I must get that hat back! Think nasty, think nasty, think nasty!

Liberality and Freida each story-virused me last week. Apologies it took so long but here are my contributions.

Here's Liberality's strain which I'm going to end...

The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

The man who apparently owned the box glared at me and I moved my feet closer toward my seat and sat up straighter. Outside the wind was blowing hard and I watched out the window as the tree limbs swayed along the street and people clutched their scarves more closely about their heads as they made their way into the wind. We passed a building that had a flag pole and the flag it flew stood straight out and flapped angrily it seemed to me. I bemoaned my fate of having forgotten my hat, gloves and scarf on such a miserable day but I had been running late and had to get to the bus stop if I wanted to get to work on time.

After a few moments of surveying the frigid scene outside my window I returned my attention to my fellow passengers on the bus and noted with some alarm that one woman was so bundled up in her hat, coat, and heavy wool scarf that it was hard to even see her face. Another man sitting next to the gentleman with the cardboard box wore a jumpsuit which I found very peculiar indeed. He was sitting quietly with his eyes closed and seemed to be sleeping. My gaze upon him though brought his eyes open with a snap and he stared straight into my eyes with a most hypnotic gaze. His eyes were a bright light green. I had never seen such beautiful green eyes and could not look away. It reminded me of that famous photo taken of the Afghan girl, the eyes were so striking and fierce even. I tried to look away but it was impossible. (liberality.)

Those eyes! They burrowed into my soul and left it impossible to think, to move!

With every effort I could muster I closed my eyes but I could still see Jumpsuit Man's eyes piercing into my soul like twin lasers. Then I heard the voice.

"Don't be alarmed," said his voice. "I won't hurt you."

Were the words actually spoken? Was I the only one that could hear them? Was this telepathy or my imagination?

"Stand," commanded his voice.

I tried to resist but found myself rising to my feet against my will.

"Now reach into your purse and pull out your wallet."

So he was robbing me? I sighed to myself in relief. Such total command could've been so much worse.

"In your wallet is a playing card," said his voice. "Pull it out and tell me what it is."

Suddenly I was once again in control of my motor functions. In my hand was a playing card. It seemed like every eye in the bus was fixed on me.

"Um, the ace of spades," I said.

Jumpsuit Man took the card from me and held it up for the rest of the passengers on the bus to see. A loud round of applause greeted him.

Fuming, I sat down hard in my chair. I hate it when David Blaine rides mass transit.

Fin.

(Deanwormer)

-------------------

Here's the chain Freida's been infected with and my contribution-

The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

I couldn't believe my eyes. Surrepticiously, I tried to establish, without giving it away, if anyone else had seen what I had. For ten years I had been looking for that box. What looked like an ordinary cardboard box to most contained something most precious. Only by the small golden "P" was I able to identify what I was looking at. (Freida Bee)

How the box got here, or how I happened to be on this bus with it now--these questions were immaterial. I just had to get that box. The bus slowed to a stop, so I steadied myself. Just as I was about to make a grab for the box, however, it moved. Someone else was picking it up to take it away! I had to stop her! (Dguzman)

What? This couldn't be happening--to get this close and watch some quick-footed little dwarf just up and snatch it away from me...no! I got up and just as I did the sweaty hillbilly in front of me stood up and stepped into the aisle. Moving like a bad mime imitating a man in a box he extended his arms and stretched, looking up at the ceiling as he did so. The dwarf with the box--I couldn't be sure if it was a man or a woman, but something about her seemed feminine--slipped out the front door and off the bus. I took a deep breath and slumped back down into my seat. (Bubs)

I sized up the chances of getting bodily fluids on me for a few seconds before I decided to risk it. I needed to get that box back.

"Sir, do you think I could get past you?" I ventured, standing stiffly, hoping to move near the front door to catch a quick exit at the next stop.

"Ah's gettin' off a' tha nex' stop," he said as he wiped his brow and placed his hand squarely on my shoulder.

"Well, fuck," I thought, getting more and more irritated each second his residual touch seemed to burn itself permanently into the fabric of my sweater. "I need to ask the bus driver about the next stop, really quickly. Do you mind?"

I could see he was challenged. His size alone made the bus an unfortunate place for him to endure, but I was concerned I would not be able to catch up with the thief who stole my box this time.

"Ah know these parts real good-like an' kin tells you anythin' you wants ta know."

