The Day in Douchebags

Yeah, running for office is the same as putting your life on the line and getting shot at. If he wanted to do something serious there’s always Army.

This is much like the chicken and pig when it comes to breakfast. The chicken drops an egg, makes a lot of noise and thinks it’s done it’s part whereas the pig gives it all for bacon.

TJ/ Spending four days in the bush makes one appreciate the simple things in life like warm real food, a toilet with a roof and clean clothes.

@ManchuCandidate: Where’d you go?

OT – just found this:

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

I honestly can’t tell which side of Poe’s Law [1] this falls on; if it’s serious, I’d love to see what the “KJV is teh onlee Bible” crowd thinks of it. Especially the bits where they want to cut out “liberal” parts, and highlight the “free-market” basis of the parables.

It has to be a joke, right? Right?

(I can haz footnotes too, just like Caribou Barbie!)
[1] Poe’s Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.

@al2o3cr:

Once they flush all that BS about helping the poor and downtrodden, they’ll have a two-page pamphlet that’s more appropriate for their comprehension level.

@al2o3cr:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

–Revelations 22:19-21 (the last three verses of the bible)

Which, now that I think about it, kinda puts me in a bad place as far as the Zombie Bible is concerned. However, I believe that the inventor of humor probably has a sense of humor. The assholes that wrote that bullshit probably view God a bit more literally. But they aren’t really Christians anyway, are they?

@al2o3cr:

This Conserva-Bible thingy does kinda make sense in a twisted way. It’s like when I turn off the Magnolia DVD 10 minutes before the actual end of the movie ’cause most of it was très excellent, but the last bit didn’t make any damn sense. They’re simply forcing Le Bon Livre to fit their worldview.

@Original Andrew:

Unfortunately, they haven’t apparently gotten to any of the “difficult” bits yet, like Matthew 19:23-24 / Mark 10:24-25 / Luke 18:24-25. (the line about the rich man entering into heaven)

Maybe they’ll just cut those verses out entirely, as clear “liberal bias”. :)

In other news:

Alabama governor says, “Fuck it, most of our kids are going to grow up to watch Nascar and sleep with every skank in the trailer park anyways.”(r/e the education budget cuts)

@al2o3cr:

Those were all written by those horny, insatiable apostels, in between their hippie-love-in-help-out-your-neighbor-be-kind-to-old-people fuckfests, so the whole New Testament’s gonna get the heave-ho.

Except maybe New Revelations, which will just be one-paragraph summaries of the Left Behind series.

They like their Jehovah wrathful and Hulky.

Gawd SMASH!

P.S. Having been raised in the Southern Baptist church, lemme just confirm that they started leaving out all the feel-good shit in the 80s anyway.

Thanks nojo – thanks for posting this. My douchebag hunting will be limited for a few weeks … need more buwwets.

TJ/Breaking:

They just announced that Rich Ross was hired as the new studio head- he was the head of the Disney Channel. You know, the people that brought you such artistic powerhouses as “Hannah Montanna”, “The Jonas Brothers”, and, of course, “High School Musical”.

I had been wondering if they would go with someone with a higher artistic version, or just another marketing hack. Now I have the answer.

@FlyingChainSaw:
Went to the interior of Algonquin Park, hopefully looking for wildlife (to photograph.) Nothing. Except a lot of rain. The leaves changed color which was nice. And no bugs.

Spent the nights huddled under a tarp with my friends drinking okay whiskey (try lugging a 24 of beer while carrying 55 pounds of gear.)

This trip to Algonquin proved to be better than the last year’s clusterfuck which was cut short when I seriously sprained my ankle (we lucked out in the end when it rained heavily on the way back home–we figured it we would have endured nine hours straight of heavy rain.)

@ManchuCandidate:

No Appalachian trail?

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches:
Didn’t that nearly kill the Mouse last time during the Computer Wore Tennis Shoes Era?

@ManchuCandidate:

We’ll see. The reorg shall begin in earnest now, anyway…

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches:
No. This might be in the TMI category, but my sex drive drops zero when I’m hiking deep in the woods. I’m more interested in keeping warm, thoughts of beating up the bastard who made the lousy dehydrated meal I’m eating and wondering if the greatest invention ever was the gore-tex jacket or the covered outhouse.

