Book of the day

Cameron Pierce's Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

In a land where black snow falls in the shape of swastikas, there exists a nightmarish prison camp known as Auschwitz. It is run by a fascist, flatulent race of aliens called the Ass Goblins, who travel in apple-shaped spaceships to abduct children from the neighboring world of Kidland. Prisoners 999 and 1001 are conjoined twin brothers forced to endure the sadistic tortures of these ass-shaped monsters. To survive, they must eat kid skin and work all day constructing bicycles and sex dolls out of dead children.

I believe this was published by Random House and is on the short list for both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. It was optioned as a film for Sony Pictures Classics. If the rumors on Ain't It Cool News are true, the Ass Goblins movie is slated to star Meryl Streep as the head Ass Goblin, Ralph Fiennes as The White Angel, and Danny McBride as Danny McBride. It's slated for a winter 2011 release and a big Oscar push as one of Sony's prestige pictures.

In 2011, America is about to be Shit Slaughtered!!

I have an idea for a new themed pizza chain

Bernie Madoff is back in the news again as another civil lawsuit was filed against him, trying to get back all that money he stole. That's going to be a problem. If they want that money, they'll have to invent time travel, go back to 1975, outwit two streetwise toughs, infiltrate "a culture of sexual deviance", and then dig that money out of Bernie's nose.

Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a mob boss and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.
...
According to the allegations – their source isn't specified – Madoff deployed an employee and to get drugs from 1975 to 2003, fueling an office so cocaine-laden insiders dubbed it "the North Pole." Office parties featured topless waitresses, employee affairs were common and Madoff kept a list of his favorite pretty masseuses in his personal phone book, the lawsuit said, claiming investors' money helped pay for it all.

I refuse to accept the possibility that coke and hookers were used to excess at any time on Wall Street. Still, I wonder if "the North Pole" was only a reference to cocaine part of the drug fueled orgies. God I hope not.

Still I'd like to know the context of the whole "eats pizza cooked by a child molester" thing. Is that a reference to how far he's fallen, a "Look at what he's been reduced to" type thing? Or is it more of a "Haw haw" type thing? Because if it's the former, I reject the notion that child molester pizza is a bad thing. I mean if you want to lure children you have to get them with things they like, namely pizza. The man can probably whip up a good pie, not to mention chicken fingers and grilled cheeses. That's a benefit Madoff is getting.

In any event that entire story is full of win. Stealing billions to fuel drug and sex parties, hanging out with mobsters and Israeli agents, fight club, a kid diddler making pizzas piled high with pepperoni, and I'm sure he's being invited to all kinds of prison sex parties as well. His life is still better than all the people he bankrupted.

Broken News: As town halls end America longs for new outlets to vent their angry insanity

THE HEARTLAND—“I just don’t know what to do now. All of this rage and sloganeering still left to yell about at completely inappropriate times. If these town halls are really over, where else am I going to be able to repeat all the stuff I read in chain emails to the people who sent me those emails?”

These are the words and concerns of Gaston Boyle, a tractor salesman from Dubuque. But they are also those of an increasing number of livid, directionless Americans. With health care town halls wrapping up as senators and representatives gleefully return to their "jobs," grateful for no longer having to endure their constituents, many citizens are wondering from where their next opportunity to shout conspiracies at public officials while being restrained by local law enforcement will arise.

“First we had the teabagging thing, which went OK. Then there was the health care fight, and that was a blast. But I don’t see what there is on the horizon to get worked up about,” observed Tony Paymer, a Mississippi diner owner fresh off a 30-day stay in the county jail for dumping 40,000 tea bags and 70,000 Sweet ‘N Low packets into the community pool.

“Maybe the czars thing that Hannity is all uppity about? Sure, it sounds like that disease from a few years back, but I don't know if I have the energy. I guess we could go back to the ‘black President’ thing, but that’s so passé and I hate repeating my ’08 material. Maybe some Kenyan stuff... I just don't know."

For many Americans, therein lies the problem: finding a new outlet for the irrational anger. Some are still clinging to the last gasps of the health care movement, hoping that continued references to death panels or some newly developed murder and/or line-waiting conspiracy will stem the inevitable tide of half-hearted, incremental reform.

Still, others have plowed straight into being afraid of governmental czars, stopping the government from trying to infringe upon coal companies god-given right to pollute, preparing gold coin designs and isolationist slogans for Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign, stopping Congress from making it easier for unions to organize, and going outside to yell at the sun and low flying birds. But these are scattered movements without a cohesive center and none has managed to channel the concentrated fury seen during the health care town halls.

“It just felt so good, going down to the local community center to yell at some overwhelmed representative about why he wanted to garrote everyone’s grandmother,” reminisced Sally Harrow, a homemaker from Valdosta. “You really felt like you were doing something that would get you on TV. Now… I just don’t know what I can do to be part of a YouTube protest video that gets linked on those blog-things.”

For many citizens, this end has given them a chance to direct their bile towards places that are more traditionally accepted by the community at large: either inward at children and loved ones, or at professional American football teams. As luck would have it, the conclusion of these town halls has coincided roughly with the start of both the NFL and amateur beauty pageant seasons.

