Jack Does Montreal

My good friend Jack Lee, he of EuroPic-Art.com, has done it yet again. A couple of months ago, my friend Daniel and I went to the lookout on Mount Royal to take HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos of the Montreal skyline at dusk. I, of course ran out of battery after my first shot, so Daniel took this particular picture, and i messed with it in Photoshop.

It turned out spectacularly, so I sent it to Jack with the request to do it as well as he could. I got the painting last Friday.

It's beautiful! And it's vast, around 36 x 48". here's a photo of it, with the original photo on top. Click to see it in all its glory! You too can get a painting like this from any of your photos, starting at around $120, including shipping, for quite a large one, which, might I remind you, is painted by a real, talented individual, not by a computer.

Check it out, and do yourself a big favor -- order a painting from Jack right away! Email me for his direct email!

Top: the photo
Bottom: the painting
Click to make this BIG!

Wolfram Alpha

This search engine will BLOW YOUR MIND. Just go to wolframalpha.com and type in something like "Flights visible from Montreal, Canada" or wherever you live. Not only will it tell you what planes are above your city right NOW, it'll also tell you where they're going, how high they are, what time they took off vs. what time they were supposed to take off, and a million other things.

This search engine makes Google look like a clumsy child compared to a neurosurgeon.

Summer Rolls (Gỏi cuốn)

This entry has been long promised. Brigitte and I both had a sudden lusting for these rolls, which are not-deep-fried spring rolls. I suppose you could deep fry them, but chances are they'd fall apart, and most of the ingredients are raw anyway. That's what's so good about them; they have a satisfying crunchiness that cannot be surpassed, at the same time tasting like you're eating a herb garden.

So here it is (click pics to embiggen):

Summer Rolls

Not perfect cylinders, but it'll come with practice

Ingredients
The "essential" ingredients, in other words the ones that should always be there are

Carrots, finely julienned
Bean sprouts, blanched for 20 seconds in boiling water and then plunged into an ice-water bath
Vietnamese rice noodles, any size or shape, soaked in hot water until soft, then plunged into an ice-water bath
Some form of meat filler, such as shrimp sautéed in garlic and sesame oil or shredden chicken
Mint, whole leaves
Cilantro, whole sprigs

You can go to town on the other stuff. Yesterday I put in:

Enoki mushrooms (they look almost like cooked spaghetti with little heads), lightly sautéed and rapidly cooled
Green onions, shredded
Cucumber, peeled and seeded, cut in julienne strips, then lightly salted for five minutes, then rinsed, with excess water removed
I added basil leaves to my green mixture, plus hearts of romaine lettuce for extra crunch.

And of course, the wrapper, which happens to be Vietnamese rice wrappers (see photo) which are made of liquid rice that is dried on bamboo lattices in the sun (hence the patterns on them).

Method
Get all your ingredients prepped completely first. I make a list of the order I'm going to layer them in. All the ingredients should be at room temperature or below. For shrimp, slice into thin strips or small pieces; whichever you prefer. My list is:

Shrimp
Mushrooms
Cucumbers
Noodles
Carrots
Green onions
Bean sprouts
Mint
Basil
Cilantro
Lettuce

To moisten the rice wrappers, I have a neat trick: using a three-ply paper towel (Bounty etc. -- don't do what I did yesterday and use a cheap supermarket brand -- they'll all fall apart), moisten with warm water and lay on a cutting board. Moisten another towel and have it ready. Put a rice wrapper on the bottom towel, then cover completely with the second one.

After about a minute, the wrapper will be completely soft. Roll the top towel up just over the halfway point of the wrapper, and start layering the ingredients in the middle, making sure not to put too much in, and leaving about a 1.5-inch space on either side. The last ingredients, the leaves and lettuce, will help bind the other ingredients together. Now, carefully roll the bottom of the rice wrapper over the ingredients, moving the top paper towel up as necessary. When the wrapper is completely over the ingredients, start to fold it underneath them, like you're rolling a cigar. At this point, fold the sides of the wrapper in like the sides of an envelope and continue rolling until it's (hopefully) a tight cylinder.

