Not 56 Songs. But Enough.

I don't usually do a post for Ilse's birthday, but I'm fucking the rest of it up pretty roundly, so at least she gets this part on time.

Databoy was a little startled to find out over the weekend that his parents have some fondness for this little ditty:

He always thought that this was our song (and, in truth, it is):



On the other hand, we'll always have this:



Jeebus, that's filthy. You prolly shouldn't watch it at work. And really, don't touch it. You know where it's been.

Yeah, okay, I'm fuckin' around. Here's the real deal, honey. Happy Birthday, throw your panties at Bobby. Not that you were old enough to do that when this video was cut.


By the way, there are a shitload of really bad versions of Sugar Magnolia on YouTube. I found out so you don't have to. This one is really weird (New Year's Eve in San Francisco). But it's at least it's not in the Zombie Jerry phase. It does, however, appear to be in the Someone Spiked the Punch Again phase.

I digress. Happy Birthday, Ilse.

Whoa, I'd Better Hurry Up and Get This Shit Posted

I just woke her up a few minutes ago, and this really needs to be up on the internetz before she gets to a computer, y'know?



Ilse: still legal after all these years. Happy birthday, honey, even though you let those fucking parasites into our house. The fuck's up with that?

Maintenance and Boredom

I added more folks to the blogroll to the right, which remains really not so much a blogroll as a navigation tool. Some of them are clearly people who should've been there for some while; one is restored to grace for no reason other than that he is; some are habits or curiosities I've recently acquired. No endorsement of views implied or expressed.

Ilse wants you all to know that she feels really dirty for wearing a Carolina blue shirt to school yesterday.  She also wants you to know that the pep rally was excruciating. And I've made her very uncomfortable about the little blue paw totem that rides over her left breast. She did make the cunning fashion choice of selecting only a white polo trimmed with the hated blue, for which I salute her good sense. I'm still wearing only a t-shirt from her last school (which I bought because her theatre kids harangued me into it).

She actually doesn't want you to know any of those things, but I'm really just a total fucking dick that way. And frankly, I'm kinda bored.

Justice was done in the end; her little blue coyote totem school lost to their archrivals (who are, I must admit, far more more worthy of derision), and my big blue condom school beat an ancient enemy, big-time. Sadly, the school in the front yard won, too. I know, because we can clearly hear the play-by-play over their PA system (the football field is quite seriously about 500 yards from our front door).

BFF wants you to know that he feels that his contribution to civilization is insignificant, so he's going to try to shut up for the weekend. I note that it's raining and he can't disk. But I counternote that he's entering the most horrible time of his year, so maybe...just maybe he'll meet his goal. Much more of this and I think we'll undertake a pledge drive.

No futbol, but Labor Day is a big football deal here, with two fantasy football drafts. I will not bore you with further detail except to note that Sasha (who needs to post something, anything, to sort out her RSS feed) and Whispers (who is the ancient Labor Day enemy) will be in attendance, and if we eat anything so yummy that I need to gloat about it, you'll be the first to know.

Hump A Teacher

So I accompanied Ilse yesterday to a grade-in at my not-quite local mall (my local mall is busy dying, though brave teachers were grading there, too).

"What the fuck," you might quite rightly ask, "is a grade-in?" 

Well, here's the thing. You probably remember last autumn, when I went briefly insane, currying favor and disfavor (probably, though they're both kind enough not to admit it) with local political figures like Nancy Floreen and Hans Riemer, both of whom have been far more gracious than I have deserved. We're no longer in election mode, and chickens are roosting and suchlike, especially when it comes to money.

Money is coming home to roost in a big way here in MoCo. There isn't enough of it, mostly because shameless huckster fucktard panderer Robin Ficker (whose name, my German-speaking friends assure me, is hilarious) spurred county voters into passing an idiotic charter amendment in 2008 to limit property tax increases to the rate of inflation without a unanimous vote of the County Council. There are competing proposals on raising property taxes within the charter limit--the one I support isn't Phil Andrews', which is a blowjob for the rich fucks in his district (of which I am, technically, one). An attaboy to Hans for publicly trashing The Blowdried Green's gratuitous sex act for his North Potomac and Actual Potomac money. Yeah, Phil. We're onto what green really means for you. Bitch.

