Stereotypes in Transition
Mood:  irritated
Used to be that the disproportionate share of vehicles broken down in traffic belonged to Mexicans. But, no more. Now, young Mexican laborers live ten to fifteen per apartment, making their monthly rent out to be about $40 per guy. So, what do they do with all that extra money (besides send it back home)? That's right: they each buy these enormous, brand new pick-up trucks. Check it out: go through the poorest, most Hispanic neighborhoods in your town and you will see some of the biggest and baddest pick-ups in town parked outside the most ramshackle lean-tos ever conceived. No matter that these people have to sleep and fuck in shifts and have no sense of domestic dignity: at least they have giant vehicles to publicly demonstrate their shit driving skills. All I can ask is that Paco stop loaning out his Chevy to his three foot-five girlfriend Imelda: she can't even see over the fucking dashboard. Give her a cell phone and you can just forget about safety.

Taking a Bath with the Turks
Mood:  celebratory
Inevitably, I must gloat in the face of the average spineless Turk who protested to his government not to let the United States talk them into going to war in Iraq and who now presumes to compare what al-Qaeda has done in Istanbul this past week to the events of 11 September 2001. It makes me laugh. If you sorry bastards had helped us at the start of the war, it is all but certain that we would not be having a fraction of the trouble we now do with the insurgents in and around the Sunni Triangle. Remember all of the men and materiel we had in position and which you made us (for the most part) remove to another part of the theater before we could begin the liberation? Well, these bombings are a small repayment (made through the auspices of a common enemy, you goddamned cowards) for your spinelessness. When you pressured your parliament into withdrawing its cooperation, that was quite an act of grassroots democracy in action, no doubt. It was all enough to bring a tear to the eye of the Great Autonomizer. But learn your lesson well, fezhead: THOSE WACKED-OUT TOWELHEADS WANT A PIECE OF YOUR ASS, TOO. Get it? YOU DIDN'T BUY YOURSELF ANY SAFETY! YOU LET THE WAHABBO-FASCIST SONS OF BITCHES KNOW FOR A FACT THAT YOU DON'T HAVE THE GUTS TO FIGHT BACK! Get it? When the whole world saw that all you filthy bastards wanted was to extort money out of Uncle Sam, they knew they had a big ripe ass to stick it to. Enjoy digging yourselves out of the rubble, you Constantinipples. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Down on Our Knee
Mood:  cool
They say law-making and sausage-making are the two things a person should least want to see, but let us add a third: hero-making in East Austin by the NAACP. It's a pretty disgusting sight. In the past year, a couple of pieces of garbage (a mentally ill woman living on the government teat named Sophia King and a young hoodlum with multiple assault and theft charges already on his tab named Jessie Owens) have been shot to death by officers of the Austin Police Department.

In both cases, the death was of great benefit to the community. King had been a violent water buffalo for many years and had the reputation to prove it. She had a knife out and was threatening to kill her apartment manager. However proper such an impulse might be in certain cases, King was just being a cracked-brained sack of violent crap. When she pushed her threats too far, one of our cops shot her dead. Good. This officer even got an award later on, although not [necessarily] for doing what he did in this instance.

The other case I wrote about two weeks ago. Owens was in a stolen car when he was dispatched to Hell. Why does that not mean something? I WANT cops to kill dumbasses who steal people's cars. Why NOT? The fewer of their kind, the better. YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE. There have been times in my life when I was desperately broke and, yet, it would never have OCCURRED to me to go and steal a man's car. Why don't liberal assholes who preach about socioeconomic inequality and systemic racism and the pipe dream of rehabilitation ever just consider the facts? Think about it: when you go and break into someone's house or car, you HAVE to know how WRONG that is; how FUCKED up that is to go and take from someone else! And why would you do that in the first place? Because you lack the character and will to hold down a job of your own to make the money to buy the things you NEED (crack cocaine NOT being one of them).