At this point, cover a plate or a plastic container with more moist paper towel and put the roll in. When you have two or more, take care that they don't touch, or they may stick together and rip.

Cover with more moist towels and voilà. They're best eaten right away, but they'll last about 12 hours in the refrigerator. Dip with a peanutty satay sauce or anything else you prefer. Like I said, I like mine with ghost pepper sauce.

The rice paper wrapper

The shrimp, sautéed, before cutting

The prep, including some vicious Thai chilies at the bottom (not for the faint of heart)

I think I overstuffed this one

What I Want for Your Birthday

You love me, don't you, Flock? You really, really love me. So get me this fantastic Tony Montana 1/6 action figure to add to my collection!

All you have to do is click the "Donate" button below and you send me $10 towards my purchase (a cringe-inducing $180) of Al Pacino's Tony Montana action figure (he comes with his "coke throne"!)

What do YOU get out of this amazingly generous $19 donation?

1. A Photoshopped figure of YOU (to be submitted by you) sitting or standing next to Al!
2. A signed photo (by me, faking Al's autograph) of Al sitting amongst my other action figures!
3. A blog post all about YOU, the content of which I shall invent and make dynamic, heart-rending, uplifting and hilarious!
4. My fawning, undying love

So donate freely with love in your heart! Press that button as many times as your boundless generosity allows! If we all pull together, we'll have Al proudly lording it over my Gang of Plastic in no time at all!

*MmmmmmWAAAH!*

Cat Among the Pigeons

I thought I would just compete with Knatolee and her endless posts of fuzzy cats, so I allowed a friend of Brigitte's to deposit his cat Lulu here for a few days (week? months? dunno yet). (Brigitte's angling to take her, but I'm not so sure.)

She's a jet-black, fuzzy, shedding furball and so far a bit of a scaredy cat but she's pretty lovable when she wants to be.

Can you believe she loves yogurt?

Oh well. She'd be perfect for Halloween.

Poised to get the next pigeon that wanders by

Relaxing with her first Boréale Cuivrée of the evening

Open Letter to Discovery Channel Canada

Umm . . . just a comment on how far down the Discovery Channel has come.

Please describe to me how "Canada's Worst Handyman" fits in with a "discovery" theme. Please tell me how "Canada's Worst Driver" fits in with a "discovery" theme. Please tell me how "Cash Cab" fits in with a "discovery' theme.

Upon looking, randomly, at your schedule for today, I see the following offerings: "Big Foot: The Definitive Guide." This is science? Followed by "Mythbusters." Entertaining, perhaps, but every single day of the week with the occasional marathon?

Then there's Cash Cab, followed why How It's Made. I wouldn't have a quibble with How It's Made, except you're still running episodes that were made in the 90s. Also, most of them are on such scintillating topics such as "How Ice Skates are made" or "How Traffic Cones are Made." Who on earth could possibly be interested in how traffic cones are made? Yet most of the episodes are about these obscure items.

Then, Daily Planet. Again, occasionally interesting, but not three times a day, every day. Then we go to two back-to-back episodes of How it's Made, then Canada's worst Handyman again. One hour after that there's Daily Planet again, then -- you guessed it -- Canada's Worst Handyman.

This is what I pay my cable provider for? Since your promising inception, your programming has descended into a roster of eight completely irrelevant products, one slightly interesting one and occasionally one not even worth becoming a doodle on a paper napkin, let alone going into production.

Take solace in that you are far from alone; A&E has become the Dog the Bounty Hunter/CSI channel, National Geographic (that's a joke) has become the Dog Whisperer channel, the Food Network has become the Iron Chef/Top Chef channel and "The Learning Channel" has become the "Learning About Human Freaks" channel.

I cancelled A&E and haven't regretted it at all. You're next up.

The so-called "500 Channel Universe" is indeed a 500-channel universe; a 500-channel universe of dreck.

Give me the old days of the twelve-channel universe. Hey, there's a program, that's a program! Explain why most of the content of cable television has been reduced to garbage. I'll be glued to my seat for that one.