First unanswerable question for my friends Nancy and Hans: who's blocking a higher tax increase? Bonus points, of course, for blaming Phil Andrews, though I'd also reward a thorough pummelling of Valerie Ervin.

So, the apostrophe¹. As you found out in the original Val-bashing post, Ilse was surplused at the school at which she's nearly completed her second year of teaching. It's a sad thing, because it's an awesome school and she fits in well there. I'm not telling you which school--if you know me, you already know, and if you don't know me, it would be too much information, and if you know me and you've forgotten, you know how to find me. Lots of teachers were surplused this year because of a dramatic increase in average class size, despite the county's meretricious assurance that that increase equals "one." I'll save you a trip to the Landru English Dictionary: "meretricious" means "lying sacks of fetid shit." The increase was about 16 percent, from an average class size of 29 to an average of 34. A lot of teachers, especially in big academic departments, are moving to other schools involuntarily, and it's not yet clear whether they've all got places to go. I don't have any firm figures on how many--there are 11,000 teachers in the county--but my best educated guess is that something like 5 percent of teachers were involuntarily transferred, and I have no education from which to guess on how many will end up unemployed. Corrections from people with actual data are welcome.

It will cheer you--and, I'm guessing Hans, who can now have lunch with me without fearing my righteous holy overeducated, overcaffeineated (hi, Nancy) MoCo wrath--that Ilse landed at another school, and that the aforementioned possibilities of her remaining at her current school (it's the preference) are not entirely exhausted. So it's slightly less personal now.

But I'm a man of the people, hence the grade-in. Let's talk briefly about MoCo teachers, remembering that Maryland has some of the best schools in the country, and MoCo's are the best in the state, by far:

-MCPS has gone through three years of budget cuts. The BoE has delivered a budget request that cuts per-student spending by about $1K from last year's levels, despite the state's maintenance-of-effort law (which the county has now, it appears, decided to completely ignore--and again, I'll cheerfully accept a cogent and apolitical explanation of how that makes sense, because it's hard for me to understand how the cost of the fines is going to be less than the costs of keeping up with the MOE requirement).

-The county has, for at least two years running, violated its contract with the teachers union.

-Starting teachers in MoCo now make less than starting teachers in DC, an educational cesspool.

-While the Council and the BoE seem to want to pin more sacrifices on teachers by increasing (again) their share of health insurance costs (again breaking the contract), and claim teachers need to sacrifice along with other county employees, the teachers' plan costs the county less per capita than its other union health plans.

-The County is using portions of a $65-million increase in state funding for public education for other purposes.

-Finally, if you dare to speak to me about how teachers are babysitters who get the summer off, I'll punch you in the fucking gob. Ilse busts her ass outside of the school duty day, to her family's detriment, to grade schoolwork and plan lessons for her students. Now, she's a fucking freak, but that's a personal issue and it's mostly between her and me. Almost all teachers work evenings and weekends to keep up, and many (including Ilse) work on professional development in the summer.

People don't get this stuff. So yesterday, the teachers put on a little demonstration of what they do on the weekends. They gathered innocently at local mall food courts, and sat down and graded papers or did planning work. It was actually pretty awesome:

Monkey Mall Food Court, 11:40 AM

 

Monkey Mall Food Court, 11:46 AM--Note Predominantly Purple Overtones

Two Random Teachers Who I've Never Seen Before In My Life, Hard At Work

You might think it's kind of a cheesy stunt, but reality is like this: these are the same kind of people that Scott Walker wants you to believe are union thugs. These people, easily over a hundred of them at one venue for the grade-in, are the people who keep our longstanding covenant to have the best fucking school system in the state. And the county wants to break its covenants with them? Again and again?

Keep pushing. The last school strike was devastating. I believe that the next one will occur during Ilse's career, and sooner rather than later, given the political and budget climate. These are the people behind the Apple Ballot. Duchy Trachtenburg found out what happens when you try to break it off in their asses.

Second unanswerable question for my friends Nancy and Hans: Whatcha gonna do?

¹ I really don't understand how anyone can not get that lyric. But this probably goes back to my whole Hamiltonian democracy thing².
² By which I mean we should find a way to disenfranchise fucktards without other fucktards using that as an excuse to disenfranchise people who've had limited opportunities. But then, that's the apostrophe³, isn't it?  
³ Uh-oh. Recursive loop.