And, so, organizations like the NAACP find themselves in the happy position of defending garbage like Owens and King. Why? Are they serious? Is it possible that they believe these people were shot to death because they were black and NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE BEING VIOLENT PIECES OF SHIT? Why doesn't the black community know the diference between the two? They say the cops operate differently in East Austin than they do west of the Interstate. No foolin'? Could that be because a disproportionate amount of the crime committed in this city is committed IN East Austin? Get a clue, Nelson Linder! Don't EVEN front like those people are worth a damn. Even if you don't show it, you KNOW better.

More Perversion
Mood:  incredulous
Michael Jackson is a disgusting faggot ---a moral leper and physical freak who should be put to sleep. It's not that I care so much about the 12 year-old who says Jackson molested him (because I absolutely don't); it's that there is now an opportunity to bury this turd in the litterbox of American jurisprudence. He MUST be made an example.

The only thing approaching Jackson's moral turpitude is the parent who would permit her child to spend time alone with that disgusting faggot at his ranch. These people are goddamned vermin for exposing their prepubescent sons to Jackson's desires. What the fuck do they expect? They should all be charged with child endangerment.

Perversion
Mood:  don't ask
Want a sense of how perverted the anti-war/anti-American/anti-Semitic/anti-Bush Left has become? When terrorists bomb a British consulate and bank in Turkey, British protesters blame Bush because he's on a state visit to their government. Right. And, uh, HOW ABOUT BLAMING THE FUCKING TERRORISTS WHO ACTUALLY DID THE BOMBING, YOU STUPID PIECES OF SHIT?!?!

Do This to a Telemarketer
Mood:  suave
The next time some lifeless female drone calls my house looking for one of the many, many Mexicans who formerly had my phone number, I'm going to thank her for calling back from the 900-number service and then ask if she'll wait for me to get my lotion and paper towels before we begin.

Down with the Saudis
I hear the Saudi government is now convinced that terrorism is a great threat to its own authority. Now that they've had a few bombs go off in their backyard. Of course, for all we know, they ordered that shit done to themselves to appear as though they are not complicit in the doings of al-Qaeda. They're just a bunch of bankrollers for all of those Wahabbist sacks of shit. I'm not fooled, even when they send in that prissy little ambassador with the good English. Try again, towelheads!

Right
Let's get absolutely clear about something that really matters. What should be the ideal state for man? One in which freedom and autonomy are valued above all else? I think so. That is a better state than subjection to the Government or subjection to an oppressive culture. There's lots of alternatives, of course: you could live in communist China or Cuba or Viet Nam. Or even North Korea. Individuality in such societies is suspect to the authorities. That is, the very thing you are ---an individual--- is subsumed into the greater whole around you. But that's not a patriotic feeling I would wish to have. Coming to Kim Jong-Il on your knees? Nah. Fuck that. Nobody who prizes the dignity and the integrity of the individual can approve of what he is and what he does. He has brutalized his people in ways we Westerners can only imagine. So can we agree that there are leaders in this world who do harm to their own people and their own cultures because they themselves are fucked up? Sure we can.

Now, a cynic (and a very hypocritical one at that) might, at this point, make the terribly witty observation that our own President is a leader who is harming his own people and culture because he is waging a war with which they cannot agree. The anti-war Left sees George W. Bush as an enemy to be destroyed. Why? Because they hate him for defeating their candidate in 2000. They think he did it fraudulently, even though you can show them all sorts of evidence to the contrary. They are wrapped in an obsessive caccoon of hatred for the President because they think he is a dumbass and a thief and a warmonger. But what is he doing that is so intolerable to THEM? Getting our soldiers killed? Well, that's unfair. The leaders of great countries have ALWAYS sent young men to fight and die abroad to effect some great change in the way of the world. That is what is happening now. Bush is trying to reconfigure the Middle East and it is a huge undertaking. It is a bold and brave undertaking ---and he gets no credit for the breadth of his design, which escapes most people who are caught up in their own little intellectually-stunted world of masturbatory illogic and incompetent vision.

