Blogging from work on my last day!

What a nice treat for my last day of this hated job. Our rabbi of IT came in to do something and he must have forgotten to turn the firewall back on and I have access to all sorts of sites that were deemed by my boss to be time wasters like Blogger, Tribe, Gmail and other sites. I was planning on spending my last day here not doing a whole lot of work, but now I really get to enjoy it by blogging about it. I think I've mentioned before that on my second week of this job the boss blocked my website because too many people were stealing time from him by... GASP! ...looking at pictures of my newborn (at the time) baby. So my last few days here have been quite interesting. The evil little boss is off on vacation which makes it even easier to waste my last few days away here, so the sales manager is in charge. I've had issues with this guy before. He's like a spoiled child who always has to get his way and then whines to the boss when he doesn't get his way. He rarely puts the time and abilities of the people doing his jobs into consideration when he agrees to impossible deadlines from his clients. He also understands what a complete prick our boss is, particularly to the production department, and rather than use his influence to make things easier for us in production, he threw us under the bus, getting us chewed out for being bad, lazy workers with no integrity, all on the day before we took off for Christmas. Dick! So anyway... yesterday I see that sales manager guy acting all sneaky, talking on his phone and looking around nervously. I figure he's probably just snitching somebody out to the boss, which was not exactly incorrect. So a little later on a couple of cops were sniffing around and I asked if I could help them. They asked if anybody here called them, and I said I wasn't sure and took them upstairs to the sales office and asked if anybody called the cops. The sales manager said that he did, and as the cops walked upstairs he pointed to our administrative assistant and said that they needed to arrest her for fraud. Apparently she had been writing some checks to herself at the tune of 10 grand or so. One of my coworkers put it all in perfect perspective for us. He said that at least this probably ruined the boss's vacation. I could picture him trying to ski and just muttering about how he's been right all these years that everybody just wants to take advantage of him. Good riddance to this place!

Al Gore Finally Won Something

So Al Gore won an Oscar. I want to be happy for him. I really do. With a lot of hard work he let a bunch of people know that global warming is a serious problem without coming off as a complete stiff. If he worked half as hard running for president as he had pimping this movie, we wouldn't have been stuck with this idiot monkey of a president we've got now. Sure, everybody loves Al the lecturing filmmaker. He's the toast of liberal Hollywood. Don't these people realize that it's his rotten campaigning and poor choice of a running mate that can be directly to blame for Bush? I suppose it's a lot easier to blame Ralph Nader for that since he doesn't have a hugely successful documentary out now. But the blame Nader thing is stupid. I've said it before and I'll say it again, that election was Al's to lose. He was the VP of one of the most popular presidents ever, running on a strong record of good times, against a complete doofus who has skated through his entire life because of who his family is and still managed to screw up everything he touched. And Al lost it magnificently. He hired a bunch of egomaniacal political strategists who gave him awful advice. He didn't offer any kind of exciting policy, just more of the same drivel as before. He didn't throw the base a single bone. He was pro-death penalty, pro-corporate globalization, didn't even mention anything about health care reforms or really any reforms whatsoever. And as a final fuck you to the people whose votes he was taking for granted, he chose a running mate who was just effectively kicked out of the democratic party by his constituents for being too much of a republican. He lost our votes, and we got stuck with Bush. Sorry if I sound bitter, but as far as I'm concerned, Al Gore can take his Oscar and shove it straight up his ass. And don't even get me started on that wife of his...

Who dropped out of the race?

Tom Vilsack, we hardly knew you. And apparently, that was the problem. That and not enough money to get us to know him is why this guy is no longer running for president. He's been in the race for a whole 3 months and I don't think I've heard a single thing about him. What an off-the-public-radar candidate like that needs is a good publicity stunt. He could have gotten himself a cameo on a CSI or Law and Order show. He could have played tamborine for the Police on grammy night. He could have had the South Park guys to animate him killing Kenny. He could have gotten a tattoo, shaved his head and gone in and out of rehab. He could have gotten on stage at a comedy club and dropped a bunch of N-bombs. He could have gone on Howard Stern and talked about salad tossing. But he didn't do any of these things, and now he's still just another former mid-western governor that nobody has ever really heard anything about.

Guiliani campaign off to a great start!

The Onion is usually good, but sometimes it's absolutely brilliant. This is one of those times. If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world's conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions. "Let us all remember how we felt on that day, with the world watching our every move, waiting on our every word," said Giuliani, flanked by several firefighters, ex-New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and Judith Nathan, his third wife. "With a campaign built on traditional 9/11 values, and with the help of every citizen who believes in the 9/11 dream, I want to make 9/11 great again."

Sour grapes, Hilly?

