Why Americans Fail at New Year's Resolutions

In a word: football. How am I supposed to quit smoking, cut back on drinking, ease up on the fatty snacks and grease-soaked goodness when there's a game on this weekend? All those things are as much a part of football as spoiled quarterbacks soliciting unwilling young women for sexual favors. The playoffs are in full swing as the new year begins and you expect me to abandon my season-long tradition of downing a shot of tequila when my team scores? You expect me not to go outside and light a cigarette in frustration when my team does something stupid? Or not go outside and light a cigarette in celebration of my team doing something awesome? Or not crack open a beer to get the taste of tequila out of my mouth? Or not have a cigarette with that beer. And there's half a beer left here; be a shame to drink it without some wings, pizza or nachos. Oh crap, there's more nachos here and my beer's gone; better open another.

Whoever invented the New Year's resolution could not have envisioned a nation whose vices went hand in hand with its national sport. We blame "the Holidays," for our ruined diets and excesses, but our real Holiday doesn't come until early February, when we can unite as a nation around one game. We aren't Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists during the Super Bowl; we are Babylonian drunkards and gluttons, gathered at the arena's vomitorium so that we might purge ourselves and make room for more wings and beer.

So if you've already failed in your attempts to become a better you, don't blame yourselves, Americans. You belong to a unique place that worships a spectacle the rest of the world will never understand, try though they do. You're a football fan, even if you don't understand the game. The Holiday calendar still applies. Drink like a Greek God. Eat like a Roman Senator. Monday is the start of a New Year.

Idiocracy

Original image here.

Admit It: You Were Moved

Regardless of how you voted, (or if you're a foreigner watching from afar) tonight is special.

God Bless America. And I don't use that term loosely.

Subtle

Yard sign in the hood, featuring the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the obvious assumption being that only McCain (and PALIN!) can prevent this from happening again. Keep America Safe. And by the way, John McCain can't comb his own hair. So vote for him.


I cannot imagine what the 2012 election is going to be like. This has gotten so out of hand that I am very seriously ready to emigrate to Australia.

In case you're interested, here's where the sign points you to.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Jesus Supports Your Agenda

For my 1,000th post here at Where's My Jetpack? - a simple Photoshop hack-job in honor of Patriot Day. He makes a fine Republican, doncha think? But he's still two years too young to be elected President.


(This is actually Dick Cheney's official portrait, with the classic Jesus painting head stuck on.)

Idiocracy & Caribou Barbie

The term "Caribou Barbie" (in quotes) searched on Google nets 15,300 results. That sure didn't take long.

Nevermind that she took little Wasilla, Alaska from a debt-free city to $19 million in debt in her short term, the Rove Machine is selling her as a "fiscal conservative."

Say what you will about the manufacture of Obama, how he is a creation of the Axelrod marketing machine. I have said so much myself. But what we see happening right now is surreal. A total unknown (about whom much more is becoming known) is being sold to the American voting public as a "revolution." Energize that base, "Base" being an excellent synonym for "totally base."

While Mrs. Palin is hiding from the media and learning foreign policy from Joe Lieberman, Obama's star is fading in the afterglow of America's initial introduction to Caribou Barbie and her one speech, written by Bush's speech writers and delivered artfully by the former sportscaster. A quick study, Mrs. Palin will emerge from hiding and dupe millions into thinking that she is a thoughtful, experienced and poised leader, ready to assume the office of President of the United States tomorrow.

If this country elects McCain, (who has sadly been eclipsed by his running mate) we are much closer to Idiocracy than I thought. But I have every expectation that my brain-dead countrymen will do just that.

Now might be a good time to watch that movie.

Damn Me, I Did it Again

Tuned into Fox News, that is - and Hannity among others. The outrage, the feigned disgust, the appalled righteousness on the part of the right wing in response to liberal bloggers asking questions about Governor Palin's daughter's pregnancy is the very height of hypocrisy. Not the world's most liberal blogger, Jake Tapper of ABC, asks a great question:

"What would the response be if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and his wife Michelle had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter?"

I don't believe this young girl's pregnancy says anything about her mother's ability to govern, but the reaction to it, particularly from the right, says a whole lot about how we really live in two countries that will never get along. The right has their own media, the left has theirs. Those of us trying to get a glimpse of the truth have to switch back and forth and face both fronts of the propaganda storm.

It's already fractured beyond repair. I say we just split the thing down the middle.

