JayStar -- Poor man's OnStar

Scenario

Sometime after two a.m., the door to Burger World opens. A disheveled drunk stumbles into the place, clearly after a night of heavy consumption. The eel-eyed cashier is an unhappy teenager with a superiority complex. He sighs as the drunk approaches.

"Help you," the cashier says.

The drunk looks at the vast, illuminated menu board as though it's the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. "Jus' a sec," he belches. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of soiled change. He stares at it like he doesn't recognize the currency.

As another belch rises in his throat, the drunk takes out his cell phone and hits the JayStar button.

The signal banks off a dozing satellite and shoots into the squalid apartment, which serves as the JayStar headquarters.

JayStar, an unkempt man of indeterminate age, lounges in black jogging pants before a television showing reruns of Family Guy. His com-device signals with its distinctive beee-booop, rousing him. He grabs the handset.

"JayStar here -- go."

Back in Burger World, the drunk tries to collect his thoughts. "Uh, yeah man, whoa, I'm at Burger World and I only got two dollars and thirty one cents."

"What've you had tonight?" JayStar asks.

The drunk turns away from the counter. The cashier rolls his eyes.

"Uh, about eight beers, six rye-and Cokes and two doobs."

"How many people sharing the doobs?" JayStar inquires.

"Four of us."

"All right . . . today's what? Tuesday. OK, get the Fisherman's Catch Combo and an apple pie."

"Hang on," the drunk says into his cell phone. He turns to the cashier. "Gimme the Fisherman's Catch Combo and an apple pie."

The cashier punches the order into the register. "That'll be two dollars and twenty-nine cents."

The drunk slaps his change onto the counter. "Keep the change!" Into the cell phone he says, "Thanks JayStar!"

Pitch

Party-time always leads to "munchie time," but seldom does it lead to "clear-thinking-time." But that doesn't bother you because you've got JayStar.

Having difficulty satisfying your munchies on a limited budget? Call JayStar, he'll instruct you on how to order the most food for the lowest price -- every time! Experiencing "option paralysis" choosing that last drink for the walk home? JayStar knows what you need. Having trouble navigating that confusing and convoluted telephone directory? Fear not, JayStar has the information you need.

For serious partiers, there is only one serious answer to those snags that keep you from enjoying your night to the fullest. Get JayStar today!

beee-booop

"This is JayStar -- go!"

Scenario

Convenience store. After midnight. A burn-out stands in the snacks section, teetering like a tower in a windstorm. He suffers from option paralysis. In one hand, he holds a bag of Cheese Bursts. In the other, he holds a bag of Guacamole Diddlers.

Then inspiration hits.

The burn-out takes out his cell phone and hits the JayStar button.

The signal is slapshot into JayStar's apartment as he entertains some women he met in the laundry room of his apartment complex. JayStar, staying mentally limber, regales the ladies with an anecdote: ". . . dude's girlfriend carries a metal spoon in her smock so when she's giving the old guys sponge baths and one of them starts coming to attention, she gives his unit a thwack with the ole spoon --"

beee-booop

JayStar grabs the device-com's handset. "JayStar here -- go."

"Yeah, man, I'm at a store and I've been partying pretty heavy, and I don't know if I should get the Cheese Bursts or the Guacamole Diddlers."

"All right, Amigo," JayStar says, "breathe easy and tell me what you've had this evening."

"Uh, well," the burn-out wheezes, "I wasn't really counting --"

"That's OK, give me a rough ballpark guesstimate."

Eyes closed, trying to conjure images of his consumption that evening, the burn-out recounts: "Some beer -- about half a case at least. A fifth of vodka. Couple tequila shots. And some pot."

"Weed or oil?" JayStar inquires.

"Oil!" the burn-out says, momentarily recalling. "Oil. Right. Oil."

"If it was oil, go for the Diddlers. No question about it. Diddlers won't let you down."

The burn-out takes the bag of Diddlers to the counter and pays for them. As he walks out of the store, he raises his cell phone to his ear. "Thanks JayStar!"

"That's why I'm here," says JayStar.

Oprah after Oprah

Oprah Winfrey does much good with her money and celebrity. Now that we have that out of the way:

The stage set of The Oprah Winfrey Show is something akin to television's public square. Part circus ring, execution platform, porno set, part self-help couch, weeping gallery and buffoon hangar, Oprah Winfrey's stage is a combination slaughterhouse-gameshow-cum-withered-diseased-brain-lobe. The cavalcade of idiocy that has pranced across that stage defies description and imagination. The ravenous life-and-dignity sucking quicksand stories of human misery -- interspersed with jaunty tampon and cleaning product advertisements -- staggers the soul.

Like the annual Texas A&M bonfire, year after year, Oprah piles reprehensibility upon blinding reprehensibility. The latest salt-in-the-eyes saga she presented was that of actress Mackenzie Phillips with the story of her father allegedly raping her as a teenager.

It's too awful to comprehend, but in OprahLand, awful is never enough. Mackenzie Phillips went on to explain how the nonconsensual incest with her father turned into consensual incest. It's beyond comprehension, but not beyond Oprah's palette for excrement.

Oprah provides a platform for the most wretched, diseased and deranged among us in the guise of "helping." Mackenzie Phillips, in her own Oprahesque rationalization, stated, "I can't be the only one this has happened to. Someone needs to put a face on not only nonconsensual incest, but consensual incest, and I know that I can't be the only one who's lived through this. So in finding this redemption, maybe I'm helping someone else."

(Then Mackenzie, be that face. [bristle])

The only people helped are the advertisers. Oprah is Mahatma Gandhi to her advertisers, leading them to the promised land of profit and gain and brand recognition. If she has to do that on the back of the incest-ravaged carcass of a truly troubled and pathetic human being, she does it.

And all the while, there sits Oprah's zombie-hordes of soccer moms, the oral retentive, self-righteously obese, feeding, feeding on the rancid beacon of misery before them. It's the first law of commerce: "Give the people what they want." Oprah does.

Oprah has said that she will retire from her show in 2011. The question arises, where and how will she get her frequent, massive fix of despair. Certainly, there is plenty in this world to go around; and never will there be a shortage. But Oprah Despair is a very singular beast. It is highly concentrated for maximum upset and dyspepsia. It is highly commercial. And it must be shared. Oprah's like a malevolent emotional Nikola Tesla who beams human atrocity into the hearts of people, generating a collective power grid of shit. Of pure shit. And due to her alien physiology, Oprah feeds and lives off of this shit; grows stronger and ever richer off of this shit.

So, where will she get the fix? She may go on to be one of the most unsuccessful suicide hotline operators, finding her misery in small, phoned-in vials. Maybe she'll become an even less successful phone sex operator, one who handles masochists who call up to be outraged and humiliated, as she probes -- hour upon hour -- into her callers' miserable peccadilloes, deficiencies and dementia. But both of those options rob her of Power Grid of Despair.

Maybe Oprah will have a Queen For a Day contest through her magazine, soliciting the most sad and terrible stories from her readers, the worst of which gets to be Queen For a Day, like on the old TV show from the 1950s. And after having a gaggle of unwed mothers, abused wives, drug addicts of varying toxicity, former prostitutes, and other assorted human debris opening the tens of thousands of sob stories, I can see Oprah filling a bed the size baseball diamond with them, and rolling around naked in all the hand-scrawled missives of misery.

Fetal Felons: Crime epidemic beginning in utero

There was a time when criminals were unshaven scowling men, or rumpled world-weary women, with eyes staring out of mug shots that told silent stories of the three "D"s of crime: desperation, deprivation and desolation. The new face of crime, however, is decidedly younger, as evidenced in a Scott.net story Boy aged 3 is UK's youngest crime suspect.

Disturbing though it may be that criminality is afflicting ever younger segments of the population, there is a new crime-wave that's gone virtually unreported -- that being perpetrated by fetal felons.

Like gangsters within their own protected personnel carriers, criminal fetuses have the best cover in the world, that of a harmless, life-bringing pregnant woman. But within the family-friendly exterior lies a second, steely heart that is only out for profit and gain, anarchy and mayhem.

Twenty-six year old "Regina" -- who declined to use her real name -- was ecstatic when she learned she was pregnant, but by the end of her first trimester, she began to wonder if something was wrong. "I kept hearing this voice in my head saying 'Get me that iced-out cross rang you seen in the mall, bitch!' I had no idea where it was coming from. I thought I was going crazy. But then I started having pain with the baby."

The pain was no random discomfort emanating from a normal pregnancy -- it came from Rufus, the self-named fetus living within "Regina". Although Rufus was only a fetus of 14 weeks, he had crafted a makeshift shiv and was using it to etch in the wall of the womb, causing "Regina" great pain and distress. Soon, with the aid of an ultrasound, "Regina" understood what was happening to her, but had no recourse. The hands of the police were tied because the fetus was as yet unborn.

"So, I went to buy the ring," "Regina" says, "but Rufus insisted that I steal it. I didn't see what the difference was, but when he dug that shiv into me, I didn't care."

"Regina" stole the ring, but was immediately apprehended by mall security. "Oh, the language Rufus used when I was arrested," "Regina" cries. "He said such hurtful, horrible things. I can't repeat them!"

Then the situation went from bad to worse when Rufus took his mother-to-be hostage.

Communicating with authorities through a police department doctor's stethoscope, hostage negotiator's worked with him to resolve the stand-off. Without Rufus' knowledge, his father-to-be reimbursed the mall jeweler and all charges were dropped against "Regina." Charges, however, against Rufus were still being considered as an emergency in utero crime bill was rammed through during an all-night legislative session.

