Contrived Oil Prices

It seems that they've found a new way to jack up oil prices again.


Back 4 years ago when we decided it would be a nifty idea to invade Iraq & steal their oil supplies to make Dick Cheney even richer via Halliburton, everyone thought gas prices would come down. Unfortunately, Iraq owed so much money to every other country on earth that any money generated by their oil went to pay everyone else off first. Shit, we thought we'd get the employee discount since we owned their oil fields now....stupid us.

Then every time some yahoo in a checkered head wrap got an itchy trigger finger, which has been pretty often, oil prices went up. Then, the Year of the Hurricane hit us, and gas prices went fucking insane. Gotta cash in on tragedy, y'know. It's the American Way. And once the prices evened out again, some new disaster would come up to jack the prices up again.

So here we are....Summer 2006, and what to do? We could raise prices because Israel is shelling Lebanon, but that whole war in the Middle East shit is getting old...and there hasn't been any sign of a hurricane yet this year, and it's already almost mid-August. We needed to jack them prices up again before Labor Day and squeeze all the money we can out of travelers on the last big holiday before Thanksgiving, so now all of a sudden, the Alaskan Pipeline is falling apart?


Bullshit. Pure utter bullshit. You mean to tell me that a multibillion dollar pipeline just all of a sudden develops so many worn out places & weak spots that you gotta shut it down? Bullshit! I'd like to think someone has the sense to check this thing REGULARLY, especially in the age of global terrorism, so how the fuck do they miss the fact that it was falling apart? You mean to tell me it fell apart overnight? Sure....sure it did. Or are you telling me no one has checked this thing in the past, oh, say, 5 to 10 years and noticed it was maybe coming apart?


Pull the other leg, assholes; it plays "Jingle Bells".

TELL ME WHY

Why is it that it's okay for these dustbunny scumbag insurgents (a polite term for organized terrorists) to behead Americans on live TV and the Internet, to kidnap American soldiers, kill them, and booby-trap the mutilated bodies, to kill civilian contractors & burn the mutilated corpses, and hang the remains from bridges so more of these assholes can beat them with sticks like a piñata, but if an American says something about the Koran or some Iraqi prisoners get embarrassing pictures taken of them, the media explodes like it's the second coming of Hitler?

Why is it that the media never shows images of US troops feeding starving villagers, or air-dropping thousands of food packets, or building schools, or giving inoculations for cholera to people who shit in their own water supply, or training police officers to take care of their own country, and instead only focuses on the rare occurrence of some dipshit who snaps and kills a civilian? Why is it only the bad things get hugely publicized while the good things get forgotten?

Why is it that most junior enlisted troops, who have to do the bulk of the shitty details the military gets tasked with, are so poorly paid that they qualify for FOOD STAMPS? Why do so many troops have to take second jobs delivering pizza and stocking shelves at night at Wal-Mart to make ends meet? Why is it that it took a Doctorate in Aeronautical Engineering to design a plane, a Master's to build it, a Bachelor's to fly it, and the millions of dollars of electronics, avionics, and weapons are maintained by a high school graduate who is paid less than the drive thru clown at Hardee's, and isn't old enough to even by a beer yet to toast the news that he's again getting deployed to some Third World shit hole where every day angry people will do their level best to kill him for trying to help them?

Why is it that troops have had to beg Rumsfeld for armor kits for their vehicles and in many cases have had to scrounge steel plates from trash piles to weld onto their vehicles for protection from people who strap explosives to pregnant women & send them into wedding parties to blow themselves up?

Why is it that we have Israel, Lebanon, the Hezbo's, and every other Jallallahoolabooladurkadurka jihad teetering on the edge of potential nuclear war, and the biggest story in the news is what Mel Gibson said about a Jewish cop during a DUI arrest? At this rate, Israel will get wind of the anti-Semite remarks of Gibson and start bombing Hollywood. No big loss….

Why is it that the average American has no clue that Venezuela, whom we import an assload of oil from, is on the verge of going communist, but knew that last night was the series premiere of Celebrity Fit Club and Flavor of Love?