News is Fun

Outside our local nation:

Opposition Brings Down Canadian Government

Huh? That sounds really impolite. But here's my favorite part of the story:

Canadian opposition parties brought down the Conservative government in a no confidence vote Friday, triggering an election that polls show the Conservatives will win.

Oh, wait. This is one of those square wheels things, right?

Not actually; I was being selective. While the Conservatives will likely win a plurality, they likely will not have a majority, and will be even more reliant on opposition parties for votes in their little minority government. Which could lead the Liberals to form their own coalition government with other opposition parties.

It's good that Canadians are emulating our success with minority government, eh?

In other news, My Local Locality's County Council President (oh, Christ...see here and in the same chronological area, if you can fucking stand it, for more background), whose name is Valerie Ervin, went on My Local Shove News Up Your Ass Until You Explode station today and bitched about the school system's increasing budget compared to the rest of the county's budget. What a genius of misrepresentation. For one thing, as noted ad infinitum here and elsewhere, the student population's increasing, and for another, there's a state law that requires the county not to reduce per-student spending on education.

Ervin crawled out on her astonishing slim limb three days after something like 8 to 10 percent of the county's teachers got involuntary transfer notices, meaning that their jobs at their present schools won't be there next year.

I read this, and immediately logged onto my secret Gmail account, figuring I had some chance of catching my very close personal friend Hans Riemer¹ on Gmail chat. I got lucky, and Hans found out about two hours ago what you're finding out now: that the county teachers who got involuntary transfer notices, and whose jobs are threatened, includes a treasured constituent of his, who also happens to be my wife.

It seems that, as a result of planning decisions made by people who are not Hans Riemer (or Valerie Ervin, for that matter), average class size in our schools for next year will increase from 29 students to 34. That's a 17-percent increase, and Newtonian math leads to a 17-percent reduction in teachers. Reality intercedes there--the relationship isn't a straight line (and fractions are harder to deal with in lightly staffed departments--sadly for Ilse, she's in a large department). Hence the 8-10 percent estimate.

It's possible that I protest too much, at least on Ilse's behalf. For one thing, her principal is a seriously greasy operator, and he seems to like her, which is unusual for him and teachers generically. There's a fair chance that he'll manage to slime her back into his budget. For another, most of the teachers cut are lightly experienced. So's Ilse, who is in her fourth year of teaching for real. However, she's got experience at three schools (this isn't the first time she's been surplused), and glowing recommendations from all three. And I mean they glow like Fukushima No. 4--she's a young teaching rockstar. This also means that she's relatively inexpensive. All in all, an attractive prospect for any job for which she applies; the trick is whether there will be jobs that she wants. Or jobs at all.

Anyway, I ripped Hans a little in Gmail chat, and he's a good human, so his response was primarily concern for Ilse (who also did a little work for him during the campaign, and who looks damn good at receptions and suchlike). I mostly ripped Ervin, and Hans is a smart human and didn't explicitly agree with me. Well played, Hans. My white cat and I will make another run at you sometime soon.

For extra giggles, see the comments section of the WTOP article I cited above, where one genius asserted that there are 250,000 "illegal immigrants" in Montgomery County. That would be a quarter of the county's population. I'll tell you what, people who think illegal immigration is an actual problem: I'll support checking peoples' immigration status before they receive government benefits, if you support disenfranchising fucktards.


¹ I have this mental picture of what Hans must look like every time he thinks of the day he called me on the telephone to solicit my vote, and of every email he innocently replied to in the days shortly thereafter, which is probably every time I reach out to him by phone or email. Hans seems to be gracious enough to believe that any publicity is good publicity, and of course he gets beaucoup points for that, as a human and as a pol. But I've got at least 3-4 more years to teach him an awful lot about that little bit of folk wisdom, hmm?

Teachers Are Best Loved Tough?

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day.

Of course, the unions strike back. I make it a habit to remind Ilse that, despite their craven efforts to knuckle under to the County, the union is her friend.

The Montgomery County Council is simply despicable, and Duchy Trachtenberg is a piece of obscene downcounty moneyhumping DINO crap. I can't find written evidence in this blog that I told you so, but Herself assures me that I told her so (during our election ritual of telling each other who to vote or not vote for), which is good enough for me. I told you so.