That's small comfort to Rufus' father-to-be. "Now we're terrified to see what's going to come out of 'Regina'," her husband says. "If we're having behavioral problems at this point, how are we going to cope when Rufus is ten or fifteen years old?"

There are no easy answers, but the proliferation of fetal felons demands that some action be taken.

In order for Rufus to start life with no police record, a judge has sentenced him to house arrest for the duration of "Regina"'s pregnancy. That solves the immediate problem of Rufus' police record, but what about after he's born?

Social worker Meredith Swanheart says, "The best we can hope is that in utero rehabilitation techniques will become more widely accepted and used. Otherwise, daycare centers in a few years are going to resemble armed camps."

Conservative legislators, though, see potential light at the end of this tunnel. Conservative politician, Lila Nojoy, believes there may be a solution to this problem. "The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to continue for generations, thank goodness. If we can get the international ban on child soldiers lifted, and rebrand these crib-crawling psychos as brave, pre-toddler patriots, we'll have the little sociopaths playing in the sand far, far away from here."

Solution to the abortion issue

Born-again Christianity makes full use of the elasticity of human beliefs. For instance, born-agains say they're all about the "culture of life," that "life is precious." Why else would they so aggressively picket abortion clinics? Because they believe in life.

But not all life.

Born-again Christians tend to be politically conservative, and if there's one thing conservatives love, it's capital punishment. The state of Texas has a human BBQ just about every month. They can't seem to put people to death fast enough in Texas.

Also, born-again Christian conservatives love war. It's like the Olympics, but "for keeps." And war is most fun when it's against people who have different beliefs. The born-agains tend to love Israel, and I've yet to hear about American born-again Christians declaring war on Buddhists. But when it comes to Muslims, born-again Christians just can't seem to get enough of the killing.

I once had a born-again neighbor who had a very easy solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. "They just need to kill them [Palestinians] all."

So, given this very selective outlook on the value of human life, I think a solution to the abortion issue can be found:

The next time a woman is harassed on her way into an abortion clinic, all she need do is tell the born-again Christians badgering her that her baby is Muslim. For added effect and realism, the woman could say, "Yeah, I couldn't decide whether to name the baby 'Jihad' or 'Abdul.'" Those words would hardly be out of her mouth when the born-agains would no doubt hoist her upon their shoulders and carry her into the clinic, and assist in every way possible in the termination of that birth.

You see, it can be easy dealing with hypocrites -- and by gosh are the born-agains world class hypocrites. Check out this article about anti-abortion activists who, themselves, have had abortions called The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion.

The world needs a Mr. Clean Corps

I know we're supposed to be tolerant of other cultures; respect them, even. . . . But I can't. I see a picture like this, above, and I just shake my head and think, Who the hell are these backward imbeciles who'd live like this?

I would never advocate the invasion or bombing of a country based upon its lack of municipal hygiene. And I certainly wouldn't discriminate against a person in a hiring situation because they originated from a country that embraces a more open and loose attitude toward mounds of garbage in city streets.

But respect? No. I just can't.

We don't need the Peace Corps, we need Mr. Clean Corps to send around the world. How can you have peace where everything smells of rot and decay? How can one even contemplate peace where nausea is a permanent part of the national character?

Why are we sending shipments of food to countries where the recipients are only going to consume it amid such filth? So they can have full bellies while enjoying all of the benefits of dysentery and plague?

My point is not to mock the poor, but to shame those who feel that disposing of masses of garbage in city streets is a viable sanitation strategy.

Doesn't the World Health Organization have some sub-sub-arm that deals with teaching people to put paper on public toilet seats, not to eat their toe-nail clippings, to avoid using used toilet paper for home decoration, or that garbage-strewn streets may be a detriment to public health?

The photo above is from an article about Egypt and how they are only now learning that it was a bad idea to kill every single pig in the country at the first blush of the misnamed "swine flu," H1N1. You see, the pigs there used to eat all of that garbage. Somehow, I don't envision pristine clean streets in the aftermath of pigs consuming that vast buffet of refuse. Unless the pigs are airlifted out of the area immediately after feeding, would they not simply replace the garbage they just ate with shit? So, what's worse? Streets filled with garbage or streets filled with pig shit? The WHO needs to weigh-in on this question.

In the meantime, cultures and countries that treat their cities and countries like a teenager treats his bedroom, are not high on the scale of things I respect, admire or care about.

Bono's running around the world talking about Third World debt. Christ, he should be making deals with Glad, Windex, Purell and Lysol to send massive shipments of their products to these hygiene-impaired countries.

We always hear about how high the unemployment rates in these developing countries. Why not hire masses of citizens into garbage brigades? Surely there's enough abandoned military equipment around that could be converted into garbage trucks.

I don't know. Surely in the year 2009, the world has better solutions to handling garbage than having swine simply eat it and turn it into shit.

Confessions of a Conservative Christian Libertarian Constitutionalist

The beauty of owning twin kraut World War II vintage Walthers is that the barrels on them are long and narrow enough to type with. They come from a time when men were men, and guns didn't need "safeties." Sure, that's cost me a keyboard or two, blogging with them, but no price is too high to pay in the name of freedom.

One time, I got so goddamned worked up blogging about that Barak Hussein, I blasted through the Enter key, and the slug did some weird dance ricocheting off the desk, going through the trailer wall separating the living room from the bedroom. It found its way into my wife's right temple. Before I hear any gasps from the gallery, let me tell you that she survived the mishap just fine. Poor thing's been dying of brain cancer the last year, and since we don't have any health insurance after I lost my job at the incinerator plant, I had to cauterize the wound with my soldering iron. Her head's a little lopsided now, but nothing a wad of toilet paper underneath her wig can't fix. Weird thing is, she says the tumor doesn't hurt so much anymore. Fancy that.

First thing I'd like to note: I don't have a permit for my Walters. Fedzilla is not going to have me on any its goddamned bureaucrat lists.

Second: when are people finally going to admit that the government can't get a goddamned thing right? From traffic laws, to taxes, welfare, to keeping the roads in passable condition. The mail's slow, schools are nothing but idiot-making factories, and snow plows only clear the streets where the mayor's friends live. Government sticks its incompetent nose into the auto industry, Wall Street, and now it wants to get into the healthcare business. Where does the madness end?

Now, I don't care if the bureacrats and their jack-booted police want to tell people what they can and cannot smoke, who they can and cannot fuck, what they can and cannot watch, read, drink, snort, or inject. Go ahead and jail those hippy assholes and their marijuana. Just don't try and take away my guns!

Some hippy, Communist, jackoff at the incinerator plant once said to me, "Why is it that conservatives think the government can't do anything right, except when it comes to executing its citizens?"

The son of a bitch. Sure, I know about "Thou shalt not kill," but everybody knows that God actually meant "Thou shalt not kill . . . unless you make me mad."

"And isn't it funny," the hippy Communist asshole went on, "that our economic system is called 'capitalism' and executing citizens is called 'capital punishment'?"

Yeah, hilarious. I didn't see the idiot's point, but that was nothing new.

What do I care about the government killing people who are murderers?

Then the hippy loudmouth said, "You know, conservatives live in society like there is no society. You live in the community like there is no community."

Well, who the hell can make heads or tails out of that?

I blog with my Walthers because how do I know some hippy drug maniac isn't going to come in through my window and slaughter me and my wife? How do I know the FBI isn't going to mistake my place for Ruby Ridge or Waco? I see those neighbors across the driveway sitting outside, always watching my trailer. Probably informants. Christ, they're probably a sleeper cell for some group of fanatical whackos. How do I even know my neighbors are my neighbors?

Sometimes, I watch my wife sleep and I'm tempted to poke at the cauterized bullet wound in her head, just to make sure it isn't make-up; that she's not some snitch sent in here undercover. There's even the odd time I'll look in the bathroom mirror and wonder if its not actually a piece of clear glass behind which the government has created a room to look just like my bathroom, and that they have an actor in there acting just like me. I've seen that in movies. Sure, the only time the government has its act together is when its up your nose and down your throat, snooping. So, I took a shot at that window, one day. Turned out, it was only a mirror after all. My wife wasn't bothered. She figured I was blogging.

My cat's been watching me extra intent this evening. When I look at its eyes the right way, they don't look like eyes, but camera lenses. Sure, the government has all the expertise in the world when it comes to spying on its own citizens! Time I took a closer look.

Stop pansy-assing around! Deregulate everything Now!

Once and for all, I want the government to get off my back! The one thing that will revive this narcoleptic economy is deregulation. We have far too many rules to live by and it's stifling innovation, commerce and growth. It's impeding freedom. It's poisoning democracy. It's turning humanity into so many lab mice.

The first and most important deregulation that must -- not should, but must -- be instituted is the eradication of all traffic laws. We've been following these laws -- intersection traffic signals, Stop signs, yellow lines, white lines, dotted lines -- for generations although they outlived their usefulness long ago. They are throwbacks to an overbearing, patriarchal age. What could be more of an affront to human dignity than a Do Not Enter sign? Or, this arcane business of driving on the right-hand side of the road? It's quaint, sepia-toned bullshit.

"Well, we have traffic laws to keep people safe!" squeaks the bureaucrat whose job it is to ensure all traffic fines are paid.

Safe? If someone is stupid enough to step out into a busy street, in front of a speeding car, maybe they don't deserve to be safe. We cannot legislate away death.

Traffic is a natural, self-correcting system.