Why is it that the average American will gladly tell you that he lives in the greatest country on earth because we're free and can vote for our leaders, but that they have no idea who their elected representatives to Congress are and didn't vote in the last election? Why is it that more Americans voted for American Idol than in any American presidential election, ever?

Yeah...can you tell me why?

I Love Me Some Me

I Love Me Some Me

You know, some people just love themselves too much. Many of these same people seem to live for feeding their own publicity machines. Perennially problematic notable media whore Terrell Owens, in a post-game interview, said once (or twice), “I love me some me". Sure, T.O., and everyone else in football thinks you're a pariah.
The United States Marines are the few, the proud, the ones who have to tell you time & again how great they are. Every Marine, current & former, has no shortage of hats, bumper stickers, flags, and t-shirts proclaiming their status as the most dangerous oxygen-burning carbon-based life form ever to grace this rock. Now, don't get me wrong; I love Marines, even though I was Army. My oldest friend in the world is a former Marine. But the self-propaganda machine amuses me. It's almost like they have Short Man Syndrome...the smallest branch of the military always puffing itself up. Look on any (and I do mean ANY) military t-shirt web page and the shirts for the USMC will outnumber the other services 5 to 1. Shameless self-promotion..... don't hate me, Chris!


Rush Limbaugh toots his own horn for 3 hours a day, telling his mindless sheeple zomboid listeners how great he is and how America would crumble into dust without him. You'd think that blowhard would have gone into the shitter after his Oxycontin scandal, but like Marion Barry, he fell into shit & came out smelling like a rose. It's funny how Limbaugh spent 8 years beating Bill Clinton like a gong, and the two of them have more in common than you'd think...they both are enamored of the sound of their own voices, both are beloved of throngs of dolts, and both came out of potentially career-ending fuck-ups more popular than ever.

Aw yeah, boyeee! Gots me some bling!

It simply astounds me, the very nature of human beings.

It mystifies me, the stupidity of my fellow humans. Why, oh why, would you put 5000 freakin' dollars worth of ugly-assed oversized rims on a 500 dollar piece of shit car?


A barely drivable mobile-unit, with a paint job that's primarily primer, that's been paid for since Carter was in office, and then you went to some fly-by-night finance place and took out a LOAN for 5 grand to buy WHEELS? Are you HIGH? Or are you just stupid?

I get a kick outta the ones that are on a payment plan & have just rims on the back, and regular wheels on the front because they haven't bought the others yet....or better yet, what happens when you can't pay the payment? Do the repo guys come & repo your wheels? I can see it now...it's 3AM Eternal, and the repo man wheels into the trailer park, jacks up your car like a NASCAR pit crew & takes back your wheels, all in under 60 seconds.

I absolutely love the ones who feel the need to tell you what the size of the rims are with numbers painted on the rear quarter of the car. Whether it be 22's, 24's, or even 26's....I mean, does anyone really give a fuck except the other douchebags with rim-envy and numbers on their own rides? I even saw one twat riding around town in a beat up Ford Probe and on the back it had 16" in big stickers on it, under the Lee Press-On Spoiler kit. Yes... a Ford freakin' PROBE! Advertising 16" rims! Whoopty shit. My mom's Kia Amanti has 16" rims. Then again, this was a supposed adult driving a car named after something that goes in your ass. Need I say more?

Yeah...a 500 dollar car with minimum coverage liability insurance, with 8000 dollar rims, 2000 dollars worth of dumb-assed TV’s in the headrest and a 5000 dollar stereo & speaker set up. Makes sense to me.

Wutz a Bawlzy?

Wutz a Bawlsy?

With these three words, “What’s a ballsy?” American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler surpassed Jessica Simpson as The Dumbest Bitch Alive. Never did I think that I’d hear someone say something dumber than Simpson’s diatribe on whether Chicken of the Sea was fish or chicken. No one can be this damned stupid. I live in the Deep South, and I’m confronted with uneducated ignorance daily, and I’ve lived in rural Maine amongst Yankee Rednecks, yet I have yet to physically run up against Capital-D DUMB of this caliber in person. Not even innocent naiveté could cause a rational adult human to continually spew forth dumb-isms about calamari, salmon, spinach salads, being labeled a minx, the terms “ballsy” and “on paper”, and whatever shucky-darn down-home crapola we’ll see this week on American Idol, or as I like to call it: Televised Crack for the Suburban Masses.