“Yeah, thank Jesus for those,” said Danny Verges, a machinist from Owensboro. “Luckily I have a two daughters, so I’ll be able to psychotically obsess over their achievements in lieu of the encroaching hand of socialism. Between that this irrational attachment I got not control over, I figure I'll do ok. Maybe I'll even go to one, get a few in me, start a fight with a rival father, traumatize my kid and any bystanders with my curse filled screaming fits after they lose..."

Asked whether he was referring to a beauty pageant or a professional football game, Verges replied, "What's the difference?"

For now, most are content to let their inexplicable anger seethe and grow inside them, confident that when they’re able to coalesce around a new cause, this stifled frustration will fuel the next great leap forward in poorly thought-out criticisms of ideas they only half understand.

Wait.....they chose...adult behavior?

In a rare flash of adult behavior, the RNC decided to vote down the eminently childish plan to rebrand the Democrats the Democrat-Socialist Party and rebrand the GOP as the He-Man Handsome Jesus Par-tay. Was it a full moon? Did someone show them a graph charting their Congressional losses with projections for 2010? Did the Holy Spirit jump into Michael Steele and tell the assembled masses not to vote for it during a fit of speaking in tongues? Tell me, I must know.

The Republican National Committee backed away Wednesday from a resolution that officially called Democrats the “Democrat Socialist Party,” but instead voted to condemn Democrats for what it called a “march toward socialism.”

The voice-vote came after an unusual special meeting of the party that underlined fractures among Republicans on how to deal with President Obama and the Democratic Party. The original resolution was backed by some of the party’s more conservative members but was opposed by the party chairman, Michael Steele, as well as other Republican leaders. The opponents said the proposal to impose a new name on the Democrats made the Republican party appear trite and overly partisan, and would prove politically embarrassing.

Oh, they rigged it. That would have been a tense vote count had they decided to really vote on it. Michael Steele counting ballots, flop sweat on his brow, finally ending with a disgusted slam of the last ballot to the ground and a plaintative cry of "...you dumb bastards." Instead they just had Steele gesticulate his arms up and down while acting as an applause meter while Hayley Barbour yelled out "Let's make some noise for sanity! I can't heaaaaaaaar yooooooooouuuuuuuuuu!" and pretended the guys starting in disbelief at what their party had become were louder than the guys in the Nobama hats and Hannity shirts.

Gotta say, I did not think Steele was this smart. I might have underestimated the intell...oh Christ, Steele just claimed "liberalism will kill you". I take it back. Accidental smartness. Fluke. Won't happen again.

Great idea

What do you do if you're a once great party that is now in the throes of almost total irrelevancy, historic unpopularity, is the punchline to any number of "funny in the tragic sense" jokes, and your prospects for maintaining the meager power you do have looking dimmer as the full crushing weight of your reign of stupidity hammers down on the American people? You start spinning your wheels with fruitless, empty gestures meant to speak to no one but your craziest fringe, further alienating yourselves from the American public. I mean that's the obvious plan, right?

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Let it be said that the GOP is truly the party of ideas, that the RNC under Michael Steele's tenure is bringing worthwhile discussion to important debates, and the GOP is no way a complete and utter embarrassment/sideshow.

Weekend Art

Do you hate those cutesy little ceramic sculptures of kids doing wholesome shit as much as I do? Good. That makes you, me, and Barnaby Barford. One of us is a really talented and funny artist.

Enjoy the rest HERE. And then go the fuck outside. It's gorgeous.

CIA slapfight

What's the most important story today? Inter-party squabbles over who told what when over Barack Obama's choice to lead the CIA, Leon Panetta. You see the media got word that Panetta, a former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and the OMB director, was the pick for CIA head and blared it all over the place. This of course ruffled the feathers of outgoing Senate Intel Chair Rockefeller and Diane Feinstein because Obama didn't tell them before the media got wind and broke the story. So the nomination might be in jeopardy. Because Washington is a place run by adults.

The surprise selection of Panetta, a former California congressman and chief of staff to President Clinton, would give Obama a CIA director with loyalty to the White House and an experienced managerial hand to steer the administration away from potential intelligence scandals.
...
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," Feinstein said. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the senator "would have concerns" about a Panetta nomination.

Of note, the people that were unequivocally agreeable to Feinstein and Rockefeller, to whom which raised no concerns: Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Michael Hayden, and Feinstein also backed Porter Goss and Michael Mukasey. Of note is their claim that they want a career intel professional in charge, which is interesting since that's never really seemed to be a concern before. But more interesting is trying to find a career CIA man who isn't entangled in the CIA's policies of torture and rendition, policies which Feinstein and Rockefeller didn't actually oppose and, despite some tough talk, completely buckled when it came time to actually do anything.

Panetta? He's unequivocally against torture, rendition and all that shit decent people find objectionable. He's also run a giant Government bureaucracy and helped steer a President through national security and foreign policy waters. So of course he's unqualified and raises concerns. But I guess Barry made a mistake, he didn't hand hold the children enough before the press leaked something and now they're mad that Obama didn't make the horrible, torture riddled choice they wanted him to make. Barry, hand out the "Pobody's Nerfect" cookies, look sheepish, and pretend to care about what two people (whose stewardship of the Intel Committee has been abysmal) think about your choices.

Children's letters to God

Website Mango Fun was kind enough to bring us unincinerated letters from children to their God. Unknown if God ever answered back or smote these pre-pubescent miscreants for questioning his work, or if he was too drunk to notice (like usual). And yes Bobby, God is an American. Jesus and Gandhi too.