Moreover, vehicles keep people safe, not laws. Deregulating traffic laws will finally get every vehicle under the weight of 6,000 lbs off the road. We need bigger, more heavily fortified vehicles. And once we get hydrogen fuel hammered out, it'll cost next to nothing to drive an eight-wheeled Hummer Steroid Hefty Edition.

Also, more people are killed each year by drivers running yellow and red lights, than any other traffic scenario. Intersection traffic signals are merely a red cape flashed before the bull in every motorist, challenging and tempting them to beat it.

"What about school zones?" wheezes the weak-kneed bureaucrat. "We've got to keep the children safe!"

More children than ever are driven to and picked up from school in motor vehicles, whether they be buses or cars. Nobody walks anymore, and it's a good thing. Walking is another ridiculous, outmoded memory of the past that serves to crush the future.

And I think it's time to speak frankly on the matter of children: once a fetus has successfully avoided abortion during its nine months in the womb, it's on its own. What are we supposed to do? Coddle people from cradle to grave?

No.

So, I propose that all traffic laws governing city and highway traffic be abolished. Will this lead to some car wrecks? Certainly, but traffic is a self-correcting, self-regulating system. Once we get the spaghetti-spined, heads-up-their-asses motorists off the roads, true freedom and innovation and commerce can finally be achieved. We cannot constrain and strangle our potential any longer like a child immobilized by a seat belt. We need to put the roof down, kick into fifth gear, lay on the horn, and speed the wrong way down that one way street called Progress.

Do Not Enter? You'll have to pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands.

Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines (and other stories) by Gary Britson

Murphy's Law Press is proud to announce the publication of Modern Communications Techniques in Des Moines by Gary Britson.

Some writers we miss entirely during their lifetimes: John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, Tom McHale, author of Farragan's Retreat, H.L. Humes, author of The Underground City, even Fred Exley, author of A Fan's Notes. Their books are thrust upon us by ardent strangers we meet on trains or in cafés, or by friends who pass along heated recommendations as though they're cures for gout or hangovers. Usually, we can only find these books in the dusty and shadow-shrouded stacks of used bookstores. Upon finding some partially disintegrating edi-tion, we clutch it, rescue it and devour it -- only to become that ardent stranger, ourselves, who thrust the book on strangers on trains or in cafés.

Searching through the vast swampy bulrushes of the Internet in 2002, I stumbled across the work of such an author who is still with us. His name is Gary Britson. I encountered his story, "A Job For Gotsdiner," on the Zoetrope Virtual Studio -- it made me feel like Joseph Smith unearthing those golden tablets, thinking, This is the stuff upon which new religions are predicated.

A baby-boomer from America's Midwest, Gary Britson has fermented in popular culture for more than fifty years. In his work, references to Finnegan's Wake and the operas of Wagner stand alongside mentions of Hee Haw and The Three Stooges. In other stories, zombies eat at restaurant salad bars and young women communicate with fellow riders on public transit via slogans on T-shirts. An equal-parts fan of theatre, opera and baseball, Gary Britson writes in his story "Harry in America," about a composer whose opus is a musical based on the Warren Commission Re-port on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In his story, "The Executioner's Groupies," Britson co-mingles capital punishment with baseball, writing of a wretched old stadium in Iowa where condemned men are strung-up to the scoreboard and electrocuted when a homerun is hit. In "A Job for Gotsdiner," he writes of the soul-demolishing experience of a middle-aged man losing a job he'd held for years and his fruitless, perilous pursuit of another, wringing pained guffaws from the reader as he recounts Gotsdiner's tragicomic travails.

The following stories are the hilarious and playfully perverse work of a man who's been overlooked by literary agents far and wide, shunned by the whole of American publishing, ignored by major magazines, and who is, quite possibly, the best writer you've never read. Check out an excerpt.

Negatunities Abound for "Deviant" Behavior of AmorGroup at Camp Sullivan, Kabul, Afghanistan

Sirs,

Adversity often brings with it certain negatunities. The recent publicity about so-called "deviant" behavior at Camp Sullivan (A.K.A. the American Embassy) in Kabul, Afghanistan among AmorGroup -- who guards the place -- may seem bad on the surface, but I am writing to assure you that marketing, PR, and even entertainment franchise opportunities abound.

First, from the POGO Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding U.S. Embassy in Kabul:

Numerous emails, photographs, and videos portray a Lord of the Flies environment. One email from a current guard describes scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity…." (Attachment 2) Photograph after photograph shows guards-- including supervisors -- at parties in various stages of nudity, sometimes fondling each other. These parties take place just a few yards from the housing of other supervisors.

This isn't as a bad as it sounds. The reference to Lord of the Flies isn't great, but luckily, no one reads anymore, so the reference is lost everyone except the few nosey finks who'd even look at this letter. Next, the actions of AmorGroup in Kabul have been compared to the antics of the fun-loving roustabouts in the 1978 John Landis film, Animal House. This may be considered a PR win. The film Animal House depicts non-stop fun and hijinx. Sure, there are varying degrees of raunchiness to its merriment, but all of it is harmless, which is the most important thing.

Next, there is marketing potential in the ArmorGroup's frolicking, namely snacks and alcoholic beverage endorsements. May I ask, what brand of potato chips do ArmorGroup personnel prefer to eat from one anothers' buttocks cracks? Similarly, what brand of vodka -- or other alcoholic beverages -- do they drink from each others' behinds? I understand that video of these exploits exist. I will give you the email address of our "viral video guru," Calvin Ligula. He can have that footage uploaded to YouTube and other venues within 24 hours of receiving it. We also have power-user accounts on social media sites, such as Digg.com and Reddit.com, to ensure that we saturate your target audience with those images.

With the success of the animated TV series Family Guy, the Jackass franchise, Bum Fights, and the like, I have great hopes for an "AmorGroup Gone Wild" series of videos to spin-off from the initial product marketing campaign. So far, you've had excellent exposure -- if you'll pardon the accidental pun -- having been featured on the very enviable Web site, Gawker.com. That is a wonderful start; something my company could help you build upon.

I look forward to hearing from you, gentlemen! In the meantime, please remember that every cloud has a silver lining, and every buttock crack potentially has a tasty potato chip hiding within!

Yours,
Nigel Tepwater
Executive Vice President, Corporate Client Outreach
SilverLining Marketing Systems

Boycott Scotland! Freedom Tape!

From CNN.com: Anger over the decision [to allow the Lockerbie bomber to go back to Libya] has prompted a call for Americans to avoid travel to Scotland and boycott Scottish products including whisky.



Republican senator from Mississippi, 83 year old Freemont Indignan, tabled a resolution that the 3M corporation either rename its popular Scotch Tape product "Freedom" Tape or else leave the country.

"And forthwith and henceforth, I will no longer eat haggis," said the senator.

The senator did, however, admit that he would continue to wear kilts during his private time because those are made in China. "I have always preferred a good, airy kilt over dungarees."

Where monsters are made -- in Ivy League schools

• Sources: Report to detail alleged abuse inside CIA secret prisons
  
  
• The Rich Get Richer: Top CEO Pay Up While Stocks Tumble
  
  
• Report: CIA Used Power Drills, Guns, Threats Against Children
  
  
• Bank Looting Bonuses Reported - Will the SEC Awake from Its Slumber?

Do you want to know where the monsters of modern life come from? The Ivy League schools of the United States.

Who are these monsters? Wall Street and American intelligence agencies.

A recent writing project necessitated some research about the CIA. As I did my reading, something occurred to me: the same epic incompetence, greed, sociopathic/psychopathic behavior exhibited by the CIA in its torturing, democracy-overthrowing history mirrors the behavior witnessed in recent years on Wall Street. How Wall Street traders and financiers gleefully, and without accountability, tank our economy, and then feel justified and entitled to receive millions of dollars in bonuses for their misdeeds. What do these two groups of miscreants have in common? So many of them come from Ivy League schools.

One CIA hero I was reading about was Dan Mitrione. He may not have been Ivy League educated, but the men who recognized, encouraged and employed his particular "talents" surely were. Mitrione was a small-town cop who joined the FBI, and later, the CIA. He was regarded as an expert in "harsh interrogation techniques." In fact, Mitrione was so proficient at mistreating human beings, he was sent to South America in the late 1960s by the CIA to train others to better mistreat human beings. One of Mitrione's signature tactics was taking very fine wire, which was attached to an electrical source, placing the ends of that fine wire in between a person's teeth and then applying electric shocks. Done in the name of freedom and goodnenss, democracy and God, no doubt.

In 1970, Mitrione was kidnapped by "terrorists" and murdered. About Mitrione, the CIA said that he exemplified the highest principles of the police profession. Right.

The "perfect storm" of this sociopathic, psychotic, remorseless inhumanity and epic incompetence of the Ivy League was embodied in George W. Bush (Yale and Harvard educated) who is noted, far and wide, for his efforts to tank the economy and his deeply held disrespect for human life.

Having never come within a hundred miles of an Ivy League school, I have to wonder, what the hell are they teaching people there?

Learn more about forgotten CIA hero Dan Mitrione

Rush's Ark

Gawd went to his bulbous, bilious servant, Rush, disturbing him as he penned a list of reasons why he hated his neighbors in the village. Gawd said, "Rush, build an ark by this number of cubits, by that many cubits, by whatever else number of cubits. And fill this ark with two of every venal, petty, contrary opinion and belief -- catch them like fireflies and be sure they survive. I have been on a binge, drinking the Cosmos' version of Milwaukee's Finest, and will soon empty my bladder upon the urinal puck of your world."

