A Hairy Proposition

"You'll never catch me, Dudley! Mwuhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahaha!"



I often forget that Mike Coleman is a black man. Normally that would be a good thing. We need to live in a society where color doesn’t matter but in Mike Coleman’s case I don’t think about his ethnicity because of his mustache.

Some people think he looks like Lando Calrissian but I wouldn’t go that far. Lando was cool because he was played by one of the coolest men to ever walk the earth. A lot of guys can’t pull off the mustache without looking like they're trying to overcompensate. Billy Dee did. A lot of black men wear mustaches because Billy Dee Williams rocked it so well. If you’re trying to make the BDW connection with regard to Coleman’s creepy ‘stache you have to concede that he maybe looks like Williams’ gay second cousin from East Lansing. Coleman isn’t cool.

To me, Mike Coleman looks more like a villain from one of those silent movies. Every time I see this guy I wonder which railroad tracks he tied the girl to. Maybe that’s why I don’t ever think of Coleman as a black man…I see him in grainy black and white and when he talks I only her the clacking of an old projector barely drowned out by sinister music being played on a phonograph at the front of the theater. I’ve read that Coleman wants to raise our taxes and I think his mustache is a big reason I don’t want to give it to him.




Another mustache I’m really uncomfortable with is the one Brandon Flowers adorns himself with. The Killers’ front man looks like he’s trying to channel Freddie Mercury when he prances around with his 70s-ish arrangement. It doesn’t work.



I like Brandon fine. I enjoy a lot of The Killers’ music. I think they’ve gone a little too mainstream recently but I don’t begrudge them that. If they want to make some money, more power to them. Far better to sell out early than to do it after your hipster fan base has grown old, fat and encumbered by children. I think it’s pathetic to see some of these “alternative” acts bellying up to the retro trough. Sell out when you matter, load up the bank and then reinvent yourself. That's the way you do it. Do you hear me Smashing Pumpkins?




Still, Flowers is not Freddie Mercury. Nobody is. Freddie’s mustache looked terribly out of place as well but he’s the guy who stole ugly mustaches from porn stars and over-the-road truckers and gave them to gay men. Just because Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck didn’t have the good sense to give in and let them have it doesn’t mean other straight men should try to steal the look back.





Facial hair is a tricky maneuver that not everybody should be trying. Goatees and mustaches are especially difficult to negotiate because they require regular maintenance that is even more demanding than shaving. They’re easy to misalign. Too often people hold their faces differently when trimming their facial hair, failing to account for the natural position of their heads and the relaxed expression they normally carry. The result is fucked up.



Besides the logistical problems is the fact that too many mustaches and goatees are ironic. A lot of guys try to rock a little facial hair because they want to look manly but they only end up looking queer. There’s no such thing as gaydar but when a guy puts a little too much effort into his facial hair it’s a pretty good indicator that he likes penis other than his own.




The problem is that you can’t not put effort into a mustache or a goatee. If you get lazy you look like a trailer park leasing agent or a dump truck driver. You have to understand the balance between caring about your hair but not looking like you do. That’s where the manliness line is. Most people aren’t macho enough to pull off a mustache or a goatee.




Beards are much easier but you have to customize your beard to your personality. Don’t rock the full biker beard and commute on a Trek. You can’t grow one of those counter-culture Rastafarian beards and hold down a job at a Fortune 500 company. Your beard has to be who you are and it has to work on your face. If you have four chins you might want to forgo the tightly-trimmed jaw line tracer and if your facial hair grows as though you’re in the middle of a round of chemo, it might be best to stick with the baby face.



People are going to judge you by the way you wear your facial hair. There’s nothing wrong with that. Facial hair is a personal choice. If you choose to look like a gay man heading for a cabaret, don’t be surprised when some bear slips you a roofie and you wake up aching on both ends and if you want to raise my taxes, try shaving off that pencil-thin huckster ‘stache.

