Kerry Speech Highlights

• Tonight, we're setting out again. And together, we're going to write the next great chapter of America's story. The chapter: "America Needs a Pooper Scooper."
  
  
• We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They say this is the best economy that we've ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Okay, they didn't actually say all that. But they've been saying so much crazy shit the past four years that who can tell anymore? Check this out. President Bush believes in creationism. Don't know if it's true or not, do ya? See? Crazy shit.
  
  
• And I will build a stronger military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended and under pressure. Like those in Iraq.
  
  
• We shouldn't be letting 95 percent of our container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America. We should shut them down in both places and send the jobs to China. Ha! Just kidding.
  
  
• We need to make America once again a bacon in the world. I mean, beacon. God, I'm hungry.
  
  
• You see that flag up there? We call her Old Glory, the stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of those people who were here tonight and all across the country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head and it was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. Even when the wind wasn't blowing. That's because it was a magic flag. You could even wipe your butt with it and the poop would shake right off.
  
  
• I don't wear my religion on my sleeve. I wear it on my bicep. [tears off shirt to show tattoo of Jesus with electric guitar behind him.] Jesus Rocks.
  
  
• For four years, we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Actions taken without slogans are just values. And slogans that value action but don't act on slogans are empty promises, like the flag hanging in the Oval Office, which looks a lot like a magic flag. But it's not.
  
  
• As president, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together, we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford lifesaving medicine. Because then they would die, unless doctors are totally fucking with us and making seniors take more medicine than they need.
  
  
• What does it mean when Deborah Kromins from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, works and she saves all her life, and finds out that her pension has disappeared into thin air and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute? Sure, his parachute was actually made out of gold and he plummeted to the ground at 612 mph, but then he landed on a big, soft pile of money.
  
  
• Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada. And France. That right, France. Just to piss Republicans off.
  
  
• So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: Go to johnkerry.com. Also, here's something else that he could never say. I can walk.
  
  
• What if we have a president who believes in science, so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem-cell research and treat illness for millions of lives? Yeah, I said it: believes in science. I think he's missing that entire section from his brain. You do too. Even his friends aren't going to call me on that one. Think of how sad that is. He's going to whine to Cheney: "He can't say that. I do believe in séance. You email him to shut up." And Cheney's going to say, "Sure, Mr. President. Right after the magical delivery elf gets back from driving on the Internet." Bush: "Damn that elf! I'm not paying him to cruise around."

Later Today...

Kerry Speech Highlights. I'll write it when I get back from work.

I just realized it's been a week between posts. Wow. I suck.

Dear Democratic National Committee

Please, please, please drop the slogan "Hope is on the way." America isn't trapped in a well.

Down the Drain in the Shower

Every weight-loss advertisement has a few, rail-thin people gushing about the amazing results of the product. "I lost 14 pounds in one week!" Then, on the crawl in small print: "Results may vary."

You think they can go out on a limb and say, "Results will vary"? Or, "If our product actually has this effect on you, please see medical attention. You are about to die." I want to see the weight-loss ad that has a woman saying, "I lost 14 pounds in one week!" and a team of EMTs storming in and strapping her to a gurney. "Dear God! Get this woman into the ICU. Move move move!"

Etymology

You know how the roots of words always match their meanings? Like the word herb, which comes the Latin herba, meaning grass or green blades. Why don't some words have inappropriate histories? Like etiquette, which comes from the Middle French word estiquette, and means "fart from the armpit". Wow. We really screwed that one up.

Brother, Can You Spare a Job?

In their cartoon, "Brother, Can You Spare a Job?", Tom Neely and Greg Saunders have done a superb job of capturing the depression era of the '20s and '30s via old-fashioned cartoon antics and the use of period music.

Okay, that's from their press release. I'm too lazy to come up with my own description. But it's extremely well done and worth watching, even though the message isn't novel.

Real or Fake?

Girls Gone Wild: The Music CD

Enemy of an Enemy, Friend of a Friend

Every day, along one of my dog routes, I walk by a car with a "Bush in 2000" bumper sticker and, next to it, "I Believe In Angels".

Whether the fact that these stickers are still on the car is a testimony to her devotion to President Bush and angels or to the bonding properties of glue, I do not know. I suppose the former, barring an angel tripping her and pushing her down the stairs since she affixed the sticker. Although it is hard to get a good look at the person pushing you down the stairs, and the angel could have taken on a deep voice and said "I'm the devil!" before planting his soft hands into her back.

But that is besides the point. The two slogans made me realize an interesting property of bumper stickers. Multiple bumper stickers can change the response one has to the idea in one of them merely through association with the other. To be specific, I would have rolled my eyes if just the Bush sticker were on her car, or thought nothing if she just had the angel sticker on her car. But with their might combined, now I think she is a dumb ass.

Neither sticker promotes the dumb-assiness of the owner by itself. Rather, the two stickers are taken together as a whole to produce a response too strong for just one of them to create.

My idea is to use this property for political warfare. What we do is put bumper stickers supporting President Bush on our cars and affixed next to it a sticker expressing an idea the Bush campaign would be embarrassed to be associated with. Like "Bush: 2004" and "I Hate Black People!". Or "Support President Bush And Our Troops" with " Nazis Are People Too".

Actually, to save time, we should just find cars with pro-Bush stickers on them. Just to save time. And if anyone wants to be extra clever, why stop at a total of two? "Bush 2004"; "Bush 2008: F*CK The Constitution!"; "Bush 2012: I Now Feel Better About Saying Fuck."

