Monday, May 31, 2010

"Show Them Your Heels!" -- says The Juice

A friend of Inside the Hotdog Factory writes:
"I've attached a scan from the October 1980 issue of the Avengers. I remember seeing a lot about this guy around that time. I hope he's gone on and done a lot more!"

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Years of the Beast -- they're closer than you think!

White American Christians are the people who start all of America's wars.

They're the gun-wielders, the bomb launchers, the troop level escalators, the provocateurs, the ones wearing the largest American flag lapel pins, the ones who pray and sing the national anthem the loudest.

And they make movies portraying themselves as the persecuted underdogs who are unjustly pursued and attacked for their devotion to Jesus, Prince of Peace.

Movies are fantasy and so is this image of the poor, freedom-loving American Christian being attacked for his wholesome values; his family being terrorized because they lead such clean lives.

And this rancid motif gets the movies it deserves: Left Behind, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force, Left Behind: World at War, and winner of winners, Years of the Beast.

In keeping with the tradition of Inside the Hotdog Factory reviews, this one is rife with spoilers. Tread forward at your own risk.

Like the Bible, Years of the Beast is a sterling example of atrocious storytelling.

Professor Stephen Miles is a secular instructor at a secular university teaching nothing less than Faust to his students.

Summoned to his mentor's office after class, Miles finds the brilliant, though slightly dotty, Dr. Carl Klineman packing up his office. Due to budget cuts resulting from an overarching recession that grips the world, Dr. Klineman has been canned. Moreover, the next semester has been canceled.

Dr. Klineman makes as awkward a segue way as can be made from speaking about his career's demise to his religiosity. Oh, he knows the young, progressive, liberal Dr. Miles "doesn't believe" but that doesn't stop Klineman from asking him to read and offer feedback on his life's work -- a hilariously handwritten tome titled Current Events and Biblical Prophetic Literature, which looks like the work of a precocious, sci-fi obsessed teenager.



A moment later there is a clap of thunder, the lights flicker and the room shakes as a tremor moves through campus --

-- and then Dr. Klineman is gone, though his clothes lay in a pile on the floor where he'd been standing seconds before.

A very strange exit from the room, thinks Dr. Miles, for an erudite, self-described "fuddy duddy."

Being secular humanists, Dr. Miles and his wife attribute earthly, scientific reasons for the sudden tremors and disappearances of people around them.

Still, just to be safe, they flee to Mrs. Miles' father's farm.

As they make their way through the sodden city overtaken by anarchy, their car is set upon by hoodlums who proceed to spray soda pop onto the windshield, mug with scary masks in the passenger side window -- considerably upsetting Mrs. Miles in the process!

One brazen lout even puts his thumbs in his ears and waggles his finders, while making a funny face.

There is, apparently, no end to their depravity.

Although he sees that these young hooligans are in desperate need of the guiding hand of a social worker, and that of an educated, liberal thinker, Dr. Miles gets away from them and heads for the safety of rural environs.

Of course, the world is too much with the Miles couple -- they eventually run out of gas. Mrs. Miles, in complete contravention of her husband's myriad rules, is found to have abused her privilege of using the household automobile by using the last of the gas in the spare gas can in the trunk of the car and not refilling it! See where that gets her!

Stuck in the dark on a lonely country road where moonshiners, aficionados of bestiality, Communists, hippies and gawd knows who else dwells.

A truck comes along and Dr. Miles flags it down. By gosh, it's Mrs. Miles's father's pickup truck! It doesn't run on gas, but is fueled by the salt of the earth.

The truck is driven by spunky young free spirit, Gary Reed. He's all too happy to give the Miles couple a ride.

But thoughts of a joyous reunion between father and daughter are quickly dashed. There's dinner on the table, a wrist watch and wedding ring on the table on one side of a full dinner plate, and an empty set of overalls and checkered shirt in the chair.

If any secular humanist needed more proof that the Rapture had occurred ... more proof is offered. If there is one thing Christianity in the movies is all about, it's solid, irrefutable, see-it-with-your-own-eyes proof.

The Miles couple runs outside with Gary to the site of Mrs. Miles's mother's grave. To everyone's astonishment, it's been breached and all that remains in the gaping coffin at the bottom of the hole is a set of empty funeral clothes.

Time for the secular liberal humanists to face facts -- Jesus is coming!

But not before the Anti Christ does.

World events move quickly and before atheistic Communist Dr. Stephen Miles can say "Eugene Debs," there is a one-world leader in place who has cut through the world's bureaucracy and appears communicate directly with local law enforcement the globe over.

The pudgy, pugnacious sheriff in the town near the farm the Miles couple and Gary have fled to quickly becomes a power unto himself, going from farm to farm busting families for hoarding food, taking away their guns. When outraged, gawd-fearing, rural, salt of the earth American people sass his Badgeship, he assassinates them in cold blood.

The sheriff makes the out of control youths who fell upon Dr. Miles car as he and his wife fled the city look like school children when his pure evil is compared to their rakish pranks.

O, the story -- such as it is -- rolls on. Christianity is, of course, outlawed. A new economic model is brought in, which requires all citizens to register for a world census and receive the Mark of the Beast, either on their foreheads or right hands.

At the same time, Dr. Miles finally sits down to read Dr. Klineman's magnum opus, Current Events and Biblical Prophetic Literature. And not a moment too soon, because it explains everything! Before long, Dr. Miles is a believer.

The snails fall from his eyes!

Outrage compounds outrage and the lines of morality become blurred when even some of the remaining, renegade Christians propose that receiving a physical mark doesn't change what's in their hearts. After all, they merely want the mark so they can buy toilet paper and Pringles potato chips.

Interspersed with the heavy theological dialogues, laden with "Yea" and "Thou", are freaky meteorological arrays, as the Anti Christ increases in power.

At one point, it literally appears as though Jesus Christ has forsaken the earth. I shit you not! As unexpected, unjust death is piled upon unexpected, unjust death, it looks like the axle is going to fall right out of the whole fucking thing.

There is nuclear war. Dr. Miles is even shot in the back by the cowardly, evil sheriff -- though Dr. Miles' new found piety sees him through.

And just like the end credits, Jesus can't appear in this movie too soon.