"Sir, I really just need to be ready to step off the bus as soon as it stops," I said irritatedly now, as the bus jerked to a stop in its typically abrupt manner. I fell forward smack dab into his chest, catching a whiff of a strange smell that simultaneously made me gag and feel groggy only moments before I felt my head spinning as he caught my fall, grinning knowingly. (Freida)

"Axe," he whispered in my ear as I began to pass out. "Always gets the ladies."

I dreamed of a valley filled with dancing penguins. A dwarf with my box slowly pushed his way through the dancing birds. As I tried to follow the penguins slowed my progress with their fancy footwork and proclivity to dip their partners.

As I faded into consciouness I realized I was in small, cheap hotel room. Sitting next to me with my box on his lap was the dwarf from the bus.

He smiled a toothless grin and in a voice that sounded like Gary Busey after he'd just sucked down a balloon full of helium he squeaked "It starts."
(Deanwormer)

Anybody that wants to take that up feel free...

That really hurt! I'm gonna have a lump there, you idiot! Who throws a shoe? Honestly!

Wow. President Bush mentioned me in his press conference just after the shoe incident-

"It's like driving down the street and have people not gesturing with all five fingers. "

One of my proudest moments was having his limo diverted just a few feet from me and giving that ass just gesture he mentions.

Seems we're all so busy trying to beat the other fellow in making things go faster and look shinier and cost less that Christmas got lost.

Wouldn't it be ironic that as one of Bush's last official acts as President he finally did the right thing for once and acted to bail out automakers?

I won't hold my breath.

But if we had any doubt that Republicans were going to put aside their partisan bullshit for the good of the country after the results of the last election I think the events of this week pretty much dispelled them.

We began the week with Republicans pushing the Clinton rules back into place in the media with the Blagojevich story. Apparently, just as it was in the 90s, innuendo from conservatives once again equals fact. Guilty until proven innocent and all that.

Watch for a strong push from congressional Republicans in the next session to replace Fitzgerald with a special prosecutor willing to dig into more than just this pay to play Illinois stuff. These fuckers play for keeps. Deja vu all over again.

Then we had Republicans take a shit on working Americans as they worked to bust the UAW. The headlines surrounding this are ridiculous. "Senate Bails on Auto Bailout: What Next?" Are you kidding me? How about "Senate Republicans Give American Economy the Andy Dufresne Treatment" as a more accurate headline?


Don't even get me started on this "Corker is a hero" bulshit. He was the Chief Obstructionist. He was an excuse. He was a tool. Nothing more.


Once again I hold out hope that Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership will finally come to their senses and realize you cannot deal with these people in good faith. They are going to filibuster, and scream and clench their tiny little fists in faux rage at every step of the process as we try to set to work fixing the messes that they made.


Ignore the petty little fuckers. Utilize legislative solutions that work around them. Put everything, including health-care reform into ominbus budget bills that can't be filibustered. If they intend to filibuster then for God's sakes make them really filibuster.


But let's stop pretending Republican Senators care about this country because they don't. Not in the slightest.

Burn some dust here. Eat my rubber.

Haven't had much time on the intertubes or even to read the news lately. Anything I need to know about?

Say, by the way, can you play "Jingle Bells?"

A moment of yuletide zen from this weekend--

We were toodling around the house, putting up Christmas decorations. We had Christmas music playing in the background and at one point I went into the kitchen to find all three of my kids dancing to Vince Guaraldi like the Peanuts kids.

How can you not dig that?




(For the record: A Charlie Brown Christmas if my favorite Christmas special and I reserve the right to quote it more than once during the next couple of weeks. Phhhhtttt!)

Change is the essential process of all existence.

I've mentioned many times on this blog that I'm a Trekkie - a fan of the original Star Trek television show. I've loved Trek since I was a kid, but really didn't grow to appreciate it until I got older. At some point I realized that my politics and the liberal, Kennedyesque politics of the show segued.

I've often wondered if that television show, along with my progressive Catholic upbringing, actually shaped the basis of the political beliefs I've taken into adulthood. If not then they at least had some influence.

To me Star Trek doesn't just represent sci-fi action, technobabble and the occasional bad acting. There's an optimism that runs through Trek, at least the Trek inspired directly by Gene Roddenberry if not the later television series(*), that presents us a picture of the future in which the superficial is immaterial.

I've been thinking about this as the reverberations of Proposition 8 continue to move through our political landscape. One doesn't need to believe that man will be able to dematerialize one place and appear somewhere else or fly through space in giant ships named after famous nautical vessels to believe that progress is inevitable. The future will be better for all of us regardless of race, religious belief, gender, sexual orientation or whatever else separates us.