Campaign Posters from the Other Side

The political short-order cooks are working double shifts of late, sweating in the kitchen as they turn this election season into a vomitorium of bad taste, unseemly innuendo and blatant lies. Throw in a little Sean Hannity, a dash of "Take America Back for God," and a pinch of leftover 60s radicalism and you've got the makings for a really foul smelling melting pot. What we've been served is a big steaming platter of political junk food, free of nutrients and loaded with crap. "Eat up, kids! Clean your plates! You know, there are people in Africa starving for democracy."

So why fight it anymore? I'm going to join the fray.

Imagine if we let Karl Rove create posters for Obama. Or what if we let David Axelrod create posters for McCain? They'd probably look something like these. (Click for larger versions.)

You're Watching The John Edwards Channel

Where it's all John Edwards, all the time.

Is anyone really surprised that a vain and pretty rich man who talked way too much about his concern for the impoverished and loved to tell you about his millworker father but never talked about his hedge fund work or his life as a vain and pretty rich trail lawyer, is guilty of feeding his ego by sleeping with another woman?

This is news?

It's the salacious slice of the week, from a media culture obsessed with enforcing a moral code they could never uphold themselves, casting stones and pondering the results of their stone-casting. Gay Republicans in airport bathrooms or straight Democrats in hotel bathrooms, it's all the same. Give us the pictures, the love letters, the stained dresses, the quotes from friends of friends. Tell us why this is important and why we need to stay tuned.

America, you suck so much sometimes.

Come on Baby, Lawn is Burning

Daylight Savings Time
from the album, Geometry

Who wrote this scene? You know what I mean.
It finally registers and rings.
Dodging knives, rearranging lives.
There were a thousand little things.
Grab a towel. Hear the wind howl.
Tell me, who loves you more?
Rain is gone, baby. (Lawn is too, maybe.)
Let’s say we hit the shore.

Come on, Baby – Lawn is burning – season’s turning.
There’s nothing left but rock
Save daylight - turn back the clock
Jumping off a floating casino on a cruise to Mexico

You don’t want that life. I don’t need that strife.
Blinds drawn on an ocean view.
And we’ll find it, too – what we were born to do.
We’ll go where we please.
We’ll see through the trees.
We’ll shoot at the knees.

I’ll drink your wine. We’ll dine, recline.
You caught the subtle pass.
We took a chance. We left the dance.
Raise a toast. I’ll refill your glass.
Grab a raft and paddle like mad.
No need to pack a case.
We're jumping ship. You bit my lip.
We'll find a quiet cove – a secret place.

Come on, Baby – Lawn is burning – season’s turning.
There’s nothing left but rock.
Save daylight - turn back the clock
Shut the doors on the club where the voices were dubbed

We don’t want that life. Dull as butter knife.
We're gold now, no longer blue.
And we’ll find it too – what we were born to do
We’ll go where we please.
We’ll see through the trees.
We’ll shoot at the knees.

We made the scene. You know what I mean.
We were dying to find a cure.
Who's gonna mock the heavens at half past eleven?
Baby, I ain't never seen you so sure.

Come on, Baby – Lawn is burning – season’s turning.
There's nothing left but rock.
Save daylight
Come on, Baby – Lawn is burning – season’s turning.
Have you had enough talk?
Save daylight - turn back the clock
You know it's twice as nice in our private island paradise

I don’t want that life. You don't need that strife.
We're gonna be made new.
And we’ll find it too – what we were born to do
We’ll go where we please.
We’ll see through the trees.
And we'll shoot at the knees.

When a Rich Man Spends This Much Money...

...be wary

I can't watch TV without seeing this old guy's face warning me about our dependency on foreign oil.



So, just who is T. Boone Pickens? That's one Texas-styled name, isn't it? Learn more about him here.

Some highlights:

• Supported George W Bush
• Supported Rudy Giuliani
• Supported the Swift Boat effort against Kerry
• Corporate raider
• Chairs a hedge fund
• Was a frat boy
• Flirted with a presidential run
• Is pretty rich
  

On a positive note, he is devoted to philanthropy. In 2005, Mr. Pickens donated $165 million to Oklahoma State University. Interestingly, The New York Times noted that "the money spent less than an hour on December 30 in the account of the university's charity, O.S.U. Cowboy Golf Inc., before it was invested in a hedge fund controlled by Mr. Pickens, BP Capital Management."