When the Archie comic light show fills the sky, the evil, cowardly sheriff is on hand to take one more shot at Dr. Miles and his dwindling band of faithful -- who manage to spontaneously break into song in the closing minutes.

Dr. Miles is shot, and then the cowardly and evil sheriff actually points his rifle into the sky as though to assassinate Jesus as he assassinated the Dobs family when he took away their baked beans and Bounty paper towel!

Unfortunately, the screen merely fills with the third rate nightclub light show. We don't actually see Jesus. Which makes sense because Jesus would require Santa Claus-styled quantum physics in order to appear to all (few) remaining Christians at the same time all over the earth. That is, unless, Jesus simply favored white Christian Americans more than the rest, which is entirely possible.

When the DVD version of Years of the Beast is released, as it inevitably will be, I hope there is an alternate ending in which the face of Ronald Reagan crests the mountain when all the Jesus-light takes over. And it'd be awesome to have the commentary for the film done by Ted Haggard. Nobody knows about second coming like he does.

Watch Years of the Beast and feel the burn.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

The plan behind Canada's lame, dysfunctional hay-wired, misfired judicial system


Is it possible that by doing all they can to keep criminals out of prison, Canadian judges are setting the stage for the day when law abiding Canadians will request to live in prisons in order to be safe?

Will Canadian prisons be the high-priced condos of the future?

If everywhere we turn in "free" society, we run into paroled-and-pardoned child molesters, paroled-and-pardoned murderers -- sex offenders, wife beaters, thieves of every stripe, just coming off of a few hours of house arrest -- maybe jail is the one place of solitude where Canadians who have no interest in crime, could reside in peace.

Canadian prisons could be the Watergate hotels of the 21st Century. The Watergate, in its heyday, had apartment blocks, office space, shopping outlets, restaurants. It was the ultimate in never-have-to-go-outside living.

Since Canada also doesn't give a shit about pollution, maybe we're destined to become a nation of Indoorsmen.

But then, in typical Canadian form, the inevitable will happen: Criminals will sue to gain entry into our safe, cozy prisons.

They'll claim that the high rents and intense scrutiny of every prospective prison dweller undergoes are discriminatory, and intended solely to discourage the "undesirables" from the elite living accommodations. Provincial Human Rights Tribunals will rise to the occasion doing whatever's necessary to equalize the demographics of our prison population.

The next step in the inexorable decline of Canadian prison living: crime in prison.

The shoplifters will be drawn to the inviting stores in our prison malls. Since only the affluent and well-heeled will live in Canadian prisons, thieves and drug addicts will be slavering to get in, with all the accompanying murder and rape that are often ancillary parts of their transactions.

Canadian justices will continue to reside in their ivory towers in whatever alternate universe they spend their off-hours, soaking in the amniotic fluid of babies who've gone to Limbo.

Rent controls will infiltrate our prisons.

As demographic that amuses itself by sledgehammering toilets, graffitiing public areas, and swarming lone elderly walkers as they return to their cells from the shops, the rabbit-droves of Canadians with no interest in crime will flee their prison malls, prison Tim Horton's, prison HMV, prison poutine, prison First Choice, prison workplaces, prison churches, prison living spaces for the newly deloused city dwellings back in the old world.

Back in Canada 1.0.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Fear and Loathing at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

From New Era News: Yeah Dudes! Get Ready to Rage . . . at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center?

Puke-y Sorority Party Held At Underground Railroad Museum

A couple things come to mind, immediately, upon reading that headline.

First, what in the world is the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center doing hosting college formals? Aren't such events held in ballrooms, hotels or convention centers?

Second: even if the NURFC has the facilities to host a formal of this kind, why in the world would they want to? I realize that museums in culture-starved America need to find new and innovative ways to raise funds, but when the money made from hosting a college formal is subtracted from the costs of cleaning up afterward, anyone can tell you it's a losing proposition.

The third question that comes to mind centers, of course, on the outlandish behavior of the revelers. But in this day and age in which contempt for the past is viewed as savvy and hip -- where complete ignorance of events that didn't happen in the past year is a shameful given -- the onus is on those who know better -- ie, party planners, museum officials -- to simply not allow college students and alcohol anywhere near the museum.

Unfortunately, that third thought sounds too much like blaming the victim, but we live in the world -- the people who know better need to be vigilant against those (painfully numerous) people who don't know better.

Maybe it all seems so clear to me because I've been on both sides of the drunken stupidity at formals: as guest and as employee of a hotel hosting such an event.

As a guest, my sins were measured in decibels. As the hour grew later, and I got drunker, I got much, much louder with unfunny, profane jokes. I have never been into property destruction. Not so much because I'm so peaceful and just; simply, I'm not slick enough to get away with it, and paying fines and for damage would have cut into my drinking money.

Live to drink another day, was my motto at that time.

Also, I've been the clerk working the front desk of a hotel that hosted revelers and had to field noise complaints from other guests, and heard the horror stories from the maintenance crew the next morning. Nothing I heard surprised me.

Of course drunken idiots were running through the hotel at all hours like banshees.

Of course horny, drunken couples were having sex on every available surface, whether in public, a stairwell, or a closed, darkened conference room. (I imagined the next occupants of the conference room going in after the maintenance crew had cleaned the place up, and detecting the subversive scent of sex, and one crusty businessman saying to another, "Jeez, Bill, smells like a deal was made here over the weekend!")

Of course the swimming pool was commandeered by drunks hours after the pool had been closed.

Of course the rooms occupied by the revelers were destroyed, vomit-tainted and piss-christened.

Of course.

The only thing that surprised me was the surprise of others at the aftermath.

In case there's anyone reading this who doesn't already know: mixing alcohol, college students, formal dress and some concocted occasion boils together to create an amoeba-like toxic entity that causes outrage and nastiness to seep through the location of the event like a chemical spill.

Like all such spills, this drunken-college-student entity seeks the lowest points of a structure, the furthest corners, and has no regard whether it's pulling a fire extinguisher from the wall or walking off with an expensive vase from the ballroom.

It's wreaks havoc on a location like water damage after a fire.

For some reason in our culture, being a college student is not only a license to be an outright idiot, it's a mandate to be as stupid, inconsiderate and destructive as possible when the right set of variables present themselves.

Far from college being the intellectual haven of book-learning, it's basically a stained and scarred chili pot boiling over with debauchery.