A Couple of Things to Know Before You Fly

Pilots don't have automatically-deploying oxygen masks. If they don't know that the plane's oxygen levels are down, say, while flying at 36,000 feet, for whatever reason, and manually deploy their masks, they will pass out within a minute.

Also, if you're in the Death Zone (named after Everest's altitudes) without oxygen you will faint in thirty seconds if your automatically-deployed masks run out of oxygen.

The masks have cylinders of oxygen attached to them. They will last about 12 minutes, not the whole flight, like you thought. This is enough time for the pilots to get you to a safe altitude.

If they're conscious.

If they're not, you're all gonna die. But when you finally hit the mountain, you'll have been long unconscious.

So don't worry about it.

So Little Time, So Much to Waste

I just accidentally discovered this massively time-wasting genre called Legomation while I was looking for a Lego toy for my son. It's absolutely incredible how many person-hours are going into this. See for yourself . . .

My New Aquarium

I've always wanted a large saltwater aquarium for the living room, and last week I splurged and bought one. The problem was, what kind of fish did I want to stock it with?

Well, I've always liked Japanese Spider Crabs, so I got a baby one. When fully grown these things have legs that are around eight feet from toe to toe and stand about five feet tall, but since they live around 100 years Pépé (that's what I call him) will grow very slowly. I'll just get a bigger tank when that happens.

And I bought a baby Sunfish. In the ocean, she'd grow to about 3,500 lbs (about the weight of an SUV) but they don't need a lot of space to move around in, so this tank will  be okay for a while. Her name is Sally. Sally the Sunfish.

And I thought what better fish to round it off with than a Mako shark? (That's Tony, in the background).

I have an agreement with the sushi place down the street and they'll provide the150 or so pounds of fish I need to feed these guys every day (heh -- no Kamikaze rolls, needless to say!) so I'm all set!

I have my eye on a deep-ocean giant squid (they can reach 48 ft. in the wild!) but I'll settle for these guys for now.

My new aquarium. That's (l - r) Sally, Pépé and Tony.

The Horrors of OCD

I was just reading an article about Howie Mandel and his obsessive-compulsive disorder, which he has been amazingly candid about, considering his fame and wealth.

But I see a piece of me in him! I'm not quite at his level but it's bothersome nonetheless. The trigger was after I read an article by Chuck Gerba about fifteen years ago (caution: do not read if you even have a remote fear of germs). I was horrified, and after that, I started becoming . . . umm . . . obsessive, if not compulsive. About touching things in public places. About shaking people's hands. Even today, if I go out, a little devil sits on my shoulder and keeps track of everything I've touched. The only "safe" place is my house.

Hmm . . . it goes. Push the elevator button with your keys. Use your coat sleeve to open that door. You shook that guy's hand -- you must wash as soon as possible. Public toilets are the worst. If they actually have paper towels, make sure one's below the slot so you don't have to pull the handle after you've washed your hands. Why does the door open inwards? That means that even though I've washed my hands now I have to pull the handle. Why do they even have a door?

I credit this minor obsession for my not having been sick for years, but it's still extremely annoying. And the most annoying thing is I can't do a damn thing about it. That little devil starts up the moment I close the door to my house.

Is the Condo Project on Pluto Still Viable? Buyers Want Answers

Ever since Pluto was downgraded to dwarf-planet status, I've been inundated with queries from buyers who have put up anything from $800 billion to $76.8 trillion for a spot in Pluto's relatively sunny West Side Condo project.

They have a right to be concerned -- after all, when the construction began, Pluto was officially the 12th planet and property values were going through the roof, especially when McDonald's built their McPluto Theme Park complex in the Upper Polar Regions in a deal with Disney LLCʬ.

I have assured nervous investors, many of whom already own condos on Jupiter, that property values remain constant despite the new dwarf designation.

Pluto

I wish to confirm to all buyers that the project is on full go-ahead and despite the three-billion mile commute that has recently been shortened to only fifteen years, investors can look forward with confidence to their fulfillment of their desires for their ultimate Dream Destination©.

