Category: Uncategorized

For the past 60 years, gun enthusiasts have been firing rounds at the San Gabriel Valley Gun Club, the largest shooting range in Southern California. But now the club is in the crosshairs, since residents of the city of Azusa say it no longer fits in with the area’s increasingly suburban way of life. Some are lobbying the City Council to adopt a new general zoning plan that would force out the gun club when its lease expires next year.

That move has the shooting range firing back, saying it’s been a good neighbor by providing a service not only to its members but also to police and the military. But people who live nearby say they’ve put up with relentless gunfire echoing throughout the canyon, hour after hour. The firing gets so loud, they say, that they have to stay inside all day to get any peace and quiet.

I absolutely HATE this mindset. The club has been there for sixty freaking years, then people move in and want the area changed to suit them. SO DON’T MOVE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU MORONS!!!! Forget the national border fiasco, communities should be allowed to give newcomers provisional residency permits. If a new resident makes any political effort to change anything about his new community in the first ten years subsequent to his arrival, he gets ridden out of town on a rail.

Alternatively, one could simply go with the ANC approach of one settler, one bullet.

CNN has ended its relationship with the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and will shortly cancel its long-running daily political discussion program, “Crossfire,” the new president of CNN, Jonathan Klein, said last night…. Mr. Klein said, “We just determined there was not a role here in the way Tucker wanted his career to go. He wanted to host a prime-time show in which he would put on live guests and have spirited debate. That’s not the kind of show CNN is going to be doing.”

Yes, we can’t have any of that nasty debate stuff, can we. The role of the media is to inform, propagandize and brainwash in a one-way medium to the passive absorber, who is not to think or question, but simply accept what we declare to be fact.

And the CNN executives wonder why they’re being gagged, hog-tied and raped by Fox News in the ratings. I think more public insults of their potential viewers will probably help, don’t you?

I picked up a copy of a neighbor’s US magazine today and was bemused to notice the dichotomy between what 100 men and 100 women considered sexy or silly on women. According to women, the three sexiest trends of the nine polled were:

1. Newsboy caps (84%)

2. Capelets (78%)

3. Huge Sunglasses (70%)

I had to read it twice for the numbers to register on my incredulous mind. These three items easily beat out the Plunging Necklines thought sexy by 93 percent of men, the Long Hair Extensions favored by 85 percent and the Slip Dresses given the thumbs up by 62 percent. Women, meanwhile, regarded those three as silly, by 54, 82 and 54 percent respectively.

This poll, I think, confirms the Sports Guy’s theory of the complete disconnect of the average American woman’s idea of what appeals to men from actual male preferences. (A few years back, the Sports Gal, now the Sports Wife, was trying to argue that Andie MacDowell was sexier than Shakira. Now, Andie MacDowell is a nice, attractive woman, but she has less sex appeal than a widescreen laptop.)

Seriously, though, if you’re a woman who thinks that wearing a newsboy cap with a capelet and huge sunglasses is going to work better at attracting male attention than long hair and a plunging neckline in a slip dress, you are completely off your gourd. I mean, fine, go ahead and wear your cap and mini-cape if you want, but don’t be surprised if we’re more interested in looking at the chick with the slinky dress and the stripper hair. The short summary is, if you and your friends think it’s “cute”, whatever it is won’t even register on male consciousness.

As Space Bunny says, women dress more for other women than for men, which may account for why so many of them vigorously hate those few women who prefer to dress for men – and for whom men harbor such enthusiasm. Space Bunny also points out that men don’t dress for women, but then, I’ll freely admit that most of us have no idea what women find sexy. I sure don’t. The same women who openly drool over the fantastic body of a steroid-injecting firefighter will tell you that you’re too muscular for them. The same women who love the Sean Connery-Piers Brosnan James Bond thing will ask you why you’re so dressed up if you show up in a suit.

It’s hopelessly confusing… the only thing you can truly count on is that accessorizing with a Porsche is always attractive on any man.

Jimmy Kimmel wangles a one-shot on ESPN for the cause:

And so another year passes without Steve Garvey making the Hall of Fame. All I know is that his name belongs in Cooperstown some day. And, by God, if I have to break into the place and spray paint it on the wall, I will.