Our President and his people are trying to do what we have a genius for doing: we spread our own belief in democratic humanity and the blessings of liberty all over the world. We impose it at the point of a gun or at the tip of a rocket or in the sublimity of a mushroom cloud, but we will always impose it. Why? 'Cause that's our job. We force people the world over to recognize their own dignity and their own potential to live freely and to trade freely and to succeed by dint of their own labors. We liberate the world. That's what we do. And whether they admit it or not, they know they ought to love us for it. We burned the imperial impulse clear out of the Japanese soul. We humbled and reconstituted the German nation in recompense for the stupidity of their racist idealism. Yep, we mongrel motherfuckers have had it out with everybody ---including ourselves. And what for? So that any human being anywhere can believe that, no matter what, there is still a culture left in this world that will come and fuck you into a hole until you admit that a man's right to breathe and think freely is greater than any lousy religion or despotic state. And you know who it is, baby: it's the right and will of the American citizen. We got friends? You bet. And they'll get theirs as long as they know who their best friend is. He's the destroyer of tyrants and despots and towel-headed sacks of fascist shit. Every American soldier who dies in the service of this great cause of our time is a father or a mother to the next world. They are the righteous ancestors of a great peace and true justice. Fuck the cynic in his ass to his sternum. Fuck the hypocritical liberal turd who has no sense of justice anywhere in his heart and who lacks the moral vision and clarity to support our triumph over these medieval enemies of the modern world. Whose side are they really on? They can say all they want about how they are performing their patriotic duty by undermining the President when he is working hard to make Iraq a success, but they are seditious know-nothings. Don't they know how many thousands of Saddamites and Muslim garbagemen have yet to be slaughtered before our goal is met? Make just one more mistake, Abdul: Billy Yank and Johnny Reb are going to come flatten your fucking house.

Irene Terrazas
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "I Got You" by the Split Enz
In the course of my professional duties last night, I had occasion to speak to a woman named Irene Terrazas (which may mean "peace on Earth" somehow). She is apparently a nice Mexican-American lady who is in a transitional state with me and everyone else this side of the Rio Grande/cultural divide. That is to say, when I asked her to pronounce her surname (repeatedly, because I did not understand it the first couple of times), she launches into the well-known "news anchor accent" mode by trilling out them R's like a jackpotting slot-machine. Terrrrah-sas, Terrrrah-sas...

Well, guess what. I think that's a silly thing to do. You, of course, will think me a close-minded, culturally-insensitive bigot, but hear me out: Irene says her given name (what they used to call a Christian name before the ACLU and the Communist menace, generally, showed up) just like anyone in, say, Iowa would: Eye-reen. Just as American as mom and apple pie. But with Terrazas? No. She's still gotta own every tongue-flicking millisecond of them R's so that Gringo McCrackerputty can't get next to her at the party. Get it? It's a matter of cultural resistance, unconscious or not, but that's what it is. And I say that sucks. Wanna know why? 'Cause you KNOW my great-grandpa Henry (whom they called Heinrich until, well, YOU know...) was saying Petzold a HELL of a lot differently than me. He probably put a big old T-sound on the end of my kraut-given surname and did a few other things with it, too, that wouldn't occur to ME. Why? 'cause by the time Petzold got to me, we had buffed the edges off a little so that the other folks around town could have a fair chance at being able to pronounce it well enough to communicate who we were. And, to this day, a Z in your surname will send half the American population into a tailspin of enunciative discomfort and incompetence. People have such godawful trouble with my bisyllabic, relatively-easy-to-pronounce German surname that it has caused one of my siblings to permanently pronounce it with the use of a joy-buzzer. It's ridiculous.

So, Irene Terrazas, I'm glad you're here. But let that trilling shit go. Your surname isn't so rare that an educated man can't figure it out if it just weren't so damned elaborate y liquefrou-frou.

