazing photographer from here in West Philly -- JJ Tiziou -- has been down in Oaxaca, Mexico, and he's taken photos of the standoff between journalists at the newspaper Noticias and the government-supported bullies.

 

I urge you to check it out -- the story is compelling, and it's getting next to zero press over here.

 

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists Web site :

 

"The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by the violent removal of 31 employees from the offices of the Oaxaca-based daily Noticias. The employees had been confined to their offices for the last several weeks, due to a blockade erected by a striking, pro-government union.

Around 8 p.m. Monday night, dozens of unidentified people stormed the offices of the newspaper, pulled journalists and press workers out of the building, and destroyed computers and furniture, according to local press reports. Raciel Martínez, a reporter with Noticias, told CPJ that some of the individuals wore masks and carried sticks, bottles, and pipes. A few suffered bruises, the reporter said, but no serious injuries were reported.

The intruders arrived at the newspaper with officials of the Oaxaca Attorney General's Office, according to Noticias. State police who arrived on the scene did not intervene, the Mexico City-based daily Reforma reported."

Now I Can Marry In Britain!

Ah relief!

 

The Times online reported today that the British government will "...abolish the traditional terms 'spinster' and 'bachelor' in new reforms to marriage laws..."

 

Praise the lord! To think, had I actually found someone to agree to run off and marry me in Britain or Wales, I'd have to face a marriage certificate blaring "spinster!" for all eternity.

 

Ah, and those Brits are so damned helpful, even going so far as to provide a nice definition at the end:

 

"The term spinster developed as a way of describing a woman who spins, but developed into the legal definition of an unmarried woman. The occupational description disappeared as the spinning trade died out in the industrial revolution. By the 18th century it had acquired derogatory connotations, synonymous with "old maid".

 

Bachelor has always had more romantic associations. As well as referring to an unmarried man, it could also refer to a man aspiring to be a knight bachelor, or a man (and now woman) who had taken their first degree. Unlike spinster, the term also retained its association with youth, and unmarried men referred to as bachelors were invariably unmarried young men ."

 

Yesh, nothing more romantic than living the rock and roll lifestyle in my rented "spinster pad". Not quite them same... eh...

 

(Well, at least they no longer lock us in the attic and pull out our teeth.)

 

 

Making Me Obsolete

So I thought this was a joke... I thought to myself, "Self, this can't be for real! Who would be so stupid as to believe something as absurd as this."

And yet, 'tis a true product.

It's called White Smoke, and it's a "revolutionary writing tool" that essentially turns normal, everyday words and sentences into utter bullshit.

Hence, the name.

I may be an offspring not far removed from the old country, but as far as I know, the term, "Blowing white smoke out his/her ass" means, essentially, that the person is completely and totally bullshitting, talking a lot and saying zilch.

Well, now there's a program that "provides context-based recommendations" to get writers to business-ese in a hurry, allowing them to "enhance their writing skills."

There's even a free trial download! Woo hoo! Let me see how badly I can mangle the English language...

But, 'kay, see, here's the deal: I've enhanced MY writing skills over the years with this amazing invention called learning the proper way to write!

We've all done it -- remember grade school? Mapping the sentence? Proper noun, verb, predicate?!!?!!?

(And I'm not going to lie -- being the geeze I am, I had ADD before anyone knew just why it was I was wandering off and drawing pictures of shoes and butterflies on my lesson book, and I can still write better'n half the bolloxed bullshit floating around like fetid turds in the great electronic spider Web.)

But no, instead we've got a program to add to the kind of crap Shrub regularly regurgitates and spews around to globe to unsuspecting intelligent folk who sit, scratching their heads and wondering just what it was they just heard...




(And what is it about this dude on the homepage, sitting in his cheap suit, chin in hand, looking all sly, probably thinking something like, "Heh heh, with this crapola program, I can have this shoddy e-mail explaining why I missed another deadline sent out in no time, and no one will be the wiser. They'll certainly give up trying to decipher the meaning within minutes, thus leaving me free and clear to continue to bang that hot, horny admin in the supply closet for the rest of the afternoon!)


And I have to admit, this is the kind of thing that makes me crazy. For those of you who remember, a few months ago I was sacked from a gig where the company president regularly made use of the sort of nonsensical gibberish this program creates, and I struggled, day in and day out, to clean up the jargon and replace it with something akin to actual English.

Dude spewed more bullshit and pointless jargon than the local schizophrenic homeless person with tourettes sitting on the street corner in a Hefty sack...

So, to find out this is a desirable trait makes me reevaluate my entire existence.... or perhaps I have just found my calling....