Please contact me at galacticproperties.galaxy or ring me at 598-09842827-02652469-067253672-96453 ext. 5 for more information.

New Lights, New Lens, Action!

Yesterday was another challenge for me photographically. I dropped my camera a few weeks ago and rendered the lens inoperable, so I bought an identical one, and while I was at it I bought some lights. I'm the farthest thing from being a professional photographer that you can imagine, but I've always loved it (I made a pinhole camera when I was eighteen -- it was the wildest thing in the world to develop that photo!) and I guess I've been interested in photography  ever since I had an Instamatic, but yesterday was crunch time.

This place downtown, devi, for whom I developed their website, asked me to come in and take pictures of their new line of lunch specials, so I lugged all my minty-fresh equipment over there, with Brigitte for support, and took photos all afternoon. Here are some of them. Taking pictures of food is amazingly fun, and you get to eat it afterward.

I don't know an F-stop from a stop sign but this time the camera seemed to have a mind of its own and took some great pictures. Click on the photos to, as my friend Jim Donahue says, embiggen.

I think this was chicken. If you look at the spoon you can see my new umbrella light reflected!

I think these are lamb chops. I don't like lamb too much but this sure looks good!

No need for a food stylist -- the tiffin-wallahs did a great prep job.

I was joking to Brigitte that this looks like a spacecraft. Et voilà: the Starship Tikka Masala.

Blogs Gone Dead

If there's anything I want to kick Mark Zuckerschmuck's ass about, it's the invention of Facebook. Oh sure, it's responsible for the Arab Spring, among other things, but it really is a dumbing down of the general public discourse. Don't argue with me, dammit -- you know I'm right.

Used to be, there was a pen, and people used to write with it. Now there's only a keyboard, and I still can only type with two fingers after forty years. Used to be, there was a blog, and people used to write interesting stuff that was Not The News, and other people used to read it.

I remember when Facebook was a college-student-only domain, with actual login requirements, where you had to be a bona-fide college student to "get in."

It's always comical to review the "that was in the good ol' days" thing but it's permissible to regret something that had real merit. Kind of like, writing a postcard instead of a letter. Shorthand is always good, but when it becomes the level of "tweet" you really, really have to admit that things have gone down the tubes.

Thus dieth the Blog. Don't know about you, but to me, Blog vs Facebook is kind of the equivalent of "Citizen Kane" vs. "Smokey and the Bandit II."

To someone who used to go on Usenet or IRC for a discussion, this is a dismaying development.

Day after day, I've seen blogs fall silent, and quite very good writers have lost their voice, or rather, chosen to lose their voice. I don't really know who reads this blog, but I know someone does, and even if that's only one or two people, they drop by pretty much every day and if I'm fulfilling some kind of need I'm always happy, no matter whether I'm just mouthing off or truly entertaining someone. (I like to think it's the latter, but it's more probably the former.)

But my plea is (a plea akin to blowing bubbles in a tornado) to not stop writing your blogs because of Facebook or Twitter. Even if it's only about what you had for breakfast last week.

The Underworld Inside

Few people, including me, really know what is fermenting in front of our very eyes. Either we choose to ignore it, or we pretend that even if it's there, it doesn't involve us. But in every culture, in every city on Earth, there is an underworld, a place in which people do dubious things in order to survive, or perhaps just to get a step up the ladder, which has a barrier already in place for people like them.

In other words, it's a place where good intentions go bad. Montreal is a case in point. Few people actually realise, or remember, or choose to remember, that this was a major underworld paradise, for many, many years. I would warrant that it still is. People think of New York or Chicago as the places where "The Organization" exists, but I'm willing to bet that it's vastly the opposite.

Montreal is a "true crime" zone in every sense of the word. I really can't gauge the level of corruption at City Hall, but trust me, it's endemic, pervasive, and is definitely in it for the long run.

It's just that it's covered up so well for ordinary folk like you and me. The only difference between Montreal and Johannesburg is that the people doing the covering up are richer and have more resources.