I’m starting to agree with the various conspiracy theory websites that Miss Pickler is bullshitting us all with her feigned folksy innocence. She seems to have lied about never having performed in public, and if you’ve ever seen her prom picture, innocent is a word that never comes to mind. I’ve seen hookers in Germany wearing more clothes.

So here’s my list of the Top Ten Things Pickler Could Say Next:

10. What’s a Korean Basket Job?
09. What’s a Money Shot? Is that like a rim job?
08. What’s a Pre-Op Tranny?
07. What’s a Tijuana Donkey Show?
06. What’s Rollin’ a Fatty?
05. What’s a Dirty Sanchez?
04. What’s a Teabag?
03. What’s a Shart?
02. What’s a Crunk?
01. What’s a Haggis?

Total Hockey Fag

You know you’re a total hockey fag when you sit and watch a seven-year old hockey game on ESPN Classic, a game that you already know the outcome of. But then again, it wasn’t just any ordinary game, either. It was a game played in Madison Square Garden on April 18, 1999 between the Rangers and the Penguins. The Pens won it 2-1 in OT. This was back in the days when Pittsburgh had a solid team & could actually finish out of the basement, unlike today.

The game was literally riddled with all-stars:
The Pens had Jaromir Jagr, Robert Lang, Martin Straka, Alexei Kovalev, Jiri Slegr, and Darius Kasparitis, while the Rangers had Brian Leetch, Peter Nedved, Marc Savard, Kevin Stevens, Niklas Sundstrom, Mike Knuble, Mathieu Schneider, Dan Cloutier, and Mike Richter.

The sidelines were filled with such luminaries as Paul Coffey and Mark Messier watching from the pit rinkside, and Mario Lemieux, sitting up in the stands.

And all these names pale in comparison to whom they were all there to see. This game was special. Number 99 was playing his last game ever. The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, was retiring after breaking and setting pretty much every record in the NHL. The greatest player the sport has known, hockey’s greatest ambassador to the world, a true Canadian Hero, and he was calling it quits on his own terms.

It was surreal to see it again after all these years. I was mesmerized. Yeah, you’re a total hockey fag when you watch a seven-year old game. Especially when you own a double-DVD set chronicling Gretzky’s career & have seen the footage a dozen times over. Especially when you sit there unabashedly teary-eyed, weepy over watching Wayne skate around the rink, waving goodbye to a 20-year career. Yeah, a total hockey fag indeed.

So what? It’s Gretzky. Enough said……

Who teaches these assholes how to drive?

Allow me to preface this little rant by stating my qualifications to comment on the topic at hand. I am a licensed professional. I hold a current Class B Commercial Driver’s License, or CDL. I partially make my living by driving. I have about 18 years experience behind the wheel, including my time driving in the Army. I’ve driven in 4 different countries (The USA, Canada, Italy, and Germany), sometimes at high rates of speed, through countrysides, on trails, over mountains, on Autobahns, and through major cities like Toronto, Montreal, Boston, New York, Washington, Stuttgart, and Munich.

This is mind, I do believe I’m qualified to make this statement: people in South Carolina are among the worst drivers in the known universe.

Never in my life have I seen more reckless, ignorant, obstinate, inconsiderate, and downright stupid drivers than here in SC. Tailgating is a sport here, although the popularity of NASCAR here has the local rustics thinking they’re drafting me. Dear me, here they are imagining they’re Greg Biffle or some such other overdone circle-driver, and if I have to hit my brakes hard they’ll be eating 13 tons of bumper. Remember, kiddies, if you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you.