Sasha also tells me that it's pronounced "Ducky," not "Douchey." Disappointed? I know!

While it's distressing enough that no-account Potomac trash like Douchey thinks it has the right to dictate to our elected Board of Education, the level of stupid here is astonishing. A protracted legal fight is guaranteed; furloughs will guarantee further punishment to our school system in the form of state-imposed sanctions; and this ignorant bitch has no idea what can happen when you rile up the teachers' union here--mostly because nobody has ever been fucking stupid enough to try it. There's a reason our school system is expensive--it's one of the best in the country, and it's why we live here, Bullis Mom.

And why? Why are we this dumb? Because we're a County Council and we hate our County Executive. News flash, Douchey: When Ike Leggett manages to get himself on the same side as the Superintendent of Schools and the unions (who, as Ilse notes but didn't blog--and her first anniversary of not-blogging is nearly upon us, and come to think of it I produced her last post--have never, in recorded history, been on the same side), you're going to lose. Painfully. Embarrassingly. Legally. And, me hopes, politically.

Himself prepped us for this issue with a link a few days ago, so thankee, Himself.

The Place I Got Birthed (with Extra Fuck for Swami)

So as he tells you first, we slogged to Philadelphia (where I was birthed) yesterday, the point of the trip being to see United play Phunion (that's his intellectual property, there) at the Linc. After years of relative indifference occasioned by factors best summarized as relating to several degrees and forms of original sin, Philadelphia has become my favorite other city, at least my favorite other city that I visit with regularity (I am very, very fond of London, and need no encouragement to go to Paris or San Francisco).

My favorite place in Philadelphia is Reading Terminal Market (very spiffy Web site, fellow Web pros), which is, now that I mention it, almost certainly my very favorite place on the face of this planet. I am not hyperbolizing when I tell you that a short walk through the avenues and stalls of the Reading Terminal Market brings tears of joy to my eyes, the kind of tears that only one's deepest home of the heart can bring. It is the very essence of every food experience that formed me, a perfect storm of the scents and flavors and food sights of my childhood fused with elements I have come to appreciate as an adult. The place makes Landru cry tears of the joy of life, minions. Chomp on that.

We also walked; he chronicles that, a little, below the fold in his post, and does a fine job, though I must caveat that we covered a very small slice of Center City, basically walking about 10 blocks down Market, then back up Walnut. Good choices for a slice, to be sure, but small and coverable in the time we had at a Landru-like pace, punctuated as that is by Serge-like informational interruptions and fruitless searches for things that are gone. Oh, and a very entertaining break at a Walnut Street Starbucks where I put my feet up for a bit (they're getting oldish) and we watched a local psychotic wackaloon bounce around outside the locked mens room for nearly 10 minutes before finally deciphering the sign on the door that very clearly instructed him to get the fucking key from the fucking area around the fucking cash register. It would've been more entertaining if he had exploded, since I was sort of shielded from the potential spray pattern. On the other hand, it would've been unpleasant for my loved ones, who joined me in a different spray pattern later, but one not quite so noxious.

So we drove down to the Linc and prepared for the game by hanging in the designated, secured lot with our DCU kin for a time before we marched, approximately one thousand strong (seriously, and maybe a few hundred more), into the Linc, snarling, singing defiance, chanting. The local authorities kept us carefully corralled, apparently fearing that your Nation's capital is a place where we practice South American soccer riots, before escorting us on a lengthy death march to the uppermost reaches of the stadium, where little can be seen and nothing can be heard. And there we proceeded to take periodic beer showers and watch the game.

I will be brief about the game¹. United has a host of problems, and many relate to inadequate personnel, though the most glaring deficiencies can, in fact, be pinned on the current coach, and I'll be the first to say it: Fire Curt Onalfo. Oh, wait a minute. I already was the first to say it, pointing out in that process that he should never have been fucking hired, because he's a fucking loser undeserving of a place in the history of our Nation's greatest futbol team, except to the extent that his existing place in DCU history is having his fucking teams mostly fucking run over by the fucking DCU bus.

Curt Onalfo is fucking Tommy Soehn in disguise. He presided over a mediocre period in the history of a mediocre club, and did so with an excess of mediocrity, displaying no flair and a commitment to boring futbol. He's a fucking hoser, and he has no fucking business coaching my fucking soccer team. He has no flair, he has no tactical aptitude, he has no vision, and he has no idea how to lead what is, admittedly, a fairly sad collection of personnel with some salvageable bright spots (some of which spots are infinitely arguable, and believe me, they're argued infinitely, just not here).