This is just so rich, the bible thumpers find the bible an embarrassment, in that in many places it flat out contradicts their beliefs, so they decide to revise the bible that they love so much?

This actually makes me cry, not laugh. I knows my bible, I have studied it, in depth, at least the new testament. If you remove the parts which emphasize forgiveness, the condemnation of greed, the emphasis on love and forgiveness, the constant stress on humility and forgiveness, on giving without question, on forgiving without judgement, remove all that, and all the red letters would be gone.

But I have always noticed that the fundies have no fondness for the red letter passages, anyway.

@ManchuCandidate: The greatest invention ever was wool, and oilcloth, waxed cotton, comes in second. Mallory got to 27,000 feet in layers of wool and an oilcloth cover.

I gots to say, Manchu, the greatest swindle in the world is the swindle of high-tech outdoors gear.

Wool is the most high tech outdoors fabric ever, it was designed to keep sheep warm in freezing rainstorms.

You just don’t ever get wet and clammy in wool and oilcloth, wool and waxed cotton. Never. You may get humid, but you never feel wet, and it stays warm no matter how wet.

Silk next to the skin, wool all the way out, in layers, and a cover of, ok, if you want, goretex, is better than anything.

@ManchuCandidate: And I am serious about waxed cotton, I have a waxed cotton field coat, and I also have a total high tech gore-tex parka and pants set, which I used to use for cross-country skiing and once tried doing downhill in a rainy day.

I have never felt wet in my waxed cotton, never, but I have felt wetter on the inside of my gore tex rainsuit than the outside was.

Mind you, I was soaked through, in both cases, the sweat inside the gore tex was as bad as what got through the waxed cotton.

But I have to say, wool layers inside waxed cotton, it never feels wet, moist as it all might get inside, whereas polar fleece and down parkas inside gore tex becomes a soggy, cold mess.

True fact. Try it out, go out in the woods, in the rain, in nothing but silk, wool, and waxed cotton. Just do it.

@ManchuCandidate: Not TMI at all! I am always up for inside information about the sex drves of Asian guys.

@Promnight: “Try it out, go out in the woods, in the rain, in nothing but silk, wool, and waxed cotton.”

Prommie, that line just made me laugh for the first time today. Thank you.

@SanFranLefty: Its funny, you never know what will strike you, I am glad that did, SFL, you must be worn down from the work of being such a caring, wonderful person, glad I made you laugh.

@Promnight: Dude – Mallory croaked on Everest. Mrs RML’s friend Dave Hahn found his ass up there.

@ManchuCandidate: All the blood is going to your core to enhance survival prospects. Must be really cold out there. Glad you came back ok this time.

@ManchuCandidate: Kurt Russell carried that place after Fred McMurray and Blackbeard moved on.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Popular with the tweens but – Son of RML used to love HM a couple of years ago but won’t be caught dead watching that shit anymore. He can watch Selena Gomez in Wizards all day long, though. The Jonas Bros are a joke to him.

@redmanlaw: Yeah, but he got to what, 28,000 feet, no gore-tex, and died from the fall. I saw the pics your friend took of his wool sweater, I was following the blog of that expedition, what was it, 1999?

@Promnight: I have a waxed cotton tarp in the shed. Thing weighs about 50 lbs. Another point in your favor, however: polypro undies melted onto the skin of the Britsh sailors when the Argentines blasted their ships with Exocets.

I have all kinds of tech shit, as well as wool, fast drying 60/40 cotton shirts, and a choice between Pendleton wool or cheap poly fleece blankets for tribal events, but no Gore-Tex. I’m too cheap.

@redmanlaw: SmartWool socks with silk or polypro liners. That is all.

@Dodgerblue: Smart Wool sox all three days in my moccasin boots all three days on the recent pilgramage.

@redmanlaw: Pendleton all the way. Is there any connection between Pendleton wool and Camp Pendleton, CA?

@JNOV: The blankets come from Pendleton woolen mills somewheres in Orygun and are prized throughout Indian country. I don’t know for whom the USMC base is named after.