The truth about Mom and Dad

People often ask me, SteveVC, why do you hate your parents so much? The answer is that I don’t hate them at all. I absolutely adore them. Now that they’re in prison and can no longer torture and kill innocent pets and wayward hobos I’ve really come to respect and admire them.

My mom, whose real name is Eunice Blatz, has lived a hard life. She was cut out of the Blatz family fortune when her father married Tonya Harding and left the balance of the estate to her. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Tonya inherited a 1975 Ford LTD with one headlight and a doublewide trailer in Muskegon Michigan, several rows up from the lake. Still, it was hard on my mom.

She worked in the fetish porn industry for a while before taking to the road with several other women who could queef on demand. They were called the Pussy-fart Dolls and they were big hits, touring the truckstop circuit of the southwest through the late 50s and early 60s, before they set up shop in a seedy little Hollywood Blvd dive that was later purchased by Johnny Depp and renamed The Viper Room. Rumor has it that the burlesque troupe that performed there took their name from an old poster that was in the dressing room. But they changed “fart” to “cat” since none of them were particularly good at queefing, although that changed when Nicole Scherzinger became the front woman.

Pregnant with me, my mom kept performing. My grandmother, who was a bouncer at the club, told me that I was technically miscarried four times, generally being ejected from my mother's uterus during the her show stopping rendition of Foxy Lady. They’d just stuff the fetal version of me back inside and mom would go back to work. I was none the worse for wear, but the doctor was a little disturbed to find cigarette butts, pull tabs and M&Ms in stuck to the placenta.

Growing up, my mom was truly attentive. She slept with one eye open all the time. It was a glass eye. She lost her real eye in a knife fight with a Mexican trucker who accused her of stealing his wallet with her vagina during a show. She always said “Big Eunice 2, wetback trucker1…hahahaha” when she talked about it. I never knew what she meant by that as a kid but I found out not too long ago that those ugly earrings with the lumpy gray pearls were actually his testicles.

Mom ruled the house with a firm hand and a lit cigarette. When I got out of line she’d burn me with that cigarette cackling, “You’ve come a long way baby!” I once made the mistake of correcting her for using the Virginia Slims tagline when her cigarette of choice was a Newport, which she developed a taste for in grade school when she dated a pimp from Detroit named Sugar Finger. Mom made me eat an ashtray full of cigarette butts, soaked me with lighter fluid and flung lit “strike anywhere” matches at me. After she depleted the whole box, the matches snuffing out before they hit me, she sent me up the road for a box of Garcia y Vega cigars and for the next six weeks I was punished with cheap stogies instead of the milder menthol cigarettes. There are still scars on my body that smell like burnt tobacco. Whenever I have to make a moral decision, I sniff one and think of my mom.


My dad was a cross between Al Bundy and Joe Jackson. He was an alternate on the 1960 curling team and desperately wanted his kids to achieve success where he had failed. Every morning we’d wake up at 3:00am and head outside to practice. 365 days a year. I say we because for a while I had a brother but one day he had the flu and couldn’t get out of bed. My dad canceled practice that day, drove us to Vermont and sold him to a maple syrup plantation. For all I know my little brother is still out there gathering buckets full of sap with a vicious Doberman tracking him, waiting for him to deviate from his route. I think of him whenever I have pancakes.

I had other siblings but they were lost along the way. During the winter my parents saved money by playing a game called Donner Party. When they first mentioned it I was excited because all I heard was the word “party”. I quickly learned what the Donner aspect was.

They never turned the heat on and during the day we’d get thrown outside in the snow. We did our best to keep warm but eventually your body just starts to shut down. Mom and dad would watch intently from the window, waiting. Waiting for one of us to succumb to the frigid air. When somebody finally fell to the ground, the victim of hypothermia, the game was over and we all went inside for dinner. A big dinner with all the trimmings and lots of fresh meat. I didn’t want to eat my baby sister, I swear I didn’t, but I was so very hungry and she was delicious.