Passing on the right is popular here, too, as well as passing 6 cars in a row on a 2-lane backroad in a no-passing zone before forcing themselves back into the traffic flow to narrowly avoid a head-on collision. And then the asshole will apply his brakes. Why? This makes no sense. Why pass me and then slow down? Again, I blame NASCAR. I may be slow but I’m ahead of you, so I must be going faster than you…

The other thing that people here do that frikkin’ stupefies me is when you’re cruising along at terminal velocity and some desperately stupid cretin pulls out in front of you going 20 below the speed limit instead of waiting for you to go by before pulling out. Hell, there could be 2 miles of empty road behind you, and rather than wait, they pull out. NEWS FLASH: a 13-ton truck going 60 mph does not gracefully stop on a dime like a German sports car. Granted, those air brakes work great, but be realistic.

Many a time I’ve had a nimrod do this and then have the audacity to shoot me a shitty look because I came up to within a few feet of their ass end, close enough to read their “My kid is a mediocre underachiever at Bubba Dillweed Middle School” bumper sticker. The infuriating topper to this episode is that 90% of the time, this waste of oxygen is gonna pull out in front of you doing 30, and then go about 200 yards before turning off the road again. Yes, you read that right. They couldn’t wait til the truck goes past, and the next 2 miles of road is empty, to creep that 1982 Dodge Diplomat out onto the road for a 300-foot excursion to the next driveway.



I’ve seen imbeciles of all ages guilty of this heinous act, but the main perpetrators are Blue Hairs, folks that were driving Miss Daisy in a Model-A Ford to the Scuffleville General Store when gas was a nickel. Nothing like a 300-year old driver with a handicap tag and glasses so thick they say “Five Cent Deposit” on the rim to make that big blue vein in my forehead twitch like an epileptic on crack.
Nothing at all, unless it’s a frikkin’ Moped…

Never in my days have I seen so many people on Mopeds & scooters as I do here in SC. I could see if the underlying reason was Manhattan commuter traffic snarls, or if it was to save gas by getting 17 million miles to the gallon, but face it: the truth of it is that 99% of these Ped-Heads lost their licenses on a multiple DUI conviction and can’t get an SR-22 insurance waiver thingie. So they’re stuck doing 25 mph on a rolling chainsaw carting their purchase of a 22-ounce Steel Reserve and box of White Owls in a stolen milk crate bungee-corded to the back fender. For every scooter being jockeyed by a clown wearing leather and an airbrushed helmet like he’s on his way to Daytona, you’ll find 11 motorists behind him grinding their molars to dust and screaming like Gunny Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.


And before I go, I have a question for all you Playa Pimps out there driving a 200 dollar Hooptie with 5000 dollar 26” spinners and a 10,000 dollar subwoofer system: How the bloody hell can you drive that thing while pretty much laying down and trying to peer out through a foggy haze of dope smoke and windows so black they absorb light? Enquiring minds wanna know.

Treating Diseases?

I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials by now; the ones that advertise some new wonder drug that will make your life so much better. What amuses me is that most of these commercials don’t even tell you what malady this prescription treats. Note that I said TREAT and not CURE. We don’t cure anything anymore. We merely treat, but I’ll get to that later.

These wonderfully artsy commercials and print ads, with pastel colors and animation galore, are so entrancing that you almost wish you had whatever disease it treats just so you can be the first on your block to be taking the drug. And then some tiny little voice comes on at a million miles an hour and whispers about the side effects, hoping you won’t hear them. Ah, yes, the Side Effects. Or, as they call them,” Certain Side Effects”. They say them so fast as an obligatory disclaimer that you almost miss them. But once you hear what these effects are, you begin to wonder if the treatment isn’t actually worse than the disease. No, thanks, I’ll take the heartburn. A little acid in my stomach has to be better than nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and insomnia.

