Where is Howard Beale now that we really need him?

[shereads]

"I'm mad as hell as I'm not going to take it anymore!"

 

[rgraham666]

I gave up on anger.

Deadlier addiction than heroin. Pity it's socially acceptable.

 

[Guest]

"I'm mad as hell as I'm not going to take it anymore!"

breathe in
breathe out
before long, im sure youll be able to say..."brokaw, who?"
well, maybe
hrm

 

[shereads]

I gave up on anger.

Yes, but you're Canadian, right? You have to live near us but not among us.



Speaking of which, I'd love it if you guys would give some serious thought to arresting Dubya for war crimes when he visits this week. You don't have to put him on trial or anything. Just give him a little scare. See if his daddy can get this one erased from his record.

49% of us would be tickled pink.

 

[rgraham666]

Yes, but you're Canadian, right? You have to live near us but not among us.



Speaking of which, I'd love it if you guys would give some serious thought to arresting Dubya for war crimes when he visits this week. You don't have to put him on trial or anything. Just give him a little scare. See if his daddy can get this one erased from his record.

49% of us would be tickled pink.

Oh we have lots of angry Canadians. Most of them are angry they're not Americans. Go figure.

And 51% would be ravening for our blood. Thanks, no.

 

[shereads]

Oh we have lots of angry Canadians. Most of them are angry they're not Americans.

Still? That's odd.

And 51% would be ravening for our blood.

I can't imagine that all 51% are still certain they did the right thing. This week, their boy is not precisely resolute about the War on Terror. He's alledgedly being bulled by Rumsfeld into allowing a few pro-Pentagon Republicans to block the passage of the intelligence re-structuring recommended by the 9/11 commission.

Notice anything?

Me neither!

There hasn't been an Orange Level Terror Alert in quite a while. That means we're safe, right?

 

[cantdog]

I'm just annoyed

The BYF decorated my office with tinsel garlands and glass ornaments. My printer is especially Christmassed up. And I have to be very gingerly opening the office door.

So far Dubya has refrained from torturing me directly like this.

I don't blame the kids; they are being swayed by sappy 'leaders.' But the printer! Man. Just looking at it!

cantdog

 

[BlackShanglan]

I gave up on anger.

Deadlier addiction than heroin. Pity it's socially acceptable.

Wise words there. I remember reading speculation that anger releases adrenalin, adrenalin feels real good - i.e., some people might actually have developed a love of anger and hatred in and of themselves.

What the hell else explains Orange lodges?

 

[cantdog]

Anger, woo hoo

Some of the people I worked with at the fire house went to bars in the summertime to have fights. Or beatings, really. (When you end up in the emergency room, that's the criterion by which you know that you were not in a fight; you were in a beating.)

They say alcohol causes a disease, but its action was too slow to save hundreds of people from beatings over the years.

I didn't socialize with a great many of my fellow firefighters.

 

[shereads]

Re: I'm just annoyed

The BYF decorated my office with tinsel garlands and glass ornaments. My printer is especially Christmassed up. And I have to be very gingerly opening the office door.

So far Dubya has refrained from torturing me directly like this.

I don't blame the kids; they are being swayed by sappy 'leaders.' But the printer! Man. Just looking at it!

cantdog

The tinsel garlands are just to loosen you up for the motion-activated singing Santa with the creepy hip-thrust dance step. Take a deep breath. Before you know it, your local TV news crews will be doing their annual story about last-minute shoppers. After that, there are the year-in-review stories and the thumbs-up or down on holiday shopping and what it tells us about the economy, which is never a lot. Soon it will be time for the peach crop to die from an unexpected frost as it does each year in upstate South Carolina, and for me to wonder why it's always unexpected when it seems to happen like clockwork. Mall Santas will turn in their uniforms and line up for work dressing as cows outside the Bagel Barn. Someone will figure out a way to outsource the Mall Santa job and maybe even the cow one, raising the average household income in some small Asian nation by an amount equivalent to the price of season tickets to a quasi-popular Miami sports team whose new, taxpayer-subsidized stadium will almost pay for itself by the year 2065, unless it is demolished in 2012 to make room for a nicer one. Seats will remain 2/3 empty and the structure will block views of Biscayne Bay from what used to be a favorite spot for family picnics and pole-fishing, until a city commissioner approved a zoning variance, on the grounds that no one he knows uses public parks, after which the site will fall to a failed high-rise condo project and be declared unfit for any other use than a sports stadium. No one will get the flu in 2005. They will, but it won't be the strain for which there is no vaccine. There won't be a vaccine for this strain, either, but the fault will be a freak mutation and not a vaccine shortage, so we won't be able to blame Britain or even Canada. The president will announce that Iran has weapons of mass destruction capable of missile-delivery to the USA in under 20 minutes. No one will believe him. Condoleeza Rice will present proof to the United Nations. No one will believe her. Everyone will assume the evidence has been faked, or provided by a professional con artist who is also a double-agent for the Russians. Americans will come together at last, united in our disdain of the Iran story. Iran will fire a nuclear missile. A defective navigation system will cause the missile to hit a small Asian nation, causing a critical shortage of Mall Santas and resulting in the postponement of December 2005. Elections will be held in Iraq and end in a run-off between an Iranian mullah and write-in candidate Saddam Hussein. The U.S. will void the election, calling it a "practice vote," and will declare marshall law. Sudan will invade Pakistan. Pakistan will invade Vietnam. Your tinsel garlands will be a pleasant memory.