A Meaty and/or Logical Theory of Our Weather
Mood:  on fire
Have I mentioned lately what worthless sacks of shit TV weathermen are? I don't suppose it makes (much) sense blaming them for the absolute indian summer-like weather we are still experiencing EVEN IN FUCKING NOVEMBER, but there's an obvious inverse correlation between the amount of high-tech crap they're so proud of and their actual forecast accuracy. And when I say it doesn't make much sense to blame them for this preposterously un-autumnal weather, that is to say that Shawn Rutherford of KXAN is the single greatest reason why Austin experiences nine months of summer every year. He is obviously the Spawn of Satan because there is no day hot or bright or humid enough to slake his overheated, dessicated, and bleached-bone sense of climactic discomfort. This is the only possible explanation, for who could imagine a weatherman less inclined to the joys of a nice, juicy thunderstorm? A real soaker, see. Or, how about a nice cold snap? One that might kill off some bugs? Oh, no! Not His Repellency! Not the Everlasting Dome of High Pressure Itself. I mean, FUCK this guy! Who is he being a shill for? The Board for Unpleasant Afternoons? The International Council for Nights of Ninety-eight Percent Humidity? I am SICK of this cracker mofo! I want cold days and even colder nights NOW. Not several years ago before Rutherford of the Nether-regions emerged on the scene to scare away the weather a normal man would like to see. Think he's taking on too much of the blame? Nonsense. His physical existence in the Austin metropolitan region actually causes entire systems of ripe low pressure to split up and go around this town only to remerge again to our south. Tune into him sometime: who knows why he says what he says? Is he just trying to placate the phoniest anchor team in Austin TV by praising all hot weather and sunniness and damning with faint expectations anything that might appear cool or cold or overcast? Maybe THAT'S it. Maybe it's their fault. Wendy Woolfolk and that mumble-mouthed [quipster] Chris Willis: blame THEM.

Down with Smoking!
Mood:  loud
Smoking sucks. No more smoking! There's no such thing as a social cigarette smoker. They're always there. Stop! Stop! You're killing yourselves. You're paying money to the Government so that they can subsidize tobacco growers back East and kill YOU off faster so that you won't be around as long to take your Social Security payments and use up their Medicaid funds. It's a giant plot, folks. They WANT you to die faster. Don't pay the G! STOP SMOKING!!!

Breaking My Radio Silence
Mood:  down
Have been in a black hole lately and can't make myself care enough to show up here like I should. I am sad about our losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can't we go back out there and start hammering down on some of that dog shit until it learns its lessons? There's no way a self-respecting superpower is going to sit there and take it off of these Saddamites and Saudi and Syrian "ex-pats." If they want war, I say take it to them.

I am also absolutely demoralized at my job, the particulars of which I cannot share. Suffice it to say, the situation there has been through what I would call an unprecedented degree of dissolution. You would agree if I elaborated. Nevertheless, there are some irons in the fire and, if one of them gets selected for some further work, that'll be fine. Because I know I would love to run some people through.

Anyway, I'll try to make it back around. I DO appreciate the kind words of my friends who visit here. They were wondering what had become of me, but I wasn't able to come up with anything good. Still, I enjoy this and will try to keep it up. Again.

Get Serious
Mood:  cool
I saw something in George W. Bush's demeanor at his photo-op with Jerry Bremer the other day that reminded me of why I didn't vote for him. It was this clumsy, but studied, kind of superciliousness that couldn't conceal a very real impatience with the press. It's just the kind of attitude that can piss off a friend at a hundred feet (and infuriate an enemy at a thousand).

The reason why this matters is that it's emblematic of a much larger failure for this Administration. They have absolutely lost the PR war in a dozen different ways. Yes, the imbedded reporter was a stroke of genius, but that was to keep our minds on the danger and our hearts strong for victory. Now we need ("now" being the past several months) a clear and coherent message to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and, just as importantly, to make it clear to those against the war here how it's paying dividends. But the Administration has dropped that ball repeatedly. They've wasted a lot of time and energy on trying to redefine the terms of post-victory insurgency when what really mattered all along is that they kept their word and acknowledged the truth of the situation.

Rumsfeld's memo was honest, at least.