There are few things I admire as much as ferocious passion and loyalty dedicated to something as ephemeral as professional sports. To this day, I loathe Jim Zorn and the Seattle Seahawks because he broke Fran Tarkenton’s rookie passing records. It doesn’t make any sense, I just do. I still feel a chill run down my spine whenever I see a clip from an old NFL game played in the snow and I remember my first games at the old Met. (TEAR DOWN THE DOME ALREADY, A MINNESOTA TEAM SHOULD PLAY OUTSIDE!!!!!) And just seeing a ref in zebra stripes gives me the primal urge from some deep, dark place within me to throw a bottle at him.

The best thing is that you just KNOW that Kimmel didn’t have to look up a single statistic to write this paeon to Steve Garvey, one that he appears to have unleashed in a single breathless rant that he could practically deliver in his sleep. I don’t care about baseball and I wouldn’t recognize Steve Garvey if you put his poster on my wall, but I kind of hope he makes it one day, just for the sake of fans like Jimmy Kimmel.

In other Sports Guy-related news, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. DOUG AND JACKIE CHRISTIE HAVE A REALITY TV SHOW IN THE WORKS! This promises to be an epic disaster of grand tsunami proportions. The Christies are the legendary relationship that spawned the jersey that has now become synonymous for being pussy-whipped to perfection. Just to give you one example, they get remarried every year on their anniversary, complete with dress, wedding cake and guests. They make Dennis Rodman look downright sane.

DALLAS, TX – January 2nd, 2001 – In a move that has millions across the Internet community frowning, Despair, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had awarded them a registered trademark for the ‘frowny’ emoticon which serves as their logo.

At a press conference, Despair’s COO, Dr. E.L.Kersten, announced his intentions to sue “anyone and everyone who uses the so-called ‘frowny’ emoticon, or our trademarked logo, in their written email correspondence. Ever.”

A great and well-worthy endeavor.

Silence the hordes of would-be clever!

Those madcap dogs, wearing down upon

Us with their Hell-spawned emoticon

Joel Miller draws our attention to a familiar barnicle encrusting the sinking ship USS Fannie Mae:

The federally-subsidized mortgage lender is currently deep in the hole, so it’s a little amusing to discover that Fannie Mae “is a major financial supporter of Jesse Jackson’s largest nonprofit organization, the so-called Citizenship Education Fund (CEF).” So says the National Legal and Policy Center. “According to the [Fannie Mae] Foundation website, it has contributed at least $660,000 to CEF since 1996, including $150,000 in fiscal year 2004.” NLPC, which has previously gone after Jackson with red-hot pokers and tongs for his corporate shakedowns, has announced its filing of “a shareholder proposal to end Fannie Mae’s support of Jesse Jackson through the Fannie Mae Foundation.”

Everyone thinks things are looking pretty good economically, but as the Elliott Wavers see it, this is just the peak of the Wave 2 countertrend bounce. Things are about to get weird, I think, and the first round of bankruptcies such as Enron and PSI/net are going to be dwarfed by those in the coming round. Once rats like our man Jesse begin leaving the ship, we’ll know it’s going down.

Nils offers a sneering critique:

An amusingly dumb posting. First off, it’s an example of the fallacy logicians call “petitio principi” — assuming what needs to be proven, namely that women have some distinct “nature” that makes them dislike work in a way different from men.

Secondly, let’s grant that this is true, then so what? The definition of civilization is the overcoming of nature? There’s nothing “natural” about clean running water, electricity, internal combustion engines, or any of the other appurtenances of civilization; that’s why we like these things. Overcoming nature is what civilized life is all about. A general word of caution: any time you hear someone invoke “human nature” as an argument for anything, you’re getting fed hogwash.

Right, there’s my traditional petitio principi opposed to the scientifically proven fact that women and men feel exactly the same way about everything and share all goals. Speaking of amusingly dumb… anytime you hear human nature dismissed as irrelevant or nonexistent, be prepared to hear some glorious plan for the betterment of humanity that will a) involve centralized power, and, b) result in killing large quantities of people. Human nature not only exists, it is more powerful than any ideology known to man.

Third, empirically, does anyone know a single woman who actually provides nothing to her household but sex? No cooking, no cleaning, no changing of diapers? Or is changing diapers not work in Vox’s view? I’m sure he’ll be happy to do all these things

I’ve likely changed more diapers than almost any man here – including Nate – and more than most of the women as well. It certainly isn’t work, anymore than cleaning up my office is work. Raising children is the most important thing anyone can do, but it is extremely easy. Most men, knowing nothing of it, are willing to buy into the myth of the belabored homemaker, those of us who actually have some experience of it know better. The only difficult aspect is the stamina required, because there simply isn’t any time-off built into the equation.