I'm not saying riches make you a bad man. I'd love to be rich. But like T. Boone, I'd likely spend a lot of money looking after my own money. Whatever this guy is suggesting, keep in mind that it will benefit him.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

Grayscale Babylon
A Dream in Black and White

The bodies of giant angels, rotting in the woods
We climbed upon their corpses while the ants crawled underfoot
Fallen from a skyward battle
On whose side we couldn’t tell
But their peaceful faces seemed to say that they’d never been to Hell


There’s a rush of refugees always slogging through my dreams
down lonely roads and darkened streets or fording swollen streams
The pictures come in shades of grey
and I know the scenes by heart
A spoiled people now afraid in a country in the dark

It's more of that sleep twilight stuff.
Picture stolen from.

Blasphemer!

I thought I'd edit Mr. Jefferson's document a little.

Click for Maximum Offensiveness

Guess this means Sean Hannity won't be inviting me to his picnic.

Of course I "Love My Country." But let's be real for a minute on this day and remember that the "Founding Fathers" would probably not have associated with you unless you wore a powdered wig and banged your slaves. It's fine to celebrate our past, but don't color history in such majestic and glorious shades that you repaint it entirely.

We still have a long way to go as a country. We are just as divided today as we were then. 40-45% of the colonists supported the rebellion. 15-20% of the population remained loyal to the British Crown and the remaining 35-45% attempted to remain neutral.

Overdosing on the Flag

Here's a screenshot of Sean Hannity's homepage. He's so handsome when he does the "squint into the distance" pose, don't you think? Note that you can sign up for "Hannidate," where you might meet the woman of your dreams. She bakes red, white and blue cakes and agrees with you completely that "The Architect" Karl Rove gets a bad rap from the liberal Commie press.

It's good we have Sean here in our country. Anywhere else he'd have been locked up. Or worse.

Let Me 'Splain it This Way

Many friends and readers are sending me links to this video of the professional jet fighter pilot who jumped from an airplane over the Swiss Alps and cruised to earth in a nice little 18-minute flight with his jet-powered wing-thing. They title the emails, “HERE’S YOUR JETPACK!”

It’s a nice sight to behold and looks like a thrilling ride, but no, that’s not my jetpack.

The only way I will stop asking the question “Where’s My Jetpack?” is when jetpacks are affordable to common folks like you and me and will safely convey us to and from our places of employment or the grocery store. It would also be nice if they didn’t sound like F-18s at full throttle and could fly for longer than a couple minutes on a tank of fuel. Another real benefit would be if they were available at Wal-Mart. I want them easy enough to operate that my Mom could handle one.

But more than that, “Where’s My Jetpack?” is at its heart a joke, a lament and an encouragement. The jetpack is simply a symbol of all the other things that were supposed to be here by now, promised to us by the advertisers, by Disney, by the government and all the other dreamers. As it says over in the sidebar in the “What’s The Meaning of This?” section: “The future is now, and we’re still waiting.”

And we will wait forever. Maybe the jetpack will be here in a hundred years, but I really ask the question to keep people from getting too pessimistic, believe it or not. It’s not just about a lack of technology or futuristic fun that hasn’t arrived. It’s about that grand Utopian vision that we will never achieve. As the song goes:

Where’s the end of war and freedom from disease?
Where’s the milk and honey from sea to shining sea?
Where are the crime-free cities and rockets on our backs?
Where are the smooth moving sidewalks? Where’s my jetpack?

The biggest lie ever foisted upon our optimistic species is, “You shall be as gods.” Here are some things I know about the future:

• There will always be liars, cheaters and thieves, hiding behind asterisks followed by fine print.
  
• Barack Obama isn’t bringing world peace.
• John McCain is not a maverick. He's a typical phony politician.
• You will always encounter spiteful and hateful bastards and bitches wherever you go.
• People will likely always be starving somewhere in this world.
• Life is only easy once in a great while.

As long as you know that the promises made to us and the dreams held out in front of us by our leaders, the media (and their sponsors) are usually a bunch of crap, you can do what you need to do, rarely being disappointed. You won’t be expecting a handout. You may be offering a hand-up. You might take a moment to appreciate what you have right here, right now.

That’s a roundabout way to arrive at optimism, I know, and I'm still working on it. But I have always learned the hard way.

A hovercraft in every drive
Instant breakfast on the table at 6:45
Rocket to the moon and race right back
to my holograph room and my new jetpack

Remember, I was gonna watch your dreams
On a flush-mounted giant plasma flat-screen
Baby, we were gonna live forever
With a wish and a pill and the pull of a lever

Heaven on Earth in a God Free Zone
Where we all get along and no one’s alone
A paradise of plenty where nobody lacks
We're all flying around with our own jetpacks

This Might Be Good

One of the writers for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has a book coming out that should be good for a laugh. At least this promo for it is.



The author of this blog was not paid for this advertisement, but he is not rejecting the possibility of promoting stuff for cash.