Like driving an ornery old car with a manual transmission: some people achieve the balance between the clutch and gas pedals to continue the forward momentum. And some of us can attend college, and emerge once in a while from that chili pot of bad behavior to get an education and formulate a future.

But if you are the curator or proprietor of a museum or a location that houses or possesses objects that you can't bear to have covered in vomit, piss or residual sex juice, then maybe you should forego hosting a college formal at your venue.

Because that boiling chili pot of licentious, destructive stupidity lacks one crucial component: a lid.

The fourth question that comes to mind is this: Where are the dumb cunts of Alpha Xi Deltas going to have their formal next year? The Holocaust Museum?

Examples:

Aggrieved Letter

Aggrieve-making description #1

Aggrieve-making description #2

Thursday, May 27, 2010

America, it's time . . .

From CNN.com's This Just In:
"In ironic twist, BP finalist for pollution prevention award" -- BP, now under federal scrutiny because of its role in the deadly Gulf of Mexico explosion and oil spill, is one of three finalists for a federal award honoring offshore oil companies for "outstanding safety and pollution prevention."
And from In These Times:
BP, Massey Energy and Tesoro all have hauled out plaques celebrating safety achievements to deflect allegations of corporate recklessness in the aftermath of explosions in April that killed 47 of their workers.

Though each of these corporations accepted awards for safety statistics, not one has taken responsibility for workplace deaths.
Read that and understand it:

BP and Massey Energy were both recent recipients of safety awards from the US government.

From In These Times: "Just last year, the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) gave BP and Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, Safety Awards for Excellence –SAFE awards."

More from In These Times:
Some BP executives actually experienced a little of that burn on April 20. A group of BP bigwigs was aboard Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico when it exploded. They’d traveled out to the oil rig to celebrate a safety milestone. Workers on the rig had gone seven years without a lost-time accident – well, seven years without reporting one, anyway. Corporations routinely subtly and overtly discourage workers from reporting injuries. For example, companies grant cash awards for designated time periods during which no injury reports are filed and force mishap victims to wear distinctive clothing like orange vests so they get the blame – and not the corporation – for injury reports that cost entire crews their cash awards.
. . .

America, the time has come for you to hand over the keys.

Friends don't let friends drink and drive.

Yes, the 20th Century was the "American Century" -- you have the body count to prove it.

Nothing good lasts forever. You gave us the hamburger, Elvis Presley, Martin Scorsese, Raquel Welch, Tanya Roberts, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. And a pile of wonderful book-writing authors, as well.

But the myth of American competence has vanished. It's been well on the decline since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The decline accelerated when Reagan became president, and the mask fell off entirely when George W. Bush took hold of the Oval Office like some spoiled rat kid playing "I'm the King of the Castle."

W cashed out with his cronies in 2008 to the tune of more than $700 billion, and America's been a floating, tattered lifeboat without paddles or a rudder ever since.

You can't go on like this.

So, I propose a slight paradigm shift: Go with your strength and pack in the rest.

Give up your military, Wall Street and those two horrific whorehouse dens of dysfunction: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Shelve your foreign policy, pack in your wars, disband your Gestapo FBI and your Langley KGB. Reel it all in.

And stick to making movies, TV shows, porn and music.

That's all the world wants from you: movies, TV, porn and music.

Because that's always been America's #1 strength and export: fiction, fantasy, make believe.

From George Washington cutting down the cherry tree to "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," America has been the world's most chronic, consistent purveyor of fabrication and myth.

All we're asking is for you to become the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Continue to lay the golden eggs, and the world will protect you.

If North Korea or Bolshevic Jackoffistan make any threatening move in your direction, the fans of your movies, TV, porn and music will step in.

Japan will be there like a shot. Canada, you're happily forgotten neighbor who kicks your ass every time our militaries compete against one another in friendly "games," will stand on guard for thee.

Send China your torture instructors from Fort Benning along with your torture manuals and torture toys, and I'm sure your landlord (the Chinese) would forgive your debts to them.

But the fact is, you can't go on as you are now.

Whether it's your Teabag party demanding that bullets be declared one of the main food groups in the Food Pyramid (with the all-seeing eye), or that Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are still running around free, somewhere along the line you forgot what you were about.

It happens.

Look at Elvis. Look at Kurt Cobain. Look at Larry King.

Sure, continue to have your elections. After all, they're just like rigged gameshows. And have your culture wars. But put down the car keys, pull up your pants and try to regain your dignity. Because at this point in time, your Bronx is showing.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Farcebook


Proviso
All privacy settings are on an "opt-out" basis. Using Farcebook is a free choice you have made and by doing so you relinquish all custody of your personhood, any and all rights to your name, identity, soul and DNA. Farcebook may or may not (but probably will) sell your personal information to anyone with a dollar in their hand without any regard whatsoever to your rights as a free individual in this world. Privacy is so 20th Century. Privacy is for assholes. By using Farcebook, you entrust its CEO, Stark Fuckerberg, with your identity, personhood and all the rights and privileges that derive thereof, and you certify that by so trusting Stark Fuckerberg, you are a "dumb fuck."

A scene from a parallel universe


. . . in which BP is fined $5 million per day for each day its oil leak hemorrhages:

BP executives are seen swimming down to the rupture and plugging the leak with their bare hands.

2nd Quarter Dick Cheney Award for Corporate Malevolence Goes to BP

Who needs regulation when we've got altruistic corporate titans who innately know and do what is right?

Why should government stick its incompetent nose into the business of big business when corporate executives have the whole thing under control?

Why should there be any talk of accountability when corporations like BP have built their reputations upon always owning up to their mistakes, rectifying problems and treating all wronged parties fairly?

Then, of course, there is this world, in which none of these things exist.

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd., told Coast Guard investigators, "I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out."

This is completely understandable given today's price of mud! What fool would seal his well with rare, expensive, hard-to-find mud when plain old seawater would do the trick?

The Blame Game
Once, there existed something called "taking responsibility for one's actions." It probably died with Abraham Lincoln.
From CBS News: BP PLC told senators Tuesday its massive spill was caused by the failure of a key safety device made by another company. In turn, that company, Transocean, said BP was in charge, and that a third company which poured concrete to plug the exploratory well didn't do it properly. The third company, Halliburton, says it was only following BP's plan.
Funny, when I was in elementary school and someone stole the donations box for the March of Dimes, or whatever it was in the classroom, and a culprit had to be caught, we had blame, but it wasn't a game.