Rush waited -- twig poised above his wet, clay tablet -- to see if Gawd was going to say more. Gawd did: "Oh yeah, and in order for these venal, petty, counter-intuitive opinions to flourish upon the earth, be sure to bring people upon the ark whose minds have all the same jagged edges and asymmetrical crevices for these cancerous beliefs to live in."

Rush waited to see if there were more instructions. There were not. He wondered if a "cubit" was a unit of measurement from that liberal, communist, new-world-order metric system. There were days when he had his doubts about Gawd.

So, Rush built the ark. Actually, Rush employed his usual strategy when there was work to be done -- he got others to do it for him. He duped them with promises of high wages, payable upon completion. On the day of completion, the workers came around Rush's hut looking for their payment. By that point, the sky had darkened and it appeared Gawd's cosmic beer-binge was ending. All that remained was The Great Micturition.

"Give me one more day," Rush told the workers. "It's about to rain. As soon as it stops raining, come back, and I'll pay everyone."

The workers were unhappy with this, but figured a short delay couldn't hurt.

As the rains fell, Rush led all of the unreasonable, cancerous, sniping opinions into the ark. By the time he invited his few friends into the ark, Rush was wet and cranky; his crotch hurt from his legs rubbing together during all of the walking he was forced to do corralling and herding the opinions.

When Rush's friends -- Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Inanity, Bilious O'Reilly, Michael Wiener and Robert Novak (who was no longer alive, but strangely, nobody noticed) -- boarded the ark, the first thing they noticed was the primitive conditions of their new habitat.

"Where are the waiters and domestics going to sleep?" Anne Coulter asked. "I like being served, but I don't want to actually be around those people."

"We're going to have to live without some of our creature comforts," Rush explained.

"I resent being called a creature," Sean Inanity pouted, crossing his arms. "And while I'm at it, I don't see a hair stylist station."

"There are no hair stylists!" Rush said, impatient. "It's just us! Don't you understand? Gawd is pissing this world away, and we've been chosen to be saved!"

"Sounds like socialism to me," Glenn Beck said.

"What do you mean?" Bilious O'Reilly asked him.

"I don't know," said Glenn Beck.

Robert Novak kept his own counsel.

* * *

The rains came, flooding the earth. The workers who'd built the ark waited at Rush's hut until they were swept away by the rising tides.

The inhabitants of the ark --

"I resent being called an 'inhabitant'" Sean Inanity groused through pursed lips.

-- unpacked their possessions. Each had been assigned an area in the ark. Everyone insisted on having their own space, to do with whatever they pleased.

The first sign of disharmony among the residents of the ark --

"I prefer to be called a 'passenger,'" whined Sean Inanity.

-- was when Michael Wiener began his prolonged colonic ablutions within his area. He had every right to do so, nobody argued that, but he went about the unpleasantness without the slightest thought for the people around him.

Bilious O'Reilly produced an axe from his luggage, and began chopping at the floor of the ark. Rush rushed over to stop him. "Are you insane?" Rush shouted. "You're cutting right into the bottom of the ark! You break through there, you'll sink us!"

"It's my right," Bilious O'Reilly said.

"Well, Jeezus, sure you have the right," Rush said, exasperated, "but that doesn't mean it's right to do it!"

"It's my right," said Bilious O'Reilly.

* * *

Sean Inanity had brought numerous books of matches into the ark so that he could continue one of his favorite passtimes: lighting farts. Seeing flashes in the darkness, Rush approached Inanity, wondering what he was doing. Although the activity looked like fun, danger was on Rush's mind.

"What're you doing?" Rush demanded. "If you light the ark on fire, you'll sink us all!"

"It's my right!" Sean Inanity pouted. He always hated being interrupted when the gas was flowing.

"Well, sure, but what good is your right if you burn up the boat?"

"It's my right."

* * *

One day, Rush awoke with a start from an afternoon nap to the sound of automatic gun fire. He hurried to the other end of the ark and found Anne Coulter shooting at targets with her Ingram Automatic pistol. She was shooting at slow moving opinions that had innocently wandered to her end of the ark. She'd hit a few of them, but had also ravaged the wall of the ark.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rush shouted. "If you shoot through that wall, you'll drown us all!"

"It's my right," Anne Coulter said, turning with her gun, forgetting to aim the barrel downward. Rush stared at the pistol's bore, pointed directed at him.

"Could you point that away from me?" he said.

"Oh sure," Anne Coulter said. In shifting it away from him, her finger accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a round into the floor of the ark. She shrugged and laughed. "Oops."

Rush struggled to control himself. "Understand, that wall and this floor are all that stand between us and all of the water. If the water gets into the ark, the ark will sink and we'll drown. There is no land for us to swim to. No lifeboats on this ark. It's just us."

"But it's my right," Anne Coulter said.

* * *

Then there came the day when a constant, seemingly-unending thudding sound awakened Rush. He walked through the ark and found Glenn Beck with a ping pong paddle in each hand, pounding two balls rhythmically against the wall in his area. Rush watched. Beck was incessant. The sound was maddening. Within two minutes, Rush was ready to strangle him.

"Glenn!" Rush shouted louder than he intended.

Beck caught the balls and turned to Rush. "What's up?"

"Do you have to do that?"

"What? Ping-ponging? I do it for exercise."

"Jeezus, you exercise like that? How do you stay so fat?"

"A remanant of my heavy drug use. When I was an addict, I must've blown my works apart. Still, ping-ponging's fun."

"But the sound of it is driving me crazy."

Glenn Beck looked at him, blank. "But I do it for exercise."

"But, really, the sound has me going out of my mind."

"It's my right."

Rush gritted his teeth. "Yes, I understand it's your right. But in the name of all that's holy, could you please see your way toward giving it a break for a while?"

"But it's my right."

As Rush walked dejectedly away from Glenn Beck, he passed Robert Novak's section. Bob had been very quiet since coming aboard. At least he understood what it meant for people to try and live together. Rush entered his area and heard laughter. The laughter didn't sound like Bob, and a moment later he saw its source -- the opinions and beliefs Gawd ordered brought aboard were skittering and running around like rats. They took off when Rush entered. It took some doing, but Rush eased his massive girth onto the floor, so that he sat next to Robert Novak.

"Bob, what's wrong with the others?" Rush said.

Bob said nothing.

"We've got to live together on this ark. I don't like the inconveniences any more than they do, but until the floodwaters recede and dry land once again appears, we're stuck here."

Bob said nothing.

"You're very wise, Bob. You keep your own counsel. There's no getting through to them."

Through the ark echoed the sounds of gun fire, incessant ping-ponging, the chopping of wood, giggles and short gas bursts catching flame, and the wet, gruesome sounds drifting down from Michael Wiener's section.

And the first narrow stream of water ran down the center aisle of the ark. The wretched, cancerous, bat-like opinions and beliefs cackled at the sight of it -- sure, they could fly. It was water from outside. Rush looked at it and hung his head.

Bob kept his own counsel.

Rush reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of Oxycontin. "What the fuck?" he said.

Bob kept his own counsel.

Conservatives are conservative on courage

Who was that gun-toting anti-Obama protester?

Liberals protest war. Conservatives protest health care. Got it.

So, a guy shows up to one of President Obama's health care town hall meetings with a 9mm strapped to his thigh. Provocative. Avant garde, even.

The thing I don't understand about conservatives is that they live in society as though there is no society. They live within a community as though there is no community.

We have police. We have a military. Yet, these fear-filled quivering rabbits carry firearms around on their person to church, to the grocery store, to the liquor store, the playground, to work. Then they have the gall to veil this obvious, selfish, childish obsession with fear by calling it "love of freedom," "exercising my rights," or simply "I do it cuz I can!" Part and parcel with this pervasive fear among gun-toting conservatives is the need to lie about it.

I have handled firearms. I have fired a Glock, a Magnum, a shotgun and a Bushmaster at a target range. It was fun. I also learned that day that no private citizen in any civilized nation should ever have the right to carry one of these corpse-makers in public. No way.

"But I use my gun to hunt!" comes an indignant cry.

You hunt outside of a health care town hall meeting where President Obama is going to speak?

Then there are the gun-owning hunters who lavishly whine about being looked down upon because they hunt.

Well, listen buddy, hunting is a primitive act -- like taking a shit outside. Sure, go ahead and do it, you've got the right, I guess, but don't do it and then turn around making any great claims to sophisticated personhood. We created society so we wouldn't have to go out and kill for our food -- and so we could shit indoors, in private.

And if you're so gawddamned frightened all the time -- sleep with a nightlight.

Thank You, Masked Man!

There was sadness at the wake. There always is. But the characters sat stoically, facing the coffin in which their creator lay. And they all came: Dutch, the warden, Kinky the hospital attendant, Uncle Tom from Death Row. Tarzan and Boy. With a lump of chewing tobacco bulging like a tumor in between his cheek and gum, Fat Boy the used-car salesman, ogled Jane, winking at her when he caught her eye. Dracula and his bats were there, as were Ike, Sherm, and Nixon, sharing a flask with the White Collar Drunk. Tonto sat with the Lone Ranger and Silver (who was also crammed into the row), asking him to explain what had happened to their Kemosabe. To which the Lone Ranger exclaimed, "I'll explain if you'll get your goddamned hands off me, you barbarian!"

In the back of the chapel stood Christ and Moses. Bishop Sheen and Cardinal Spellman sat in front of Them, whispering to one another. Seated in the front row of the chapel, clothed in their judicial robes, sat Magistrate Kaiser ing intently to Judge Axlerod, who said over and over, "I swear to God he said: 'blah blah blah!'" Next to them were the pall bearers: six police officers wearing executioner masks beneath their hats. They were members of the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York police departments. No one knew from what city the sixth officer had come.