I have one more thing to say about Curt Onalfo and Tommy Soehn. Tommy Soehn actually managed to get more out of this guy:

than Curt Onalfo ever could or ever will. That's how much I fucking hate fucking Curt Onalfo, campers; I just pwn3d him to compliment Tommy Fucking Soehn. Are we clued now? This fucking inept, unimaginative, third-rate clown got all the polite he was going to get out of me when his name first came up and I said, "No, thank you."

He likes to rail about Kasper and Payne and, implicitly, Chang, though it's not so implicit, actually, and it's invariably based in some navelgazing Marxist idealistic worldview that comes off sounding remarkably like people at whom I yell to get off of my lawn, though it's actually nothing like them at all (1. He came by it honestly; 2. He's paid his dues; 3. Seriously, are you fucking kidding me?) and I alone of his contemporaries understand the brilliance of his satire when he starts spewing that way. The proof certain of my position lies here, however. That man is the fucking bone that Curt Onalfo asked for to reassure himself that he was actually in fucking charge. That's right. Kurt Fucking Morsink. So spew all you want about Kasper and Payne, who did after all bring you this fucking assclown on the apparently errant theory that it doesn't matter that a guy has absolutely no natural or environmental talent if he plays for someone's--anyone's--loserass national team. And this guy on the theory that all South Americans with greasy long hair are good futbol players, even if you only get 115 minutes of soccer out of them before they break down irreparably. No, I don't fucking remember anyone named Gallardo. Why, do you?

So, sure. Kasper and Payne suck ass and should be fucking drowned in the Anacostia. That doesn't necessarily reflect on Will Chang--who isn't really a soccer guy, and we should in a way be grateful that he hangs in without Snydering up his team, and it doesn't necessitate labelling Chang as cheap. And while I'm fucking right about all of this, it's not the point, which is this: Curt Fucking Onalfo is the fucking source of Kurt Fucking Morsink. Both are symbols of mediocrity in American soccer, and it's absolutely fucking unacceptable that either is associated with DC United and its tradition.

That's right, our fucking tradition. What else have we got? We got bupkes is what we got, though I'm fond of Jaime Moreno, as is any right-thinking American, and Tino has some raw talent that no one's figured out how to harness and channel, and Jakovic, who at the bottom line cost the team the game yesterday, is an awesome monster of filth and rage with a wonderful defensive instinct and coltish manner, and Rodney Wallace is a'ight. And oh yeah, Perkins is back, and Pontius is okies, though far, far out of form. That's it. KasperPayne's fault? Yeah, sure. Kurt Morsink is Onalfo's. Have I fucking hammered those fucking nails into that fucking coffin yet? Good.

So let's address a couple of other things. There's really not a lot to be said about yesterday's game, in which our boys got pwn3d by Sebastien Fucking Le Toux. I mean, really, what else can you fucking say other than a few feeble parries? We got fucking pwn3d by fucking Sebastien Fucking Le Toux and...? We got fucking pwned by fucking Sebastien Fucking Le Toux but...? We got fucking pwn3d by fucking Sebastien Fucking Le Toux even though Saint Piotr Nowak was in the press box mourning a plane crash perpetrated by Vlad the Impaler Putin? Do we go W.C. Fields? We got fucking pwn3d by Sebastien Fucking Le Toux and all in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia? Oh. Here's how appalling it is that we got fucking pwn3d by Sebastien Fucking Le Toux: it's about as likely as getting fucking pwn3d, on a fucking futbol field, by fucking Landru. That's how fucking bad it fucking is to get fucking pwn3d, on any fucking futbol field in America by fucking Sebastien Fucking Le Toux, career hoser and all-around player of no particular fucking accomplishment whatsoever. Fucking Seattle left him fucking unprotected. Jeebus.

Two quick items. While Terry Fucking Vaughn is a dreadful fucking referee and a worse fucking human being, he was absofuckinglutely right to red-card Dejan Jakovic yesterday. There is no if or maybe here. It was a straight red, and that's what Vaughn dealt, and the ensuing DFK goal by (of course) Sebastien Fucking Le Toux was, as the man himself admitted, Troy Perkins' fault in its entirety, with no mitigators or comforts. Period. There is no argument to be brooked here, and frankly, bDr's implication of Vaughn by juxtaposition is unfair. Own up, bDr. The foul was straight red all the way.

