Yo Friggin' Ho

Santa was totally cool this year. He delivered really early on the goods. I hope he keeps it up, too.

Our good ol' president, the Bushster, is in deep kim chee and I'm liking it. Ditto for the jackass lobbyists and their pud buddies: DeLay and Company.

I hope your holiday season is just as merry.

Kill a Barbie, Kill a Barbie...

Barbie, that smiling plastic icon of childhood and yesteryear, has been systematically and brutally tortured by young children in Great Britain for many years. This sad fact was unearthed recently by a team of highly-skilled scientific researchers who toiled day and night at the University of Bath, located near the city of Bristol, England.

Interestingly, the report suggests that the children were "disavowing Barbie" in "rites of passage" and considered Barbie dolls "disposable". To this, I say: "Bullshit."

I remember when my sisters had Barbie dolls, which was a little over 30 years ago. We all had fun treating them to various forms of abuse and torture. We even had a Barbie automobile in which we would stuff several dolls and watch them tumble down a hill, imagining them in some bizarre accident. We melted their air, drilled out their eyes, switched arms for legs, and even had a lynching or two.

That was a lot of fun. My sisters and I all had a good time. We only had a few dolls, but we never thought that they were disposable. They were convenient objects of our repressed aggressions. It was either the dolls or each other.

Personally, I think the researchers have it all wrong. Barbies are maimed and tortured because they are an outlet for feelings that children are told not to show. When mommy says "stop crying," you have to vent the emotion somehow. What better way to keep your sanity, than to hack a Barbie to bits and feed them to your Raptor Robots?

Are We Getting Impeachment Happy?

Doug Ireland in AlterNet.org wrote a piece which discusses the plausibility for impeaching President Bush. For those of us who actually read news reports and follow Congressional Debates, this is not new, nor is it surprising. Impeachment was possible when President Bush first knowingly lied to the American citizens about the reasons for instigating a war in Iraq. Not being a keen supporter of the Bushies, I am not opposed to the idea.

On the other hand, I am a bit taken aback at the notion that we seem to be on a fast track to a weird vote-then-impeach standard of thought. My fear is that, since we have such horrible voter turnout, and because the tallying of votes is rife with corruption, incredibly corrupt people will find their way into the Oval Office and then find themselves faced with a forced removal.

If Bush suffers impeachment hearings, then we will surely see it very often from here on out. I'm sure the public could not care less, since it follows the consumer laws very well: Get the flashiest thing for nothing, then, when something looks better, trash it and get the other; repeat, ad nauseum. Four-year terms wouldn't be necessary. We'd just kick out the guy (or gal) that lost their appeal.

Bush Uses Standard Debate Tactics

In President Bush's radio address to the nation on December 17th, 2005, he declared that he:

"...authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

Ok, so that means that he asked the NSA to spy on American citizens.

What? Did I hear you say that he said they would only listen in on people with "known links to al Qaeda"? That's a funny thing, because there would be no need for spying on people who were already known to be part of the terrorist group that organized the 9/11 incident. Furthermore, that statement is in contradiction to the very events of 9/11. If the NSA knew about these terrorists, they should have been on top of things.

The biggest kicker for me in the speech, however, was this:

...the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals.

Ok, so maybe we should give our lyin' prez the benefit of the doubt. Apparently he thinks that federal investigators weren't allowed to pursue terrorists with "tools they already used against other criminals". So what the hell did they have before? Also, just what makes a terrorist a legitimate terrorist if they haven't committed any act of terrorism?

The speech was bullshit, through and through. Wake up, folks, and smell the criminal activity of our own government. Get pissed.

'Tis the Season to be Owing

Yes, it is that time of year when we all open our pocketbooks, take out rectangular pieces of plastic, and give, give, give. So many people I have met (including myself at times) seem to equate the spirit of giving with the cost of the giving. The more they spend, the bigger their spirit.

What a pile of bullshit. The more you spend, the more you place yourself in debt. Of course, this isn't true of the 0.00001% of us who use the green stuff to buy presents. Using cash to make purchases takes planning and saving, something few of us understand.

No, I'm talking about the 99.99999% of us who use credit cards to buy holiday gifts. With each generous purchase, you graciously give not only to the recipient of said gifts, but also to the demons of debt: Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. It is they, those grim reapers of our income, who get the most out of each holiday season.

But, what the fuck do you care? You want Bobby to have a bike and your spouse a new robe. Your neighbors certainly deserve another bottle of wine -- each -- and the house most definitely needs another thousand lights to keep on burnin' through the darkening night.

Forget the fact that millions of impoversed people in third-world nations work horrendous hours and are paid little, if anything, just so you can madly consume with your credit cards and make those much more fortunate than yourself even more fortunate. Ignore the little man behind the curtain who continually rakes in your hard-earned money from interest.

Just don't bitch and moan when the bills start a-piling. Just spend the next 12 months paying it all off and start all over again. Hey, that's what Christmas is for.

Oh, that and that little baby dude, too...