Seven kids went into that family. One was sent to Vermont, I made it out alive. We ate the rest.

Anyway, Curling. Dad wanted me to be the best curler ever. Every day sliding rocks and sweeping. During the summer we did it in the back yard. Have you ever tried to curl on grass? It’s impossible, but after hundreds of vicious beatings I found a way to make it work. I was great.

The problem is that I had too much power on ice. By the time winter rolled around I was all yoked up for curling on grass and my control was off. I was blasting rocks through arena walls on the amateur circuit. I was sweeping the ice right down to the concrete floor. At the Outdoor Games in Saranac Lake one year, five people drowned when my aggressive sweeping cracked through the ice. It was a disaster. You might have seen it on George Michael's Sports Machine.

The International Curling Association reviewed my performances and insisted I was on steroids. I passed every test but they eventually banned me from competition because I was a danger to other competitors. I was told I could apply for reinstatement after 5 years but didn’t fit into my dad’s plans. He was crushed. I was supposed to bring home the gold. A five year suspension was out of the question.

I was kicked out of the family and forced to make it on my own. I dabbled in hook rugs, migrant working and gay porn before I made my bones in the fast food industry. After a few years out of the game, my curling form is manageable and I hustle fools on the weekends. I still have wicked power which comes in handy when people set up blocking stones. BOOM. Cleared the ice again. I’ve been thinking about going pro if I can get a work visa in Canada. People know me in curling circles. I’m a little old, but I’ve got mad skills.

My parents were arrested for plotting to assassinate Danny DeVito (It’s a long story, don’t ask.) and I reconnected with them at the trial. We vented our frustrations with each other. I bought my mom a few cartons of Newports to make up for all the cigarettes she crushed out on me and my dad is pretty happy that I’m a street curler. They probably won’t get out of prison alive. My dad will out last my mom by becoming somebody’s bitch (after all, that’s how he survived the marriage) but he’s not healthy. He used to freebase bacon and his heart is weak. Mom will get shanked within a year. She’s just not as quick as she used to be. Surly as she ever was, but the reflexes are shot.

Anyway that’s the story, I hope it explains where I’m coming from.

closure

As a Gen-Xer I have come to hate the term “closure”. I understand the importance of resolving things but to me the 90s was the “closure” decade. It’s like everybody my age wanted a cookie. I don’t know why. I blame post-goth, grunge wannabes like Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder. So much vying for validation while acting like they were too cool to care. A bunch of whimpering pansies we were.

I suppose that’s what happens when your grandparents start browbeating you with tales of how great they were. Surviving the Great Depression, fighting back the scourge of NAZI Germany, and then getting called right back into the Cold War. They were the ultimate patriots and they never let you forget it. Then Tom Brokaw had to come along and jerk them off with his tome, The Greatest Generation. Thanks a lot Tom, I can’t speak for everybody else but my Grandparents wore that shit like a badge. Read this book, boy. Read it and understand. Understand that you owe us. You owe us everything. Now run to the store and get me a big box of Depends.

At least they died before they sucked every bit of the zest for life out of me. They did a hell of a job convincing me that the world was going to end in THE YEAR 2000, which is why I never really felt the need to excel in my studies or worry about holding down a good job, but they kicked the bucket before I blew my brains out like Cobain. That’s why he did it, you know. He was a GOD but when he told his grandmother she laughed in his face and told him he’d never be as good as Mel Torme. His parents were no better. Our generation wrote the book on Rock music, Curt. We don’t know why you’re wasting your time.

Our parents didn’t help matters much. They managed to turn dodging the draft and smoking dope into some sort of revolution. Basically they partied for 10 years but to hear them tell it, they were in the trenches making the world a better place for our undeserving asses. We weren’t worthy and we never would be. Our Grandparents agreed.

