Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Blog

  • Jumping Off A Bridge With The Rest Of You – The Bum Beer Challenge

    Swiss Servator

    I believe it was Brett who warned mexican sharpshooter sometime back about his beer reviews, something to the effect of not letting the commenters goad you into joining them should they jump off a bridge. Well, ms did at least fall off a small pedestrian bridge at the commentariats urging…reviewing “Earthquake“.

    Well, never learning from other’s mistakes…I saw a bit of banter in the comments of one of ms’ fine beer reviews:

    Almost immediately my brain’s higher functions shut down and I started pestering ms “hey, lets do a bum beer challenge! I can do a couple and you can do a couple!” Now the good messican resisted at first, but I whinged enough to get him to relent.

    I decided to open with a classic – Olde English 800. It got me to thinking…you know what else Olde and English we had at least 800 of around? Yeah….the common law. Not everything we brought over from England was worth casting aside, like tea over coffee or boiled beef. The common law was a keeper. In fact, when various States set up their Constitutions, they would often explicitly keep such. Virginia for example;

      “That the common law of England, and all statutes, or acts of parliament made in aid of the common law, prior to the fourth year, of James the first, which are of a general nature not local to that kingdom, together with the several acts of the colony then in force, so far as the same may consist with the several ordinances, declarations, and resolutions of the general convention, shall be considered as in full force, until the same shall be altered by the legislative power of the commonwealth.”

    So, was Olde English 800 one of these Colonial legacies? Hardly. It is a product of the Miller Brewing Company and joined us in 1964. It has been a staple of bums, highschoolers and college kids looking for a cheap drunk ever since. It has a bit of an evil reputation – receiving less than flattering reviews from those that care to do such.

    Up first…

     

    A sniff was a bit alarming. It reminded me of the stale beer you would smell in leftover plastic cups from a college kegger…the next morning when you were trying to remember if you had 13 or 14 beers, and really didn’t want to smell the leftover Natty Light in cups strewn about the living room and front porch.

    Taste – like corn syrup and despair, mixed and chilled. Then came the slightly to moderately unpleasant aftertaste. Some subsequent slugs of it didn’t help. I decided to pour the rest of the bottle out, in memory of departed comrades (but not the really cool ones, just the meh ones). RATING: 1 out of 5 dumpsters.

    Next up, I had planned to do King Cobra Malt Liquor – Anheuser-Busch’s answer to Olde English 800. I am disappointed that I was unable to find it around anywhere. Oh, not because I expected it to be any less vile than OE 800….but I had teed up some funny:

    Sorry, Commander. Maybe next time.

    and some interesting:

    Queen’s Cobras Regiment, Royal Thai Army

    But the story of the Queen’s Cobras, serving in Vietnam, will have to wait for another time.

    Instead, I drew forth the local Wal-Mart’s latest bum beer – Rockdale Light. Fortunately, it came in bum cans (24 oz) too (I suspected one can would be enough for this lifetime). Unlike OE, the Rockdale seems to have a bit more of a moderate set of opinions.

    Yes, Rockdale LIGHT…I am watching my Glibfit calories.

    Slipping the tallboy into its paper sack, I cracker ‘er open. Could it be that the craft beer revolution had come to bum beers? I tried a sniff and got…nothing. Huh. I mean, zero. Odd that…. OK, on to taste. Hmmmm. Similar. It was the Oakland of beers – No there, there. A little bit of an aftertaste of something resembling beer. 24 oz of 4ish % ABV….nothing. Not high enough alcohol content for a true bum beer, but by God, I can see cases of this being drained by thirsty undergrads, furtive highschoolers and others on a budget/not desiring taste, merely effect. I mean, $1.29 for a 24 oz can isn’t bank breaking. Dump a couple in a cheap plastic pitcher and here you go! Gets the job done, maybe a bit slower and you may end up a bit bloated by the sheer volume you would have to consume…but a success for the category. RATING: 3 out of 5 dumpsters.