Come On, Get Your Cruise

I suspect advertisers target their ads towards dogs and just replace their names with ours.

"Spot - Reward yourself with new Pepsi Edge"

I realized that the difference between me and the dogs I walk is that when I get really hungry, I can open cupboards.

Landscapers of the Willing

Al Qaeda is the only group taking the coalition of the willing seriously. When President Bush first announced the 46-member coalition, many people mocked it with arrogant, snippy comments such as "some of these countries don't have militaries" and "Ooooh, the Philippines. Thank God for their survey committee." Al Qaeda, on the other hand, is like "We must deal the coalition a mortal blow! Capture a truck driver from the Philippines. Once their 50 humanitarian workers leave, several weeks early, the coalition will crumple like clumps of day-old double-fudge cheesecake with raspberry swirl from The Cheesecake Factory that the lying pigs told you was just made."

I Have a Sneaking Suspicion...

...that there is quite a bit of crossover between these two audiences.

Tonight on The History Channel: Top Ten Plagues

Do you know what's great about the bubonic plague? It's the perfect comedy disease. One, it sounds funny. Two, no one has it anymore, so you don't offend anyone by referencing it. You don't offend someone's mother, or grandfather, or great-grandfather. If you make a bubonic plague joke, no one is going to write you a letter saying:

"You sick bastard. My-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's uncle's niece's sister, who was raised by baboons and was shunned by the town for her enflamed buttocks during sexual heat, died of the bubonic plague. Or a broken heart. The historical record is fuzzy.

But the point it, she was like a great-great-great-great-great nephew to me. And the pain you caused by rhyming this blight on humanity with 'Da Chronic' can never be repaired.

Shame, shame. Also, Philharmonic Plague would make a great name for a band.

Sincerely,

Phineus P. Fitzgerald"

I'm tired of newspaper articles that argue that the current incivility in national politics isn't all bad relative to the worst moments in U.S. history. Every time there is an article like "Dick Cheney Calls Dick Gephardt Dick Head," next to it will be a companion: "The Nation's First Bitch Slap: Hamilton vs. Burr."

While it is comforting to know we haven't surpassed events like "Senator Coughs During Colleague's Speech, Gets Bayoneted" (1869) or "Rockefeller Socks a Fella" (1912) it's time to raise the bar. If your eight-year-old takes a dump on the carpet, it doesn't help that he also did it at age two and flung it at your mother while singing the Star Spangled Banner. He's eight. He's out of the plastic pants. He should know better.

I feel like this country is in denial. Our politicians act more uncivil and display a Machiavellian worldview through their actions, and our comfort is that at least they didn't write The Prince.

Larger Than Life in Every Sense

Snippets from an article on Marlon Brando's life (July 3, 2004; The Washington Post).

"Mutiny" director Lewis Milestone was one of many directors and studio officials he confounded with his distaste for authority. "Before he would take direction, he would ask why," Milestone said. "Then when the scene was being shot, he put earplugs in so that he couldn't hear my direction."

Starting in the 1960s, Brando became one of the first actor-activists to march for civil and Native American rights. He memorably refused to accept his Oscar for "The Godfather," protesting what he said was discrimination against Native Americans on film and in government policy.

Instead, he dispatched to the Academy Awards a woman who claimed to be a Native American named Sacheen Littlefeather and read an abridged version of Brando's 15-page indictment of policies toward the Indians. Later, she was revealed to be an actress named Maria Cruz, winner of the 1970 Miss American Vampire competition.

"Over time, he represented the disintegration of a sex symbol, as his muscular physique crumbled and he ballooned to more than 300 pounds; he often broke his diets by persuading McDonald's employees to pitch French fries and Big Macs over his fence."

One of his instructors was Adler, who came from a distinguished family of Yiddish actors. One day in class, she asked her students to imitate chickens in a henhouse who had just learned they were about to be hit with an atomic bomb. While others flailed about, Brando sat still and pretended to lay an egg.

A Little Idea

I am disappointed at John Kerry for choosing John Edwards over the best candidate for vice-president. Namely, Lil' Jon. In my haste, I already printed several bumper stickers featuring the duo, including "Big John, Lil' Jon: 2004" and "It's time we put the vice back in vice-president."

Oh, the campaign speeches we're going to miss…

KERRY: "This November, we're going to kick those crooks out of the White House."
LIL' JON: WHAAAAAAT?
KERRY: "We're going to kick those crooks out of the White House."
LIL' JON: WHAAAAAAT?
KERRY: "We're going to kick those crooks out of the White House!"
LIL' JON: "YEAAAAAH!"

In the vice-presidential debates, Lil' Jon could have blinded Cheney with his silver-capped teeth and demanded to be addressed by Jim Lehrer as "The King of Crunk." Sure, Lil' Jon will probably reward his friends and campaign donors with rewritten laws and plum government jobs, but at least you'll know who they are as they'll be with a 10-foot radius of him at all times. Does anyone even have a clue who's in Cheney's entourage? And forget about American unilateralism. Lil' Jon always gives a shout-out to his homies and NATO allies.

Is Lil' Jon perfect? No. Cheney can out-curse him. But in all other areas, Lil' Jon would have been the choice to beat.

...

Tributes to the human spirit are either saving kittens or dying of cancer.