Fuck You Friday - NSFW

IRS Chief Steve Miller doesn't want anyone to fly like an eagle

I was going to write a long, detailed blog post about how Obama is using many, many distractions to cover up the Benghazi scandal. I even wrote most of the piece for this. But then these other news stories that distracted Americans from Benghazi just kept getting worse and worse. Take, for example, the IRS getting busted for targeting all political opponents of Obama. That story is blowing up huge. And it isn't as if Obama is the first Democrat to use the IRS this way. Clinton did it, too. So anyway, fuck you, IRS.

Motorola fucks up Android

Motorolla forced a so-called OS update onto my phone, at MY expense, mind you, sucking up all my data for the month. And then, that so-called update broke half the things I need my phone to do. I can no longer connect to the WiFi in my own fucking house. Motorola says "oops" but didn't fix this. I haven't had a 4G connection since the fucking 'update' either. Oops again. All my data files were deleted by the update. Oh, so sorry. I can no longer set my apps to write to the SD card. Well, who needs an SD card anyway, right? I mean, except that writing data files to an SD card helps prevent that data from being lost in an unrequested OS update. Oops. Fuck you, Motorola!

Senator Orrin Hatch - (Cunt)

Senator Orrin Hatch is pushing for the pro illegal alien bill to pass, but his only hold-up with the bill is that he is fighting to increase the number of H1B visas available to US corporations so that they can lay off more American IT workers and replace them with slave labor from India. At last report, over 4 million US engineers are unemployed and this has been the case for the last 4 years. IT is doing no better, with literally millions of degreed and experienced IT workers looking for work, only to be told "sorry, we don't want you. You are an American citizen and we can get slave labor from India for dirt cheap." I thought we had a war in this country that resulted in a Constitutional Amendment that outlawed slavery, but apparently I was wrong. The slaves are just Indian now. Meanwhile, our needy corporations are throwing away all their technical talent and sending them to the welfare office. And all the while they, and Senators like Orrin Hatch, are bitching and moaning that they just can't "find" any US engineers or IT workers to work for them and thus have to look to India. Fuck you, Senator Orrin Hatch and fuck you all you corporations lobbying for more H1B visas while you aren't hiring Americans with the same skills.

The gay US Media is turning every single news story into a pro-gay story. Whether its a kicker in the NFL signing with a new team, or a golfer dropping his ball in a way some consider cheating, or a chef farting on a YouTube video, the gay media is reporting it as being somehow about gays and gay power. Fuck you, gay US Media. You are the reason the internet is so popular and TV and newspapers are struggling. Get over your gay selves.

Looks authentic to me

The internet is totally distracting me away from the legitimate work I am trying to do on my laptop. I sit down to write something important and the next thing I know I'm searching for information about the episode of Saturday Night Live with Kristen Wiig as the host, which I missed. And then I'm just searching for information about Kristen Wiig. And then I'm searching for photos of Kristen Wiig. And then bikini photos of Kristen Wiig. And then naked photos of Kristen Wiig. And all the naked photos are photoshopped fakes and the rest aren't even Kristen Wiig at all. And then my free time for working on the computer is gone and I didn't do what I sat down to do in the first place. Fuck you, internet! I can't concentrate.

Fuck You, Spring!!!

Spring is here. All bloggers know what that means. It means everyone is getting off their couches and computers and going outside. The lawn needs mowing and the flowers need weeding and fertilizing. The cat needs kicking. The grill needs cleaning because someone didn't do it last year before putting it up and maybe it was me but even so its annoying. The cars need washing. The girls need bikinis and tans. Everyone is taking a walk. Meanwhile, all the lovely blogs out there are neglected. It's like a graveyard. No one is updating their blogs. No one is reading my blog or commenting. Bloggers are starting to write about the end of The Blog. Again. We all get depressed. And then we distract ourselves by searching the net for naked photos of famous people. Fuck you, Spring, for ruining the internet for those of us keeping it alive. This is a lot of work and no one is appreciating it while they're out in their yards playing with dirt and plants.

Stop all this craziness and come back to the internet!

I Just Got Ebayed

How YOU doin'?