I guess blame only turns into a game when billions of dollars are on the line, as when Wall Street turned its cannons onto the floorboards of the economy in 2008. Congressional hearings from that time seemed to have only one purpose: to not play the blame game.

I say, let's play. I think it should be played like "Duck, Duck, Goose" except when the guilty party is tapped as "goose" he should have a live hand grenade stuffed down their pants.

BP's (de)Merits:How ignoble.

Late breaking addition
Leaked BP Memo Compares Employees to Three Little Piggies, Puts Monetary "Value" on Employees Lives.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Another unwanted verbal stool sample from his majesty, Jean Chrétien

To the Liberal Party of Canada:

Do you see the crooked mouth in this picture? That's where your votes are going in each election.

That mouth is an open window, a breach in time and space. It's a black hole. It sucks up only one thing from this world: votes.

The Liberal Party of Canada is the party of Jean Chrétien, that barnacled, corrupt, career politician who is the very face of political entitlement, arrogance and crass, ugly ambition.

He draws his opulent, undeserved tax-payer funded pension.

His name is in our history text books.

But now he wants respect. Jean Chrétien has done nothing to deserve respect.

He might use a little bit of his twilight years to figure just where that $1 billion "misplaced" by the HRDC went. He might reflect upon his position as the George W. Bush of Canadian politics.

Leave it to the Chrétien ego to chastise the voting public.

O, to be a Liberal these days. At least Brian Mulroney took his party with him when he cut and run, leaving Kim Campbell to take that election right on the chin. That was the one time I really felt that Canadian democracy works -- the Progressive Conservatives were not only defeated at the polls, they were voted out of existence.

If only that had happened to the Liberal Party after Chrétien cut and run and left Paul Martin to take that election on the chin.

I hate Stephen Harper. I hate the conservative party. I hate the Liberal Party even more because you're so weak and unfocused, so spaghetti-spined and fastened to political correctness, that we'll probably have the conservative party leading things here for quite some time. Stephen Harper will probably never win a real mandate, but he's proven that he doesn't have to. It's not like he has any meaningful opposition.

I'm sure Michael Ignatieff is absolutely chafing to flee Canada once again and sign on to the payroll of some cushy think tank int he United States. He's probably in constant reverie thinking of all the upper crust gobshites in England with whom he could be tutting and hurumphing at this very moment.

Instead, he's left to captain this ship of fools.

Please pass my thanks to Jean Chrétien for reminding Canadians like me just why I despise the Liberal Party of Canada: because of the stench of your arrogance, your execrable sense of entitlement, and your intolerably bloated, bilious blowhard platitudes.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Smarmmit: for those who take their Internetting seriously

Let the Philistines have their low-brow photographs of harlots and drunkards, their base stories of sexual perversion, their inane links to blogs and frivolous entertainment news.

Smarmmit is the thinking Interwebber's place to commune with fellow Internetters who are, let's face it, a cut above.

Yes, it's inevitable that the rabble will find their way into our pristine galleria of the mind, posting their rank videos of tavern punch-ups and skateboarding mishaps.

Smarmmit is ready for them.

With only down-vote arrows available, smarmy Internetters have the ability to vote everything out of existence.

You don't like the cut of a certain bloke's jib? Down vote him and his execrable post.

Weary of the sentimentalists' prattle? Use that lovely violety-mauve down-vote arrow to puncture their overwrought hearts.

Have you been whittled down to your last serviceable nerve by a frustrated comedian's gross and/or lame attempts at humor? Use that down-vote arrow for what it was meant to be used: vote the lout into the outer begone.

Society has taken away our leper colonies and debtors' prisons, but it cannot take away our down-vote arrows!

Life is too short and the Internet is too small for us to bear with the bawdy, the licentious, the crude and superficial.

The thinking Interwebber's arrow is the down-vote arrow. Use it!

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Modern Translations by Gary Britson

Guest contributor, Gary Britson, brings "Modern Translation of What is Actually Meant by Prospective Employers, Good Samaritans, or Other Irrelevant Folks by Everyday Expressions":
"Thank you for your application."
Translation: "We'd rather hire Charles Manson."

"We are sorry we cannot use your services at this time."

Translation:"We're not sorry at all. What the hell do we have to be sorry about? You're the one who wasted our time with your bullshit application."

"Life's too short to carry a grudge."

Translation: "Don't shoot me."

"We will keep your application on file in case future openings should arise."

Translation: "In the meantime, why don't you send your resume to the Tooth Fairy? You'll have better luck with her?

"Sir? Sir? Sir?"

Translation: "Why don't you shut the fuck up, asshole!"

"Your call is very important to us."

Translation: "We're entitled to a fifteen-minute coffee break, and by God, we're going to take every damn second!"

"Are you all right?"

Translation: "Aside from the fact that you just got run over by a Hummer, and your liver and heart are lying on the pavement next to you, how do you feel?"

"I have some unpleasant news."

Translation: "You have two weeks to live, but there's still time to remember me in your will."

"Do you come here often?"

Translation: "If you and I weren't such neurotic losers, we wouldn't have to hang out in a dive like this to get laid."

"Mr. Anderson isn't in. May I take a message?"

Translation: "My boss said if I took one more call from you he'd replace me with his daughter-in-law."

"We cannot use this story. However, please try us again."

Translation: "If you think we're going to waste ink on a no-name, you're crazy. But send us another story. The paper comes in handy when we're too cheap to buy coasters."

"I think we should see other people."

Translation: "My new boss's dick is twice as big as yours, and he drives a Mercedes."

"Thank you."

Translation: "Are you gonna hang around here for fucking ever? I'm late for my morning blow job upstairs."

Waitress: "Can I take that plate for you?"

Translation: "Get the fuck out of here so I can give this table to customers who know how to tip!"

"We need to talk."

Translation: "You're the last person on earth I want to talk to."

"Have a nice weekend."

Translation: "Two days without you! I'm in heaven!"

"Is there anything I can do?"

Translation: "We both know there's not a damn thing either one of us can do, so let's have a drink."

