I met this girl.

On Simple Human Decency
By Ben Metcalf

Part I

Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust, which the odd reader who knows me will surely expect, I am obliged to address a preliminary concern, which that same odd reader may safely ignore.

Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas literary taste does not seem to have advanced much in the interim, and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull, I find that I am no longer able to discern with any accuracy where the bounds of simple human decency lie. This would bother me even less than does the taste issue were it not for the fact that ground gained or lost in the theater of decency tends now and then to affect the law, and it has long been a personal goal of mine to avoid capture and imprisonment.

I am therefore led to wonder what the common citizen is allowed to "say" anymore, in print or otherwise, and still feel reasonably sure that some indignant team of G-men, or else a pair of gung-ho local screws, will not drag him away to a detention center, there to act out, with the detainee as a prop, that familiar scene in which one hero cop or another is patriotically unable to resist certain outbursts against the detainee and what were once imagined to be the detainee's constitutional rights.

Because I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question.

I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency:

Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?

Let me be clear that I have no wish to perform such a deed in fact, nor do I want anyone else to destroy bodily what is, at least in the technical sense, a fellow human being. (Let me be equally clear that the above qualification, although true, is intended primarily as a legal ploy and should in no way be attributed to my claimed pacifism, which today's prosecutor might find a way to use against me. I would also like excused from the proceedings my personal feelings for George W. Bush, embarrassment and rage, as they could probably be turned to my disadvantage as well.) In truth, I bring neither a message nor a promise of violence.

I seek only to gauge what level of discourse is still acceptable in this country by asking, in the hope that I might someday participate in that discourse, whether I am free to posit that it would probably be great fun, and a boon to all mankind, if I were to slaughter the president of the United States with my bare hands.

You can find the rest here.

I think this is the best piece of political writing I've ever seen in years if not my lifetime. If you agree, post it in your blog (along with this plea to further pass it on).

Study finds no marijuana link to lung cancer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.

They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.

Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

read the rest...

I really get a kick out of all the hand-wringing by the tobacco companies and the politicians over the supposedly safer so-called "smokeless tobacco" products. Guess what, assholes, it already exists.

It's called marijuana.

The death of American soldiers in Iraq is acceptable in order to secure freedom and liberty for Iraqis but we can't safeguard things like privacy and due process in the United States because hey, this is a post-9/11 world and if we don't, the terrorists might strike again and an American might die.

That's Bush's logic. See if you can wrap your head around that one.

"And here are the flowers, ordering cabs to deliver sperm."

...is tangentially related to...

"Beyonski."

Reader; What am I doing? Answer in kind.

Repaid Kathy the whole $100 I've owed her since forever, finished paying my back child support, paid off my entire Citizens debt and I have $170 sitting in my bank account.

May not sound like much but it's been a LONG time since. My financial hole isn't particularly deep but my shovel is a soup spoon.

Didn't buy any long-sought-after toys. New computer, digital SLR, tablet PC, dual-purpose motorcycle. But still, paying off bills is almost certainly my first step toward getting a decent job, like it or not.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said something interesting during his interview with Wolf Blitzer.

BLITZER: Give us your -- tell our viewers who aren't familiar your personal story, how you got to where you are, your grandparents, your parents. They struggled, they came here. I don't know if they came here legally or illegally, but give us the story.

GONZALES: Well, three of my grandparents were born in Mexico. They came to Texas. My parents -- both of my parents were born in Texas, extremely poor. My mother...

BLITZER: But when they came to Texas, were they legally documented, were they unlegally documented?

GONZALES: You know, it's unclear. It's unclear. And I've looked at this issue, I've talked to my parents about it, and it's just not clear.

John in DC on Americablog fires back:

He says "it's unclear" whether they came to the US legally or not. How is it unclear? I mean, I know damn well how my grandparents came to the US - it's called a passport, and you read it and see if it did or didn't have a visa in it. We've got our grandparents' passports from Greece dating back to the early 1900s. Come on now. His parents don't know how their parents came to the US? That's patently absurd. What, the Gonzales family never was curious to ask mom and dad about when and why and how they came to America? Give me a break, that's just a lie.

We're sending US troops to the Mexican border to deal with these supposedly horrible people and our own Attorney General can't tell us if his own family is here legally? Are these people a threat to our jobs or not? But don't tell me you're hiring their family members for your cabinet at the same time you're bashing them and talking about kicking them out.

Meh.

Dude, look on that mountain! A haunted mansion.

So what?

A haunted mansion. Ghosts and evil scientists and stuff.