So Gen-X grew up feeling like crap and half-believing that we were all going to die in some horrific apocalyptic disaster in THE YEAR 2000. We were worthless and we’d never amount to anything.

As we got older we pierced our faces, shoplifted stuff on Rodeo Drive and started our quest for something called “closure”. By the late 90s it was a fucking buzz word. If Starbucks didn’t give you skim milk you called their customer service line for “closure”. We fought with our parents at our grandparents funerals in hopes of reaching “closure”. If your roomie borrowed your socks you were forced to pout until he gave you “closure”.

Now it’s 2009 and most of Generation X is staring down the barrel of the big FOUR OH. Some of us are already there. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that life is going to keep rolling whether we get “closure” or not, so most of us just plug along.

We don’t try to make the younger generations feel bad even though it’s painfully obvious they’re a bunch of spoiled little punks who don’t know what it was like to live in an era before you could watch HULU or listen to MP3s on your phone. Back in our day, you had to listen to music on a portable CD player that would skip every time you moved. One second you’re jamming to If I could turn back time and the next Will Smith was Gettin Jiggy Widit. Phones where as big as shoe boxes, weighed as much as a cinder block and they gave you cancer instantly. All you got in return was a shitty phone call that got dropped before you could get any “closure.”

What Would Jesus Do?

Friday is Refrigerator Day in my office. That’s when one or two of the members of a designated group have to go in and purge the refrigerator. Exceptions are made for condiments, coffee creamer and obviously sealed items such as soft drinks (in these parts we call it pop, but I don’t want to piss of you soda snobs who might stumble upon this), but around 4:00 on Friday afternoon anything else is bound for the trash.

We all know this. It is the law. So it is written, so it shall be done. Because I’m so much cooler than everybody else, I don’t even use the fridge. I pretend I do, so I can steal leftover pizza and the occasional can of Red Bull, but when Friday comes around you could blow the damned refrigerator up and I wouldn’t give rat’s ass. (Where does that expression come from? I use it, but it still bothers me. Did people actually use rat’s asses in trades back in the day?)

Of course that doesn’t stop the rest of the people in my office from making a major production out of the affair. Usually there’s an announcement over the intercom. That’s fine, but recently the announcement was way too fucking long. We’re several months into the whole cleaning thing and people know that Friday is Fridge Day. A simple “We’re emptying the Refigerator in 5 minutes” would suffice but was that good enough for *****? No. ***** had so much to say it took her two overhead pages to get it out. Our intercom has a time limit and lengthy pages get cut off.

I was a little irritated. Part of it is because I don’t like *****. She’s one of those born again Christian-types who assumes that all white people like NASCAR, Jesus, country music and the KKK. Whenever she starts talking I get the urge to buy some underwear from WalMart and see if my sister’s available for a little phone sex. It’s really that bad.

I was also pretty busy and the pages distracted me. *BEEP* BlardyblahblardyblahRefrigeratorblahbladryblah…. *BEEP* Blah blardyblardyblahblardyclean-outblardyblahblahblah.
Then came the other pages. *BEEP* There’s a nice bowl in here and I’d hate to throw it away it’s… *BEEP* …it’s blue with a white floral pattern.

*BEEP* Ummm, they’re going to throw away a frech container of potato salad. You might want to get it.

*BEEP* There’s a nice cup in the sink, it’s blue with a white floral pattern.

*BEEP* Did somebody buy groceries earlier? There’s a bag of fresh food on the… *BEEP* …second shelf.
I was in my office going insane. Nobody else is in my office. I normally sit in the server room and do what tech guys do (troll the Casual Encounters section on Craigslist), but today I was busy and the incessant pages pissed me off. “God fucking dammit,” I said to myself. “Just throw the shit away and shut the fuck up.”

I’m not the most professional guy in the world but I’m not exactly the office potty mouth. I generally avoid swearing, cussing or cursing simply because I like to be more ornate when I speak. I also don’t like to draw too much attention to myself at work. I do what I need to do to get by and pretend that I’m much busier than I really am. It’s the secret to my success.