With an empty chair separating her from the pall-bearers, the widow grieved. She was Lenny's shady lady: Hot Honey Harlowe. She wore a black crushed velvet dress, which clung to her lushly sculpted body. Her long, wavy red hair hung down her back. She cried and fidgeted with the object she held in her hands-Lenny's favorite microphone.

Standing at a podium at the front of the chapel stood Father Flotsky. He looked on all of the fatherless characters, and in his Barry Fitzgerald brogue began his eulogy, "Once a boy goes the bad road, the good road is hard to follow. When the good road is hard to follow, the bad road opens and the good road closes. Lenny was not a bad boy. Saying words of four letters doesn't make anybody bad. 'To' is a preposition, and 'come' is a verb. When Jackie Kennedy stood up in the Presidential limousine during her husband's assassination, the moment after the President was shot, she was hauling ass to save her ass!"

The old priest looked down at the placid countenance of Lenny Bruce. Father Flotsky sighed and said, "There is nothing sadder than an aged hipster."



Father Flotsky motioned to the pall bearers. They came forward and lowered the coffin's lid. With three officers on each side they raised the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it down the aisle like a trophy.

The atmosphere at the cemetery was even more melancholy. The police lay the casket on the straps stretched across the gaping mouth of the open grave. The orphans gathered around. In the midst of the gathering, stood Honey holding the microphone. Although she was a living person, she stood among Lenny's creations for she was often more fictional than real to him.

Father Flotsky, in full ceremonial garb, asked that the lid of the coffin been raised to allow him to bless the body, and so Honey could lay the microphone on Lenny's chest. The police officer whom no one knew stepped forward and raised the lid.

The characters breathed a collective gasp when they saw there was no body in the casket, but that it was filled with plastic dog crap. Tarzan turned to Nixon, "Plastic dog crap?! Who'd build a factory to make plastic dog crap?!"

Nixon shrugged and said, "I don't know how you couldn't, seeing as the plastic vomit sold so well."

The unknown police officer turned to the gathering and removed his hat and mask. It was Lenny. To everyone's amazement, Lenny removed every stitch of clothing he wore except for the gun belt, which he turned in such a way so as to cover his nudity with the holster.

"What?" Lenny asked, looking at the stunned faces. "Nobody ever seen a naked Jew before?"

No one replied.

Lenny slipped his thumbs into the gun belt and said, "Before I go, I just want to get something clear: If you take a kike and a dyke, a spic and a mick, and put them into a room with a kraut, a gook, a fag, and a spook, what do you have? A room full of people. So, if you put an F next to a U, then throw on a C and a K, what do you have? A word. And if you think about it, one that's pretty nice. Because, when I think about that word I don't imagine scenes of death and killing. No. I get images of her," he pointed toward Hot Honey Harlowe. "And if any of you schlubs think that's dirty, if you think that's decadent, amoral, or asexual; if you really think I'm rank for telling you that you're probably a bunch of fruits.

"I'm not saying there are no harmful words. There are. Like "mutilate." God, that's an ugly word. Or how about these dirty four letter words like "kill," "hurt," or "hate?" Or how about these: "entrapment," "harassment," and "we find the defendant guilty as charged!?"

Lenny gazed at his grieved characters. He approached Honey and kissed her tear-wet cheek. As he turned to the anxious expressions on his characters he said, "You worried about where I'm going from here? Am I going up? Down? Well, since I believe that the earth revolves, you can go to Heaven at six-oh-five in the morning, and hell at eleven-twenty-nine at night. You could say hell is to the left. I don't know. But if I see God I'll bet He's pretty pissed off. He might not have a TV, but I'd bet He knows about all the crappy things we're doing in the world. All this killing and hurting shit we're doing is a boil on God's ass, so he sent Jesus to lance that boil. But we killed Him. And if you think about it, it's a good thing we got Him when we did because if we killed Christ in the last fifty years we'd have to contend with generations of parochial school kids running around with little electric-chairs around their necks."

In the rear of the group, Christ smiled at Moses.

"Nah. Hey, I gotta split. There's a subway train due to go by in the Great Beyond and Marilyn Monroe's standing next to the tracks-I gotta be ready with my gun when her skirt goes up. So, in the words of Will Rogers, 'I never met a dyke I didn't like.'"

Lenny turned away from the assembled characters who watched his skinny, white Jewish ass as he walked off into the sunset.

Walter Cronkite's first realization upon entering the Afterlife

Upon entering the Afterlife following 92 years on earth, veteran newsman Walter Cronkite's first realization -- after the knowledge of the universe was suddenly opened to him -- was: "Jesus Christ, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy! I was such a fool! Where the hell's that Earl Warren?"

Michael Jackson's Star-Studded Debacle

Like the Bible, Bob Dylan has a quote for every occasion. When it came to the "star studded" memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center on July 7th, one Dylan line, above all, came to mind: "They're selling postcards of the hanging" from his song Desolation Row on the album Highway 61 Revisited.

No one could ever accuse Michael Jackson of being humble. Sure, he was a benevolent, harmless, torrentially talented man/child who did many good works in his lifetime. He made the money and he spent the money. It was his -- he could do whatever he wanted with it. To anyone who would criticize Michael Jackson for his ridiculously ostentatious wardrobe -- that sequined glove always stood out to me as a wretched beacon of laughable excess -- I would offer the line from Jesus Christ (which I think of every time I stiff a panhandler): "The poor will be with you always." But for all his virtues -- and they were many -- no one could accuse Michael Jackson of being humble.

So, the unhumble, ostentatious Michael Jackson was waked yesterday in a concert hall named for a company that sells adding machines and Liquid Paper. I didn't watch the event. I don't have any interest in postcards of hangings. But this being the 21st Century and this being North America, there wasn't a gawddamned place I could go yesterday where there wasn't a TV barking in my face -- and every one of those TVs was tuned to the orgy of weirdness in Los Angeles.

What I saw was stomach-turning: a gaggle of funeral crows surrounding Jackson's eleven year old daughter as she was propped up, nearly hysterical, to speak of her love for her father. The normality of the child's pain and grief stood in stark contrast to the rest of the debacle's unreality.

The painful, schmaltz-upon-schmaltz musical selections performed to slide shows of Michael Jackson flashing on a screen five storeys tall was more than my pancreas could take. And all of those "stars" crowding on the stage for their few minutes in the spotlight. It's like Jimmy Kimmel's appointment book was used to find "stars" who were available: Usher? John Mayer? Jennifer Hudson? Magic Johnson? Kobe Bryant? Shaheen Jafargholi? Al Sharpton (whose speech, I'd heard, was actually well done)? Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who apparently embarrassed herself in her over-the-top late-breaking defense of Michael Jackson against child molestation charges, of which he was completely acquitted years ago.

Incredibly, Jesse Jackson -- America's #1 Uninvited Guest -- wasn't there to growl inarticulately about how much Michael Jackson owed to him.

I heard a bit of Berry Gordy's speech on the radio. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but it struck me as deeply unseemly. There was something victorious in the voice of Berry Gordy, having outlived a much younger, towering talent which he had "discovered." It's just me, I'm sure, but it was like J. Edgar Hoover speaking at President John F. Kennedy's funeral.

There is no question that Michael Jackson was a preternaturally talented person. His performances with the Jackson Five were amazing. As he got older, he remained inventive and vital, but his voice sounded like it was squashed in his throat. The first time I ever saw Michael Jackson perform was in about 1977, when he was on some TV variety show performing "Rock With You." Hearing him, I turned to my mother and said, "He sounds like a girl." So did Geddy Lee and Neil Young, but there was something trapped and hiding and unpleasant in Jackson's voice. Clearly, I was in the minority with my opinion.

I watched, live, in the 1980s as Michael Jackson received his truckload of Grammy awards for Thriller. Aside from the song "Beat It," the album didn't do much for me.

I saw Oprah Winfrey's interview with Michael Jackson in 1993, and marveled at how vulnerable and helpless he appeared. He was a 35 year old man who clearly still needed his mother. It seemed I wasn't the only person who saw that, for it was only months later that child molestation accusations against Michael Jackson surfaced in the media and amid California law enforcement. I wasn't there, so I cannot say definitively, but I don't believe for a second that Michael Jackson abused any children. I believe those molestation charges were simply a shakedown. Most celebrities have competent handlers who head-off potential problems. Obviously, Michael Jackson did not. No manager, agent or handler or publicist for a celebrity of that magnitude would ever allow their client to hold sleepovers with children who were not blood relatives. But Jackson either surrounded himself with spineless, idiot "yes" men, or was too naive to take good advice. So, he opened himself to heinous accusations that forever tarnished his name, and robbed him of $20 million -- the first time around.

Then came the child molestation charges in 2005, or thereabout, of which he was completely acquitted.

I also watched Martin Bashir's shameless, execrable documentary Living With Michael Jackson. Again, Jackson's handlers were utterly asleep at the wheel, allowing Bashir's camera to film their client's life in all its bizarre and creepy absurdity. How Jackson traveled around with an army of foam rubber human dolls, all with caricatured facial expressions, which were seated throughout his palatial hotel suites. Jackson on shopping sprees, impulse-buying items worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jackson's limousine being besieged by his terrifying fans, who swarmed the vehicle like starving cannibals. And then Jackson dangling his child out of that hotel room window in Germany. Directly after that occurred, Bashir put on some sort of Dr. Phil act, seeming to try and get Jackson to admit that it had been a foolhardy gesture. But for all Bashir's probing, only one thing was clear: he wasn't trying to help Michael Jackson come to a realization, he wanted to provoke the unstable pop star into doing something even more outrageous.