What's got Hillary Clinton's panties in a knot this time? It's not a hidden sex scene in a video game, but the man responsible for signing Nirvana to a major label. David Geffen is not a guy afraid to speak his mind. Previously a major fundraiser for the Clintons, this time around he's supporting the more progressive Barak Obama, and he had a few things to say about his old friends to Maureen Dowd. "Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is -- and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? -- can bring the country together." So of course Camp Clinton goes ballistic and starts telling the Obama campaign to disassociate themselves with Geffen, denounce his statements, and give back the money he raised. And here's another reason I'm liking this Barak guy... with the biggest guns in his party pointing at him, he didn't even flinch. "It's not clear to me why I'd be apologizing for someone else's remark," Obama said, according to his press secretary, Dan Pfeiffer. Obama told reporters, "I have said repeatedly I have the utmost respect for Sen. Clinton and have considered her an ally in the Senate and will continue to consider it that way throughout this campaign." Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs flatly refused Wolfson's request to denounce Geffen's comments and referred to a remark made earlier this week by South Carolina Democratic state Sen. Robert Ford. Ford predicted Obama would not win the presidency if nominated because he is black. Obama and Ford are both black and Ford has endorsed Clinton. "We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Gibbs said in a written statement. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when [he] was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. A lesser democrat would have caved and gone into damage control mode, making himself look like an ass in the process. I look forward to seeing how things play out between these two as things get more heated further down the road. If anyone stands a chance of taking down the worst half of the Clinton machine and then going all the way, I'm liking the way Obama is the guy to do it. But it's early on, and I know from my years of being a politics junkie that there's plenty of time for me to find something incredibly disappointing about him.

Too busy for a real post

I'm off to a horrible re-start of this blog. But as usual, I've got excuses. I'm in the middle of trying to move, change jobs and celebrate my daughter's first birthday. In the middle of all of this, I've seen a little bit of news. Apparently the top headline of the past 4 days or so is that Britney Spears shaved her head. So at least nothing important is going on in the world that I need to pay attention to. Expect more of me in the upcoming weeks. But in the meantime, enjoy this great PSA from George Takei.

News Roundup

I don't have time tonight to give a detailed analysis of any one story, but here are some quick thoughts on a few stories... There will be no satisfaction of seeing Dick Cheney cross examined in the Libby trial, let alone Libby himself. Oh well, there will be the civil case at some point. As Howard K. Stern runs to the Bahamas and sells exclusive interviews, many media outlets have dropped the middle initial when talking about him to the anger and dismay of the King of all Media. And more potential baby daddies are crawling out of the woodwork. And now this... And lastly, we've got even more people throwing their hats in the ring to run for president. Rudy Giuliani could go all the way if the hard right doesn't eat him alive for being a moderate. Mitt Romney probably couldn't beat either serious democratic contender, though he doesn't stand a chance in the primaries. And Barak Obama apparently just announced his candidacy over the weekend which is funny because I thought he announced weeks ago. The exciting contest is going to be between him and Hilary, and I'm really hoping he gives Hilary a hard whupping.

A Song Dedication

I'd like to dedicate a song to the guy who felt the need to attack Ellie Wiesel in a hotel elevator. Elie Wiesel, the renowned Holocaust author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was attacked and dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator last week, possibly by a Holocaust denier who claims to have stalked Wiesel for weeks, police said Friday. Wiesel, 78, was at the Argent Hotel on Feb. 1 for an interfaith conference when he was confronted around 6:30 p.m. in an elevator by a man insisting that he wanted to interview the author, said police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens. Wiesel said he would do the interview in the lobby of the Third Street hotel, but the man insisted on going to Wiesel's room. The man then stopped the elevator at the sixth floor, dragged Wiesel out and tried to force him into a room on that floor. "That's when (Wiesel) started yelling," Gittens said. The man fled, and Wiesel went down to the lobby and called police. This guy survived a concentration camp and has since dedicated his life to making sure that kind of shit doesn't happen again, and you feel the need to grab him out of a hotel and try to tell him that none of it happened? Look, I don't care if you're Mel Gibson's dad or just another ignorant skinhead, you have no business bothering this man or anyone else with your hate filled bullshit. So this song is for you...