"At least he didn't suffer."

Translation: "Thank goodness he won't make us suffer any more."

"I agree with Sarah Palin. We must take our country back!"

Translation: "I agree with Sarah Palin. I don't want my tax dollars going to sick black people!"

"This medicine should not be taking by people with liver disease or women who are pregnant or may become pregnant."

Translation: "We don't sell our overpriced medicine to drunks, or tramps who are pregnant, may become pregnant, or women who have ever done anything which might result in pregnancy, or who have ever thought about or even remotely considered doing anything that might somehow cause pregnancy, or who have ever associated with, or talked to, or is related to anyone who has ever for one nanosecond thought about maybe, possibly, doing anything that might result in pregnancy. We went thorugh hell to get through medical school, and we never pass up a chance to pass judgement on anyone who didn't."

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Proof Positive: The Roman Catholic Church is Excrement

Amazing how quickly the Roman Catholic Church can act when it perceives that a wrong has been committed.
From NPR.org: Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated after allowing an abortion to be performed on a woman who doctors say would otherwise have died.
Read the whole story, and listen to the episode. You simply won't believe it.

In one fell swoop the Catholic Church tipped its hand, revealing:

(a) Its millennia-long hatred of women
(b) It moves swiftly to punish perceived transgressions
(c) Pedophilia is not viewed as a transgression

Thank you Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted for clearing this up once and for all.

Pedophilia = OK

Life of a woman = expendable


Got it!

From NPR.org: "She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means."

There are some situations where the mother may in fact die . . .

The life of the woman in question was a sacrifice the brave old barnacle-and-semen-encrusted church was willing to make.

Hurrah for Catholicism!

Hurrah for the truth slipping out!

I can just hear the sigh of relief of all those priests realizing that pedophilia hasn't yet been taken off the table.

What an absolute shower of bastards!

Monday, May 10, 2010

The Persistence of Pryvett

Now available for purchase!
Canadian orders: $12.95 + $2.95 shipping




I began writing about Pryvett Rawgers seven years ago with the simple line: “Pryvett is an improbable personage.”

When I submitted that first article to a magazine, the editor replied, “We don’t publish fiction.”

I assured him my piece was non-fiction; that Pryvett was very much an actual, living person.

The editor wasn’t buying it—he’d had fiction submissions in the past come in masquerading as non-fiction.

After I provided names and telephone numbers of people who could vouch for Pryvett’s existence, I received a sheepish apology from the editor, and the Pryvett story appeared in the magazine soon after.

Such is the life of an interloper.

Although Pryvett exists, I’m not entirely sure he’s from this world. My closest guess is that he’s a character from a novel I haven’t read yet, and somehow dislodged himself and now treads terra firma, rather than his place of origin, liber firmus.

Pryvett is an ordinary child of the 1960s. He works in the warehouse of Package Handling Company, Inc., where he is under-employed, over-stimulated, and from which his ire, angst, hilarity and spasms of unsociability springboard.

He studied history in university only to graduate into the Ontario marketplace of the 1980s, which embraced a practice unabashedly named “positive discrimination.” This put jobs he was well-suited for—art gallery curator, animal husbandry technician, school teacher, Towne Fool—out of reach.

So, whether it was during the eight years he spent as a door-to-door market tester, or his abortive attempts in men’s fashion retail, the beer store stockroom, or as a bagel shop sandwich artist, Pryvett lived by Samuel Johnson’s adage: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

A writer friend in Iowa suggested:
In your introduction, you could compare him to Lenny Bruce.

You could compare him to Diogenes, looking for “an honest man.”

You could frame his seemingly antisocial acts as a philosophical search for truth. Frame him as a philosopher, a Don Quixote of sorts, looking for meaning in life and occasionally stumbling along the way, but always rising and continuing the quest.

You’d have to do this lightly and gently, so as not to make it sound sarcastic, which would be wrong. You wouldn’t want to give him the idea that he’s being mocked, which we would never do. We just think he’s interesting.

Use the word “iconoclast.”

You could use Jamie’s “be always drunken” speech from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Also Hamlet’s “rogue and peasant slave am I” speech.

Also Springsteen’s “Drivin’ all night chasin’ some mirage” from The Promised Land.

Frame him as a philosopher instead of a weirdo who likes entrails.
After reading the first Pryvett piece, my writer friend in faraway Iowa inquired frequently via email about him: “Can you give me an example of Pryvett saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time?”

Yes, I could. “At my first book release party, Pryvett turned to my father at one point and without preamble said, ‘Do you think Tom Hanks is a urine-freak?’ Pryvett had read an article about how Tom Hanks hangs a leak, at some point, in all of his movies. It’s the same sort of ‘signature’ move as Tom Cruise who manages to run in all of his movies—even the one where he’s in a wheelchair. My dad was amused and baffled by the left-field conversational gambit, but that’s the kind of question Pryvett thinks is all right to toss around.”

I once heard Pryvett say to a room filled with people: “If you watch Roots in reverse, it has a happy ending.”

When people cringe or frown or vilify him for such statements, Pryvett shrugs and utters his personal credo: “I do not court popularity.”

Pryvett, however, is more than pratfalls and ill-advised comments in the wrong company. He’s a well-read, culturally literature cinephile and Monty Python fanatic, who loves history, Celtic culture; who’s as current on world events as Bill Moyers, and who has an insatiable passion for popular culture arcana. He reads Backwash magazine, The Fortean Times and Rue Morgue to stay abreast of subjects none of the rest of us has the stomach to think about.

He’s a Renaissance man in need of a Renaissance.

With every step of his search for that renaissance, Pryvett steadfastly avoids courting popularity.

Like the time he went to a girlfriend’s summer cottage. On the drive up to cottage country, they stopped in Toronto and hit a few bookstores in Toronto for Pryvett to pick up some reading material. A few days later, when the girlfriend’s parents arrived at the cottage, they found one of those books lying around: a tome detailing in graphic color on obscenely glossy pages something known as “entrails-fetish,” in which naked people enjoy being tied to trees with the entrails of animals.

“What is the worst social faux pas Pryvett ever committed?” my Iowa friend asks.

That’s like asking “What’s the slickest riff in the Miles Davis catalog?”