Sadly, one of the office Jesus Freaks overheard my private tantrum and she had to poke her head in to let me know that she didn’t like it. “You took the LORD’s name in vain,” she advised.

“No I didn’t,” I replied. “I said god-fucking-dammit. I never called him by name. I might have meant some other god.”

“There’s only one,” she said.

I laughed, “Then you tell that to Odin and Thor because I’m not going to mess with them.”

She didn’t like that at all. I think she thought that I was mocking her religion. That’s not that case. I was mocking her. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have much respect for her religion or any religion for that matter, but I don’t go out of my way to offend religious people. At least not any further out of my way than I do to offend everybody else. Like Hungarians, for example. Shut up, Laszlo.

The last time I checked I wear big boy pants. So does everybody in my office. People sometimes act like babies, but we are all adults and, I believe, that as adults we have a responsibility to accept certain things. I accept the fact that most people are stupid, perhaps you can accept the occasion f-bomb. It’s not like Seth Rogen is writing my dialogue.

You’re not going to burn in hell because you overheard me swearing, or cursing or blaspheming or whatever the fuck you want to call it. If your god has a beef with me he can take it up with me but I’ve read at least one version of the bible and got the general impression that Christianity is supposed to be a “mind your own business” enterprise. Jesus probably doesn’t care if I say “fuck” every once in a while and probably doesn’t want you to poke your head in my office to register your disdain. I know I don’t.

I told another coworker, who heard that I had been a bad boy, that I don’t go out of my way to offend people and that I’d expect others to reciprocate by not going out of their way to be offended. We have people at work who keep their ears perked up so they can catch an errant profanity and take umbrage. Then they go to a manager and spend 15 minutes throwing themselves a pity party.

What’s funny is that these so-called Christians are much more offensive than a few choice expletives. I’ve walked into the break room to hear conversations about Barack Obama being the Anti-Christ, disparaging remarks about Muslims, and horrible comments about gays. One of my other coworkers is openly gay! I wonder how it would go over if I had a conversation with somebody about the joys of atheism. I bet that would stir up a lively discussion.

I just don’t understand that brand of religion. You’re going to pitch a holy fit over “god-fucking-dammit” but yet you see nothing wrong with sitting in the office break room and carrying on a conversation about gays burning in hell. It doesn’t add up. I suppose you can interpret that one of the commandments addresses cursing, but I know that homosexuality isn’t on that list and besides that, the 10 commandments are rules for you to follow, not enforce. Religiots.

Hey, Joe

Duh


I probably shouldn’t waste my time on Joe Wuzzlebucker, or Joe The (unlicensed) Plumber, but he hails from Ohio and as a native I feel the need to offer some sort of counterpoint. It’s my duty to make sure that, while most of the state is full of idiots just like Weasleblubber, there are actually a handful of thoughtful people who live here. We don’t necessarily like it, but we do the best we can.

Whipplebeater rose to fame when he confronted Barack Obama on his economic policies. He lamented that fact that Obama’s tax plan would discourage him from buying the company he worked for even though that company was so small that it was eligible for tax cuts under Obama’s plan. It was later revealed that Whatsabooger had never discussed any purchase arrangement with the owner of the company and of course we learned that Joe wasn’t really a plumber at all, but rather an unlicensed tech known for unclogging toilets with his bare hands. Sometimes, according to a number of his customers, he even ate poop. Disgusting.

Wumpleborshter became an instant celebrity and at first pretended not to like it. He was a regular guy who never asked for the attention. A regular guy who didn’t pay his taxes, worked illegally as an unlicensed professional, had pre-existing ties to John McCain, and who hired a publicity firm so he could distance himself as far from being a regular guy as possible. A regular guy who enjoys kimchee enemas, gay anime porn, purple nurples, and weekly spankings from Jamie Farr.