Michael Jackson wasn't the only person duped by Martin Bashir's journalistic guise. ABC News gave him Nightline after Ted Koppel retired. Truly bizarre.

So, Michael Jackson was buried in a gold casket, and his memorial was compared by TV talking heads to President Obama's inauguration and Princess Diana's funeral. After all, it's not about the loss of a human life, it's about the ratings.

Michael Jackson died as he lived -- used, abused, tacky, enigmatic. The final, horrific image I caught of the funeral was Jackson's brothers/pallbearers each wearing a single, sequined glove in their brother's honor.

Now for the stories of him being sighted, alive, in Mauritius or Tanzania to begin.

Religious broadcaster builds $4M home despite layoffs at his ministry

Here's to the AIG of the Christian realm:

CHARLOTTE (AP) — A religious broadcaster is building a $4 million home in a gated, lakefront community in western South Carolina at the same time that the ministry has cut jobs and reset thermostats to save money in its new headquarters.

Inspiration Networks' CEO David Cerullo is building the 9,000-square-foot home on a lot that overlooks Lake Keowee, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday.

It's good news to hear that Christian businesses have their share of scumbag executives who feel they are separate and above the suffering of ordinary citizens who are losing their jobs, homes and lives.

(Here, inset, is a picture of David Cerullo, personally negotiating a complex bond-transfer deal with Gawd Himself, in which Cerullo cleverly and expertly took the Auld Fucker to the cleaners!)

Congratulations to David Cerullo on his beautiful new home! That's just what Gawd wants his lacquered, pampered, entitlement-filled functionaries on earth to have -- the biggest cave, the most animal skins and snake stew, while others go wanting.

It's prosperity theology, isn't it? Like a vaccuous, yuppie parents who cannot take time away from their hectic, high-powered jobs to give their children actual love and guidance, and so ply the children with gadgets and trinkets and bullshit, like cell phones, video games, cars, credit cards, etc. -- so too does Yuppie Gawd pile the trinkets onto those He most loves in this grand shopping mall called Earth.

So, David Cerullo, you go and bank all of that Gawd love, sign those deeds, hire those contractors, hoard and hoard and hoard -- because it's all Gawd's tangible love for you.

What makes this grotesque story just sizzle with hypocrisy and outrage is that extra calloused layer Christians have on their minds that makes them utterly impervious to reason, utterly incapable of self-reflection, entirely blanked on understanding how they appear to others in the world at large.

So, keep serving Gawd! And by gosh, keeping on serving yourself!

You are absolute swine.

Let David Cerullo know how you feel by e-mailing him at info@insp.com, found on the Inspiration Web site.

Someone's Watching Me: John Carpenter's "lost" movie

Someone's Watching Me, the 1978 film written and directed by John Carpenter, starring Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, aired on television 11 days after the Jonestown massacre occurred.

The movie follows the story of Leigh Michaels who has moved to L.A. to be a live TV director. She scores a fantastic apartment in a modern high rise -- in which computers control the air conditioning! -- which has a view from every room. Unfortunately for Michaels, the view goes both ways: a stalker with a high-powered telescope watches her every move in the fishbowl apartment from the high rise across the street.

The mysterious phone calls start on Michaels' first day at the office and continue at home as she settles into her new apartment. When she receives what appears to be junk mail from a company called "Excursions Unlimited," she doesn't think twice about it. But the letter came from her new secret admirer, and is followed by "gifts" left at her door, along with more cryptic phone calls. The letter states that Leigh Michaels would receive a series of gifts and if she could identify what countries they came from, she'd win an all-expenses-paid trip to that country. The pitch didn't make much sense to her, but its nonsensical nature heightens the tension.

I first saw Someone's Watching Me when it aired in the late 1970s. The older brother of friends living next door had bought a conversion van around that time, and had just finished installing wood paneling and a bed inside it, along with shag rug on the floor. My friends' older brother was kind enough to allow us to spend the night in the van as it sat parked in the driveway between our two houses. We ran an extension cord out there and plugged in a small black and white television set.

I have no idea what drew us to Someone's Watching Me, since it didn't involve a cool car or superheroes. But somehow, we settled on it, and I was immediately sucked into the deceptively good thriller.

This was a different in North America. Back when there was no commonly used word for stalkers, much less any laws against their subtle, destructive psychological assault. This was back in a time when being drunk behind the wheel of a car was a defense: "Jeez officer, I'm sorry I was driving so crazy, but I'm drunk!" "Well, sir, sorry to have bothered you. We thought there was something wrong. But if you're only drunk, well, have a good night!"

This was also a time before "call display" or *69. Veiled behind the anonymity of the telephone, my friends and I had made tons of prank phone calls in our time, dialing -- because none of us, yet, had push-button phones -- seven numbers at random and using jokes that had been in circulation since phones had been invented: "Is your refrigerator running? Well, you better go catch it!"

Maybe Someone's Watching Me interested us because it involved prank phone calls among adults, which we had always figured was restricted to the province of kids. And the cryptic caller in the movie never asked if Leigh Michaels' refrigerator was running or if she had Prince Albert in a can. He'd leave a large gift in plain brown paper wrapping at her apartment door and then call and say, "Present number one." Then click. And dial tone.

The first gift is a telescope.

The psychological assault also goes beyond mere phone calls. At one point, Leigh Michaels' stalker dims the lights in Michaels' apartment, and then brings them back up. The poor woman was pwnd a full two decades before the term was even coined.

This was also a time when Kool Aid was in the news -- not just in commercials, but in strange, unnerving reports from the jungles of South America; stories of people drinking poisoned Kool Aid and dying. In my own home at this time, I'd found a copy of Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders on my parents' book shelf in our basement. I wasn't interested in books at the time, but the cover art sure caught my eye. I didn't read any of it, but just flipped to the montage of photographs in the center of the book: black and white pictures of bloody crimes scenes, smiling victims before they'd ever had any inkling they were doomed, and those words -- like graffiti around the neighborhood -- written in the victims' blood at the crime scenes. Everything about the book and gruesome story it told was far beyond my experience and ability to understand, but on some visceral level, it scared me shitless.

The second mysterious gift to arrive at Leigh Michaels' door was a poka dot bikini, as innocuous as Kool Aid and graffiti, but with all the sinister subtext of a threat.

Maybe it was the time, maybe the crime of stalking hadn't yet caught the public imagination, but it seems to take Leigh Michaels an inordinately long time to cop on to the fact that the cryptic calls she's receiving from an unnamed stranger are weird. At the same time, she meets a man -- perennial TV actor, David Birney, who plays Paul Winkless -- whom she likes and trusts and in whom she finally confides about the odd gifts and crank phone calls.

In an interview many years after the Manson murders, Vincent Bugliosi -- famed prosecutor who obtain death sentences (later commuted to life) for Manson and his family -- said, "If you can't be safe in your home, where you can you feel safe?" The randomness of the Manson murders certainly struck at that psychological pillar, and the movie Someone's Watching Me riffed brilliantly on this theme. When Leigh Michaels is encouraged by Paul to call the police about the cryptic phone calls, she says, "And say what? That 'someone is sending me gifts and wants to take me on a European vacation, please make him stop'?" It really reveals the vulnerability of the person being stalked and the seeming invulnerability of the stalker.

After having dinner with a female colleague, Michaels remains at the restaurant table after her colleague goes off on a date. A waitress comes to the table with a bottle of wine. When Michaels informs the waitress that she hadn't ordered the wine, the waitress says, "It's compliments of the man at the bar." Of course, when Michaels turns toward the bar there's no one there. When she asks the waitress what the man looked like, the waitress shrugs and says, "Just a man."

Leigh Michaels does eventually call the police about the strange phone calls. Predictably, the officer she speaks to asks, "Has he threatened you?" No. "Well, there's nothing we can do until he does something."

One scene that nearly strangled me with tension occurs when Leigh Michaels finds an envelope taped to her door. It contains a note from her stalker telling her to meet him in the parking garage in ten minutes. Rationally, she's an idiot for going, but the way the film is set up, it's believable that in her frustration and anger, she goes. She takes a large letter opener for protection. After walking through the parking garage -- it's midday, so there's light coming in from outside -- Michaels goes into the laundry room. Hopefully the movie was made on a soundstage and not an actual apartment complex because the laundry room setup is made-to-order for rapists. Through the laundry room door there is a long, dim hallway of storage lockers, presumably used by residents. Around the corner is the actual laundry area. Michaels creeps down the hallway and slowly turns the corner only to find a dryer running. Then there is a sudden noise and the implication of someone approaching. Michaels lifts up a floor grate and hides just in time for the stalker to come on scene. At one point, he actually stands on the grate under which she hides. He smokes a cigarette and unknowingly drops the through the grate, onto her. The scene is excruciating.

It's a theme reinforced several times through the movie, that no matter how people insulate themselves against the world-at-large, stories like Someone's Watching Me remind us that the terror and crazies and danger can seep through the well-hidden cracks of our homes and psyches. So we learned with the Atlanta child murders that occurred from the summer of 1979 into the 1980s. So we learned with the disappearance of Adam Walsh in 1981. So we learned, again and again. It would be many years after this made-for-TV movie aired that laws against stalking would be created and enacted. How effective they've proven to be, only the silent sufferers of stalking could say. It's a sure bet, though, that few would ever know the satisfying surety and finality Leigh Michaels experiences by the end of her ordeal.