Not What They Had in Mind, I'd Bet

Click it and it will grow

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams and a few compatriots wait in line at the Florida DMV. Your democracy at work.

Hopefully they'll register to vote as they get their driver's licenses.

And since what you say on the Internet lives forever and can't be taken back, even if you delete the post, I would like to take this opportunity to recant my earlier denunciation of Paul Giamatti's performance in the HBO mini-series, John Adams. He grew into the role and did a great job in the final episodes in which we saw Adams retire to his farm in Massachusetts to live a life of hard work and constant heartbreak.

Size is ALL That Matters

We Americans see everything in terms of ourselves, no matter where on the planet we may be. If we're going to travel to your country, for instance, we'd like to be sure there will be Coca-Cola, a Starbucks and of course, a McDonald's close at hand. Some American TV channels would be nice, too. And when we go to your country, we don't like to think in terms of kilometers or Celsius. Give us the conversion formulas so we understand the REAL distances and temperatures. (Kilometers x .6 = miles. An easy, if slightly inaccurate Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion is "double it and add 30.") And do us a favor: speak English.

And when we measure your country, we measure it against what we know. Don't talk to us about strength of the dollar vs. your currency. Don't talk to us about culture, history or how many years we might need to subdue your tiny country if we ever have to put you in your place.

The following comparisons come from the extremely comprehensive and very useful CIA World Factbook, a great resource. It gives us some comfort to know that, besides Russia, we've got most of you beat. Don't be insulted by these comparisons. Embrace them. Perhaps we can create a sister-state organization whereby, for example, Vietnam and New Mexico exchange ideas and cultural ambassadors.

• Denmark: slightly less than twice the size of Massachusetts
• Belgium: about the size of Maryland
• Germany: slightly smaller than Montana
• Greece: slightly smaller than Alabama
• UK: slightly smaller than Oregon
• Iraq: slightly more than twice the size of Idaho
• Afghanistan: slightly smaller than Texas
• Costa Rica: slightly smaller than West Virginia
• France: slightly less than the size of Texas
• Iran: slightly larger than Alaska
• Vietnam: slightly larger than New Mexico
• China: slightly smaller than the US
• Russia: approximately 1.8 times the size of the US
• Cuba: slightly smaller than Pennsylvania
• Kenya: slightly more than twice the size of Nevada
• Israel: slightly smaller than New Jersey
• Lebanon: about 0.7 times the size of Connecticut
• Saudi Arabia: slightly more than one-fifth the size of the US
• Switzerland: slightly less than twice the size of New Jersey
• Ghana: slightly smaller than Oregon
• Czech Republic: slightly smaller than South Carolina

Elitist

Click image to read fine print of fake ad

Trek Bikes proudly touts their “Made in America” status. I love my Trek, but it’s one of the lower-end models that doesn’t enjoy that American-made distinction. It gets used every day these days as I seek to be less unhealthy. I even outfitted it with a geeky halogen light after I almost ran over two ladies walking their golden retrievers (on the wrong side of the street with giant 50-foot leashes) pre-dawn, one of whom yelled at me, “You need a light!” I grunted back, “Yeah. Sorry,” and then went to Wal-Mart that afternoon on my lunch break to find one. The light was from Schwinn, a proud American company if ever there was one. The light was also made in China, like most things at Wal-Mart, but it casts a nice, wide beam in the wee hours and I can see the things and creatures I’m about to hit on my Chinese-made bicycle. I expect the light to last maybe a year, like most things made in China.

The bike is wearing, like most things made in China, but in our disposable economy, I’ll probably be better off to just get another lower-end Trek before I can pay for one of the “better ones” made in America by angry, bitter rural folks clinging to their overpaid manufacturing jobs.

Eventually, the market for “higher-end” Treks will take a downturn. Then the folks in Waterloo, Wisconsin who make those Treks will watch their factory close. Then they can cling to their guns or religion as they continue to vote for the candidates who have no problem allowing American jobs to be shipped overseas, but who share their faith and will defend their rights to own guns as they visit during campaign season to knock back a beer and regale the locals with tales of hunting in their youth.

Whiskers is Such a Romantic

As a follow up to last week's entry about The Tuscan Trend^™ (TTT^™), I can now without question state that Americans are serious suckers for anything named "Tuscan."

It's not enough anymore that your food, drink, home or apartment be Tuscanized, now your cat gets to eat Tuscan style.

Thank you, Fancy Feast^®. (A Purina^® product, which is a Nestlé^® company.)

With apologies to the mental health community and the mentally challenged, this nation is now officially retarded.