I'm sitting on the couch at midnight watching Portia de Rossi on Jimmy Kimmel Live. I just finished watching Skylar Grey on Guitar Sessions and was surprisingly fascinated by the things she had to say and the music she played. Skylar Grey wrote "I Love the Way You Lie" (which Eminem and Rhiannon performed) while alone in a cabin in Oregon after dropping out of the music scene for 4 years. I know this because I just heard her say so. And then she performed it and was extremely good.


And meanwhile, I just got Ebayed. Dammit.

OK, in my last post I mentioned my memory of my dad winding up this antique mantel clock from the 1800s every night before he went to bed. Something about that clock got me to thinking. Years and years I spent looking at that clock every single day, several times per day, and yet now that I'm thinking back on it I have no idea who made it or exactly what it looked like. I went out on the internet to see if I could find another one that looks like it. I assumed I'd know it when I saw it and then I could find out who made it, etc.

Easier said than done. There were a LOT of mechanical mantel clocks made in the 1800s all the way up to the late 20th century. And many of the manufacturers copied each other's most popular designs.

Erin Andrews = instant distraction

OK, Erin Andrews just came on doing a TruBiotics commercial and I am distracted. Have you ever seen the naked video of her dancing in her hotel room? Wow! She's all real. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes ...

So Mother's Day came last weekend. I know this because 3 bruthas in New Orleans apparently celebrated this annual holiday by pulling out guns and slaughtering people in the middle of the street in broad daylight, as you do, you know, when you're celebrating a major holiday in New Orleans. So anyway, I called my mother to wish her a happy mother's day. While we were talking I asked her about Dad's old clock. She told me who manufactured it, how they ended up getting it from Dad's parents before I was even born, how she hates the way it gongs the hour instead of ringing tiny little pretty bells, and that she'd lost the key for winding it.

Moooooooooom, no! Not the damn key! Seriously??

So anyway, armed with this new clock knowledge, I went out on the internet to see if I could narrow down my search.

Why, you may ask, was I searching for another copy of my dad's clock? Was I planning to buy one?

I'm so glad that you asked. Why no, I wasn't planning to buy one. At least, not once I found out how much they cost.  I just wanted to see how many others there were out there. And also I did want to keep track of several up for auction to see how much they finally did sell for. I put a few on a watch list and was shocked to see one or two go for surprisingly cheap. Also, many, many others going for shockingly much.

Seeing one or two go surprisingly cheaply, I decided that I'd bid on one or two. I didn't bid very much. I didn't want to win unless I got it for a really good deal. But, of course, I didn't win any auctions.

And then I put a bid on one that wasn't really what I wanted. I think the ad said the clock isn't even working. But I was outbid pretty quickly. That kind of irritated me.

So I bid it up just a bit, high enough that I knew it wasn't quite at the top, where it would finally sell for, but close. Someone would outbid me. I just wanted to see what it would go for in the end.

It went for what I bid it up for in the end. It went to me. I bought the damn thing. No one came back to outbid me.

This always happens every time I go to look at something on Ebay. Every damn time I say "I wonder if there are any X's out there anymore, and if so, I wonder what people are paying for them?" And the next thing you know, I'm caught up in a bidding war of an auction that I never intended to be a part of in the first place. And then a box arrives containing some piece of shit that doesn't work, or is all dirty or beat up or cracked. Something is wrong with it that no sane person would have bid on it, but 5 of us did anyway and I was the biggest idiot because I ended up with it.

Congratulations!
You win a piece of garbage!

So now I'm shelling out $100 for a damn broken clock that doesn't even look anything like my dad's clock and isn't worth what I had to pay for it, and I don't even want it. And all because I miss my dad and got to thinking about his old clock.

Ebay always does this to me.

Dammit

I Remember

I remember my dad winding up a big mantle clock on his dresser every night. The clock had been his dad's and something about maintaining it seemed to help my dad deal with the death of his parents. I didn't get it at the time, but I think I do now.