Montreal is a cesspool of corruption and vice, which is its favorite hobby. It's been that way since Ramzi Youssef hung out here hoping to bomb the twin towers; it positively teems with potential terrorists. That's only the beginning.

Montreal's docks are completely controlled by the mafia; until recently, the man who ran the entire operation, Dominic Taddeo, is the son of a famed crime boss. How this guy could get by running the entire Montreal dock operation for many years is completely beyond me.

There are stories -- many of them -- of large paper bags being delivered to politicians of all stripes with no ham sandwiches inside.

We live in our insular little world -- at least I do -- never questioning the "big" things our cities do, just muttering under our breath, knowing the truth yet being powerless to change anything.

And this will go on, as long as The Godfather remains the Number One Movie Ever Made and the Godfather 2 the second.

Look around you, when you get some time. Chances are eight out of ten people you see are existing in the underworld.

It's the underworld, but at least it's our underworld.

Osama Personally Ruined My Life

It's quite true, and it's why I harbor a special affection for the guy that blew Osama's left eye out of his smirking head. I really want to meet that guy (God willing, as Osama might say!) and just give him a firm shake of the hand and say "But how did it FEEL to blow that fuckwad away?" He'll obviously shake his young head, look away and say "It was just my job."

Yeah, well it was MY job that Osama the Dead Terrorist took away from me. Yes, he PERSONALLY took it away from me.

By crashing those planes into the twin towers he erased my job as graphic designer for Air Canada. Of course in the climate of the day they couldn't afford to look like they were spending any extra money for advertising or calendars or anything like that. So I got axed.

Osama, I hope Hell is very, very hot. I hope that every day you wake up before you went to sleep and see a constant movie of your sons and daughters being skewered by demons. While being skewered by demons. Especially your asshole, Osama, because it defines everything you were.

I hope you're being eternally flayed by rusty razor blades, that when you run out of skin you grow a new one that's the same putrid boil-infested mess as the one you wore in life, that all the victims of 9/11 are lined up, eternally, armed with a motley assortment of kitchen tools and metal things that will make you shriek anew every time, even though it's been done to you a thousand times over, because in the skewering, flaying, beating and torturing they've used the experience to learn new tricks and make it new every single time.

Fuck you, Osama bin Laden. I'll be sure to join you in Hell, but I'll be the one with no job and lots and lots of time to think about new and exotic ways to cause you pain.

And trust me on this: I'll be very, very creative.

Japan, Here I Come!

It's official: I'm off to pick up my son mid-July for almost two months. Damn, I can't wait. You don't know how long six months can be.

Through Thick and Thin

Through thick and thin
The vote is in.
This gang of three
So kind to me
Have seen me through
A thing or two.
When Pokey lags
Or Gumby nags
Jòsef will smoke
And tell a joke.
And they will laugh
On my behalf
And they will ride
And love provide.
Through thick and thin
Though hard it's been
My gang of three
Is good to me.

The "Carrot" and "Stick" Debate: LET'S KILL IT

Finally (how can one shout above an eternal din of nonsense?) can I put this one to rest????

There is a carrot. There is a stick. The carrot is to tempt. BUT THE STICK IS NOT TO HIT. Where the fuck did this mismanaged trope come from? Hello! HELLLOOO! The STICK was originally tied to the head of a donkey to carry the CARROT, so the DONKEY would eternally march in search of the CARROT, which was tied to a STICK in front of his FACE. Get it? GET IT? The metaphor was that the stupid donkey would wander eternally in search of the carrot. NOT THAT ANYONE WOULD BE BASHED BY ANY STICK.

You are mashing it up with another phrase, "Speak softly but carry a big stick."

Get it? GET IT??? There is no one carrying a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other. Get it? DOES ANYONE FINALLY FUCKING GET IT?

Good. Got that off my chest nicely.

A Plan, a Plan for Pak - is - stan

I've been to Pakistan. I kid you not. I spent a couple of weeks in Dhaka. I've been many times to Karachi. Again, I kid you not (I was born in Calcutta).