I attempted to reply: “Pryvett’s most hideous gaffe was probably the entrails-fetish book found by Rotarian parents at a girlfriend’s cottage. But I do also recall Pryvett telling me of a bachelor party where he was nearly punched out by the bride’s father who overheard Pryvett gassing on about how much wanted ‘to do’ the bride-to-be.

“During the debacle, Pryvett managed to cut his hand on a roulette wheel—gambling is not uncommon at stags, in the name of raising money for the groom—causing him to bleed profusely. But even the appearance of blood is not enough to stop Pryvett when he’s hit his Bacchanalian stride. He ended the night with a combination of pasta sauce and blood in his hair, streaking his face and shirt, and himself finally being led outside to an awaiting taxi, amid a chorus of voices asking, ‘Who the fuck is that guy?’

“I think you should start taking Pryvett to church,” my Iowa friend responded. “Both of you need to start thinking about the salvation of your eternal souls. I have a hunch Pryvett’s is in trouble.”

And there was the day Pryvett visited a Christian supply store with a friend who was looking for a baptismal gift. Quickly bored by his friend’s papal-tainted quest, Pryvett asked a mousy clerk where the Christian Erotica was kept, explaining, “There’s nothing like 700 pages of blue balls where the heroine teases about showing her ankles by raising the hem of her long dress.’’

Or, while browsing in an underground video store, a surly store clerk, misunderstanding Pryvett’s worldview, took a dislike to him, and thought impugning Pryvett’s age was the best way to insult him, saying: “Jeez, man, you’re old enough to be my father.”

Unruffled, Pryvett said, “What’s your mother’s name? I might be your father.”

Among Pryvett’s heroes is Miller Magrath, a 16th century Irish priest who, upon his ordination, approached the Protestant church and essentially asked, “What’ll you give me to turn?”

Magrath went on to simultaneously hold the position of bishop in the Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland in northern Ireland.

Still a controversial figure in Ireland, nearly four centuries later, Magrath is reviled for his unvarnished corruption, but also seen as a man who possessed a true virtuosity, demonstrating enormous diabolical skill in manipulating the Roman Catholic Church and the Protest Church for his own venal gain.

My Iowa writer friend suggested several titles for this work:
A Streetcar Named Pryvett
The Naked and the Pryvett
Pryvett’s Choice
The Bridge on the River Pryvett
Stopping By Pryvett on a Snowy Evening
The Love Song of J. Alfred Pryvett
The Pryvett Code
How to Be Pryvett and Influence People
War, Peace and Pryvett
Although he also embodies Robert Frost’s three-word summation of human life—”It goes on”—Pryvett is much too singular for such cardigan wisdom.

For him, it’s The Persistence of Pryvett.

Life goes on, but Pryvett persists.

A believer in asymmetrical warfare and keenly attuned to the Morse Code messages from his reptilian brain, Pryvett plods like a tortoise, out-waits his adversaries and wins by using the greatest weapon of attrition: Time.

Pryvett has the patience of a rock lying on an untraveled slope of the Himalayas.

There's more where this came from for the recession-proof price of $12.95 + $2.95 shipping. Be a pal and order a case today!



Monday, May 03, 2010

U2's ethics cost so much I can't afford to see them in concert



After reading U2 Live at the Rose Bow(E)L - Blog, I thought about my own love/hate relationship with U2.

Back in the vacuous 80s, they were one of the few bands writing songs of substance. They've reinvented themselves effectively each decade, and they sound as good live now as they did at Live Aid in 1985.

And what about those ethics! Lead singer of AC/DC, Brian Johnson, was in the news a while back slagging Bono and Bob Geldof for their humanitarian work. For all the things to criticize, that struck me as bizarre: "Concentrate on the music!" I imagined Johnson berating them. "Africa will sort itself out!"

I think Brian Johnson just needs a lozenge.

But maybe there's a kernel of truth or legitimacy with assailing Bono's and U2's sense of ethics. Particularly, how they refuse to have corporate sponsors on their concert tours.

Hurrah for integrity!

No corporate stooges in their ranks! No U2 songs used cell phone ads or selling Gatorade or the latest model car that'll fall apart three hours after its warranty runs out.

U2 concerts are pure, man, not tainted by corporate bullshit!

When you're worth €100 million, that's not a touch stand to take.

While the "U2 Live at the Rose Bow(E)L - Blog" did a great job covering the myriad disappointments associated with U2's video releases, I got thinking about the live concert experience --

-- the experience I will no longer experience because, frankly, I can't afford to see that gawddamned band live anymore.

No corporate sponsors means artistic purity -- and higher ticket prices. I don't know about Bono, but $150 per ticket is steep for me.

If U2 -- or any other band touring on that level -- really wanted to make a show of spitting in the corporate world's eye, they should go totally corporate.

Bono should be singing into a Pepsi microphone while dressed in a Kentucky Fried Chicken jumpsuit.

The Edge should be playing Budweiser guitars and wearing John Deere hats.

Adam should be playing DuPont and Monsanto basses and Larry should be flailing on a Charlie Tuna Chicken of the Sea (dolphin friendly) drumkit.

The whole circular stage could be the top of a giant pint of beer -- sponsored by Guinness.

Every square foot of the stage flooring should be covered with logos like the rinks in pro hockey or the fields of play in European soccer, all of which would be visible in the DVD releases of the concerts.

This way, tickets to see U2 would be about $5 a piece. I'd take my whole family in that case.

If U2 paired up with Warren Buffet, I'm sure they could figure out a way to play concerts where they pay each audience member $10 to attend. That's a concert experience I would enjoy.

If Bono ever wants to go back to painting his face -- a la Mephisto -- he should come on stage made up like Ronald McDonald.

John Lennon sang "Gimme some truth!" I'm asking U2 to gimme a break!

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Sex offender block party on Sir John A. MacDonald Lane!



Because nothing says "I'm sorry" like not saying "I'm sorry."

The maidens and matrons of Sir John A. MacDonald Lane were aflutter with preparations for the long-anticipated Sex Offender Block Party. It was an annual weekend fair in which the new sex offenders living in their community were honored guests.

Father Fister would take up his usual duties as master of ceremonies.

The newly released sex offenders in the neighborhood were always shy about coming out -- thinking the block party was some kind of ploy to learn their identities. After all, the neighborhood had been informed sex offenders were moving in, but never told exactly who those new residents were.