Here’s a little REALITY in advertising:
Overweight? Underweight? Tired? Can’t Sleep? In pain? Feeling too peppy?
Try new DAMITOL!!! Made from a special all-natural sucrose polymer, DAMITOL may not be for everyone. Consult your doctor. Do not take DAMITOL if you are pregnant, nursing, may become pregnant, have ever been pregnant, ever thought about being pregnant, are the product of a pregnancy, or know someone who has ever been, will be, or thought about being pregnant. In tests, certain side effects occurred such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, rectal bleeding, pus-like discharge from the eyes, spontaneous abortions, and certain sexual side effects such as festering sores comparable to genital warts and an inability to achieve orgasm ever again. Discontinue use if symptoms persist. DAMITOL…when you absolutely have to take SOMETHING…

Yeah, the treatment is worse than the disease, because as I said earlier, we don’t CURE things anymore. The last disease we cured was Polio in the 40’s. We can send a man to the moon, although not in the last 30 years, we can make handheld jukeboxes to hold 10,000 bootlegged downloaded songs, we have cellular phones with email and cameras, pay for groceries with a thumbprint, but with all the billions of dollars in research that goes on daily, the last thing mankind cured was polio. That’s because there’s no money in cures. All the money is in research and sexy drug treatments. They probably found a cure for cancer in 1960 while dreaming up a new biological warfare agent to kill communism but held onto the secret formula. How many people would go broke if the research labs and drug companies closed shop? Hell, they’d have to engineer a NEW disease to treat after that! We never even cured the really nasty diseases of old like typhoid. Instead, we quit drinking the water we crap in and started bathing regularly. THAT stopped the typhoid epidemics. Small pox wasn’t cured, it was just forgotten about once we joined the electronic age. If some dirtbag in a cave in Afghanistan set loose some smallpox in New York, they’d kill millions. But we don’t inoculate for it anymore….it wasn’t sexy enough I guess. Maybe we’d need a cool animated commercial for Poxitol!

NASCAR: The True Religion of the Bible Belt

I live in the South, where the Civil War is referred to as the War of Northern Aggression, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama is revered as an unofficial national anthem, and NASCAR is king. Folks here follow it religiously and are as loyal to their favorite drivers as Catholics are to the Pope. Daytona is the NASCAR equivalent of Mecca and receives almost as many pilgrims. Given the amount of fans he has around here, Dale Earnhardt could very well be canonized for sainthood before the late Pope John Paul II were it to come to a vote. Feuds have started and marriages have ended over driver loyalties and rivalries that make the Yankees/Red Sox debate seem trivial. If Jimmy Jack Billybob pulls up to the single-wide to pick up little Sally Sue to go a-courtin’ and he has a “24” sticker in his truck window, he better hope that her Daddy don’t answer the door with a shotgun, because his truck has a “3” and an “8” on it. People here take their car racing Seriously, with a capital S. It’s creepy. But NASCAR is no longer confined to The Bubba Belt these days, and has become huge business nationwide.

Of course, what would big business be without corporate sponsorships? NASCAR is a vast playground for advertisers. Every car is festooned with logo after logo for sponsors, as are the drivers’ jumpsuits and helmets. Each car has a major sponsor, and then a dozen or so lesser sponsors. Most drivers are so associated with their sponsors that were you to ask any average fan who drives the Interstate Batteries car or the Home Depot car, they can tell you in 2 seconds flat, without blinking. There are folks who take half their buying cues from NASCAR, folks who drink Coke over Pepsi because they don’t like Jeff Gordon and feel a certain kinship with guys driving the UPS truck but mutter under their breath when they see a Fed Ex truck in town.

And not only are the cars and drivers sponsored, the races themselves all have a corporate sponsor it seems. The Pepsi 500. The Golden Corral 500. The Bud Shootout. Plus, each level or series of racing has its major trophy sponsor. The Busch Series. The Craftsman Truck Series. And the big daddy of them all, the Nextel Cup. The Nextel Cup? Yeah, that’s right. It’s used to be the Winston Cup before NASCAR went all family-oriented. Corporate America used to bow down to soccer moms, and now it’s after NASCAR Dads.

Last year, the Powers That Be decided that in order to be more family-oriented, no longer would a cigarette company sponsor the major trophy. Now it’s a cell phone company instead. However, while the smokes may be gone, there’s still beer and sex. There’s cars sponsored by Miller Lite, Budweiser, and Coors, as well as Viagra and Cialys. What’s more family-oriented than beer and erectile dysfunction?