Whackyburger actually doing quite well as a media whore. He’s pretended to be a journalist and an author. He’s a keen political analyst offering such brilliant insights as “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel” and “one step closer to socialism” even though he has no idea what socialism is (the only Marx he knows is Groucho) and he couldn’t point to Israel on a map.

Recently, Whosabubba gave us his insight of homosexuality. It would appear that Joe The Relentless Hack is now an expert on social issues. He thinks that homosexuals are queer and to justify this stance he looked it up in the dictionary. Queer, he says, means strange or unusual different and homosexuals are strange. “It’s not like a slur,” he told Christian Today (formerly Voice of the KKK) magazine, “like you would call a white person a honky or something like that." Then he explains that God is clear about what men and women are for. So apparently it’s also Joe The Evangelical Minister now as well. Stupid ass honky.

The problem, of course, is that regardless of what version of God you believe in, there is no clarity on the subject of homosexuality. The bible has passages that seem to condemn it but then there are other passages that seem to accept it. The confusion exists because it’s not spelled out in simple terms. Christians seem pretty sure that homosexuality is a sin but God didn’t seem to think it was worth wasting a commandment on and Jesus didn’t make it his mission to put an end to guy on guy action.

Regardless of what conservatives try to tell you, homosexuality just wasn’t a priority. Unless the whole “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass” line was supposed to be interpreted as a prohibition on guy–on-guy action. Unless it’s with a Congressional page, your meth dealer or a stranger in the men’s room. The reason it’s such a big deal now is because all those bible-thumping Christians are terrified that one day one of their children might come home for college with a close friend of the same gender and tell them that they’re gay and opening a community theater in Portland together. Oh the horror!

But Weinerbelcher, like most so-called Christians, hasn’t read the bible. It’s quite possible that he doesn’t know how to read at all because if he could read, he probably wouldn’t have missed the city regulation that mandated the need for a plumbing license. Of course, the guy’s not all bad. He was quick to mention that he has gay friends and that they all understand where he stands. Apparently they take no offense that Joe The Homophobe doesn’t want them around his kids.

Of course that’s probably not an issue he needs to address. Gays tend to have an aversion to inbred twits and their rotten children. It’s unlikely that Joe The Blithering Idiot knows any openly gay people and if he does it’s doubtful that they consider him a friend, but if he’s worried about his kids he should rethink his association with the Republican Party and all those back room boy toys in its midst.

The guy is an assclown but because the people who run conservative media outlets are elitist snobs who think that working class people are just as moronic as Weeblebater, they keep giving him a forum to speak his mind and that’s too bad.

Look, I’m not delusional. I know a lot of working class people right here in Ohio and they aren’t exactly geniuses. Ohio is probably home to more than its fair share of stupid people, but that doesn’t mean we should take the biggest unwashed rube from the huddled masses and make a star out of him. There are real plumbers with real opinions and better means of expressing them. Why not give them 15 minutes of fame?

The O'Reilly Factor

Bill O’Reilly is boycotting Sean Penn. O’Reilly acknowledges that Sean Penn is a great actor but apparently this has everything to do with Penn’s political leanings and not because O’Reilly felt “it” move during some of the romantic scenes in Penn’s recent film, Milk.

Nope. O’Reilly is exercising his “right as an American” because Sean Penn doesn’t jibe with O’Reilly’s neo-conservative point of view. According to Reilly, Penn “…gives aid and comfort to people like Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein…”

Apparently O’Reilly’s been paying more attention to Sean Penn’s political affiliations than I do. I’ve always thought of Sean Penn as a brilliant actor with a quick temper and a rather reclusive personality. Even though I consider myself to be a liberal, I don’t necessarily view Sean Penn as somebody I would want to take sociology lesions from. I admire his work, but I really couldn’t care less what his politics are. I also liked Ron Silver even though I found his conversion to rabid conservatism to be a little disturbing. But Silver really took the 9-11 attacks to heart and wanted to set the world on fire so everybody else could feel his pain.