    Later today, in Part 2, mexican sharpshooter suffers because of my enthusiasm.

  • Saturday Morning Links of Vengeance

    Another lovely weekend. And if Sherlock Holmes were here, he’d look at me and say, “I perceive that you have been binge watching The Avengers with your wife. And that you sit on the right side of the couch.”

    “That’s astonishing, Holmes, how do you come to that conclusion?”

    “I noted that your left upper arm is covered in bruises. Each bruise is about the size of your wife’s right fist. So clearly she has been striking you repeatedly. What could cause this, especially from a woman not prone to violence? You are someone of the correct age to have been a young teenager in 1966-1968, your are relentlessly heterosexual, so you clearly would have had a masturbatory fixation on Emma Peel. I see an Amazon Fire attached to your television. The rest is straightforward deduction.”

    Enough reminiscing, we need links. First the filler crap: today’s the anniversary of Calvin Coolidge (our greatest president) granting full and unconditional citizenship to all Indians (casino, not call center). And the marriage of Grover Cleveland (our second greatest president) in the White House. It’s also the birthday of Jerry Mathers, whose death in Vietnam caused dad to clobber him or something.

    On again, off again, on again, off again. Anyone who has ever spent time in the Middle East recognizes this dance- you perform it any time you buy something at a shop. If you don’t walk out at least twice and let the shop owner chase after you and wheedle you back, you’re not doing your job. The delightful part for me is watching the whiplash as Progressives go nuts at each step of the dance. Perhaps they prefer bombing to dancing? The track record of their heroes certainly suggests that…

     

    Job growth, record low unemployment. Sort of what was predicted after the tax rate cuts last year. But it’s bad news. Really bad news. It may not be obvious to you, but that’s because you’re not the deep and nuanced thinker that Nancy “Hold my head up to your ear and you can hear the arteries cracking” Pelosi is.

     

    Today is International Sex Workers Day. Shit, I could end this right here and let you pervs do the rest. On a related theme, here’s a guy who is great at getting news outlets to promote his business, which promises to rid you of your addiction to alcohol, drugs, and porn. In other words, to remove all the joy from your life.

    In the clinic today I meet James, a 32-year-old former office worker who has been coming here since December when his wife found his porn use on his laptop. “I was nipping to the toilets at work and masturbating,” he explains…

    “When people use pornography over an extended period of time unchecked for six or seven hours a day, maybe with cocaine and alcohol as well, then the lines get blurred and the tolerance level develops.”

    Wankers In the Mist.

     

    Chicago machine politicians gotta do what they gotta do, and Team Blue is of course the party of the little guy, the workers, the downtrodden. Here’s the passage in the story that got me laughing hysterically:

    Obama has kept a relative low profile since leaving the White House in January 2017

    As the Cos would say in happier times, “Riiiiiiight.”

     

    Every once in a while, The Onion is still funny.

     

    This one is a stunner. I hope you’re sitting down because the shock of this will make you keel over. Ready? OK. Even in Progressive utopias, rich people and poor people live in different parts of town! Whew, I’m glad I warned you ahead of time, otherwise you might have hit your head when you fainted.

     

    Speaking of Austin, my Old Guy Music this week is some folks I would see there regularly. I made the mistake of going out partying with them after a show once, and found out that at my age, this wasn’t a great idea. Kelly is an amazing guitarist, and that fellow on bass has had a pretty interesting career himself.

     

  • SEA SMITH TUESDAY…UM, FRIDAY NIGHT LINKS

    SEE, TUESDAY WELD COME IN, KNOW WATER FINE!

     

    SEA SMITH GET DISTRACTED WHEN SEE OLD PICTURE TUESDAY WELD, FORGET WHAT DAY IS. BUT HE OK NOW AND WILL PRACTICE JOKES ON GLIBS HOOMANS. SEA SMITH THINK HE ALMOST READY FOR OPEN MIC NITE AT LOCAL SUSHI BAR. THAT BAR WHERE FISH DRINK!  SEE, AM READY!