Father Fister understood the wary nature of sex offenders. Weren't they just ordinary human beings, filled with love, who had funneled that love in the wrong direction? Of course they were!

So, Father Fister -- who was on grand terms with sex offenders who'd received their pardons and had their pasts scrubbed and their names redacted from the Sex Offender Registry -- had them pay social calls to the new 'uns.

Among the new sex offenders in the neighborhood was Gerald Gamut, who'd just served three months of a six year prison sentence for molesting a dozen ten year old boys who'd played on the baseball team he'd coached. He was wary of the block party, but the neighborhood ambassador who came to see him spoke his language, commisserated about how difficult it was not to take children up on their coquettish gambits.

"We're only human," the neighborhood ambassador said.

"Is this a trick?" Gerald asked.

"Of course not. What've you got to lose? You'll have some barbecue, maybe play a few games at the booths. Since you're new, you can be one of our pie contest judges. And you'll go home with a jar of homemade jam, courtesy of Mrs. Trubideau. She always insists!"

"But I can't go if there are any children there."

"Why's that?"

"One of the stipulations of my parole says I can't go within a thousand meters of kids."

"Oh, that old saw!" the neighborhood ambassador laughed. "Don't worry about that. The people in this neighborhood believe you get more flies with honey, than with vinegar. They believe in making friends. Most of all, they believe in forgiveness."

"Forgiveness?"

"Of course. You see, this is a Liberal community. We understand that people make mistakes, but we don't believe that they should pay for those mistakes for the rest of their lives."

"You don't?"

"Heck no! I know how it is. How the prudish, unenlightened in this country don't believe that adults can have deep, meaningful, loving relationships with children. The knee-jerk, law-and-order crowd believe children are stupid and incapable of making decisions for themselves. But we both know that children are much wiser than some people are willing to accept. Am I right?"

"I guess," Gerald said.

"Of course, I am! But this community is different. They understand. Which is really amazing to me because to a person, none of them has ever been a victim of crime. So, it just shows how enlightened and open they are. They understand."

"So . . ." Gerald said, drawing the word out. "Are you saying it's OK to . . ."

"No," the neighborhood ambassador said immediately, knowing exactly what Gerald was talking about. "Just remember one thing -- don't shit where you eat."

* * *

Everyone was at the Sex Offender Block Party.

The local Liberal MP was making the rounds, having his photograph taken with his constituents. Father Fister presided over the three-legged race -- after personally ensuring that none of the boys had their legs tied together too tightly. There were a lot of young athletes in the neighborhood and nothing would be worse than one of the hockey or baseball stars having the circulation cut off in one of their legs in a silly race.

After a long, silent debate with himself, Gerald eventually walked over to the block party. It didn't make any sense to him. His life had been filled with his subterranean, socially unacceptable impulses and all of the attendant vilification. He wasn't ready for acceptance. There had to be a catch.

The block party was in full swing when he arrived. There was a pie eating contest and dunking tanks. In one of the tents, locally grown vegetables were being judged for their color, girth and weight. A particularly robust zuccini was all the rage.

Following the three-legged race, ever-energetic Father Fister was out there playing touch football with the boys.

"Where does that man get his energy?" some of the mothers said, smiling, to one another.

"His faith," one of them said after a moment.

Although no one wore name tags, Gerald spotted a few guys whom he was sure were newly released sex offenders: the expressions on their faces looked the way he felt -- uncomfortable, wondering if this was actually a trap.

The neighborhood ambassador who'd invited Gerald came up. "Hey man! I'm so glad you came! Let me introduce you around."

Within minutes, Gerald was seated at a long fold-out table judging cherry pies.

"Now, is your last name pronounced 'Ga-moo'?" asked Mrs. Gray, the matron in charge of the pie competition.

"Uh, just Gamut," Gerald said.

"It sound aboriginal," Mrs. Gray said. "Are you aboriginal?"

"No."

After the cherry pie competition, Gerald was taken over to the dunking tanks where he hit a bull's eye with his first throw, dunking little Jimmy Turner, star forward on the Peewee hockey team.

Father Fister led the community in grace when they sat down to eat their barbecue. All the kids vied to hold one of his hands -- the place of honor during the block party grace. Father Fister -- ever diplomatic -- chose a ten year old girl and a ten year old boy. Father liked round numbers and good children.

* * *

The ribs, hamburgers and potato salad were delicious. Gerald couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten so well.

After dinner, as the men prepared for that night's Sex Offenders' Fireworks Display, Father Fister approached Gerald and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Enjoy your day?" the priest asked.

"Uh, yes father."

Father Fister led Gerald away from the group; kept his hand on Gerald's shoulder. "I'm glad you had fun. And I hope you'll feel at home here. You see, this community is different than most. We embrace our sex offenders."

Gerald stiffened at the mention of those words.

Father Fister chuckled and patted Gerald's shoulder. "Of course, of course. 'Former' sex offenders, is what I meant to say. You're a good boy Gerald and I'm sure it's been explained -- you're very welcome here. Just remember one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't shit where you eat."

"Of course, I know -- I wouldn't --" Gerald stammered.

Father Fister raised his hand, silencing him. "Indeed, don't shit where you eat. But nobody objects to a little fart, now and then."

The priest winked, and then walked away toward a group of children who were throwing a DayGlo Frisbee amongst themselves.

Suppressed video of simpler, more orderly time, wrenched from the hands of Obamaviks



There is no greater example of government intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizen than the bane of every driver: traffic laws.

Above is an example of how smooth the world ran in 1905 before the execrable invention of the traffic light, before the proud, paved faces of our roads were scarred with asinine yellow lines, white lines, dashed lines.

Traffic is a naturally self-regulating system.

If only Alan Greenspan were made Traffic Czar, he would set everything straight. He was the man who didn't believe fraud in the stock market should be punished -- that the market would always correct itself. He was the pure-minded believer in man's innate desire to do good and be just.

Watch the video embedded above and see the majestic, almost arterial flow of traffic; an unchoreographed ballet of man and beast and machine sharing the roadway. The only thing that could add to its pastoral beauty is if children were playing in the roadway, as they surely did with the perfect knowledge that the wise and careful adults driving cars and commanding horse drawn carriages would look out for them.