Just getting steamed up.

Need to fucking level Tikrit, though.

Carpet Bomb Tikrit. NOW!
It's pretty clear that the guerilla war or insurgency or whatever you want to call it that's going on in Iraq needs to be addressed with a renewed American offensive. Will it piss off the moderates there who aren't trying to kill us and the UN and the Red Cross? Probably. But enough's enough. We need to find Saddam and butcher him in the middle of a soccer field in Bahgdad. We need to carpet bomb Tikrit and drop any other hammer we've got on the rest of these dead-enders. After that, let's help Sharon level Damascus.

You've gotta be the biggest piece of shit in the world to load up an ambulance with explosives and bomb a Red Cross hospital.

Let's never again talk about the sanctity of the "holy month" of Ramadan. These Muslim garbagemen don't respect it; let's not, either.

Jeb Bush Is a Tool of the Religious Right
Mood:  don't ask
Let's be clear about something very important: people with terminal illnesses and irreversible brain/organ damage are facing an unspeakable crisis of being, whether they know it or not. Necessity gazes into their eyes and does not blink or look away. Necessity says: You must fight now, either to stay alive for the sake of others and yourself, or you must fight to achieve a good death (which is what euthanasia means in Greek). Let no one dare question your choice. The outcome isn't changed, but the way there is yours. That is the whole of human dignity.

Some people choose to fight so long as they have some hope and something to fight for. They pursue any and all medical options and, if need be, go into tremendous debt. That is their choice. But others may choose to let go and not endure any more pain or incur any more debt. That, too, is a dignified choice ---and one that ought not be questioned or precluded by the meddling of others.

Thus, I am utterly offended by the actions of the Florida state legislature and their governor, Jeb Bush. For political purposes, they have singled out a woman who has been in a vegetative-comatose state for over 12 years whose husband last week won the right to pull her feeding tubes to let her finally die. They passed a bill specifically to allow the governor to order that her feeding tubes be restored. And that's what he did. Ridiculous.

It is outrageous enough that a law be passed and signed to allow the intervention of the state in the affairs of a particular individual, but it is worse that the issue at hand is this woman's life and dignity. What do those pro-life religious fundamentalists know about her? It's sickening that she could be used this way. Wouldn't her husband know better than anyone that she would never have allowed herself to have lingered in a coma and be a useless vegetable had she known in advance what fate had in store? She's condemned by the Florida state legislature to remain in her own physical hell because the religious right believes that euthanasia is against God's will?

Fuck that shit. Don't presume to dictate terms for political gain, you sorry bastards. You got into her family's heads and made them think they were doing right by this woman. But it's her husband who knows the truth. Who would choose to be a vegetable? Human dignity is greater than any notion those stupid miraculists could possibly conceive.

Just Di
Mood:  don't ask
Oh, and another thing: I don't give a good damn about Diana Spencer, either. She wasn't a saint or a martyr or in any way interesting. I don't know how many points this takes off my personal Anglophile Index, but the Queen of Hearts is easily the most overrated dead celebrity of the past decade. She used the press when it suited her fancy and then made a great show of avoiding them when she was in a pique. And what's the story now? She foretold her own death? You think British intelligence had some hand in it? And there I was thinking it was because she and her boyfriend thought it would sporting good fun to instruct their drugged out and drunken chauffeur to go blazing through the streets of Paris and into a tunnel at 100 mph to avoid ---what? The TEN BILLIONTH SNAPSHOT OF THE GREAT DIVORCEE BEING FAMOUS AND TROUBLED?!?! Bah! Fuck that nonsense! Diana died because of vanity and recklessness. Quit pumping her up and let it go. Fifty years from now, if it takes even that long, her memory will have faded so utterly from the Western cultural pantheon (to which she was elected solely on the basis of emotion and shock, anyway) that the only historical interest to be had in her is how so inconsequential a figure could have exercised such great control over the British monarchy and the media which covers it.