    HOW DO HURT OYSTER GET TO HOSPITAL? BY CLAM-BULANCE!

    WHAT FISH MADE OF TWO SODIUM ATOM? …. 2 NA. IS JOKE FOR SCIENCE HOOMANS!

    WHAT YOU CALL LAZY CRAYFISH? … SLOBSTER!

    HOW OCTOPUS GO TO WAR?  … WELL ARMED!

    SEA SMITH FUNNY! HAHAHAHA!

     

    OK, SEA SMITH STOP. HIM NOT WANT GLIBS TO HURT SELVES LAUGHING TOO MUCH. NOW GIVE YOU LINKS.

    • SEA SMITH THINK HE REMEMBER TIME WHEN SPAIN HAD SHAKY GOVERNMENT? WHO WAS STOP THAT FOR WHILE?

      Quién?!
    • OH HOW SEA SMITH LAUGH. HE THINK THIS ONLY HAPPEN IN CANADA…BUT LOOK! HAHAHA!
    • IF ONLY SEA SMITH HEAR THIS EARLIER! HE COULD PAY VISIT TO STRANDED SHIP CREW. BY PAY VISIT…
      “Anyone know why the harbor police ran away while screaming “SEA SMITH!!!”?

       

    • WHY EVERYONE LOOK AT SEA SMITH? SOMETIME THINGS DO REALLY “FALL OFF A TRUCK SHIP“! “While the contents of the containers are unknown, we understood they do not contain dangerous goods,” Mr Mitchell said. SEE, NO WORRIES, M8! NOW, SEA SMITH RELOAD BAR AND HAVE NEW FURNITURE!

    SEA SMITH HEAR YOU SUPPOSED TO GIVE MUSIC LINK. OK, HERE LINK.

  • Friday Afternoon Outta Heeeere Links

    Some of you might remember that line from when skit comedy was at least occasionally funny. As Sloopy mentioned, we will be doing a joint family vacation on the far-eastern side of the Redneck Riviera. Arranging marriages for the Glibertopian breeding project, drinking bootlegged beer from Texas, and generally exercising Florida Man style decision making. I don’t know about Sloopy and Banjos, but I explained to my wife about bail money and how to go about getting a bail bond.

    Here we go. One of London’s too white cyclists takes reasonable exception to nearly being run down, goes Crocodile Dundee on the car driver.

    Bees! OMG!

    This is… I mean, aside from catching multiple felonies… pretty funny. Three people in MI showed up to 911 calls and impersonated cops.

    This is strange reporting. An Uber driver, who may or may not have been on-duty, fatally shot a passenger in his car. The fact that he wasn’t arrested leads me to believe he had a good story about why shooting someone in his car while on the highway wasn’t a bad idea.

    Jesus. This is just horrible. Probable serial killer and all-around terrible person caught in Springfield, Mass.

     

    All right, I’m out of heeere.

  • GlibFit 2.0, Son of Glibfit – Week 3

    Week 3 – The Tabata Protocols

    Last year, about two millions Americans died.  Of those two million, about 760,000 were related to heart issues of some type. That’s more people than were killed by cancer.  More than killed reading derp on the internet.  Even more people killed than those droned by Obama while attending a wedding. Combined.

    Sitting through this movie was also worse than death

    So take care of your heart, or it will kill you.  But there are things worse than death (far more worse than death.)  

    Like doing cardio.  I’ll take death over boredom.  Probably shouldn’t, but I would.  I tried it all. Audiobooks. Podcasts.  Thinking about baseball. Nothing could convince me to get on that bike six days a week for a half hour to an hour.  I chose death over boredom. I had high blood pressure. This wasn’t an abstract choice.

    But it was a false choice.  I found out, there is another option: Pain.  And pain’s name is Dr Izumi Tabata.  I’ll take fifteen minutes of pain over an hour of boredom any day of the week.