Actors aren’t always very smart. Some are brilliant people with tremendous talent that spans several genres. Like Bruce Willis who combines the ability to portray deep characters as varied as a hard-nosed New York cop who thwarts an international terrorist group to playing a rough-around-the-edges Pittsburgh cop who ultimately captures a familial serial killer…but Willis is also a recording artist. So is John Goodman, Billy Bob Thornton and Lindsay Lohan. But not everybody swims in pools of talent so deep. For every Hilary Duff there’s a one dimensional clod like Phillip Seymour Hoffman who just “acts”.

Sean Penn is just an actor and clearly not as multitalented as most of his peers. He’s been in a couple of decent movies and actually turns in a good performance more often than not, but he is still just an actor. He lacks depth and versatility, clearly a byproduct of his beatnik upbringing which was only exacerbated by a lack of formal education. A person would be crazy to listen to him.

Bill O’Reilly, on the other hand, went to college. He earned a degree in History from Marist, got himself a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University and later went to Harvard to get another Masters degree, this one in Public Administration. Granted, none of those degrees is particularly valuable. An MA in Public Administration is a step above making your own degree out of construction paper and Broadcast Journalism is what you get a degree in if your text books are yellow and entitled "The Idiot's Guide to..." I'm not saying these aren't real degrees, but real and possessing substance are two totally different things. They are the sort of courses one takes when they simply have a lot of time and money on their hands. They are also the sort of courses people took during the Vietnam era when they didn't have the balls to dodge the draft like real hippies. Big Bad Bill, by the way, graduated from high school in 1967. Convenient, no?

Now there are those who might say that a man motivated to collect all those sheepskins must be overcompensating for something, but that would only be the case if that man was so enthralled with himself that he would edit his own Wikipedia page to make sure that all of those degrees were mentioned, especially if that page included references to specific teachers and overseas studies. Hey everybody come see how smart I look. That would be sick.

Bill O’Reilly learned a lot in college too. Unlike Sean Penn, who is a notorious hot head, O’Reilly is a skilled debater who never loses his cool. Penn’s been in and out of trouble his whole life, but O’Reilly has never been taken to task for his lack of decorum. Which one do you trust?



Sean Penn: “Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.”


Bill O’Reilly: “If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”



Sean Penn’s pretty stupid isn’t he? Especially when you compare him quote for quote with Bill O’Reilly. See what a difference an education makes? Sean Penn’s clearly better off if he sticks to acting where other people—educated people—write his words for him. He’s just not equipped to deliver his own thoughts off the cuff and, based on his temperamental history, it’s probably best not to engage him in any sort of debate. He’s likely to scream at you to shut up or even go so far as to have a producer cut your mic off. That’s the kind of childish behavior you’d expect from a pampered Hollywood fat cat. Bill O'Reilly would never resort to such childish tactics.

You’d think somebody as brilliant and better than everybody as Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t see the need to waste his time boycotting the likes of Sean Penn, but that’s just the kind of guy Bill O’Reilly is. He’s not doing it for himself, he’s doing it for America. Sean Penn is evil. He loves communists and hates America. Somebody has to call him on it, and Bill O’Reilly is just the man for the job. He's a real American hero.

Rather than close by writing something poignant I’m going to offer up one more pearl from Bill. Remember, America, he’s the only guy with the guts to stand between Sean Penn’s leftist agenda and our wholesome values.


"So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind...and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I'd just put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business..."

Way to go, Bill!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

HAHAHAHAHAHA

---sorry--hahahahahaha

Seriously, I'm sorry. I just read a story about Columbus mayor Mike Coleman's State of the City address. Obviously I didn't watch it last night. Apparently the City of Columbus, like most cities, is facing some serious budget shortfalls. In addition to the variety of fees and fines Columbus imposes to generate revenue, the city also charges a flat 2% income tax to both residents and people who work here.