@redmanlaw: I have a Chief Joseph (NALSA graduation present), and Jr has one that looks like a shield with a bear paw in the middle. My friend made me a shawl with a Sioux Star on it before we found out that, well, we’re probs Blackfeet and not Lakota. Let’s just say we’ve been having some oral tradition issues on my mom’s side of the family. I still dance intertribal and veterans dances with the shawl or the blanket (depends on how hot it is). Haven’t been to a dance in years.

ADD: I never stop on the beat, either. Embarrassing. ;-)

According to the Camp Pendleton Historical Society website (which is the most appalling shade of yellow–my EYES!!), “It was named for Major General Joseph H. Pendleton who had long advocated the establishment of a West Coast training base.”
Librarians just can’t help themselves. It’s a sickness, really.

@redmanlaw: Ah. This is Jr’s.

@Mistress Cynica: Heh. I wasted three years of my life there. But the beach was nice, so long as you weren’t too close to San Onofre…

@Promnight: In another life, in another land with a very moderate climate, for complex reasons, I was living outdoors, for months and months in parks and trailer camps. Mostly, the weather was with me but for one stretch of almost two weeks, it rained full-on until finally I was using clothes to mop out the water in the tent pan day and night. Finally, with my toes gooey with rot, I staggered to a trailer camp with a bunk house, essentially an immense quonset hut next to a cinder block building with cooking stations and a TV room. The smell of dozens of campers trying to dry clothes that had been wet and glued to someone’s flesh most of that time was something you’ll never forget, especially that souring-milk aroma that would bloom when someone got distracted and held them too close to the gas heater in the middle of the bunk house and burned them. I had a vulcanized jacket that I picked up at an charity shop and that never smelled that great as it was horrifically aged with old, peeling rubber flaking off all over it. After more than a week of wearing it in a pathetic attempt to stay dry, it was apparently growing some monstrous flora in the seams and in the cracks of the rubber where the cloth was exposed. I felt terrible tossing it away, profligate and impatient, but the thing really stunk to a frightening extent and I feared it would infect my arm pits the way my shoes had apparently cultivated a horrific bug that was melting my toes. The bicyclists were equipped with durable and exotic fibers designed to endure inclemency. Shake, hang to dry and you’re good to go once the weather clears. The rest of us were wandering around in damp sarongs trying our best to salvage some clothes for when the rain cleared, tossing our shirts and pants and tents over any horizontal pipe we could locate, giving the bunk house, with its long rows of sagging, steel-framed bunk beds, the appearance of some post-apocalyptic laundromat. Very little of my wardrobe (three or four items, tops, as I had abandoned underwear of any type for convenience) survived. Luckily, I had one pair of US-issue fatigues that could endure any weather without rotting.

@ManchuCandidate: Really? No pix at all. Wet foliage can give you nice color saturation and the overcast enhances the effect by delivering diffuse light. Can give you a nice pastel feel to your images.

Oh, yeah, this the same park and the same track?

@FlyingChainSaw: Trench or Paddy Foot?

Wool: Millions of years in the development. Those sheep and goats know a thing or two about how to thrive in the cold and the wet.

@lynnlightfoot: And this reminds me of a song.

“Sheep” by Sunny War.

The sheep are unhappy because our shepherd is cruel
We exploit ourselves and then we sell our own wool
No Gods no masters, well I am trying to break free
those [?] shepherds know they can’t hurt me
We’re not sheep.

The sheep are unhappy because they’re all fenced in
Living the same old day over and over again
I burn my fence down with my fist up in the air
There are no fences
Only the sheep are unaware they ain’t

…

@JNOV: I dunno. Gooey is all I remember. Just kept washing it when I was someplace with hot water. As I was in seawater all the time in that life, I probably did more by just keeping footsies immersed in saltwater than I did with hot water and soap and elbow grease.

When did Don Ameche come up?

Kilts. I recommend kilts. Plus the plaid ( that folded piece of tartan worn over one shoulder a la Dorothy Lamour). Smear your face with the blood of lambs and you’re good to go.

@Benedick: Son of RML has a kilt in the Wallace pattern. He is some degree of Scotch due to the presence of an Scottish immigrant in Mrs RML’s family tree who served in the US American Army calvary in NE New Mexico (along the Santa Fe Trail) c. 1880. Said ancestor married into the local population and his family became Hispanicized as time went on.