Edwards and his blog troubles

Finally a post about politics beyond just a passing cheap shot at Bush while talking about crazy astronauts and dead reality TV stars. So John Edwards managed to get himself into a minor pickle this week. He decided to hire a couple of lefty bloggers to help his campaign reach out to the netroots. Is it a surprise to anyone that some members of the christian lunatic fringe have found some things that these women have posted that they find to be offensive? In some of their online writings, Marcotte and McEwan used vulgar language to characterize religious conservatives and Roman Catholic teachings on birth control and the divinity of Christ. What? Bloggers being provocative? Stop the presses! What was it that these evil women posted, anyway? McEwan referred to conservative Christians as "Christofascists," and Marcotte said that the Catholic Church's prohibition on the use of birth control forced women to bear "more tithing Catholics." Both frequently employed profanity to describe their ideological opponents. Have these dumb fucking christofacsists ever read a blog before? Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick, if you can't blow off some steam at the expense of those who you disagree with politically every now and then, what's the point of political blogging? The fact that these religious wingnuts want these women to lose their jobs because of something they said just proves the fascist name given to them. So this apparently has raised a huge bruhaha across the blogosphere. The rightwingers want these women fired, but as people who wouldn't have any business voting in the democratic primaries, their opinion on this issue is irrelevant. And the lefty bloggers are saying that if Edwards fires them, he loses their votes, and as a candidate lacking anything resembling the star power of Barak or Hillary, that threat is a bit on the hollow side. So where does this leave us, dear readers? Is it just another non-story getting far too much attention? Or is it the first foreshadowing of what campaigning in the digital age is evolving (or devolving?) into? It also leaves me without a chance in hell of getting hired by any campaign with my years of openly mocking the opposition as obnoxiously as humanly possible and a movie that members of the American Taliban would probably consider a hate crime. And frankly, I'd much rather sit on the sidelines and openly mock every participant of this tragicomedy stage show called the next presidential election than actually put my faith into any of these stuffed shirts. Being around politics all of these years has left me cynical and bitter and I wouldn't have it any other way.

RIP you crazy trainwreck of a woman

It's really hard to blog about politics when you've got crazy astronauts running amok in diapers brandishing BB guns, mayors sleeping with their friend's wives and going into rehab, evangelist bigwigs claiming to be heterosexual except for that meth induced fling over the course of several years with a male prostitute, and now this... Anna Nicole Smith died today. Despite the fact that this is the surprise ending to the trailer trash tragic soap opera that had been her life, I am sad, mainly for her 6 month old daughter and for her lawyer/quasi-husband/reality show costar Howard K. Stern. Watching her reality show was like passing a grizzly accident, it was a horrible thing that I just couldn't take my eyes off of. She was such a mess of a person and it made for delightfully awful television watching. Even after that went off the air, her life continued to be full of drama. She gets pregnant, hides in the Bahamas, has her baby girl, then her son dies under mysterious circumstances right in the hospital, then she keeps changing the story on who the baby daddy is, she sells the last pictures of her son alive, has a non-binding wedding with supposed baby daddy Howard K. Stern (which led to some hysterical moments on the radio show of the other Howard Stern - a caller asked Howard if it was true that the baby was his, and Howard gave a long story about how it was indeed his, but he had gotten her pregnant from anal sex), then they got evicted from a few places in the Bahamas. Plus, there was all of the crazy legal shit going on between Anna and the family of her late husband. Her stepson (who was several decades older than her) who was suing her from getting any of her husband's money died while the lawsuit was going on. And the paternity of her baby is still up in the air with the first supposed baby daddy suing for a paternity test. So this girl is only 6 months old and you can bet there are going to be some people fighting over her and the multi-billion dollar windfall that may or may not come with her. And I thought Frances Bean Cobain had it rough. So over the course of the next few weeks we can expect Anna's autopsy results to compete for headlines with people psychoanalyzing crazy astronaut lady and which of the 12 steps of recovery my mayor is in with his alcohol treatment.

My next film... NASA Astronauts Gone Bad?

No, I'm not really going to make this film (though if this story is still in the headlines in about a month I might have to make a short trailer), but I was a bit inspired by this post from Monsters and Critics about this whole crazy astronaut story... The New York Daily News mourns the loss of the MOW (movie of the week) "whose golden age peaked in 1992 when we got three, count 'em, three competing films on Amy Fisher, the 'Long Island Lolita' who knocked on her sleazy boyfriend's door and shot his wife in the head." Defamer.com has gone so far to cast the dream "could be" movie, with Toni Collette as Nowak, and "Monk" star Tony Shaloub as the male astronaut, the apple of Lisa's roving eye. I'm taking this idea and running with it. Here's my dream cast... Charlize Theron as Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak - As we saw in Monster, she can bring the crazy! Billy Bob Thornton as Commander William Oefelein - no particular reason why, I just think he'd be good for the part, or maybe it's because he's played astronauts before. Jenna Jameson as Capt. Colleen Shipman - Only a porn star should play the kind of woman you'd drive 900 miles in a diaper to shoot with a BB gun. Supporting cast: Artie Lange as Nowak's husband who has been driven to drink over this whole affair. Why Artie? This movie is going to need some comic relief and Artie rules. Ethan Hawke as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, taking time from his own sex scandal to comment on the state of NASA. The Cryptkeeper puppet from Tales From the Crypt as Larry King. James Gandalfini as the head of Nasa. And Zach Braff as the wacky neighbor. And here's the promo teaser scene... In the bus shelter at the airport, Colleen sits nervously while Lisa Marie furiously pumps her BB gun. Lisa Marie: Once I pump this thing 8 more times, I'll shoot your fuckin' eye out, beeyotch! This post should be interactive, so please comment with your own casting suggestions and lines of dialog.