That being said, the over-scheduling of children’s activities in modern America does tend to turn what should be a reasonable responsibility into a stress-filled nightmare of non-stop limousine service.

Snowcrab provides a better definition:

I don’t agree that work can be defined as something you don’t want to do. I think work is any activity that somehow produces resources to sustain and maintain life, whether you like doing it or not.

Space Bunny and I were talking about this subsequent to reading about fifty of the comments yesterday, and we reached a conclusion very similar to this. It is somewhat ironic, in that the discussion has mutated and it can certainly be argued that prostitution is an economic activity that produces resources to sustain and maintain life, but I don’t think there’s any argument that prostitution is a rather unusual sort of work.

My thinking about housework, raising the children and washing the car is that no matter how clean you keep your house, your car and your laundry, you will die if that’s all you do. The subsistenance farmer feeds his family, the hunter feeds his family while the gatherer feeds hers, so does the cubicle jock.

What I found interesting about the New York Times article yesterday was that it revealed how many women much prefer prostituting themselves over more conventional forms of work. It reminded of how the most sought after career in a mid-90’s poll of Russian high school seniors was “hard currency prostitute”. And if you look at the fame and celebrity of porn stars in our own culture, I’m betting that there’s a significant minority who would prefer Jenna Jamison’s job to working in an office. When the porn stars are prettier than the Hollywood actresses, it’s readily apparent that there is no shortage of supply.

I’m not sure precisely what the significance of this is, but it does run directly counter to nearly everything that is crammed down our throats in the schools and media, where we’re taught that women just want the same opportunities as men. If you’d rather hook or provide escort services than take advantage of the metaphorical 40 acres and a mule, you’re living in a very different headspace than the average guy. Perhaps it’s still “working” but there is a qualitative difference nevertheless.

Tuesday night of last week J, D, and I are playing Mexican and drinking a bunch and I think, “[Gypsy Chick] and I are going to Florida for our New Years trip, I gotta make my picks.” So I pull out the computer and make a bunch of crazy-ass upset picks, laughing with Josh the whole time saying “I’m totally out of it, so if the world turns upside down, this’ll get me somewhere.”

[Gypsy Chick] and I are leaving first thing Friday morning, so Thursday afternoon I think, “What was I thinking, I need to change those stupid picks to something reasonable.” Well….I had just set up a new DSL line, and when I went to change them, I couldn’t get online. I sat over my computer for two hours cursing and pissed the whole time, then finally said, “Ah screw it, I’m out of this thing anyway.” And off to FLA we go.

We’re sitting on the beach yesterday and [Gypsy Chick] asks if I want to go watch football and I said no because we were done for the season anyway and the Vikes would surely somehow back into the playoffs no matter what happened. So I didn’t see a second of football yesterday, and I got home after midnight, so I had heard no scores.

This morning I’m driving to work and I call Chokechain because he had left me a message while I was gone. The first thing he says is, “Holy Crap! How did you do that!” And I have no idea what he’s talking about. He then informs me of my prognosticating motherload yesterday. I laughed my ass off, and almost crashed my car.

Oh wait, nevermind that story….what I meant to say was…. Any moron would have known to pick those teams. You guys are idiots and you are totally my bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)

In other words, Chokechain and I go from 8th to 15th in the last week of the regular season. WB nearly DOUBLES our point total on a week when everyone bombs out, takes the week and jumps from 11th to 2nd.

I have no printable words….

RC wants to spread the blame:

OK. On this article, we agree. However, I do not feel that the Dems would have acted differently. The issue is “politicians”–not just Republicans.

As I have repeatedly written, I don’t believe there’s any difference whatsoever. I vehemently opposed the foolishness of voting “the lesser” of two evils and this sort of thing is precisely why. However, Republicans can sometimes be woken up once they stop their knee-jerk defending of anyone with an (R) in front of their name. Democrats, unfortunately, generally can’t since they harbor too much love for the G. Bush’s repeated slaps across the face of conservatives and those who value freedom will eventually open their eyes, unfortunately, he’s already been reelected so it will be too late.

Keep in mind that it is the three-headed Republican government that has done this, not the Democrats, so in fairness it would be wrong to tar Democrats with it even if I believe they’d do precisely the same and that they will finish what the Republicans have started.

I have no doubt that many Republicans will be upset with me for refusing to spread the blame, but I could not care less. They’ll be a lot more upset once they realize just what they’ve been supporting for all these years. It hurts to learn that you’re not one of the good guys when you always thought you were.