The ancestor’s unit was later transferred to the presidio (fort on a hill) in the Anglo-Hispanic town near my ancestral home. The calvary horses were stabled down the hill from the presidio. We had a house in that town when I was practicing environmental law there and she was editor of the local weekly paper. The builder told us that they discovered several metal buckles from old horse tack . Our house may therefore have been built on the site of the calvary stables used by Mrs RML’s ancestor.

@redmanlaw: That’s very nice.

A lot of Scots emigrated to Mexico and Argentina, among other places. The English had broken the clans and there was widespread hunger and terrible poverty. And of course they went to Georgia, too.

We would say the Wallace tartan. He’s the one with the spider and the monument on Prince’s Street in Edinburgh.

@Benedick: Mrs RML’s paternal family ancestor, a Duvall, went south after hitting the beach. Various branches of the family filtered out from there. Some became prosperous land owners in South Carolina, others ended up as hillbillies in Arkansas, such as her father (her mom is the Hispanicized Scot descendant). Apparently the Duvall seed went far and wide as the descendants include Robert Duvall, Dick Cheney, Mrs RML and one Black Eagle through his mother.

I, on the other hand, have the people of Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde in my background. We didn’t stray too far from home.

@FlyingChainSaw: BTW this was a most intriguing story – what happened next? Did you buy Gore Tex or move on to an undiscloses Asian country?

@SanFranLefty: Found a church thrifty and got a couple of shirts. At that point, I’d been outside for months and months and looked it; the lady at the till waived me off when I reached for my wallet. Not like I cared much what I wore because most of the time I was in some kind of sarong but it could get nippy in the evenings. Eventually, I ended up back in the states and never really got over having to live indoors.

@FlyingChainSaw: You need a Bear Grylls kinda gig. Don’t go for the Les Stroud gig unless you want a show like “Off the Grid.” I’d dig you living off the grid (I never saw anything besides Les’s pilot, so I don’t know if the show ever made it a full season), but, yeah. You need a show.

@JNOV sez hit Vick in the head witta battery: He needs a show or a book deal! I want to quit my day job and write biographies of all the stinquers. Y’all are so interesting. Actually I like my day job today because I got to spend it hanging out with some really cool strong and interesting kids who have had some horrible things happen in their lives but are funny and great kids with opinions that are good and don’t tolerate fools.

@SanFranLefty: Yeah. I was talking to Nabeesko about it today. Even when you’re a powerless little kid, powerless in the sense that you can’t always extricate yourself from some fucked up environmental situations, something inside you always says, “This is some bullshit here.” I don’t know what it is. I suspect it stems from the fact that kids aren’t adept at fooling themselves yet. They don’t have practice with the mental gymnastics required to see injustice and ignore it or think somehow it’s okay or not their problem. A kid can spot a hypocrite in a nanosecond, and I think that’s their greatest strength. That’s not to say that they are impermeable — not at all. All the nastiness sinks in to some degree, and how they process that pain, well, that’s where we come in. We try to provide context for things that never, ever should have happened; we try to explain to them that yes, yes, you have every right to be pissed and sad and confused. Now, how do we deal with those feelings? How can I give you tools, tools I don’t even have myself, so that you can walk away from this part or your life relatively unscathed? I loved working with my gang girls in AC, and it was not hard to understand why they were beating the shit out of each other. Nope. Not hard at all. The hard part was to get them to see why they were fighting, and no, it wasn’t because she gave you a funny look.

@SanFranLefty: Oh, and yeah, FCS needs more exposure for sure. He’s what drew my kid to this site. I read him FCS posts at bedtime.

@SanFranLefty: And kids don’t receive enough credit. The first thing they develop is the ability to love unconditionally, and the next thing they acquire is a sense of fairness. The horror is that although they love unconditionally, that love is too often not returned. And when they complain to adults that something isn’t fair, they’re told that life isn’t fair. We fail these kids when we don’t stop and listen to them and say, “You’re absolutely right. That is unfair. Now how do we fix it?” Instead we basically tell them that their correct ideas of how life should work and that their ideas of how we should treat each other are unattainable, wrong or foolish.