Just to highlight my point I'd like to share a few quotes highlighting the "vision" of Star Trek. Here's an old interview with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry given shortly before he died--

"As you know, one of the joys of Star Trek, for me, has been the variety of our fans. When I go to conventions and I see people of all sizes and shapes and abilities, and when I see people with nerve disorders that can’t really sit properly and so on, I still know what’s in their mind. They are saying, “In a better world, I can do anything. I’ll be there in a better world. In a better world, they will not laugh at me or look down their nose at me.”

I used to speak at colleges a lot because it was what kept me alive and paid the mortgage in the days when Star Trek was considered a gigantic failure. I have met some of these people. I remember one night someone called me over and said, “Can you possibly talk to this man?” And here was a fellow with some kind of nerve disorder who had an electronic box, he couldn’t speak, and by hitting the box, he could make halfway intelligible sounds. He could only make grunting-like noises. And finally I began to understand what he was saying and he was asking me why I did a certain thing in a certain show, and why I had invented somebody who had something of his disorder. I said to him, “Someday when we become wise, we won’t look at those things. We will look at communication and knowledge, etc.” And I saw his hand rise up with great determination and he said loudly and clearly, “Yes!!” Those are the high moments in my life."

Here's a bit of a speech Gene's son Rod Roddenberry gave this week--

“The idea of tolerance of something I’ve heard about for a long time,” Roddenberry said. “I’ve always had a problem with that word.

“Star Trek was so far beyond tolerance. I feel like I’m talking to the choir. It goes to acceptance. Enjoying the fact that there are different ideas.

“The different ideas that we all have are what makes life interesting. ...Don’t be afraid of different beliefs. Go up to that person and have an intelligent conversation with them. That’s how we’ll evolve into the Star Trek future.”

Finally here's bit of wonderful speech actor Wil Wheaton gave a couple of years ago as Gene Roddenberry was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in Seattle--

"Like all great science fiction, it held up a mirror and showed us our failings and triumphs – not by beating us over the head with a message, but by making that message easy enough to discover for those who cared to see it. Star Trek dared to do this during an incredibly turbulent time, when it was risky to even acknowledge that the mirror existed, much less hold it up on network television.

It has been more than forty years since Kirk and Spock first boldly went where no man has gone before, and twenty years since Picard and some kid boldly went where no one has gone before.

Today, many of us still dream of living in the Utopian world Gene envisioned, where we play in holodecks, beam ourselves to work, and embrace the crazy notion that race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation are differences to be celebrated and learned from, not feared and destroyed."

Roddenberry wasn't blind. He knew the world was an ugly place. In the interview linked above he was asked if he had any heroes. Here's part of his response--

But I have less of that collection of heroes than an overwhelming affection for humanity. I think the human race is just a fascinating creature. I think we are so wonderful they should build statues to us. (Laughter) The things we are able to do are just marvelous. I know that humans, even today, capture and torture people and commit war and all of that. But that’s because they are still children and children are violent. But I refuse to think any other way about the human race but that they are beautiful children. They will, in the end, persevere.

Isn't that a wonderful way to think of humanity?

(* including some of the movies. Some of my friends are worried about the new film because of the young actors, JJ Abrams, etc. Is long as it has Roddenberry's sense of optimism I'm in.)

We're not goofing off. We're creating musical fusion.

So much right about this video but the cameo by one famous actor as Jesus and the Doogie Howser bit had me. I give you "Prop 8 - The Musical."

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

The embed doesn't seem to be working here from home. Here's a direct link to the video at Funny or Die. If it's not working from my work PC I'll change up this post to reflect.

I'll be your huckleberry.

Randal a étiqueté moi mais je ne peux pas parler français.

Thank goodness there's a Babel Fish translator.