The other item: you should never listen to me again, because it's true. I was 10 fucking feet from the unforgiven, but no longer discommodated, Santino Quaranta, and all I did was thank him for a nice goal and speak pleasantly, and briefly. No ranting. No attempt to disembowel him with my greasy Popeye's spork. Just politeness and smiles and thank yous. And that, beloved minions, is the only kind of self-complicity one should waste time whining about.

¹ This fucking turned out to be a fucking lie.

I Must Blog This Way No More Forever

I Must Henceforth Blog Thusly. Not.

In Which We Join Forces To Curse J.J. Abrams

J.J. Abrams Must Die

What, You Thought I Forgot?

Unforgotten

Referenced stuff:

blackDogred (with links to others) on DCU

Orac on Daniel Hauser

Orac on Daniel Hauser and Woo

Michael Steele's Exquisite Grasp of Irony

Inflectionlessness Rules

Inflectionlessness Rules

You Thought I Was Kidding

Woe

I Must Henceforth Blog Thusly

I Must Henceforth Blog Thusly

Briefly

WE got new underpants for Bam-Bam. The previous ones were too small. Ilse didn't understand that briefs could be too small. She thought we menfolk like our boys snug. While this probably explains a great many things about Ilse, I'm not sure exactly what they are.

IF you are sporting a bumper sticker advertising a political concept, philosophy, or sporting team with which I sympathize, please do not drive like a dick.

Say Hi to Sid

THE Washington Capitals fucking rock, and the word "douche" is too nice, and far too tasteful, for Sidney Crosby.

Note the Sid-friendly spin on the title of the video. Lessee...play is stopped, and Sid hooks Ovie, shoves him over the boards, whining the whole time, and then has a high vagina sprain when Ovie pays him back. Niiiiiice. That's definitely Ovie roughing Sid up.

I've discoursed before on my abject, most unpretty hatred of every Eastern Conference NHL team that isn't the Caps, and on my grievous distaste for much of the Western Conference as well. When it comes to hockey, I am, in fact, a black hole of hatin'. I can hate other hockey teams with the best of them. I got the PhD in Hatin'. There is no hell fiery enough to punish me for the degree and volume of my hockey hate. This may sound a little Brer Rabbity to some of my closer friends, but really, I am a bad, bad person when it comes to hockey fandom/hatedom, and in an eternal, philosophical sense, I almost certainly deserve some form of retribution for this stain on my karma.

Even so, Sid Crosby is such a hateful, whinging, bleeding pussy that it detracts from my enjoyment of how much I hate the Rangers, Flyers, Devils, Bruins, Islanders, and Canadiens. I mean, seriously, the Pens are fucking-A despicable, and it's a long, hard hate, born of far more spite than is healthy to have experienced in one short lifetime, a hatin' awesome enough to match my 40-year hate on the fucking Habs, which dates back to Ken Motherfucking Dryden (yeah, yeah, you kids get off my lawn).

So fuck you, Sid Crosby, you fucking viral cockblight, for fucking up my joy in hatin', for monopolizing my black soul's dark places so thoroughly (at least until tomorrow night, when the Caps take on the Flyers) that I couldn't even properly hate on Sergei Gonchar and Brooks Orpik and NBC's coverage of yesterday's game total monster ass-whupping. While you, Sid Crosby, are in fact a douche, your douchedom is of a character far too grotesque, too pestilential, too infected, too seedy, too odiferous, to be articulated in this hallowed space. Just fuck you, Sid, and with the dick of someone I don't like.

All this is a little funny, because Thursday, I'm taking this guy and Planet, the Best Kid Ever, to a Caps game (her first, I believe; I'm not sure about him) against the Thrashers, who aren't really worth the energy to hate. I hope they're not disappointed.

Okay, that wasn't brief. I got rolling. Totally my bad.