    The premise is this – ‘cardio’ as we all know and love it is more accurately called Low Intensity Steady State cardio, or LISS.  Do the same thing at a rate that gets your heart a little elevated, and do it without variation. The other option is the opposite – High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT.  

    You sports fans know these.  Ten and turns. Suicides. Push as hard as you can for a few seconds, then recover for a few seconds.  And when you push, push HARD. Then, when you feel like you are going to puke – presto. You’re done.

    I find this to be much, much easier to get over and done than droning on and on and on and on at a slow pace.  Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe I’ve got ADHD. Maybe I’m a sinner and deserve death. But in any case, I’ll take it.

    So I tried it.  And I just about died.  I did HIIT three times a week, and it was too much.  Four days a week wasn’t enough recovery time for my heart, or my nervous system, or something.  So I did what any sane person would do. A literature search!

    I found a journal article titled Three Minutes of All-Out Intermittent Exercise per Week Increases Skeletal Muscle Oxidative Capacity and Improves Cardiometabolic Health.  Three minutes?  WTF. So I read it, and the study uses overweight subject.  Hey, I’m overweight.

    Also, impaling your heart with a knife is considered bad for your heart.

    Long story short, but it looks like the worse shape you are in, the less HIIT you need for dem hart gains.  Good news. I was in terrible shape, so I didn’t have to push nearly as hard as I was.

    I know the N only =1 here, but every week I’ve been doing 1x LISS and 2x or 3x of the protocol here.  My blood pressure has gone from “Uncontrolled Hyptertensive” with four meds to “Prehypertensive” with two meds (and its the lower band of prehypertensive that doesn’t look to have elevated rates of cardiovascular disease or reduced mortality, but don’t tell the American Heart Association, they don’t want to hear it.)

    Should you do HIIT?  I don’t know. But if you are a masochistic sinner with ADHD and uncontrolled hypertension, it might be worth a try.

    Weekly Challenge

    Go do 1 round of HIIT.  Sprint/jog. Cycle. Do push ups.  Shadowbox. Whatever. Use the protocol from the Three Minutes paper:

    2 minute warm up; 3 cycles of 20 second of all-out work + 2 minutes of low intensity work; 3 minute cool down.  10 minutes total.

  • Friday Morning Links

    You had your chance, Cleveland. And you blew it.  You completely shit the bed and now are destined to fail.  Also, the Cavaliers lost last night to Golden State in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.  Rafa Nadal is cruising in France like I said he would.  Serena dropped the first set but came back and won her match.  The Astros were happy to be back home.  Boston was not happy to be visiting.

    But here’s the sports story of the day:  and it explains all-too-clearly why England is probably a lost cause.  Its so retarded that even Piers Morgan has chimed in.  Trigger warning: trigger.

    Boy, today was a day for birthdays.  Mormon leader and founder of Salt Lake City, Brigham Young was born today.  As was South African political prisoner and later president actor Nelson Mandela Morgan Freeman, Kennedy spit-roastee Marilyn Monroe, under appreciated actor Brian Cox, also unappreciated actor Jonathan Pryce, Ohio State defensive coordinator and soon-to-be recipient of a hefty settlement from the University of Tennessee Greg Schiano, eye-candy Heidi Klum, Canadian person Alanis Morisette, and fat person Amy Schumer.

    OK, let’s do this.

    It was also on this date that Charlemagne opened the general synod in Frankfurt, Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England, Kentucky and Tennessee (in different years) were admitted into the Union, Ohio University was founded as the first land-grant university in the nation, Sojourner Truth began her career as an anti-slavery activist, Robert E Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, Thomas Edison was granted his first patent. Lou Gehrig replaced Wally Pipp and played the first of 2130 consecutive games. Adolph Eichmann was executed in Israel for war crimes. Ed Sullivan’s last live TV show aired. And Wings released “Live And Let Die”.

    That, my friends, is quite a bit to digest.  But I hoped you saved enough room to swallow…the links!

    Well, we put the nose on him. And the hat.