Nikki Hilton: Vapid Bitch

So I must admit my disposition has been less than stellar lately. Downright glum, even. A swirling mass of deep, black fetid goo at times...

Thus, in an effort to get my brain moving, along with my bod, I decided to take a trip to the gym yesterday, something I rarely do these lovely bike-riding days.

And that's when it happened, the brain-shriveling assault of idiocy gone wild: my gym has individual TV screens on each piece of cardio equipment, and as I trudged my way across many virtual miles after a pathetically tiring day attempting to make enough money to pay the bills and still have enough to go out and buy groceries, Nikki Hilton appeared.

Now, I don't know what the hell channel I was on, and I know very little about this girl except she's annoying as fuck Paris "I have to marry someone with the same name as me so I can come while screaming 'Paris, oh Paris' while fucking" Hilton's brown-haired sister. Other than that, I plead cluelessness.

Seems this little chickie was posing, all streetwalker-like, for some guy mag -- Maxim of FHM or something -- and they were asking her really deep questions, probably something like, "So, do you touch yourself when you wake up because you are so rich and vapid?"

In the course of this conversation little cuntalina decides to defend herself against her detractors by asserting that they are full of shit because she, at 21, was/is CEO of her own company, and she'd like to see what they were doing at 21 that was so important.

Ooookay. Well, hm. Let's see. Me: I was working full-time, going to school full-time, and trying to get an education while subsisting on .14 cent ramen noodles in a bid to do something with my life. Most others are/were probably doing the same thing, and lots of people right now, at 21, are doing things far more important than Ms. Hilton will ever hope to accomplish in her life, like being human.

And, not like anyone cares, and it's not like my outrage will make an ounce of difference, but this little whorebag trustafarian* bitch should be so lucky to come back in the next life as a cockroach.

Rollin' Rove'r

You know, the obvious place to dig in regarding the bullshit fucked up state of the union is with fatty blatty blabbermouth doughboy Karl Rove and his penchant for bullying and blabbing his flabby way to Shrub's political victory at any cost.

But no. Let's take a moment, shall we, bow our heads and reflect on the recent announcement that our dearly drunken departed HST will indeed be shot out of a cannon in ash form, with the hottest man to ever walk the earth, Johnny Depp, organizing and presiding over the festivities:

ASPEN, Colo. – Friends and family of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson are preparing to pepper the sky with the late writer's ashes.

His cremated remains will be shot into the air Aug. 20 from a cannon installed on a 150-foot-high tower behind his home in Woody Creek. The 67-year-old Thompson, who had been in failing health, shot himself at his home on Feb. 20 after a long and flamboyant career.

Actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson's, has hired a Beverly Hills, Calif., events planner to oversee the event, which will be closed to the public.

"We had talked a couple of times about his last wishes to be shot out of a cannon of his own design," Depp said in a recent interview with AP Television News. "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true." AP

Ah, well, all I can say is if Mr. Depp is in the business of making wishes come true, my home address is....

... heh heh.

Anyway, back to reality, and the sudden and, gasp!, shocking revelation that pasty-faced Rove, a sub-human so deeply dark and disturbing to the core he'd probably accuse his own mother of being a lesbian cross-dressing crack-addicted porn star unpatriotic Arab-loving alcoholic guilty of hate crimes against amputee U.S. soldiers as they return to their yellow-ribboned 1950s mom and apple pie neighborhoods -- complete with porch swings and friendly neighbors always willing to lend a cup of sugar or a hand (no pun intended!) -- in order to get ahead in the polls and take any political opponent down.

Why not? His list of " accomplishments" says it all...

(And, in an aside response to Mags' distress over the fact that she and Turd Blossom share the same birthdate, I could potentially be related to the roly-poly pasty puke-inducing pustule as he's Norwegian-American. Who's worse off now?!!?)

Thankfully for the world and everyone in it, the White House press corps pulled its collective head out of its arse yesterday and discovered that it does, indeed, have balls. Here's just a little bit of the transcript that made me fall to my knees and praise the great and wondrous being(s) that made the sky open up and the heavens rain down small, sharp and pointy poisoned quills, which the assembled reporters actually managed to use to fashion real questions for talking head going-to-hell soulless mouthpiece Scott McClellan:

Q Scott, I mean, just -- I mean, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation --

Q Why are you choosing when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish --

Q No, you're not finishing -- you're not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about his wife, didn't he?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

Q Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

Go ahead, Terry.

Q Well, you're in a bad spot here, Scott, because after the investigation began, after the criminal investigation was underway, you said -- October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby, as I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this." From that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation?

Oh it makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside!