FINALLY, I can't find an online cite to the story, but I heard on my local all-news, all Badenful all morning, all scary all panicky traffic guy all afternoon, radio station that the president of my local locality's county council is a douche. Now, this is a douchedom less spectacularly pustulent than the aforementioned pestilential douchedom of Cindy Crysby. But it's still pretty doucheriffic, because this guy loves trees almost as much as he hates teachers. The man belongs on the Left Coast, which hasn't stopped him from getting elected and hanging in long enough to take his turn as head of the council (it rotates, I think annually). But now, the aforementioned radio station tells me (without backing it up on the station's Web site) that Council President Duckfucker is tearing into the county Board of Education for its $13-million (chump change) contract to buy Promethean Boards, claiming it violated state law for the Board to scatter a few pennies to install these things in every classroom in the county without first sucking Council President Duckfucker's tiny shrivelled classic liberal pussy dick.

Ilse, Goth (blog deceased), and this wise and wonderful uberwoman, will tell you that Promethean Boards are a life-altering event for teachers. I've seen them in action, and as a total layperson, I agree totally. That Council President Duckfucker wants to interpose his tree-loving self into the educational spending process in this, a top-ten U.S. school system, is just diamond shitting of the worst sort. That this jerk has actually caused me to abstain from voting in a council election makes it even worse. Suck it, Phil Andrews.

Kodachrome

We went to New York a few weekends ago, and one of our trips was to the Meadowlands to see DCU get spanked by the Red Scum. This was in the dark days when Zap Wells was still the DCU keeper, and Ilse snapped a couple of lovely photos, including this one of a banner hung by Red Bulls fans:

I repeat. Not a travelling DCU banner. There was also this lovely shot of the passion of NYRB fans:

RFK it ain't. And Fleabus it ain't, but we do try to entertain. When we feel like it.

Moving the Furniture

I've completed reworking the links. I don't care if you like them, because they're my navigation tool, and as Kimmah admits in the comments in the post immediately below, she loves it when I talk about my navigation tool. And don't think Ilse doesn't know about it.

I would like you to click on some of the links, because that's an affirmation that you care about the things I care about. But if not, no problem, I'll still love many of you unconditionally anyway, and pretend to love the rest.

Hello to: too many to count. Lots of futbol and politics, futbol especially because, as I descend toward unemployment and unshaved depression and drinking and a long death spiral, I'm looking for things to do other than look for a job. Futbol fits the bill nicely. Expect more blogging, too.

Goodbye to: Oh, let's not embarrass them. I know that being cut from the blogroll at Minions is destructive to peoples' self-esteem. Especially people whose blogs are actually read.

Take That, Ilse

(Updated; see below. The official compilation is now Lucy Liu, Charlize Theron, Melissa Theuriau, Lauren Graham, and Parker Posey. And we're done with this.)


There appears to be some confusion over The List. Ilse doubts my historic inclusion of certain individuals on that all-important document. Therefore and herewith, in no order pertaining to anything:

1. Lucy Liu. For example, here:

1a. The pharmacist at my grocery store, who is a dead ringer for Lucy Liu (Ilse is calling bullshit on this one, in the event that the pharmacist at my grocery store should accidentally wake up one day completely demented and have some desire to fuck me. I consider this encouraging, even though Ilse's perspective on who might want to fuck me is unfathomably skewed.)

2. Charlize Theron. For example, here:

Charlize is a rarity in that I don't do blondes.

3. Sarah Silverman, although I gotta say her stock stays depressed for as long as she's banging Jimmy Kimmel. I like to think that he's the one doing the catching, if'n you catch my drift.


4. Yoko Matsugane. Thanks to every misogynist sports blog everywhere for making her a household name.

5. Melissa Theuriau. She's a French newscaster. I didn't know either, until TBogg introduced us.

Honorable mentions who shall, sadly, have to remain off-list and, therefore, untouchable unless I can get to this blog in time to alter the evidence: Alyssa Milano (problem: Dodgers fan); Catherine Zeta-Jones (problems: she'd break me like a twig, and I'd have to fight Ilse and Wheezy to get at her anyway); and her:

But mostly because that, for some reason, deeply disturbs Ilse.

MASSIVELY IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Scratch the Japanese Hooters Girl. What kind of a dipshit forgets Lauren Graham? The me kind of dipshit, that's what kind.

EXTREME WITLESSNESS UPDATE II: Okay, this is the last one, but it's important. Buh-bye, funny Jew girl tainted by Kimmelseed. This is a perfect example of why these things should be compiled carefully. While drunk. Say hello to the incomparable Parker Posey, and we'll just get on with our lives, then, shall we?