    Remember in the olden days when a town would just gather together, march to a house and take a witch into custody?  Apparently, witch hunts cost a lot more in this day and age. I especially like the “rent” entry.  You know, because its not like our federal government doesn’t already own so much unoccupied space that it can’t accurately account for it all.

    I like Wikipedia.  Hell, I have had some good laughs there, especially going back to the golden age when entries were hilariously inaccurate.  I’m thinking of the incident where Jim Rome lost his shit when someone edited Stan Van Gundy’s entry to say he was a stand-in for Ron Jeremy and had also been the first successful pubic-to-head hair transplant recipient.  But Wikipedia ceases to be funny when it tars everyone to the right of Hillary Clinton as a freaking Nazi. And Google is no more responsible when they allow a publicly-edited compendium to be used as fact on its search results.  Fortunately, their algorithm hasn’t allowed anything like comparing progressives to Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Castro or any of the other communist/socialist butchers. But I would imagine they’re monitoring the accuracy of those descriptions a lot more closely than they are about icky conservatives. Or even Republicans for that matter.

    Every bit as serious as John Legend or Jay-Z.

    Kim Kardashian opens up about her meeting to discuss criminal justice reform and the hopeful release of Alice Johnson with Donald Trump. I hope CNN can keep from blowing a gasket what with the alleged celebrity worship that is happening for the first time ever in the White House just like it does with every President in living memory.

    Blood on the streets of San Francisco! Has the cabbie not considered that she needed that cab more than he did? Did he even stop to think about her, or was the greedy 1%er just gonna let her die?Also, bang-up job there, SFPD. She only ran around in the little city for two hours and crashed herself before you guys located her.  Shit, she could have driven halfway to Oakland in that amount of time.  Off-rush hour, obviously.

    Had it never occurred to any of these fucking clowns that the correct question to ask is: “why the fuck are you granting an exclusive license for a single company to operate a legal business in your city?” But that would allow for competition. Nope, these pricks can’t have that.  They gotta try and take someone else’s monopoly away.

    Typical Chicago Cop? Probably.

    I am trying not to laugh. I am trying not to laugh. I am trying not to laugh. Aw, fuck it. This one is funny.

    Placed on desk duty after the shooting, Schuler, 49, continues to collect his $111,000-a-year salary while the city of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigates him for failing to keep his weapon secured, among other things.

    Shit. I stopped laughing.

    What’s really sad for this guy is that he didn’t even have anything big enough for the SWAT team to confuse for a gun and shoot him. Also, why is he not in Florida where he belongs?

    This is how I feel today.

    And do you want to know why?  Because my son is graduating from high school tomorrow and the family are going to the beach with our friends Brett L and his awesome family for a week of relaxation.  I’m sure we’ll check in from time to time, but its gonna be time to tap the keg of St Arnold Lawnmower I’m bringing and fire up the grill while our kids all have a blast.  God bless you all and have a great week.

  • Thursday Afternoon Links – Funky edition

    Snoop Dogg smashes Guinness World Record for Largest Gin and Juice in History

    Snoop appeared at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival alongside rapper Warren G to attempt to make a paradise cocktail for the history books. The finished drink measured in at more than 132 gallons.

    The giant gin and juice used 38 jugs of orange juice, 154 bottle of apricot brandy and a whopping 180 bottles of gin, according to Guinness. Snoop celebrated his record breaking drink on Instagram with a picture of himself holding the world record certificate.

    No, I’m fine, OK? I just got something in my eyes. Stupid allergies.

    Trump Pardons Political Prisoner

    Beyond President Trump’s prolific dishonesty and extensive use of social media, it’s difficult to forecast what his administration’s enduring legacies may be for the presidency. But it’s becoming ever more likely that his innovative use of the pardon power will be one.

    On Thursday, President Trump announced (on Twitter, of course) that he will pardon Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative writer convicted in 2014 of campaign-finance fraud. D’Souza illegally pushed donations to a Senate candidate, asking friends to donate and then reimbursing them, contravening limits on giving.