David Carradine: Posthumous Spokesman for Auto-erotic Asphyxia Safety

It appears that Grasshopper failed his final test: how to get-off in Thailand without dying. Many try, few succeed.

Anyhow, dignity is so 20th Century. Maybe Lou Reed was right when he said that ". . . human life [is] not worth more than infected yeast."

For those who do believe in life and in taking ridiculously stupid gambles on losing it, there is the new government program: No Perv Left Behind.

Auto-erotic Asphyxia Safety has been neglected for far too long. How many innocent lives have to be lost before this uplifting hobby receives the same honest consideration as the automobile seat belt?

And now one of our greatest lights has been extinguished: David Carradine.

In a world sorely lacking in authenticity, he will be missed.

But one does have to step back and wonder what he was doing. He was in Thailand, the Disney World of illicit carnal convolutions. He could have paid $1,000 to have intercourse with an exotic plant that looked like Ava Gardner. But he opted for the sexually charged ambiance of his closet.

So, as Yul Brynner came back from the grave in anti-smoking advertisements, look for Grasshopper to sagely teach about Auto-erotic Asphyxia Safety.

Because, getting off is too important and avoiding stupid risks is just no fun.

J. Edgar Hoover stars in the sci-fi epic Transvestors

It's the blockbuster Hollywood doesn't want you to see! The blockbuster that lets its cyborg hair down as never been seen before! Based upon America's most famous transvestite, J. Edgar Hoover, comes a new action epic: Transvestors.

It's crime-fighting at its most fashionably, flamboyant best -- with time to spare to try on size 12 double E pumps.

Arch villain and master tailor, Fluarzi, and his corrupt legions plot to rob, cheat, chisel and bilk the world's transvestites with ever-rising fees for tailoring and alterations. When Nikki Hearst misses the Zima masked ball because he cannot afford to pay to have his costume altered, the painted-toed-foot of justice comes down.

Stanford scientist and transvestite-during-his-off-hours, Dwight Hopeman, pulls out all of the stops as he regenerates America's greatest transvestite crimefighter, J. Edgar Hoover. The decades of death haven't been kind to His House Dressness, but Hopeman is brilliant and deft at his craft of tinkering with the underpinnings of nature. With a few 21st Century improvements, J. Edgar is back in action, going after corrupt tailors everywhere as though they're civil rights workers and doe-eyed college students of the 1960s.

The hammer falls and the fat lady sings in the fabulous science fiction epic, Transvestors!

Matthew McConaughey & Cyanide Certified DVDs

Hi, I'm Matthew McConaughey, the Richard Gere of my acting generation. Sure, I was awesome in Dazed & Confused, but that was a long time ago and just one of those things we call flukes. Since then, I've let my douche-flag fly in such hits -- all of which have afforded me numerous opportunities to take off my shirt -- as Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Fool's Gold, Failure to Launch, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and a stack of others arranged for me by Celebrity Welfare Services of Burbank, California.

That's why I'm here to tell you about Cyanide Certified DVDs and their Shill Edition series of my movies. Each Cyanide Certified DVD comes with a genuine cyanide caplet that's guaranteed to kill within five minutes of swallowing. My movies aren't for everyone -- at least for anyone who has a penis, any connection to reality, or taste, or has not recently suffered a brain injury, or ever seen films outside of the North Korean film industry -- so Cyanide Certified DVDs and I want to give you that much-needed "out" when you're faced with having to watching one of my movies.

Just because I'm only in it for the money, doesn't mean you are.

So, the next time your loved one recommends watching one of my movies, make sure it's a Cyanide Certified DVD from the Shill Edition series. Your life depends on it.

North America 2071: The Path Paved by Yuppie Parenting

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

Who knows where it really began?

No one disputes, however, that there were signs along the way: poorly performing students no longer held back to repeat grades they'd "failed;" trophies handed out to everyone who participated in athletic events; parents going with their college-aged kids to campus, standing in line with them at the Registrar's Office, sitting in classes for them when they were ill, telephoning and haranguing professors who dared give their beloved children grades based merely upon essays and exam scores; parents who attended job interviews with their grown children, who telephoned and harangued their children's bosses for not allowing them access to Facebook, and other Web sites, while at work.

Most experts agree, it was probably the thing with trophies and dismantling the central purpose of athletic competition, that caused the collapse. No winners. No losers. Nothing but self-indulgent yuppie parents patting themselves on the back for their devotion to humanity.

And so it came to pass -- much sooner than the makers of the film Idiocracy ever dreamed possible -- that all strictures based upon ability and achievement were removed from society, particularly from the workplace. It was a victory for overbearing, narcissistic parents everywhere. Strangely, this new system purposefully devoid of winners and losers seemed to inadvertently breed an inordinate number of losers.

Like the passengers of GloboFly flight 107 and those of FlyNow flight 820 over Laguardia Airport in New York, in April 2070, when their respective jets collided mid-air because air traffic controllers were no longer hired based upon ability, but upon desire. Hiring based upon ability had been deemed discriminatory. As one labor crusader -- and former yuppie parent -- Estelle Gardener shouted at a Hire Now! rally, "Just because a person lacks the ability to do the job doesn't mean they shouldn't be hired for the job!"

Pandering politicians everywhere heard that plea and mobilized.

Pampered, over-indulged kids who had once entertained themselves by pulling the wings off of flies and torturing animals found themselves among the ranks of medical professionals when they reached adulthood. All the excuses given by their deluded parents when defending their children's deviant, anti-social behavior rose in a single voice, which pandering politicians obeyed. In 2071, the Surgeon General of the United States was Dr. Braden MacIntosh. His parents had long stood by him, explaining Dr. Braden's years of impromptu animal vivisections on the front lawn as "Braden merely expressing himself!" Dismissing the countless instances of sexual molestation he visited upon neighborhood children as "Braden simply experimenting!" And waving away repeated warnings about Dr. MacIntosh's propensity for self-mutilation as "Braden's just emotional!"

Those explanations were small comfort to the families of the hundreds of patients who underwent (most dying during) painful, unnecessary, rarely anesthetized surgeries performed by Dr. MacIntosh in O.R.s across the country. But in this brave new world where personal desire trumped the public good, Dr. MacIntosh's detractors could, in the words of his father, "Take a chill pill and get a life!"

Courtrooms filled with lawyers whose only qualification was their desire to wear expensive suits and carry expensive briefcases. As the pampered, over-indulged children and grandchildren of judges and lawyers, their fantasies were legislated double-quick-time by pandering politicians.

"When a law is born out of love," said former Justice Radcliff Theophany of the United States Supreme Court, "how can it be wrong? It can't be and it's not."

Pandering politicians everywhere decided that love was enough. Love would light the way.

And so the number of plane crashes increased, the stock market rose and fell as though tethered to a bungee cord, the armed forces accidentally attacked and destroyed twenty major American cities, mortality rates of people entering hospitals skyrocketed, and generally life everywhere became shittier and shittier.

Professional sports devolved into a morass of litigation -- the parents of wannabe pro athletes sued every sport into paralysis, demanding that their child not only be on the team, but be made team captain. Parents often counter-sued other parents, alleging that the other child's desire to be on the team or made team captain violated their child's human rights. The last season professional sports were played was 2059. The pending court cases -- and those piling on to that staggering number -- guaranteed another professional sport would not be played before the year 3219.

Most people just gave up on the idea, altogether, and formed underground leagues of sports teams. But many of these, even, were crippled by litigation when anyone was turned down by a team. The only compromise that could be made was that everyone would make any team they wanted. And so, sports teams came to have rosters as long as the census lists of a medium-sized cities. This became particularly problematic for baseball, for instance, when the rule "everyone must get an 'at bat'" was handed down by the World Court in the Hague in 2066, turning games into months-long events -- from which everyone emerged with a trophy.

Trophy-maker, All Inclusive Trophies, became the Microsoft and ExxonMobil of its time, pulling in tens of billions of dollars in profit each year.

But the Bradens and Neveahs and Alisons and Jeffreys and Langdons and Mistys and Crawfords and Shandys and Olivers and Jenalyns, etc., etc., all got to express themselves, as they moved through the world ensconced within the artificial hedge of protection their brain-damaged, selfish, morally bankrupt parents created, always, always, always shielding them from the poison whose name could never be mentioned -- consequences for one's actions. It was stricken from the language.

"There's nothing more unnatural than cause and effect," said stay-at-home-mom, Lacey Waters (who presided over the education of her eleven home-schooled children) in an interview with Smiling Benevolent Parent Magazine in the spring of 2071. "I mean, who says that when you put your hand in fire that it should get burned? That's just cruel. I'm glad people are more enlightened now than when my parents were raising kids. Gosh, what could be more primitive than sending kids to school and then making them do school work? Duh! It's boring! And boredom is nature's way of telling us that something's wrong."

In 2071, Lacey Waters' son, Levenworth, became Prime Minister of Canada after she successfully sued the government saying that requiring her son to go through a political campaign and then a general election violated his human rights. "What if he lost?" Lacey said, summing up the strategy of her winning case. "His feelings would be hurt."

Star Drek: schlock and ugh

J.J. Abrams has done the unforgivable: he has given movie-going audiences a young Captain James T. Kirk who is a complete and utter, irredeemable, douche-bag. Abrams' Captain Kirk is George W. Bush without the cowardice.

