Morning Seditionists

The bad news just keeps rolling in. Yesterday, we heard the tragic news that Larry King – the “Monkey’s Paw” of cable news – is retiring. Speculation is now on who will fill Larry’s suspenders in the 9PM time slot for CNN. Personally, I think they just ought to show reruns of Crossfire with Bob Novak. Not full shows – just “best of” clips of Bob. That way they can continue the Zombie host theme. But if they must find a live person, I hope they don’t go with any of the Huffington Post’s suggestions, which include Ryan Seacrest (I must confess, thought I’ve heard the name, I have no idea what it is he’s ‘famous’ for. I assume it’s got something to do with American Idol, but, having never watched it, I’m not really sure), Jeff Probst (again, no clue who that is), Katie Couric, and Kathy Griffin. I’d like to siggest Matt Taibbi (who explains why Lara Logan – whose baby daddy is war profiteer State Department contractor Joe Burkett – sucks – and not in a good way). Oh, I know, CNN would never go with an actual reporter-type person over a ‘celebrity’, and they’d need somebody with a quick finger on the dump button, ‘cuz Matt tends to say “fuck” a lot, but I think it’d awfully nice to have somebody doing interviews that would ask more probing questions than “how old were you when you first found out how great you are, and has your greatness been a burden on you?” (more…)

Did you know that Thurgood Marshall was an evil, commie, activist judge? Me neither. I always thought he was one of those legal icon kinda guys, that even people who don’t pay attention to much of anything have heard of (plus, he was really good in ‘The Defenders’). Here’s an interesting thought. You know who succeeded Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice? Clarence Thomas, that’s who. (more…)

Sad, though not exactly unexpected, news this morning as Senator Robert Byrd – who, for my entire life, has always been the Senator from West Virginia – has passed away. People will remember him for lots of things – being the longest-serving Senator, being a former Klansman, being a passionate, outspoken, and prescient opponent of the Iraq invasion, and no doubt for a whole lot of other things in his home state of WVa. Me, I’ll always remember his personal response to my mom, asking if they were related (family legend has it that my mother was in some way or another related to the explorer Admiral Byrd, and she wondered if they had that in common). As I recall, Senator Byrd’s response was, “could be.” It was very kind of him to reply (I only wish his letter was still around). RIP, Senator. And say hello to my mom if you run into her. (more…)

Well, it’s official. We can all go back to not pretending we give a crap about soccer after yesterday’s devastating OT loss to Ghana. Hell, being the lone African team left in the World Cup, they needed it more than we did anyway. Now we just have to get through the “Dead Zone” known as baseball season, and before you know it, it’ll be time for football (yeah, that’s right, world, real football). (more…)

Sad, sad news. Dick Cheney’s in the hospital. Thank Lucifer (and modern medicine – when funded with an un-ending supply of money), it doesn’t sound serious though, so I’m sure he’ll be up and oozing around in no time. Just another reason to ban science from textbooks, I guess. Speaking of science, some guy named Larry Dossey (who is a ‘doctor’ so you know he’s very wise and important) has a story in the HuffPost basically saying that, because the conditions for life and the universe to exist as we know it are on very tight parameters, there just must be something out there that set things up for us. Which, of course, is kind of stupid. Because conditions were the way they were, the universe evolved the way it did. Had conditions been different, things, no doubt, would have evolved differently. And then a bunch of egotistical silicon-based funky-looking lifeforms would be insisting that the universe was created by some all-knowing, all-seeing invisible being who created them in his image. (more…)

Another week winds its way to an end. And what a week it’s been. We had the release of the best phone ever (as long as you don’t hold it in your hand; personally, I’m lusting after the Droid X, which will not only not be tied to ATT, but will also run Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1, and, of course, is open source and not subject to the heavy thumb of Apple), had the General in charge of Afghanistan get fired (gee, I hope things don’t start to go badly for us there), and we got to see Weds Johnson and Jonny Flynn get reunited (which makes us happy here, even if the Minnesota fans don’t seem to happy about it). Of course, the best part of this week was getting my USB plasma ball yesterday. And today, my “Your Mom Sells Weed” t-shirt from Showtime should be coming. (more…)

Big, huge, enormous, tremendous, outrageous day today, as Apple releases the best thing ever in the whole wide world: the iPhone 4g. The 4g will do all the things that the old, crappy ones should have done in the first place (not Flash, though; f*ck you, Adobe!), so if you have the old iPhone, you officially now own a piece of shit that you should be ashamed to seen using in public. Yep, yesterday you thought you were cool as you sat down at Starbucks with your $5 cup of shitty coffee, whipped out your iPhone, and downloaded your free Frappuccino® Beverage Music mix on iTunes. Today? Meh. You’re just another loser who might as well be using a CB radio. (more…)

A cheery little story from my neck of the woods yesterday. NY State Troopers responded to a 911 call from a house (OK, well, a trailer) in the Town of Vienna (which is about 20 miles north of Wampsville, in case you were wondering). There, they found some 21-yr old kid named Adam Theall holding his 3-month old son (with another 1-yr old son inside) and a shotgun, threatening to kill the kid if the police responded. When the troopers got out of their vehicle, guess what? He killed the kid. I’m not sure what’s left of a three month old baby when you shoot him with a shotgun, but I reckon it aint much. I hope to never find out for myself. (more…)

I guess I can’t put it off any longer, so it’s back to work today. Not that I haven’t been working all weekend, of course. Construction is more or less complete, though, so it’s down to filling in nail holes, sanding, and painting. Hopefully before the cats have a chance to puke on everything too much. I really hate the thought of going back to work today. I’m really getting tired of it – it just screws up my whole damn day. (more…)

OK, actually summer in suburbs. We don’t really have much of a city around here (which is okay by me). But, wherever you’re at, if you live north of the equator, summer will be here at about 7:30, my time. So enjoy the longest day of the year, ‘cuz tomorrow the days start getting shorter. I say we double down and set the clocks ahead another hour. Not today, though, ‘cuz I decided to take today off. Lets do it at noon tomorrow instead. (more…)