To the Author of the "Deep Blade Journal"
I appreciate your responses to my blog, but you've made it impossible for me to reciprocate. For some reason your URL having an underscore in it keeps me from being able to pull it up and read. I just get an error message. Is there another way into your site? Drop me a line and let me know.

There's a Lot of Stupid Shit Going on
Mood:  on fire
There's a lot of stupid shit going on in the world lately, but I absolutely MUST register my disgust with one particularly egregious case.

Monday, a grand jury here in Travis County, Texas chose to indict a police officer for criminally negligent homicide in a June 2003 incident where the cop was trying to apprehend a car thief and had to shoot the culprit to get him to stop the car, which the sorry bastard was basically trying to use as a weapon to drag the cop to death.

Basically, the cop (a young guy named Scott Glasgow) is a moron behind the wheel who is always wrecking his unit. Okay. He sounds like a dumbass who can't follow procedure as well as he should. But, in this case, I don't care how many procedural points he failed: the bottom line is that the piece of shit he shot five times had stolen that car! And, instead of giving up and taking his lumps, the piece of shit decides to fight back and use the car to drag Glasgow, who then shot the piece of shit to keep fom getting killed.

Jessie Lee Owens (the piece of shit in question, who now resides in a box six feet under where he ain't gonna be stealin' nobody's shit no more, you know what I'm sayin'?) was, at the time of his cry for help against the white power structure, coked up and had significant amounts of painkillers and marihuana in his bloodstream. Sounds like the guy was fucking up and fucked up when he did us his final favor. Too bad. The guy was 20 and already had a rap sheet full of car thefts and assaults and other crap. Oh, and he's got a child, too, who will almost certainly grow up to be just like the old man. All of this is very surprising.

I want all of you lousy pieces of crap who are defending Owens to understand me perfectly: Officer Glasgow is a hero who did this community a favor by killing that piece of shit. This town's going to wind up wasting a lot of money on this nonsense and that's pissing me off already. You aren't going to be making any money off of this without a fight, you sorry losers.

I only wish this were a hundred years ago. Steal a man's horse, will you? You're gonna see this town from about 15 feet up and swingingly, you wretched animal. Good riddance and God bless that dumbass Glasgow.

Uhhh...Winnie the Pooh's Arm? ("It's Not Acting Right!")
Mood:  surprised
So, I'm washing my hands in an upstairs restroom in this building a few hours ago when I stand back from the basin and begin drying my hands with a length of rough paper towel I've cranked out. Then, I notice beneath the counter that there's this tan-colored object lying there on the tiles. It's a mammalian moment, see. The hominid just HAS to know what that thing is. But, it's a fairly fastidious hominid that may not want to touch it or to know.

A weird fruit of some kind? A crushed velour burrito? A hand-axe from a dig in Tanzania? Let's kick it and find out!

KLAANGGGG!!!

What the fuck?! It's cast iron!

Tee hee!

I take off and I'm not going back. What the hell was that thing and why is it sitting there like that?

Friday Night
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Humming pieces of "Ode to Joy"
Still not much to tell. Losing my interest in the usual things. A sure sign of depression, but it could also just be a transitional period I'm going through where everything is getting reprioritized. Who knows?

I read a good chunk of the lawsuit the Dumbocrats filed in Tyler the other day and it's flimsy. I've only read a few briefs (is that what they're called?) like that in my time and I am always surprised at how very similar in tone and quality they are to a high school forensics exchange. Nothing more dignified than a whine, a whimper, and an old cite to put some patina on it.

Also, a few friends have sent around an e-mail in support of [and maybe opposition to?] Michael Kinsley's latest screed against the President and how much of a ditz he is. It's all very undignified. Why can't people just address the issues and stay off the ad hominem shit sometimes? Al Franken and that kind of shit make me madder than a hatter. It's worthless in terms of understanding what's really going on. Yeah, yeah, I'm guilty of calling Gonzalo Barrientos a rummy and Ben Sargent a jack-officer, but aren't we supposed to expect more from those whom Public Opinion depends on for its information?