Brutha from anutha mutha

I remember when I was very small, my older brother got his very first wristwatch and he was very proud of it. He had to wind it every day. For some reason, this was a big deal to him. By the time I got to be the age he was then, my classmates would show up with wristwatches with calculators on them, big ugly things, and they'd be super stoked about their awesome calculator watches. I never understood why it was such a big deal to them. This was before I fully comprehended the whole "geeks love gadgets" phenomenon.

I remember my older brother, back when he was in elementary school, had a fountain pen that he was required to have for school. It was somehow a big deal, too, and he told me all about it and showed me how it worked. He said every day he'd have to buy more ink cartridges from the supply store at school. By the time I got to school, there was no such thing as fountain pens and the supply store didn't carry anything even remotely connected to them. In fact, I don't recall anyone writing in ink at all.

I remember when I was about 5 or 6, my older brother and our neighbor told me to meet them inside our playhouse in the backyard because they had something big that they were going to show me. So I went to the playhouse and they pulled out cigarettes and matches. They taught me how to smoke and we sat back there smoking away. I didn't get why this was supposed to be fun because all I could think about the entire time I was toking on my cigarette was that I was going to die of cancer. It didn't take me long to kick the habit, what with me not having a regular supply of cigarettes and having a powerful fear of death and all.

I remember when I was about 5 or 6, the city was working to widen a road right next to our neighborhood. In the process, they had dug deep ditches along one side of it and placed large concrete pipes running all the way down, with large drains spaced at various intervals on top. My brother and his friend and I would climb down in those pipes and crawl for blocks. It was inside those pipes that my brother and his friends taught me every single curse word that I know to this very day. I was the only kid starting first grade that I knew of who routinely shouted, "mother fucking goddamn sonofabitch fucking shit ass cunt" whenever I was really angry. Naturally this made me very popular with the teachers. And all my friends parents. It didn't really come in handy until I was much older and began to drive.

I remember my older sisters taking me to see a drive-in movie. There was only one drive-in theater still in business. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. It may have even been the very first movie I ever went to. I'm not sure. Many years later a tornado ripped through and shredded it. Today it's a shopping center filled with restaurant chains and small stores I hardly notice.

I remember when disco was popular. Every time a disco song came on the radio all my friends and I would scream and moan, "when is disco going to ennnnnnnnnd?????" We hated disco with a passion.

I remember my youngest older sister practicing her disco dancing skills in her bedroom with the door locked (no one else in the house except her was ever allowed to lock their door without Dad literally breaking it down) and she'd crank her stereo way up, thinking perhaps that this would drown out the sounds of her stomping and clapping. It didn't. Imagine hearing KC and the Sunshine band performing "Shake Your Booty" over and over again, at high volume blasting through a pair of 15 inch speakers, with stomping and clapping throughout, about 1000 times in a row. Yeah, "shake shake shake ... shake shake shake ... shake your bootie!" Just having that fucking song stuck in your head for the rest of the day should give you a small idea of the torture my family and I endured because of disco and my sister's love of it.

I remember my oldest older sister laying sideways across her bed, flopped over face down like a murder victim, while she listened to one of her many Hank Williams Sr albums while her bedroom door stood wide open, so that everyone upstairs could share in the joys of that deep country twang along with her. Fortunately, she did not enjoy it at window shaking volume the way my youngest older sister did with her disco songs. So I could at least go downstairs to get away from it if I needed to.

I remember sitting in my mom's old Ford stationwagon in the parking lot outside of Belk's where my mom was inside shopping. My sister was with me and we were bored. So we started counting Volkswagen Bugs and Ford Mustangs. We counted those particular cars because they were literally everywhere. More than any other car, those two were absolutely everywhere you looked, all the time, every place you could go. Or at least that's how it seemed at the time.

I remember watching "Starsky and Hutch" and never, ever getting it right as to which was which. For what its worth, I know now. The Jewish guy with most of the jokes was Starsky and the blonde guy playing the straight man was Hutch. I never did care much about their car, though. I liked the car chases a lot. Cop shows at that time tended to have a lot of car chases. At the time I had no idea why. The movie "Bullitt" was before my time.

I remember watching James Bond movies and hearing my Dad complain that "this guy is no Sean Connery." I had no clue who Sean Connery was or why it meant so much to my dad that this guy was not him.