Truth be told, it’s just about money. It’s filthy expensive to go to a race, with tickets priced in triple figures. I thought only U2 and fancy hookers charged that much for 2 hours of entertainment? Nextel paid out more dough than Philip Morris to be the corporate demigod of NASCAR, and the others have put all their money in the kitty, too. If marijuana were legal, there’d be a sleek shiny Chevy Dopemobile Racing team. You name the product and it’ll be found on someone’s car, suit, or helmet. I saw a guy with the PORK logo on it. I guess if he crashes he’ll be the Other Burnt Meat. When will we see the E-harmony.com Racing Team? Or maybe the Axe Body Spray Team?

Notably, though, there are no condom manufacturers sponsoring cars. That’s a shame. They could help cut down the number of teen moms in trailer parks if Trojan had a race team. They could change the car’s paint scheme every couple races. Red for the old-school original condoms. Light blue for the lubricated races. They can call the car the Trojan Chariot. Come on, kids, burn a little rubber with Trojan Racing!

I myself don’t follow NASCAR. To me it’s 75,000 drunk-ass hillbillies watching 40 guys drive in a circle waiting to see a crash at 200 miles an hour. Give me hockey any day.

Mail Order Penis

Here’s Bob. Bob’s life sucked till he started taking MiraclePeckerGro2000. Now he’s the toast of the town. Everyone wants to be his friend. His boss kisses his ass. Sports teams rally around him. He could part the Red Sea with his Johnson. Yeah, right.

You just gotta love these commercials for Male Enhancements. If it’s there, but doesn’t work, there’s Viagra, Levitra, and Cialys. If it works but it’s too small to suit your ego, there’s Extenz and Enzyte. Yeah, the vagina may have had its monologues, but the penis is big business.

I don’t mean to make light of men with erectile dysfunction. It’s a very real, very serious, debilitating medical condition. It’s the guys so worried about how big it is that need a whack in the forehead with a 10-pound codfish. The commercials are slick; slick as ever, just like any drug company advertising has become these days. The commercials for Enzyte make you feel that with a big enough unit, you can slay dragons and win the Nobel Prize. Bob smiles all the time, gets promoted, saves kittens, gets the key to the city, is the envy of all his friends, (and the lust object of his friends’ wives) and the Good Guys win all the sporting events just because Bob’s a fan of their team. Yeah. Sure. Okay. On the surface it seems Bob’s a success because he’s uber-confident now that he takes Enzyte, but the commercial’s darker underbelly makes you think that a monster tally whacker is the key to life, the Holy Grail of Manliness, Cock Almighty.


The commercial for Extenz is even more insidious. It’s a 30-minute infomercial that comes on at 3AM. It features porn star Ron Jeremy and a casting couch full of silicone tarts that couldn’t come up with three brain cells among them if the fate of all mankind rested upon it. I came across this train wreck on cable one night after getting up to use the bathroom and couldn’t immediately fall back asleep. And a train wreck it is; you can’t stop watching it even though you feel evil for doing so. Okay, I’ll give Ron Jeremy his props. He’s made a 25-year career out of having sex all day long, and he’s a seriously homely guy. His nickname is The Hedgehog; need I say more? So he’s sitting there leering and grinning as these porn chicks talk about how sex is always better when a man has a bigger Special Place. Yes. I kid you not. They call it a Special Place, or Special Part. The same chicks that scream the F-word as bad music hums along in the background while getting plowed by some doofus with a freakishly giant dong are referring it to it now as a Special Place. Please, kill me now. This infomercial pretty much convinces the impressionable that with a bigger penis, you’ll now finally satisfy all women, and you too can get porn stars to fake orgasms for you instead of for Ron Jeremy. Either way, these vultures are preying upon the fears and insecurities of men and making them feel that deep inside, you have a small pee pee and you’ll never amount to anything unless you take our drugs.

And remember, erections lasting more than four hours, while rare, require immediate medical help. Call 911? Not bloody likely. If I get a 4-hour woody, I’m calling CNN.