The Obamaviks have long suppressed this rare film footage, and right they should have! It completely nullifies their every argument for government intervention.

This film shows that government is completely unnecessary. That people can govern themselves. If there is a building on fire somewhere in the city, citizen would know how to organize themselves into an effective fire brigade.

Leave us free to carry our own guns, and crime would be eradicated over night.

Let common sense prevail and watch disease and accidental injury disappear, and thus the need for socialized health care and the ruination of the United States of America.

Let each citizen be their own judge and jury, their own constable and justice of the peace, and watch this nation in turmoil revert back to the tranquil, orderly, Edenic place we see in this suppressed video.

It's a Doug's Life - Part I

It had been a long day on the porn set.

At the last minute, the director -- Clive Wreck -- decided he wanted eight women converging on Doug, rather than the three who were written into the script. Doug didn't much care because he had one of the best contracts in porn. His penalty fee for any alterations to scripts on which he'd signed off was substantial, so it was all extra lettuce to him.

The shoot had gone into the night, and the moon was just cresting the trees beyond the balcony as he entered his apartment.

After a shower, he went into the spare bedroom, which housed his alchemy laboratory.

Doug had recently discovered how to turn ordinary household tinfoil into gold through a process of oxidation while subjecting it to the run-off of sconed milford sulphate. Between the porn shoots and his schedule of IFC bouts, he'd only had time to rig a rudimentary assembly line converting 167 rolls of tinfoil per day into 17 lbs of raw bullion. He was hopeful, with a few days off, that he could increase productivity to approximately 2,000 rolls per day.

Already a multimillionaire due to his currency trading, and foreseeing the economic collapse in the United States 18 months in advance, Doug was partial to gold, enjoyed alchemy and, hey, everyone needed a hobby.

As he worked on refining the tinfoil-to-gold transformation process, he felt an annoying click in his shoulder. Which immediately brought back memories of his IFC bout two years ago against Gorilla Gorski.

Although Doug had spent some of the early 2000s as a hired mercenary in Chechnya fighting against Russia, he bore no actual animosity toward Russian people. Gorilla Gorski, on the other hand, bore a grudge against everything that breathed oxygen.

Doug never took any of his bouts lightly, though he remained undefeated through all 143 of his career. And he wasn't about to underestimate the six-foot-ten Gorski, whose fighting technique was simple, old-fashioned brute force, imperviousness to pain and a genuine lust for hurting people.

Doug was a leading practitioner of the little-known discipline of Nemak Slapjitsu. At first glance, the fighting style appeared rather comic: its adherents slapping their opponents' heads with rapid, bongo-like tattoos. But there was much more to the fighting style than met the eye.

Nemak Slapjitsu involved a level of training and self-discipline that overshadowed even ninjutsu.

In their bout, the commentators and crowd, alike, thought Doug would suffer his first defeat, when he, Doug, allowed Gorski to storm right up to him and shove his thumbs into his eyes, gouging them.

Little did Gorski know, this was all part of his opponent's strategy.

Doug squinted his eyes and amputated the ends of Gorski's thumbs.

Training had turned every inch of Doug's body into a weapon. He could slice tomatoes with an earlobe, blind a man by blowing his nose into his face, or severe the femural artery of anyone stupid enough to grab him from behind in a bear-hug him, with a single fart.

Doug's eyelids were a pair of miniature guillotines, and Gorski's thumbs were twin Marie Antoinettes.

As the giant Russian stumbled backward -- his thumb-stubs dual fountains of spurting blood -- Doug maneuvered around to the back of the man, climbed him like a trestle until he sat upon Gorski's shoulder like a child. Then Doug unleashed a furious flourish of Nemak slapjitsu upon the bald pate of his discombobulated opponent. It sounded like small arms fire.

Gorilla Gorski fell to the canvas like a Douglas Fir (pun intended).

It was not one of Doug's more dramatic or speedy wins, but it was unique in one way: Gorski died from the head trauma.

Under IFC rules, Doug was not liable for Gorski's death and continued his schedule of bouts uninterrupted. But he did feel personally responsible, so he paid a large settlement to Mrs. Gorski and was paying for the Gorski children to go through agricultural college in Minsk.

Upon their graduation, Doug would present the Gorski children with enough tinfoil-turned-gold to ensure they would never have to work again. They would be left to farm for the sheer pleasure of tending the land.

That's how Doug rolled.

The telephone rang, distracting him from his thoughts.

It was Bono.

"Doug, man," the singer said, "I've been ringing and ringing ya, what've ya been up to?"

"Just doing my thing."

"Right, so. Well, I'm wondering where you're at with the UN Porn For Life initiative. I was updating the U2 newsletter and thought, 'What the bollocks is on with that shite, now?' Ya know!"

Bono's Red program was dying an undignified death, so he one day contacted Doug, his favorite porn/IFC fighter, asking for ideas for raising money and awareness for the poor in Africa. It was an opening Doug had been awaiting for years to unveil an idea he'd had for eradicating poverty world-wide:

Celebrity porn on Pay-Per-View.

He envisioned lining up Scarlett Johansson, Alicia Keys, Salma Hayek, Alicia Cuthbert, Eliza Dushku, Vivica Fox, Kat Denning, and every and any other gorgeous, famous starlet to donate an hour of their sexuality to help the world's poor. The actresses, models, musicians and socialites would be paired with IFC fighters -- or, elect for girl-on-girl scenarios with each other -- and filmed having sex, which would then be broadcast Pay-Per-View for $100 for every five minutes of viewing.

Bono had leapt at the idea.

By Doug's calculations, four months of celebrity porn -- with 72 percent of the profits going toward relief efforts world wide -- would eradicate most curable diseases and fund educational and food distribution programs.

"It's pretty much a 'go'," Doug said. "I'm in the process of vetting directors. Scorsese and Tarantino are already on board."

"Brilliant," Bono gushed. "I knew ya'd come through --" The singer laughed. "No pun intended."

"None taken," Doug said. "Look, Bono, you caught me in the middle of something --"

"Sorry, sorry about that," Bono said. "Right, I just wanted to touch base. Cheers!"

"My pleasure."

"One last thing, Doug."

"What's that?"

"May the Force be with you!"

They laughed and hung up.

End of Part I