Space Madness!!!

Today was a big news day. Apparently WMD's aren't the only thing we can't seem to find in Iraq. There's also $12 BILLION in cash, our tax dollars used to "stimulate the Iraq economy" that is completely missing. But who cares about that when we've got this NASA love triangle gone batshit insane? Our government fucks something up in Iraq pretty much on an hourly basis, but it's not every day that a female astronaut drives 900 miles wearing a diaper so she doesn't have to waste time with pit stops in order to kidnap and maybe kill another woman who she saw as getting in between her and another astronaut who she was obsessed with. What could make a married mother of three decide to load her car up with a BB gun, a hunting knife, mace and a disguise and go threaten another woman? It's obviously a serious case of Space Madness!

Well this was innevitable...

So just a couple of days into Mayor Gavin Newsom's scandal that nobody in this city seems to give a rat's ass about has gone the way of every recent scandal. Mel Gibson hates the Jews? Off to rehab! Mark Foley pervs out on underage boys? Off to rehab! Kramer yells out the N word on stage? Off to rehab! Now my mayor bangs a chick and while it's not all the way off to rehab, he is going to be getting some alcohol counseling. The booze didn't make you do it, Gav. People have sex with each other every day, often with people they shouldn't. I could go on, but the Buzzcocks put it best... I can't see much of a future Unless we find out what's to blame What a shame And we won't be together much longer Unless we realize that we are the same Ever fallen in love with someone? Ever fallen in love? In love with someone Ever fallen in love? (Love…) In love with someone You shouldn't've fallen in love with

Who would want to interview me?

Well I guess I am making a splash with my return to the blogosphere because just a week back in and I'm already being asked for interviews. Was it 60 Minutes? Playboy's 20 Questions? Howard 100 News? No, but almost as good. You can read my exclusive interview on Mr. Joe Blog! If you've ever wondered why I blog, what I'd do if I were president, and what other bloggers I've plugged when given the opportunity, you should definitely not miss this interview. Inspired by this interview and the in-depth interviews on Michael Manning's blog (full disclosure: I am Michael Manning's webmaster) and Will Ferrel's brilliant impersonation of James Lipton, I think I might start doing "Inside the Bloggers Studio." I've got a few ideas of people who I'd like to feature, but if you'd like to add yourself for consideration, please let me know.

Generals Gathered in their Masses...

Here are a whole lot of different versions of War Pigs with various video. Cake - Flaming Lips - Dresden Dolls - Faith No More - Hayseed Dixie - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

My Melrose Place Mayor and a fun Music Video

Is anyone outside of San Francisco getting the news blitz about our mayor and his little affair? It was all that was on the local news tonight when I got home. It's not quite as sleazy as the whole Bill and Monica thing, but it's still pretty sleazy. Single mayor sleeps with his campaign manager/friend's wife. It happened over a year ago, but apparently part of her rehab is dealing with past mistakes, and he held a press conference today admitting to it and apologizing for it. On Melrose Place, this would have been a minor subplot, probably involving Michael Mancini and some great slapstick comedy, but in the world of corporate media, this is apparently a major story. Bill O'Reilly says that this is a perfect example of San Francisco values in action.Hey Bill, do us all a favor and shut the fuck up! I'm not going to be lectured on morality by a guy who was harassing a female coworker about dildoes and falafel massages while writing a children's book. I only really have two points to make about all of this. If the people involved weren't particularly attractive, would this even be a major story or an afterthought on the local news? What if it was the same story with the mayor of Oakland? Attractive people having sex on the first day of February sweeps equals good showbiz! Gavin Newsom was single while the woman he had this affair with was married. While he did something sleazy to a friend, she cheated on her husband. But the mayor is the one getting all the flack for this. OK, that's enough of that. Now on to a fun video... Remember the bad guy karate school in The Karate Kid? You know, the one with the badass black sleaveless uniforms who only wanted to kick Ralph Machio's ass? Have you ever wondered what ever became of those guys? Me neither. But a band called No More Kings put a lot of thought into it, and they made this video. Here's a YouTube version, but you can get a higher quality one here. Enjoy.