Gone Daddy Gone

bDr's reminder that Country Dick Montana should be memorialized in every town square in America got me to thinking about times gone by. We really have a luxury skate here in the 21st century, if we can remember that the current administration is an ephemeral thing (bit by bit, if necessary, as bDr indirectly reminds). Warning: the next paragraph might should be followed by "You damn kids get off my yard!"

In the 1980s, long gone, we had a real and well-founded fear of death. Daily. It was the tail end of the Cold War, baby, although we didn't know it yet. All we knew was that we had one seriously crazy motherfucker of a President, and he was gonna get us all killed before heading off to the Great Ranch in the Sky to chop wood and command vengeful American submariners through an irradiated eternity full of dead Commies.

Previous generations had their Vietnams and their love-ins and their far-higher-quality acid. What we had was crappy jobs, plentiful and easily available drugs, and the ability to get massively jacked, go out, and slam into each other to punk, neopunk, postpunk, pomopunk, punkabilly, and metapunk bands. There was no point to life. Our jobs were disposable, our bodies were anything but temples, and the music was all there was. Well, there was sex, too.

But that's another rant involving velociraptors, chest-deep snow uphill both ways, and Ilse having lived a life never having seen the Slickee Boys. Hats off to Country Dick. I don't wish it were still the 80s, but I can sure miss them just fine.

Variants on Nothing

Mmkay, so Ilse got a long-term substitute job at one of the best schools in the county. She is officially an English teacher. Of course, at the moment, she's an exploited temporary worker allowing The Man to tread on her back for His benefit (she'll be doing actual teacher work, as an actual teacher, for about 60 percent of the salary), but it's an in, and it's a fabulous opportunity. So good on her.

I inadvertently wronged a beloved friend with my original post when I tagged Goth as the greatest English teacher on the planet. Actually, I probably wronged a bunch of people, but the point here is that I wronged another one of my minions, and I really hate myself a lot when I do that. Take a bow, Kimmah. Sorry about that whole ass-fucking thing, babe. I'll try to give you some warning and an anesthetic next time.

There will be more--much more--about important things like laughing my ass off at Bears fans Goth and Ilse over the next week. But for now, I'll leave you with yet another reminder of how and why DOOK SUCKS.



Fuck the fucking fuck out of Dook.

But speaking of which, one of my two Dookie friends on this planet is getting married. If'n you can't keep getting the milk for free, Sparkles, well, then good on you, love. Congrats and good luck. But Dook still sucks.

You Are My Dickens

So Ilse left her job at Eat The World, Inc. This is a good thing; the commute was driving her bonkers, and she was considerably underappreciated anyway. I mean, I assume the sex was as good for them as it is for me. Ilse has chosen to embark on a new career in poisoning the minds of America's young.

This requires a little bit of an educational realignment, because the topic in which Ilse would like to direct her poisoning is high school English. Ilse's postsecondary education thus far has focused entirely on alcohol, anatomy, and to a lesser extent, American history. So while she has been admitted to a graduate degree program that will certify her in mind-poisoning, it is with the stipulation that she take a little extra course work in literatoor.

We have a good friend, Goth (who seems to be getting a lot of linkage/play here lately), who is the world's greatest high school English teacher. He is brilliant and funny, and engages teenagers (girls in plaid skirts, no less) with his innovative antics, such as dressing up as Biggie Smalls and rapping The Canterbury Tales or interpreting Romeo and Juliet in South Florida in the 1990s with Leo DiCaprio and some random whore as the leads. No, wait, somebody else did that second thing. But they stole the concept from Goth.

So Ilse's drive to succeed is multi-sourced. She's always wanted to teach, and our good friend is an outstanding role model for the kind of teacher everyone should be. But there's this literatoor thing to hurdle, first.

And "hurdle" isn't too far from what this course is inducing for poor Ilse. I see stacked on the table before me a partial sample of what she is to endure over the coming semester. It involves romantic poets and people named Heathcliff and Emma. And windswept moors. Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Eat Miss Havisham, bitch!

I love my wife, I really do. And I am not a horrible little man, as she will have you believe (after reading this). But weeks and weeks of Rex-torture followed by this?

Life is schweet.