    It’s Trump’s fifth pardon of his short presidency, and the third to go to a conservative cause célèbre, after former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby. Other presidents have used pardons to send political messages, as when Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers or Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederates; or to help out cronies, as when Bill Clinton pardoned financier Marc Rich, a major donor who was on the run from prosecution. Other presidents have also tended to wait until the end of their terms to grant high-profile pardons.

    I doubt I’m the first to think it up, but man wouldn’t it be funny if Trump pardoned Hillary? I mean, let’s face it, she’s never going to jail, no matter what she does. She could suck off an underage clone of herself on live TV while giving a screaming DACA teen a knitting needle abortion and Michelle Goldberg and The Atlantic would both have editorials up defending Herself in under an hour. So Trump should pardon her. Give a rambling speech about how her contribution to civic fabric country is too valuable to let her rot in prison. It might just kill the hideous witch on the spot.

    You google “lola bunny erotic fan art” and shit gets real, dude.

    Why the Alt-Right Thinks Porn is a Jewish Conspiracy

    A few months ago, a user on a bodybuilding supplement forum asked if it was weird that he had a childhood crush on Lola Bunny from Space Jam.

    “It’s not weird,” someone assured him. In fact, this someone added, there’s “a conspiracy from sinister guys at the top” to pornify popular culture, in order to get young boys so addicted to pornographic images that they develop “bad social skills” and are too weak and distracted to resist the elites in power. “Looks like it worked,” agreed another user, who then pressed ENTER 144 times and posted a gif of a fly rubbing its front legs together, with a hook-nosed, yarmulked Jewish caricature photoshopped on its head.

    How did this bodybuilding forum go from Lola Bunny screenshots to anti-Semitic memes in less than 24 hours? Well, it turns out that despite the stereotype that alt-righters spend hours in their parents’ basements watching tentacle hentai, many of them are theoretically anti-porn. More specifically, they believe porn is a Jewish conspiracy to weaken white men and, if all goes according to plan, destroy Western civilization. (Honestly, this isn’t that different from how a lot of mainstream commentators talk about porn — but more on that later.)

    There is a heavy dose of Jack D. Ripper in this one, because, seriously, you really should deny them your essence.

    Instead of another link, and in honor of Mssr. Dogg’s achievement in the mixological arts, I’d like to share some of the worse mixed drinks I have ever created. There have been a lot of them. I push the boundaries. I take things, on occasion, way too far. I puke pretty easily. Some were due to my age, some were due to hubris.

    Age 14

    The “Martini”

    It was almost New Year’s Eve and the only way I could get liquor was to steal it from my father. Since I didn’t sleep much back then either, I got out of bed when I was staying at his place, fished a few glass screw-top Pepsi bottles out of the kitchen trash, rinsed them and went shopping. The first 16oz bottle was your classic “suicide style” nick, a little from every bottle: scotch, bourbon, vodka, gin, tequila, Benedictine, vermouth (sweet and dry), Frangelico, Gallico, triple sec and whatever else was there. This was gross, but my friends and I were going to mix it with Sprite or something anyway, right?

    The next bottle was the real mistake. I had been reading the James Bond books for the first time and I decided to make a batch of martinis for myself. Some old recipe I had found at the public library counseled 1:2 dry vermouth to gin. I got the dusty vermouth bottle out and eyeballed out around 5oz into my other Pepsi bottle. I topped it off the gin bottle in the back–probably Seagram’s–put the cap on and gave it a hearty shake. I stashed both bottles in my dirty tube socks and smuggled them home.

    Mike’s parents were out of town for the holiday, and as Tommy and I walked to his house (we all lived on the same street) it had begun to snow. Tommy had a few beers and Mike had a flask of something oily and dark that smelled like kerosene. When I passed my bottles around, Mike and Tommy both gagged at my “martini” so I was left to drink it all by myself, disgusting sip by sip. And it was really bad. I just thought martinis tasted like that and couldn’t understand why anyone would drink one out of anything but the rankest desperation. I didn’t know then, of course, that vermouth should be kept in the fridge after it is opened. I was drinking room temperature cheap gin and rancid vermouth. A pint of it.

