Posts Tagged ‘iraq’

Weekend Roundup

December 19, 2011

[UPDATED]

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, my 3 y/o stopped taking naps in the afternoon and it’s been quite a shock to my schedule. I’ve been unable to blog or work out and I’m about 13 weeks overdue for a haircut. When you have toddlers, afternoon naps are an oasis allowing you to clean call your parents read make dinner go to the bathroom by yourself and adjust fantasy football rosters. When they stop napping it’s like having to do double duty because your asshole coworker calls in sick EVERY DAY. Anyway, as my wife candidly observed, with my “wingy” hair I’m starting to look like a middle-aged, tranny Farrah Fawcett. On that delightful note, let’s get started:

Don't start making out with each other! GAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

1. Listen up Hollywood, enough with the incest storylines. First you traumatized us in Boardwalk Empire with Jimmy being seduced by his mom [my screams woke up my 2 kids making me feel like a TOTAL ASSHOLE]. And now Dexter and his sister are on the verge of getting frisky, making me want to give myself the Machine Gun Kelly treatment. Dexter’s killed roughly 10k people since the show premiered, but can’t he do something a little less scandalous, like eat a dead or burn down a nursing home? I don’t mean to get all Rick Perry on you, but what kind of country do we live in when a man can’t even sit on the couch at midnight in his boxers eating a sleeve of Ritz crackers watching a show about a serial killer without being subjected to offensive material? Anyway, I think we can all agree the two actors should get divorced in real life just to ease my sensibilities.

The one storyline I love this season is Batista’s 1978 Trans-Am, and not in a trendy, pretend-I-like-drinking-Pabst kind of way. I’ve always loved old cars, maybe it’s a lingering idea that guys who drive fast cars are TOUGH and KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE LADIES. I distinctly remember hanging out in a Pizza Hut parking lot on a random evening in 1990 after a football game with some other freshmen dudes [in a related story, we were all single] when a guy pulled up in one of those mini trucks and parked so that he intentionally took up two spots. We all agreed that the guy, in his late 20s with lines shaved in the side of his hair, definitely got laid ALL THE TIME.

2. I’m a huge fan of Always Sunny, but the most physically-grotesque character on that show is not Frank Reynolds, but Dee. She always looks like she just returned from a 8 week heroin binge with Steven Tyler. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST ON A STICK EAT A GOD DAMNED SANDWICH ONCE IN A WHILE YOU EMACIATED, ANDROGYNOUS PREYING MANTIS! Look, this is a serious issue and I hope someday to have the opportunity to address young women about eating disorders. Maybe I could go to different boarding schools on the East Coast and spread the message of my 10:1 rule (i.e., it’s better to be 10 lbs overweight than 1 under). Hooking up with Dee Reynolds and all the other chicks who look like they donated blood 40 days in a row would be awesome…if dudes who run cross country make you randy. [To the women reading this right now, why aren't you taking notes?!]

3. The Crossroads Classic

Given the Sandusky allegations isn't it a little tone deaf for Mike Brey to dress up like an Armenian porn wholesaler?

IU remained unbeaten on Saturday beating an Irish team that resembled a WNBA franchise headed for the draft lottery. At one point Notre Dame went over ten minutes without a field goal, it was like watching Larry Flynt trying to fuck the statue of Liberty. The Papacy cannot be happy with this collection of talent-less hacks in South Bend who, to be fair, look quite similar to the venerable ’09 IU team that lost to the likes of Lipscombe. After watching notably unskilled ND center Jack Cooley nearly concuss himself trying to secure a rebound, I think it’s fair to include tall men along with hot skanks in the DNA Lottery Club. If you’re a high school kid over 6′ 8″ tall, it’s a veritable lock that you’ll earn a college scholarship. [Similarly, attractive women are literally allowed to kill babies]  As someone who fantasizes about being both, I burn with envy seeing these gangly sasquatches earn BMOC rights merely by having over-active thyroid glands.

One quick note on America’s football team: apparently Urban Meyer is tearing it up on the recruiting front and making some great hires. It’s a sad reality of college sports that a grown-ass man such as myself has to obsess over the decisions of 18 year-old boys, but there it is. Anyway, what I find hilarious is this emerging storyline that it’s going to take Urban a long time to install his spread offense. This assumes we had one in the first place! Ohio State’s offense under Tressel/Bollman had three plays: (1) off-tackle right; (2) off-tackle left; and (3) stare down one primary receiver for 5 seconds and if he isn’t open, then run. Look, I’m sure it will be unfamiliar for OSU players to have to read an actual playbook, but it’s not like asking the ’00 Rams to run Navy’s offense. Okay? Good? NOW EVERYONE CALM DOWN GOD DAMMIT!