I say we pull completely out of Pakistan and leave her to her own devices. Cut the tether. They're incompetent (lots), corrupt orders of magnitude more, and assholes to boot.

They "out" our CIA director in the region. How pathetic is that? Go have a fucking masala dhosa and think it over, why don't you. Put some Bhut Jolokia in them so you'll remember them on the way down.

Torture: Making Me Sing

Torture? Who's kidding about torture? Half an hour before the dentist's chair, if the kindly dentist himself came to ask me "what I know" I would gladly give up my grandparents, parents, close friends, best friends, remote friends, and even Ali, who runs the corner store.

"What is the name of Ali's friend, the one we call 'Jumbo'?"

"Oh, Jumbo! Who doesn't know Jumbo! Jumbo lives at 14th and Exeter on the fourth floor, I believe . . . let's see, his phone number is 310-88 . . . oh shit, I forgot his phone number. Do you want his shoe size instead? I think it's a  . . ." (blow to the head).

"Now I sink ve have to drill ze front toos . . . .isn't it ze one zat's giving you some troubles?"

"Oh no, ohno, ohno, that's not the one that's giving me the problem, see here . . ."

VVWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEnnnnnrnnnnrnnnnrrnnnnnnVWEEEEEEEEEEEEE

" . . . now . . . about Jumbo . . . ."

"OH yes, Jumbo! Jumbo jumbojumbo middle aged wasn't he always in the neighbourhood tattoo on left arm shaped like a dragon can't talk to him unless you go through Piggy piggy's his right hand man yes, no, left hand because he's left handed he has a cell but they never gave me his number because they never trusted me oh yes piggy, get him and you'll bring them all down"

"You're making zis all UP, aren't you? Admit ZE TRUS!"

See how torture works, every time?

What Made Me What I Am

I was watching the beginning to The Godfather II and looking at the nine-year-old boy being shipped alone, to New York.

Well, when I was nine years old my parents shipped me alone, from New York to boarding school in England. Imagine being snatched away from everything you knew in a tropical country (India) and being shipped into a boarding school for boys in dreary 60s England.

My father's dead now two years gone but my mother's still around. And I'd just like to lash out at both of them, here, now in my 53rd year. Why? Why did you do that to me? Do you know what that did to my brain? Even I don't know. But it did something, something huge. I have a host of problems that I might never have had if you hadn't done that to me.

Do you think I could even conceive of doing that to my nine-year-old son? You bastards. You never got it, did you? I love you to death but you never, ever got what you did to me. And my brother. And my brother's brother. You sent us all into oblivion, you bastards. You never listened, never asked anything, when I said my teachers beat me. You fucking bastards. But you were/are my parents and I guess you've been atoning for your sins for a long, long time, drowning it in alcohol and making me and my siblings alcoholics into the bargain.

But I still love you, Mother! And Father, now long into your own final oblivion. Yes, I still love you! Somehow the twisted plant that became your son grew up and learned why it was twisted, but found the wherewithal to try to straighten itself, and not to blame the planters.

I forgive! But I will never forget.

The Plot to Kill The Pope™

Hey, I'm inspired by President Obama's incredibly successful "Black Ops" raid to kill Osama bin Laden! Why can't we duplicate it with a similar Navy SEALs™op to get the pope?

Imagine the terror as the specially shielded Black Hawk helicopters descend on the Vatican! (*Heavy Italian accent* "I heard them coming down even through the crunching of my mushrooms and linguini and only really realised what was going on when I took a sip of my Barolo!")

Then, the L-Team injects themselves into the grand Throne Room, only to find Pope Benedict . . . uhh . . . holding a small boy as a human shield! Aghast, the L-Team leader has only one option: GET THE POPE!

A shot to the Holy Helmet stuns the pope, who is "spirited" away to become a popular breakfast menu item! Eggs Benedict!

The outcome: all the victims of the pope are avenged! The L-Team wins the day!

Time to Die on Everest!