    Around 4am, Mike and Tommy were passed out and I was feeling so bad. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to sleep in my own damn bed. My house was only two doors away from Mike’s, I just put on my coat and left, still pretty drunk. I passed out in my own front yard, in the snow. I woke up when the sun hit me and I got inside before my mother busted me. I tasted Pine Sol for nearly a week.

     

    Age 17

    The Tea

    2/3 of a pitcher of iced tea

    1/3 of a pitcher of vodka

    20 No-Doze tablet (the real ephedra kind), crushed

    2 5mg valium, crushed

    I’m going to blame Derek for this one. Oh, holy shitballs did it taste funky. We ended up shivering on his back porch, chain-smoking and marveling over our exploding hearts.

     

    Age 20

    The Kandarian Demon

    My friend Paul was working as a bartender at a place a little way out of town and there was this huge bunch of guys in there that just kept order Mai Tais. Paul said he must have made over forty Mai Tais that night. He told us his shaker held about two-and-a-half Mai Tais, but he filled it every time and drained off the excess into this plastic bucket under the bar. So Paul came home one night with a literal bucket of Mai Tais. Now, they were pretty weak, so I had the bright idea to add a 1/5 of the only alcoholic substance in the house: cinnamon schnapps.

    In some sort of weird alchemical reaction, the schnapps turned the reddish and clear Mai Tais into an opaque liquid that was a bilious pink. It tasted awful. I mean, just amazingly awful. Hard to describe the taste, but the Mai Tai and the schnapps brought you the worse in one another to create a foul flavor that had never existed before and hopefully will never exist again.

    Artie, dear sweet Artie, Paul’s brother, took a long drink and croaked “It tastes like death.” We had been watching Evil Dead movies all night, so the garbage juice I had made was dubbed “The Kandarian Demon.”

  • Movie Review: Otoko wa Tsurai yo

    You cannot step in the same river twice
    -Heraclitus

    Travelling salesman makes his way back to his hometown after leaving in a huff twenty years earlier because of a fight he had with his father. A prodigal son story, but Tora-san is not your typical character. Vulgar, heavy drinking and incapable of following social norms, this semi failure of a salesman is a combination of Dice Clay and Forest Gump. He is exactly what his hometown needs and he gives it to them good and hard.

    The creation of writer/director Yoji Yamada, Otoko wa Tsurai yo ran for an incredible 48 installments from 1969-1998. Western audiences and critics have largely failed to embrace Yamada’s masterpiece which stands in contrast to the love Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo, Seven Samurai), Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer) and other Japanese directors have received over the years. Wanting to see Japan as subtle, cinematically pleasing and inscrutable or violent and grotesque, Western audiences just couldn’t find a place in their hearts for Yamada. Otoko wa Tsurai yo presents Japanese as people with simple, base desires and flaws that are universal. Tentacle porn can be amusing, but it doesn’t really help you understand what the average Japanese person is thinking.

    The plot for the 48 installments is simple: Tora-san, played by Kiyoshi Atsumi, returns to the Shibamata area of downtown Tokyo, falls in love with a woman known as the “Madonna” character and causes all hell to break loose with his antics. The “Madonna” shows interest in Tora-san, but his awkwardness with women destroys any chance he had with her and she ends up getting together with another man whom she was destined to be with. The series is a love story despite the crude jokes and domestic violence.

    I am Tora-san. I may not step out of your bathroom, patting my stomach and compliment you for having the fanciest toilet I’d ever seen. “That’s the sink, you idiot!” I haven’t bitch-slapped my demure sister for no good reason other than being drunk off my ass. I’ve yet to make jizz jokes at formal dinner parties where my sister is being introduced to her ultra conservative potential in-laws. I have mistakenly asked my mother-in-law, at first meeting, if she was still born. I’ve asked the elderly check out lady at the supermarket where she kept the breast milk. (Bo-nyu is breast milk, To-nyu is soy milk. Whoops.) We all fuck up and Tora-san is a ninth degree black belt in it.