4. I can’t improve upon this article about the alleged “end” to the Iraq War. Oh, and it wasn’t even our choice to leave. Our Noble Peace Prize-winning President actually pressured Iraq to allow troops to remain past the withdrawal date. So if you’re keeping track, we lied about invading, lied about the horrors we unleashed AND lied about withdrawing. So it was kind of like all those times your spouse asks you how a business trip was, even though the whole thing was a made-up excuse to leave the State and score some meth & wager on dog fights and you fled the scene of an accident, drunk, after your rental car slammed into a school bus, killing three underage hookers in the back seat. On a serious note, just ponder for a moment that despite what an enormous, vile waste of lives & treasure this was, the only person in jail is that white trash Fred Savage-looking lady who photographed the naked prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, 3 NFL coaches were probably fired in the time it took me to write this post. Okay, I better change the subject before I get too depressed and hide in the garage next to the glue cannisters.

5. Time to update my People-Who-Deserve-To-Be-Kicked-In-The-Junk List! Here goes:

  1. Mark Halperin (and everyone else on this list of media hacks)
  2. Every hack sports pundit who writes hagiographic articles about Tebow.
  3. Irrelevant bloggers who are too lazy to look up a synonym for the word “hack”.
  4. Christopher Hitchens (posthumously) for his blood lust in propagandizing the Iraq war.
  5. Caleb Hanie for being the worst person in Chicago since this guy.
  6. The people who write those “grass roots” political chain emails.
  7. All the animals who slept in their makeshift dens the last time I took my kids to the zoo. “Hey, wake up you lazy bastards! IT’S SHOW TIME!
  8. The zoo staffer who tried to tell me it was illegal to yell at monkeys.
  9. Everyone who send out Xmas letters full of humblebrags.
  10. The actors in Xmas commercials for jewelry stores. Hey, Kay Jewelers: you know what else “starts with K”? Kidney Stones, which are calcium deposits that make the act of peeing feel like you’re smuggling disposable razors in your genitals.

Would you like to pay $5 for some old masturbation jokes?

6. So I finally had to check out Louis CK’s comedy special last week, plunking down $5 to watch it online. On a related note, he was featured in a pretty cool Rolling Stone article that discussed why and how he set up the special to be downloaded (to avoid all the asshole middle men and their fees). I got a vicarious thrill reading about a seemingly regular guy who can finally call the shots after spending decades being screwed over by club managers, agents and producers. As for the show itself? I thought the jokes themselves were just okay, but overall it was still entertaining. I can’t really explain it, but when I have a history with someone who’s really funny, their future jokes/observations start from a higher plane. If one of my really funny friends or Larry David or Dave Chappelle walked in, looked at my shoddy appearance, and asked for a ride to the methadone clinic, I’d probably laugh. If Diane Sawyer made the same (only marginally funny joke), I’d probably cry and run upstairs to shave. But there was one joke from the special that nearly had me bust a rib from laughter. And that was when Louie talked about taking 1970s Bad Company hits from a joint and started singing “here come the jesters: 1, 2, 3!” For some reason it took me back to the first gym I ever worked out at when old school meatheads with their tight shorts and baggy shirts (the opposite of new school meatheads) would be in there rocking out to Bachman Turner Overdrive and Emerson Lake and Palmer, pausing only to admire their acne-scarred delts & traps in the mirror, high-fiving and urging each other to “TCB!”

On that classy/sexy note, have a good day.

[UPDATE]

Check out this article by Charles Pierce (who stands as a bastion of Hunter S. Thompson-caliber journalism amidst a sea of contrarian douchery that is Grantland) on Tebow and the culture war.

Gym/Workout Secrets Revealed!

August 13, 2010

1. If you’re tired of crash diets and ridiculous workout plans, please see the attached interview with my uncle Carl, a fitness expert, that originally appeared on the website bohogan.com.

2. I’ve been seeing a lot of promos recently for the new sitcom OUTSOURCED:

The answer to the question "is it possible to make a show offensive AND less funny than According to Jim?"

[WARNING: please keep a paper bag handy in case you get lightheaded from laughter] (more…)

Guns or Butter

April 7, 2010

[UPDATED]

While we (allegedly) can’t afford universal health care or additional job works programs, it’s good to know we’re literally building cities replete with Burger Kings and athletic facilities in Islamabad and Kabul.  According to Tom Engelhardt:

It’s striking, of course, that all this is happening at a moment when, domestically, small businesses can’t get loans and close to 10% of the population is officially out of work, while state governments are desperately scrabbling for every available dollar (and some that aren’t), even as they cut what would once have been considered basic services.  In contrast, the Pentagon is fighting its distant wars as if American pockets had no bottoms, the national treasury had no limits, and there was quite literally no tomorrow.