The question remains, of course, whether Rove will roll for this. Knowing Shrub's administration and how dirty it is, not likely, especially considering the fact that the Dems, who could potentially discover a spine thanks to the press' newfound anatomically-correct prowess, are in the minority and therefore powerless to challenge the power. As the NY Times writes:

Democrats, as the minority party in both the House and the Senate, have no ability to push forward with a formal Congressional investigation. But Mr. Rove is such a high-profile political target that his role is sure to draw intense scrutiny from both Democrats in Congress and liberal interest groups.

But, potentially, the very thing that has put the administration where it is today may also be what brings it down.

And, just like Granma used to say, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

Turd Blossom's about as big as they get.


Ew! I'm going to go be sick now ...

Ah, the mighty viking, steering his all-powerful vessel toward Valhalla.... okay, well, around the lake, anyway! July 4 weekend sailing was a blast.... 

Except, that is, for my lazy-assed bro..... 

make mine raw

Last weekend was heaven -- pure, unadulterated pink-snuggly-piggies kind of laid back drunken joy, thanks to the hospitality and understanding of my two long suffering parents. Three days lounging, full of food and libations, in their palatial house in the middle of the woods, and, alternately, on my dad's wicked cool sailboat, made a great Fourth of July escape-Live8 weekend.

 

Except for the food part.

 

Now, since the introduction of a vegan diet two years ago, my pain-riddled belly has been quite happy. Unfortunately, I've gotten lazy, and in the last few weeks have fed it either not totally vegan food, or just total crap, and it's on the rampage.

 

Thus, I'm slowly wrapping my brain around the idea of embracing, at least partially, this raw food diet. Justin's been singing its praises, and I've been laughing at him, but the thought has continued to float into my consciousness, and I'm doing more research maybe giving it a try....

 

Plus, it seems pretty much in line with my cooking abilities, which are lazy lazy lazy.

 

I just don't see myself going 100 percent raw. After all, hummus isn't raw, coffee is most certainly not raw, and those tofu hoagies from the Fu Wah (which Jason keeps surprising me with, thus spoiling me rotten ... not that I mind!) are as hot as Lance Armstrong in spandex....

 

Anyone out there raw? Any advice? And, would someone please tell me why I'm supposed to sprout stuff?!!? Aren't there grocery stores for that sort of thing?!!?! 

Novak needs to roll...

In a story that has gone from ethically blasphemous to absurd to downright horrifying, the case of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and the potential incarceration of two journalists who, incidentally, were not the ones who outed Plame in the first place, has got to be yet another sign of either the long, protracted downfall of the American empire, or the impending arrival of the apocalypse.

 

As a journalist, one of the first lessons you learn is: if you're going to use an anonymous source, you must be willing to either go to jail to protect that source or change professions. Rat out a source and you might as well walk around with an "I'll fuck you over, don't talk to me" sandwichboard 'round your neck.

 

Unless, that is, you're Bob Novak, the fuckwit blowhard who actually blew Plame's cover, and has, so far, walked free. Why is that? Is it possible he ratted out his source? Gee, but, you say, that would be career suicide, mais non?

 

Perhaps. But maybe the rules are changing and like everything else in this fine nation -- I'm thinking about municipalities kicking people out of their homes for fat tax coffers and warmongers making millions on the continual US-led war in the Middle East -- money is God.

 

And, Novak, who should, incidentally, be strung up and bludgeoned with reporters notebooks and ballpoint pens after admitting to CNN he is, plainly put, scum:

 

CNN: In general, though, you believe in the principle of keeping the identity secret of confidential sources. Have you ever revealed the identity of one of your confidential sources?

NOVAK: Well, people know -- who have read my column know there have been special case[s] where I have. But the question of being coerced to by the government and being put in prison is, I think, something that should be protected by act of Congress.

So, Ratvak claims that, once everything is said and done, he'll write about what happened and everyone will understand.

Sure. Unless it's something short of him not willing to admit that he got down on his fat little hands and knees to suck off Shrub, he deserves a byline as much as Jayson Blair.... or Monica Lewinsky.

Of course, the larger travesty in all this is the fact that Time bent over and took it in the ass once the threat of big fines came their way. Nice. It's all well and good to own a news outlet, which Time's owners (and every over media owner, small and monolithic) use to spew their side of things, skew their side of things and make you buckets of money, cutting reporters, salaries and access to the very things that make reporting possible like databases and training.

But the second the bottom line is in jeopoardy, they turn and run like the little pansies they are.

The death rattle of traditional paper-based news has been around for a while, let's hope it kills useless drivel like Time and CNN off once and for all. Especially before there's another goddamned runaway bride, killer shark or natural disaster... augh!