Yep, it's that time of the year again. Apparently this time around the weather's weird, but notwithstanding that, over 200 climbers intend to summit Everest about the middle of May. All so they can be hired for endless lecture tours afterwards.

Well, this guy won't be giving any lectures. Maybe the wife he left behind should.

Okay, Enough Mourning. Time for Dead Terrorist Jokes!

Okay, I took off all the black clothes this morning and put the Q'uran back on the shelf. It's time to paaaaarrrrtttyyyy!

And to do that, you simply must check out Ahmed the Dead Terrorist. It's simply the funniest thing I've ever watched.

Ten Years . . . why?

It took all of about ten seconds for Lee Harvey Oswald to change the entire world. It took no international manhunts, no specialised highly-trained squad of hit men no years of searching for Bourne-conspiracy- type elite death squads to deliver two shots to the head of President John Kennedy.

The fucking guy who took out Martin Luther King -- I forget his name, thankfully, but there must be a "Ray"  in there somewhere -- again, no specialised training, no tactical "hit squad"  crap . . . he just showed up and took a couple of pops off his Walmart special triple-ott whatever and killed a legend. All by his fucking loser self. The list goes on. John Hinkley. Mark Chapman.

So I'm left with, after all the jumping up and down, one question: with the combined might of everything the United States (of whom I am a citizen) had at its beck and call -- lest you be deceived, this is THE most powerful country to ever have ruled the human race, for better or for worse -- how could it possibly have taken 10 years to find ONE MAN, someone who really HAD a sore thumb for sticking out so much . . . if I were a conspiracy theorist, which I am not, I would be asking many, many questions about this one.

I suspect that the wool has deliberately been pulled over our eyes in the worst of ways. But I suspect that it hasn't been done to cover up anything remotely conspiracy-theory-worthy. Rather, to cover up the insane amount of fuckups by the above-mentioned "most powerful country ever to exist."

Oswald was lucky, but he was smart-lucky. I won't dignify him by calling him intelligent, but you have to admit, he pulled off something that an entire country's worth of the most highly trained, top-notch minds couldn't do for ten fucking years. Ten years this fucking loser/insane murderer had us dangling by the short hairs and it took two presidents and an army of thousands to nail this one asshole.

Of course I won't take away the victory for the amazing people who carried this one out. But I will say: What took you so fucking LONG?

Please, please

Is there an antidote to chuckling? Please, give me the drug! I simply can't stop chuckling since I learned they creamed Osama Bin Mama's lard-ass! I just can't get off the chuckle wagon. I just regret that the Israelis didn't do it . . . they've done everything else!

No, that crafty bastard Obama did it . . . I'm just bursting with pride. That fucker swallowed it and looked totally normal to the world for weeks, kissing babies and making policies and all the time he knew he was going to ram a fucking missile up Bin Laden's ass. That's called a poker face!

I'm not a jingoist US-loving right-of-center but I just cannot keep from almost jumping up and down and shouting YES! YES! That motherfucker, who I lamentably called dead only months after 9/11, was alive all the time! Like a fucking cockroach, hiding in the gutters . . . I hope the entire time he was absolutely terrified. He should have been. I just wish I could have been there, with just one kick to the head . . . no, two. Make it a baseball bat and a razor blade.

He made the entire fucking world's life miserable for nigh on two decades and I puke in his grave. Thank god they just fucking killed him instead of capturing him. Sorry, they didn't kill him. They put him down.

Strike one, Obama! Strike three, Osama!

Why?

Is there some secret that just has never been explained to me? Some magic "trick of the trade" that no one is confessing for fear of exposing a grand scam?

Please tell me: what is written on those 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper that news anchors are constantly shuffling around and examining at the end of newscasts? They shuffle them, re-stack them and then make sure they're lined up perfectly as the theme song to the newscast plays and the camera pans out and pretend they're reading something . . . what is it they are reading?

I really want to know.

Reason Cancelled out by Reality

In sickness and in health. I don't know why people who vote bother.

Finally, Reason

It appears that someone out there has a brain.