And there’s one more small contrast to be made when it comes to the finest military in the history of the world: for all the private security guards, mountains of burgers, lakes of gasoline, miles of blast walls, and satchels of cash to pass out to the locals, it’s been remarkably unsuccessful in its pacification campaigns against some of the motliest forces of our time.  The U.S. military has been fought to something like a draw by relatively modest-sized, relatively lightly armed minority insurgencies that don’t even pass muster when it comes to shooting straight.

It’s almost like some Pentagon assholes are attempting to recreate every colonial disaster of the past 200 years.

[UPDATE]

Pardon the expression, but I genuinely can’t handle the truth. Here’s Chris Floyd succinctly, and brutally, laying out the bottom line:

So let us have faith in the American people. They have proven time and again in this last decade that they will not countenance crimes and atrocities being committed in their names. They will not abide leaders who unleash a war machine of blood money and blind fury against innocent people. When push comes to shove, when the truth is revealed to them, they will always — always — do the right thing.

Pay no attention to that smoldering pile of $ and corpses.

March 31, 2010

I also dabble in wedding photography.

[UPDATED]

Two seemingly unrelated notes:

1. Happy Iraq War anniversary everyone! Hard to believe, but it’s been seven glorious years (and counting!) since Mission Accomplished. After hundreds of billions of dollars [and it's probably more since the true military budget is hidden in a byzantine network of government sub-agencies], hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, among other social, economic and environmental disasters, has this quagmire benefited anyone? Well, perhaps Iran which is allegedly aiding the formation of a pro-Tehran government in Iraq [and who could blame them for wanting to "meddle" in a neighboring country occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops?]. For those keeping score, we rushed to invade a county to find WMDs that didn’t exist…and a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks that never was…to replace a brutal Sunni dictatorship with a brutal Shia theocracy. And my personal favorite justification, because Saddam was a murderous, torturing thug…we killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and built a shadow network of legal black holes where we tortured scores of “suspects” to death. Assuming you’ve stopped weeping and/or vomiting, read on… (more…)

Sociopathic asshole takes victory lap.

March 11, 2010

Shit, I have a column due tomorrow. Better gin up another half-wit analogy for complex social/geo-political events.

This is not meant to be one of those insufferable contrarian/inflammatory posts designed to attract links. And I know some of you would rather watch Susan Boyle’s colonoscopy than talk about Iraq, but Tom Friedman’s latest New York Times Op-Ed is literally too incredible to pass without mention. For those who don’t religiously follow politics and punditry (i.e., anyone with a life), prior to the invasion of Iraq Friedman was one of the war’s biggest cheerleaders. This cliche-spewing mustache appeared on every cable news show to tell us that we needed to invade Iraq because it would be easy, quick, cheap, legally and morally justifiable, and it would transform the political climate in the Middle East. Cripes, we owed it to the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam!  [But lest we paint his motives as too noble, Friedman infamously explained that we needed to invade Iraq to tell those primitive A-rabs to "suck on this"]

So here we are, almost seven years later, and Iraq is still mired in an apocalyptic nightmare. Now you’re probably thinking that a rational person who banked all of his political capitol on this war would now sound a bit contrite. A person with even a shred of humility would express regret when faced with the unmitigated devastation wrought by his advocacy. If so, you’re not familiar with the NYT’s star pundit, Tom Friedman: (more…)

You’re welcome Iraq!

March 9, 2010

Suck it Iraq war apologists!

As usual, the Daily Show says it best:

“So seven years after invading the country that had nothing to do with 9/11, to find weapons of mass destruction they didn’t have, I guess the only thing left to say to the Iraqis is…you’re welcome.”  – Jon Stewart

Then again, we can’t leave out The Onion.

Finally, Some Straight Talk!

February 28, 2010

Image: Senator McCain appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington

[UPDATED]

After sparring with his 2008 presidential opponent — President Barack Obama — at this week’s health care summit, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sits down for an exclusive interview on this Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” What, if anything, was achieved at this bipartisan meeting? And how will Democrats and Republicans work together to confront health care reform and all the other challenges facing Washington, including terrorism, the economy and more? We’ll get answers from this four-term Senator up this year for re-election.

You know how Robin Williams hasn’t done anything funny since the late 80s but constantly appears on award shows and late night TV? That’s how I feel about John McCain, who will be making an unprecedented 20th appearance (more than any other public figure in the country) on a Sunday morning talk show since Obama’s inauguration. (more…)


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