Peace.

 

[cantdog]

I know, your last name is Nostradamus! I like the polished, elegant prose better than the forced quatrains, too.

You have made me, however, to repent of my former annoyance. I cast it away! Bless copiously the BYF in their innocent destructive impulses of seasonal excitement, and preserve us all from chilblained fruit. Amen.

 

[shereads]

I know, your last name is Nostradamus! I like the polished, elegant prose better than the forced quatrains, too.

You have made me, however, to repent of my former annoyance. I cast it away! Bless copiously the BYF in their innocent destructive impulses of seasonal excitement, and preserve us all from chilblained fruit. Amen.

Tree tinsel is bad. Cats eat it and it becomes entangled in their intestines and they die.

Chocolate can kill dogs.

Stop plate tectonics.

 

[cantdog]

I love plate tectonics. Hawaii especially.

I can see why they might have mixed feelings about it in California, mind you.

 

[shereads]

I love plate tectonics. Hawaii especially.

I can see why they might have mixed feelings about it in California, mind you.

According to Bill Bryce in "The History of Everything," Yellowstone National Park is not, as you thought, the caldera of a dormant volcano. It is the caldera of an active volcano. A caldera measuring around 2 million acres in size. When it erupts, depending on wind direction, most of the midwestern United States will be covered with volcanic ash to a depth of 40 feet.

The bad news is, those aren't just Red States; they're America's Corn Belt!

 

[carsonshepherd]

According to Bill Bryce in "The History of Everything," Yellowstone National Park is not, as you thought, the caldera of a dormant volcano. It is the caldera of an active volcano. A caldera measuring around 2 million acres in size. When it erupts, depending on wind direction, most of the midwestern United States will be covered with volcanic ash to a depth of 40 feet.

The bad news is, those aren't just Red States; they're America's Corn Belt!

It might improve the scenery. At least it wouldn't noticeably change it. Driving through central Illinois: "Look, a barn! Wow, look, there's another barn. And there's... gee, a barn."

 

[shereads]

It might improve the scenery. At least it wouldn't noticeably change it. Driving through central Illinois: "Look, a barn! Wow, look, there's another barn. And there's... gee, a barn."

There won't be a road or a barn.

Don't move out of the midwest and head for the southeast, though. There's a fault line beneath Charleston, S.C. that's overdue for an earthquake, and is not very far from the Savannah River Nuclear Power Plant.

Edited to add: We should start building a dome over Chicago. I love Chicago.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

We should start building a dome over Chicago. I love Chicago.

Oprah is just too fucking popular for her own good, I tell ya.

~lucky

 

[shereads]

"Democracy doesn't work anymore," says the guy on the show that comes on after David Letterman.

"Democracy gave us some laughs - President Taft, that was fun - but now, after two hundred years, it's starting to show its age.

"Democracy is turning out to be a lot like latch-hooked rugs: it's time-consuming, boring, and most of the people who participate are mentally challenged."

 

[shereads]

Oprah is just too fucking popular for her own good, I tell ya.

~lucky

David Letterman and I may be the only two people in America who own television sets and don't give a rat's gonads about Oprah Winfrey. I once found myself putting a critically acclaimed book back on the shelf at Barnes & Noble because it was wearing her seal of approval. Should I have given Oprah that kind of power? No, of course not. But I just didn't want to be seen with a book that had passed the Oprah test.

She can stay under the dome, because I'm sure she does a lot of good in the world. But she will have to apologize to Letterman first.

 

[cantdog]

I only miss my television when I find myself not understanding things like what you just said, shereads. I am assuming it was elegant and nuanced because of its source. It even had the ring of something with a little universality, pointing to a larger truth. But it is couched in references I don't understand, except for the Oprah book club thing, which I saw first hand when I worked in a bookstore for five years.

I have caught a few hours, perhaps, of Letterman, at the houses of boors who leave the television on when friends come to visit, but I can't say I get the Oprah connection.

If it's not that important, feel free to leave it be. I have no need to understand everything.