1. Five names you go by: Dad, Lurch, Johnny Apache (My stripper name from college), Vernon (Wormer) and Sergio Marinara.
2. Three things you are wearing right now: A smile (gag), mesh underwear (I rarely wear underwear but when I do it's usually of the mesh variety) and a cheap tie.
3. Two things you want very badly at the moment: Go home and get some more sleep and Bo Derek.
4. Three people who will probably fill this out: Our gorilla overlord, our blogger chaplin and our comic book expert.
5. Two things you did last night: Drove my oldest daughter to firefighter school and made delicious club sandwiches for the family.
6. Two things you ate today: One piece of dry wheat toast and another piece of dry wheat toast.
7. Two people you last talked to on the phone: Mrs. Wormer who heard there was an accident on the freeway involving a fistfight and was worried it was me and one of my staff who just called in sick after being on vacation for the last two weeks. One more pay raise and I'm switching to the Republican party.
8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow: Look for a new employee and get in a fistfight with somebody on the way to work.
9. Two longest car rides: When I was 12 and my parents decided to drive to Disneyland from Portland. They kept stopping to look at redwood trees and stuff. The other was Thanksgiving when we drove to visit my Mother in Law. Dead man walking.
10. Two of your favorite beverages: French roast coffee, homemade blackberry wine, scotch, blended margarita, coke, banana milkshakes... I can't limit it to just two.

Well, I'm certainly proud of you... you blockheads!

Sigh. Back to the real world. It's a wacky place.

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Sarah Palin proves to be that rash that no cream can cure as she campaigned for Saxby Chambliss in the Senate runoff in Georgia.

"We are rebuilding our party. . . . And it's starting right here in Georgia by sending Saxby back to work in the United States Senate," she said.

Put aside for a moment the fact that Palin is more interested in rebuilding her own image by jumping on the Chambliss sure thing, which she will no doubt claim credit for despite all evidence to the contrary.

To the extent Chambliss' re-election will say anything about the mood of the country towards the Republican brand it would simply be Americans sending the message that when the bus carrying the Republican party runs through the guardrail on the bridge and plunges hundreds of feet to a fiery explosion that voters hope the passengers have mercifully passed out before the bus smashes into the ground, rather than screaming in terror as doom rushes towards them.

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It's nice that the media is focusing on pardons. Unfortunately, it's a pardon from 8 years ago.

WASHINGTON — In the much praised career of Eric H. Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, there is one notable blemish: Mr. Holder’s complicated role in the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich, a billionaire financier who had fled the country rather than face federal tax evasion charges.

Rich's pardon was political cronyism at it's worse, but it paled by comparison to the pardons issued by the first President Bush of "true patriot" Casper Weinberger, Elliot Abrams and the rest of the Iran-Contra traitors. There are pardon's looming over war crimes from the current President Bush that will make tax evasion look like penny ante stuff. No doubt the media will cover those just as intensely.

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Jeb Bush's idea that the GOP form a is obviously self-serving. I'm certain Bush would want to be the shadow president of this shadow government.

"In Washington we need to show humility and be the loyal opposition. I actually think we need to organize ourselves in the form of a shadow government and make it based on policy and not on partisanship," he said. "People are sick and tired of the partisanship, just for partisan sake, but they aren't sick and tired of a loftier debate about policy."

Policy instead of partisanship? That doesn't describe the Republican party we've grown to love. They have no policy and they represent no ideas. The only reason they exist is partisanship.

Besides that point we've seen how the GOP governs. Their method of governance has left the economy in shambles and millions of people dead. The adults are about to take over again to try and fix the giant hash they've made of things. A Republican shadow government would have the same feeling as when they're actually in charge; the Lost Boys playing at being grown-ups.

Actually, as long as they don't have any actual power this might be a good idea. They can do less damage that way.

Oh, that's a wonderful place to start! Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving besides the fact we spent it with my Mother In Law.

The real fun was Saturday when we had don snabulus, Ladybug, Overdroid, Swinebread and Swinebreadina and Swinebread Jr. out to Faber University for a second Thanksgiving. Swinebread Jr. is just about the happiest baby I think I've ever ever met. This leads to all sorts of embarrassing mugging by the adults trying to get him to laugh some more.

Overdroid ran a round of old school Call of Cthulhu which was pretty fun. It's odd getting old enough to have our kids play with us. We stopped the Deep Ones from destroying Los Angeles with a tidal wave. Not that it would've been much of a loss to the world had we failed...

Besides getting our geek on we also spent a lot of time checking the score of the civil war as my Ducks destroyed the cocky OSU Beavers. Even though the Ducks have been spotty this year I had a feeling it would go this way despite home field advantage for the Beavers. This was the biggest game of the year for the Quack Attack and the Beavers would have a tough time not looking past their in state rivals.

Overdroid's girlfriend wisely decided that playing role playing games might not be the best use of her time while she was visiting so she headed downtown to the Portland Art Museum. Even though we're no Seattle, we have a pretty nice art museum which left her impressed.

Lest I forget: happy birthday to #1Animefan who turned 14 yesterday. You're my little sunshine, hon. Here's a Hayao Miyasaki video for you--