During the 80s, when the rest of Ohio was getting its ass kicked by Reaganomics, Columbus grew. It's economy is not tied to manufacturing as is the case with so many other Midwestern cities. Columbus is a service-based town. In fact, the few factories that are in Columbus struggle with the local labor force. People in Columbus aren't used to concepts like being on time or having a strict schedule for breaks and lunches. So Columbus has always enjoyed a higher quality of life than you'd find in the rest of the region. That means the income tax revenue was pretty nifty.

So Columbus knows how to spend money. The city has dumped big money into projects that are far more ornate than they need to be. The Short North arts district features arches over High Street that look fabulous but set the city back a small fortune. Especially since the city allowed the first contractor to install a defective lighting system and fixed the problem by hiring a second contractor.

The city also spent a ton of money building a pedestrian bridge over the Olentangy River which connects a popular bike/jogging trail to the neighborhoods on the other side of the river. I like the bridge but I think it's probably a tad pricier than we really needed. Of course when the contract was awarded Columbus was rolling in money.

Now that the money's gone, Coleman wants to increase the city's income tax but to do it he has to put the issue on the ballot. That means the citizens of Columbus have to volunteer to be bilked.

That's funny. Mike Coleman's a popular mayor and as mayors go I think he's done a decent job. He's a little more of a political glad-hander than I would like. During election years he spends far too much time traveling the campaign trail while he draws the fat city salary. As a citizen I would rather have him step down to campaign or simply stay focused on the job to which we elected him, but that's PAU. Politics As Usual. Coleman wants to be governor someday so he's got to play the game. That's OK.

What's not OK is expecting a city that has been hit hard by this recession to fork over more money. It's not my fault that city leaders failed to see the writing on the wall 2 or three years ago. If Mike Coleman had been spending more time doing his job and less time pressing political flesh he might have made proactive cuts and bolstered the city's financial reserves. Instead he spent money like it was growing on trees. Columbus squandered its financial resources on vanity projects. Now it's paying the price.

The thing that pisses me off is that Coleman managed to schmooze a few million bucks out of Obama and they dumped that money back into a bloated police force that desperately needs to be streamlined. It's true that more cops could be used on the street but I think we could find the resources to accomplish that by getting rid of a significant number of the administrative types.

For Mike Coleman I have only two words to offer in response to his tax hike proposal: FUCK YOU! I've lived in Columbus for nearly 20 years now and I've yet to see my tax dollars benefit me...not in that selfish republican way but in a reasonablem indirect manner. Based on census figures the median income for your average Columbus resident is just under 40 grand a year and they all pay a flat 2%. Where's it going? I don't necessarily have a problem with some of the projects the city has invested in, but a lot of money has been wasted in the process. In addition to doubling the cost of a number of projects by hiring shady contractors, Columbus has squandered millions on studies that never go anywhere.

The worst thing that could happen is the city government would go broke. So what? It's not like some bank is going to come in and repossess everything within the city limits sending 3/4 of a million people out into the great wide open. Some people will tell you that the city would be without a police and fire department but somehow I think public safety would be accounted for. What would not be accounted for are the city officials who get paid six figure salaries to debate the merits of a street car system that would span a 2 mile stretch between the edge of downtown Columbus and the Ohio State University entertainment district. I could have drafted a proposal for free. I like to call it WALK, FATTY. Seriously, it's two miles! We already have buses that run that section of High Street and nobody uses them. Now you want to fund street cars? Who pays these people?

I don't know how long this recession is going to last. I don't know if I'll still have a job when it's all said and done. These are harrowing times. We're all facing risks and we're all going to have to get used to some financial shortfalls. It's not fair for the government to leave a notch on its belt opened by asking the rest of us to poke another hole in our own. Mike Coleman can kiss my ass. I'm voting no on a tax hike.