The film starts with an orgy of explosions and drama and people running around, pell-mell. If the swarthy Romulans antagonizing and attacking the peace-loving earth ship in the opening minutes doesn't arouse enough emotion, there rolls onto the screen a pregnant woman in labor who is being whisked to an escape pod (probably known on the ship as a "freedom pod"). The original captain of the ship has gone on a fool's errand to meet with the Romulans, to see if diplomacy might avert complete disaster. He leaves the ship in the hands of man named Kirk. As any good executive officer would do, Kirk has brought his explosively pregnant wife on the expedition with him -- or, better yet, made her explosively pregnant during the expedition. Gawddamn it! Is no one listening to Bristol Palin's pleas for abstinence?

Communication is established between the gurneyed, writhing mother-to-be and her husband, who has his hands full managing the attack of the Romulans and his wife's demands that he join her for the birth of their child. Of course. Because children are the hope of the future -- even if the Romulans are blowing the shit out of the ship. Kirk and Mrs. Kirk's banter might have been taken from the Hugh Grant/Julianne Moore film Nine Months, so rich it is in homey, North American cliche and insurance-advertisement-hope-for-the-future.

Alas, this Kirk goes down with his ship, but his wife and newly born son survive.

The audience is given its first loving glimpse of young ragamuffin James T. Kirk when Kirk is just a boy who has stolen a vintage automobile from a gnawing voice that harangues him over the in-car communication system (was it his uncle? Stepfather? Mom's live-in boyfriend?). Young Kirk must have played a shitload of Grand Theft Auto because he's another Dale Earnhardt behind the wheel. Pursued by a cop on a land speeder who addresses young, recalcitrant Kirk with the futuristic salutation "Citizen!", Kirk evades him and ends up driving the vintage car off a cliff. Unfortunately, Kirk dives out of the car in time to survive. After climbing up from the very precipice of the cliff, pre-pubescent Kirk looks at the hovering, robot cop and utters the 20th Century staple phrase, "Does there seem to be a problem, officer?"

Kirk grows into a morose, self-pitying alcoholic hick somewhere in Iowa, Earth. He wears a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle. He drinks beer from the bottle and verbally harasses any and every piece of available ass in his local. If his verbal intercourse at the bar with the lovely, young Uhura is any indication of Kirk's proficiency with women, there's little doubt that he took a yellow-ribbon-winning hog to his high school prom; that he lost his virginity to a John Deere tractor. Clearly he's unused to speaking to anything that does not possess a V.I.N.

After harassing Uhura for her first name -- a running joke that comes back way too many times, though is mercifully dropped halfway through -- Kirk promptly proves his mental and spiritual prowess by getting into a fight with four Federation cadets who knew Uhura. Kirk gets his licks in, but is ultimately laid out, sprawled dramatically over a table. As luck would have it, the commanding officer who's come to call the cadets back to the ship happens to have known Kirk's father. He recognizes the young Kirk immediately and invites the young, beer-swilling Iowan to become a Federation cadet. Kirk dismisses this invitation by guzzling beer out of a tall, narrow science-fictiony tumbler.

But he goes. Presumably after a night with no sleep, and a morning with no hangover, Kirk shows up for the cadet ship with the same bloody shirt he'd been wearing when he got his ass kicked. When a guy near the cadet ship says, "Hey, great bike!" Kirk throws him the keys. "It's yours," our douche-bag hero says.

The film does veer into true science fiction when, at the Federation cadet academy, Abrams attempts to make Kirk-the-lout some sort of student. Don't worry, he's still a crass, bilge-brimming douche-bag, but Kirk's now found something he can direct all his chaotic energies into: cheating on a test.

There were groans aplenty emanating from the soul of this reviewer during a Friends-styled-Three's-Company-ripped-off scene in which horny Kirk attempts to lay a luscious green girl (who does not practice abstinence). Lascivious green girl's roommate returns to their room unexpectedly, and holy shit -- it's Uhura! Luckily, the green girl knows enough to have Kirk hide. The subterfuge lasts all of three seconds as Uhura discovers her roommate's coquettish game and finds underwear-clad Kirk in his clever hiding spot -- beside the bed.

We next find Kirk in a fully crewed flight simulation, which serves as a sort of final exam for the cadets. The simulation has Kirk's ship under attack. The very, very talent-impaired Chris Pine (please Jeeezus don't let him have Shia Labeouf's agent!) who plays Kirk does his high-school-drama-best to portray Kirk's arrogance and devil-may-care attitude with regard to the test. Fearing that his overt demonstration of chuckling, smirking casualness isn't enough, Kirk pulls out an apple and disinterestedly eats it as his crew shouts at him that they are in mortal danger. Kirk eats an apple. No kidding. An apple. He has it hidden beside himself in the jazzy captain's chair, and when he deems the moment is right, he pulls it out and takes a huge, messy chomp. Of his apple. A motherfucking apple! He has an apple! A fucking-fer-chrissakes apple!

As any good neo-con would do, Kirk ignores the advice of others and then takes the short way around (we later learn that he introduced some sort of computer "script" into the simulation that gave him an advantage), and easily beats the simulator. He and all other neo-cons know what none of the rest of us know: battle is little more difficult than eating an apple.

Spock -- the hardassed rules lawyer and creator of the simulation -- accuses Kirk of cheating. Kirk does not deny it. He is placed on academic suspension just as the Federation mobilizes all its cadets to help with some emergency. Thus, Kirk is excluded due to "the rules."

But Doctor McCoy doesn't give up that easily. During far-too-long, convoluted series of scenes, McCoy administers a space rufi to Kirk in order to sneak him aboard the ship. Apparently, Federation rules dictate that a doctor must stay with his patient, even to the detriment of an entire crew. So, if the doorman monitoring who enters the starship doesn't allow Kirk on, he would also be disallowing McCoy, the ship's doctor. Or, to put it more confusingly: if the doorman allows McCoy onboard, he automatically allows Kirk onboard, as well. Put in this impossible, untenable position, the doorman blinks and nods. Kirk is aboard the ship!

From there, we see a lot of people running around. We're introduced to the cute and cuddly Communist, Chekhov, who makes us laugh with his funny accent and endearing, foreign conscientiousness. We're introduced to Sulu who, essentially, forgets to take the "parking brake" off the Starship Enterprise, thus rendering it unable to get up to warp speed, at first -- or, whatever it is. And very late in the film, we meet Simon Pegg as Scotty. But roguish, comic-relief Scotty is not alone! No, he has a warty Ewok as his non-verbal sidekick. This bit of cinematic tinfoil hit my mental dental fillings with all of the miserable "Noooooooooooooooooooo!" as Jar Jar Binks hit me in The Phantom Excrement of 1999.

If any rational, steadily-being-disappointed filmgoer hadn't been put-off enough by all of this, there is the bizarre, left-field quiet, romantic moment in which Uhura kisses Spock in the ship's elevator just after Spock's home planet had been made into a blackhole and destroyed. Uhura is all into Spock. It must be the Ziggy Stardust eye shadow he uses. It's as though a snippet of the show Felicity had been jokingly spliced into Star Drek at that moment. But no, there are later hints at Uhura's hots for Spock. What's not to love about him? He has the emotional spectrum of a vending machine. He has a voice like Muzack. A haircut like Moe Howard of The Three Stooges. He looks soulful and lawyerly in blue pajamas. He probably has no usable sex organs.

Luckily, justice is served at the end of the movie and douche-bag Captain James T. Kirk is exalted and praised for his douche-baggery in the line of duty. He proves that one need not have any tangible experience or knowledge to be a Federation captain, only bravado, machismo and pores that emit Brut 33. No doubt, in the sequel to this prequel, Captain Kirk will address a graduating class of Federation cadets and tell them ". . . that even the C students can grow up to be captains!"

Star Drek is a work definitely geared toward the A.D.H.D.-gadget-distracted multitudes who require shock-and-awe from their filmmakers in place of . . . they just want shock-and-awe.

For me, it was shlock-and-ugh.

I am not the audience for such extravaganzas. Don't get me wrong, I love big, fun movies. The first three Indiana Jones films are among my all-time favorites. Even the first Harry Potter film was entirely enjoyable -- watching it amid a packed moviehouse.

Star Drek, however, in the money-numbed hands of J.J. Abrams, pained me. I was just a vegetarian in J.J. Abrams' steakhouse.

ughDesk.com - where freelancers work for free!

Freelancers, are you tired of being paid for your work? You've got your client-list, you bill them for work, they tease you with late payments, but ultimately their payments come in?

Those dreary days of working for money are over! Introducing ughDesk.com!

We've got vendors with budgets of up to $100 looking for freelance writers to create 100 articles! Or, how about designing 20 five-page Web sites for $30? Work in PHP or VisualBasic for pennies a day!

"Hey, that sounds like there's a chance I'll still get paid!" I hear you say.

Not so fast!

ughDesk.com's patented payment system is so convoluted, complex and self-defeating, you'll never get paid! That's right -- never get paid!

Our relationship with the Web's most opaque, unresponsive payment system, PayPal, will ensure that no troublesome dollars and cents -- and those even more troublesome tax problems that follow every penny -- will come your way.

If you're an IT professional who loves the work, but hates the pay, ughDesk.com is for you!

Ecrology

I'm all for alternative energy research and production, but do the supporters of this really have to use in their ad campaigns guys who look like they'd punch a pregnant woman?

This image belches: "Even guys who need anger management classes support our cause -- so you should too! Do so, before we give them your address. Don't be the only person in your office to have your ribs broken by an ecrologist!"