I remember watching movies with my dad and learning more about the people in the movie than you could ever possibly want to know because my dad knew all about the actors and actresses and what went on  scandal-wise when the movie first came out, who was dead and how they died, who had an affair with whom, who was a communist, addicted to drugs, committed to an asylum, etc. But only if the movie was in black and white. The few color movies he could fill me in about were from the 1950s or '60s. Anything from the '70s up to the present day Dad didn't really seem all that interested. I used to think that was odd, but I kind of get it now.

Wordless Wednesday

Stuff

Hoarders is on. I didn't turn it on and I'm not currently controlling the TV, so I can't turn it to something more worthwhile to watch. As I watch this cheesy reality show crap it occurs to me that I don't recall a single episode in which they went to a house in Beverly Hills or The Hamptons or some place wealthy and upperclass like that. I haven't seen or heard of a single case of hoarding in which a filthy rich celebrity or businessman had a hoarding problem.

When I think closer to home, I realize that none of my upper class  friends have houses filled with stuff. My wealthy friends don't have indoor couches on their front porches or trails in their living rooms where you have to make your way through stacks and stacks of crap.

The only people I know with stacks of crap and little trails formed through it that you walk to get from one room to the next are poor relative to most of the people I know.

To be fair, poorer people can't afford as much house, and therefore the larger storage space that richer people can. I recall a TV special about Michael Jackson in which he was shown going on an insane shopping spree where he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on crap. Where all that crap went once he got home, I don't know. But I never heard stories after he died of people having to wade through piles of crap he'd bought and set up a hasty estate sale to get rid of it all. And I know for a fact that many wealthy professional men in Memphis have wives who spend thousands of dollars per week on regular shopping sprees. I can't imagine where all that money goes, or what happens to the things they buy. Their houses are large, but never seem to be overfilled with things.

One of my sisters moved out to a part of Alabama that I have to confess, I never would have chosen for myself. It's up on a mountaintop and I'm sure it has its good points, but for the most part I have never heard much good said about it. Driving out there to visit her, it is impossible not to notice the small, rectangular houses, boxes really, which appear to be resting on piles of trash. All around these little houses are piles and piles of ... stuff. Its just stupid stuff. Raggedy couches, window frames, doors, tables, old chairs, cans, bottles, lawnmowers, motorcycles in various states of disassembly, shells of cars that are missing engines, doors, glass. There is no yard left. And their running cars don't appear to be parked in any sort of orderly arrangement in their driveways. They're everywhere, all around the house, all over the yard, front and back.

In my own neighborhood, one of my neighbors once complained to another neighbor about the fact that his son's girlfriend repeatedly parked her car alongside the street instead of in the driveway. I hadn't thought about it before, but no one here parks on the street. And no one parks in their yard, either. All our cars, at every house, are organized in our garages and driveways. I have more cars than anyone on my street, and yet even so, all of them are either in the garage or in my driveway.  That wasn't the case when I was living in Redneckville. Back then I was probably the only person in the entire neighborhood with cars inside my garage instead of stacks and stacks of junk. Everyone else had cars and boats parked somewhere in the grass.

So I'm thinking about this now and I'm wondering, why is this?  Why have I never seen a wealthy person with a hoarding problem? Why are their houses always so perfectly organized, neat, and devoid of stuff? In most of the largest, nicest homes I've been inside of, there really wasn't that much stuff. Almost every room was neatly filled with just the right amount of things. At worst, there might be a closet somewhere in the back that overflowed with old things, or maybe one entire side of their garage was stacked with junk. But beyond that, no one seemed to overfill their rooms with things.

Do rich people sell their old things once they get bored with them? Do they donate them? Do they just throw them away because they value them less than poorer people?

Do poorer people hang onto every single item they possess, even when its broken, worn out, or otherwise of little value to them, because they fear they might not be able to afford to replace it?

I don't have an answer to this. I just have my theories and random thoughts. I don't watch "Hoarders" enough to pay much attention so I don't know if they've ever offered any in-depth explanation as to why they believe people fill their houses with crap.

What do you think?