What, am I hearing things? Am I all alone out here? Didn't you just feel the wind of freedom ripping through your sweater vest? Can't you hear the wind calling, "Little miss, little miss can't be wrong??"

I'm sure it isn't half as funny if you aren't familiar with Rocky.

One more hint but I don't think you'll need it.

"Well not me! I'm staying right here. I'll be sleeping in a room right next to Trianna. And then she'll hear like thunder or something and she'll run into my room all scared and stuff and I'll be like 'Hush my darling. It's just ionized air molecules expanding.' And she'll be like "Oh, hold me" and then I'll like..."

"DUDE. If we stay here that means we'll be Dr. Orpheus' kids. And that means Trianna will be your sister. And that means you two'll have extra retard babies."

"I never thought of that."

"Sorry sir, medical personnel only beyond this point."
"I'm staying with 'em. I go where he goes."
"Ohhh. You must be his ...partner then."
"Not really it's more like I work for him. WAIT. NO."

I didn't write it but I know who did. Can you guess?

I pay way too much attention to politics.

I'm listening to Kosheen's Catch.

     it's your day believe it
     it's your date with destiny
     it's too late to leave it
     after all it's your
     it's your party


...which is pretty much my message to all Republicans this year. *sigh

10.7 inches of rain so far this month in the last 24 hours. The second worst on record missing 1st place by 1.2".

A coworker gave me a ride home today and the car flooded halfway through a puddle/lake. I got out to push. The water went up to my knees. From what I understand a lot of low-lying Gloucester residents are fuxx0red.

I think I heard that the north shore (here) has declared an emergency.

This blows.

I just did my first Wikipedia edit (scroll down to Snowcrash [hat-tip to Ella]). I feel all hardcore and accomplished now.

Saw Lucky Number S7evin. Loved it. Lucy Liu channeling Jordan from Real Genius was real nice. Real, real nice.

Of course it doesn't hurt that I've always had a thing for Asian girls with American accents.

On Monday -- about five days ago -- I checked the 10-day weather forecast. Ten days of rain. So here it is, five days in, I check the forecast again. TEN MORE FUCKING DAYS OF RAIN. I know it's New England but shit.

I've got a week of vacation burning a hole in my pocket. If in your head you continued with "...and I'm going to the arcade," you've just dated yourself. If you've just dated yourself, sound off like you got a pair.

Then send me a reply and tell me why.

An example of good graffiti.

You don't want to end up like John Henry. Absolutely. John Henry was a steel-driving man that worked the railroad. Pounding in the spikes and laying down the track. Then one day they invented a machine to do his job, right, and he says, he says, "Fuck that. I'm a man," right? So he challenges the machine to a race to lay down a mile of track, right? It takes two days. They go neck and neck the whole time. I mean right to the end. And he beat the machine by one spike ...but ...he dropped dead, you know?

B-Boom, but he beat it.

Boom, but he dropped dead.

     Basquiat

What does it mean when your idea of a good time is getting stoned and reading Wikipedia?

Oh, wait. Here's something interesting that I didn't need to see:

A [Blue-ringed octopus] male mates with a female by grabbing her mantle [head], then transferring sperm packets by inserting his hectocotylus [like an octopus arm but ...different] into her mantle cavity [??] over and over again [ow].

Jesus. And I thought bukakke was pushing the limits of good taste...

I apologize. If you love her you'll let her go ...so she can be happy.

But she doesn't want to be happy.

Everybody wants to be happy.

Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live which ...can be depressing.

     Closer

You know, the only thing I found attractive about Ashley Simpson was her nose.

I'm not much of a baseball fan. Hell, I'm not much of a sports fan but I generally root for the Red Sox. The reason I cheer for Boston's team is because I've always had this impression that Boston had a bit of class. If I can give my father credit for anything at all it's giving me a sense of sportsmanship.

Today I caught the replay of Johnny Damon stepping up to the plate for last night's game and the audience reaction was a gut-wrenching embarrassment. Damon, on the other hand, ignored 30 seconds of booing and gave a respectable hat-tip to the minority seats who had enough class to clap for the man who gave us four of the best seasons in recent memory.

Not to mention a major contributor to the Sox's sole title in ...what? Eighty years?

Yeah, he walked for twelve mil. And the people bitching about it are the same people who, if they hit Powerball, would shoot coffee out their nose when asked the ubiquitous "are you going to keep your day job?"

So consider me a Yankees fan since that's where Johnny is. The rare kind who only checks their league ranking every few weeks and only watches a game when it happens to be on.

PS: Jeter is still a dick.