    We don’t toss Tora-san in a pot of boiling water for a couple of vital reasons. First, he is an injection of chaos into what can be an oppressive and stratified group-centered society. Tora-san’s outrageous behavior gives the audience a look at the Honne (real feelings) of average people. They may look stoic, but all Japanese people have wanted to crack a relative in the head at some point. Many have a great spooge pun pop into their head during a meeting, but they keep it walled off behind their Tatemae (social face). Tora-san is a vent that releases some of the steam in a country that has 30,000 or so suicides a year. Good on him.

    Another reason we accept Tora-san is that without him, the star-crossed lovers would never end up together. Love, it seems, needs someone to smack it out of its reluctance. The “Madonna” can’t hook up with her true love unless someone kicks him in the balls and tells him to stop being such a pussy. While Tora-san’s advice may be awful, following terrible advice is better than whining like a bitch in the corner.

    At the end of each installment, Tora-san leaves Shibamata in an act of temporary self-exile. He has to leave of his own accord or he wouldn’t be allowed back. Pushing people to their limits and then backing off, giving them time to digest what happened, is a skill sorely missing these days. Being 100% pure, concentrated chaos, Tora-san realizes that prolonged exposure to chaos would destroy his family. He leaves Shibamata and crosses the Sumida river until his services are needed once more. You may not be able to step in the same river twice, but you can piss in it multiple times.

    The opening scene:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mb5PbkxxY

     

  • Thursday Morning Links

    Just a few more days till vacation…that’s what I’m thinking this morning as I type this.  Of course, I have four auctions in various stages going on right now.  Shit, make that five.  Now if I can just get the two I recently finished all shipped in the next two days I can relax for my son’s high school graduation, which is oddly enough being held 30 miles away at an NFL stadium rather than the football stadium on campus.  But whatever. (Speaking of the NFL, I can think of at least one player that needs to take a math class.) And then we can head to the beach with Brett L and clan for a week of fun.

    Oh, and speaking of sports in general, Stosur, Mugaruza, Rybarikova, Pera and Mertens have moved on today in the Women’s side of the French.Halep and Serena play later in the day.  On the Men’s side, Marin Cilic is up 2 sets in his match and no others are completed. But Sam Querry was bounced yesterday, in case anybody wondered.  Not that it matters much on the Men’s side. If Rafael Nadal doesn’t just steamroll the entire field, I’ll be absolutely shocked.

    On the ice, Holtby stood on his head as the Caps held on to even the series with Vegas at 1-1.  I still think Vegas will win in 6. The NBA Finals kick off tonight. And I think the GSW will also win in 6.  And that’s all for sports.

    BREAKING NEWS!!!!! Zinedane Zidane has resigned at Real Madrid as of right now.

    Beverly and Howard trying to make sense of the next scene in the script.

    If you were born on May 31, you share your birthday with Walt Whitman, Pope Pius XI, actor/director Clint Eastwood, (dead) rocker John Bonham, miracle-on-ice goalie Jim Craig, super-hot 80s actress Lea Thompson, nude (child) model and “actress” Brooke Shields, In Bruges (and see it if you haven’t) actor Colin Farrell, and RUN-DMC’s Darryl Matthews. Its also the day Sir Francis Bacon spent a night in the Tower Of London against his will, Madison Square Garden, named after James Madison, opened in New York City. (Uh, how come the retards haven’t demanded the name be changed from that of a slaveholder?  My guess is that they haven’t found out it was named after him.), Montgomery evacuated from Dunkirk, James Stewart retires from the USAF after 27 years of service, and Seinfeld debuted on NBC.

    That’s a lot going on.  But that’s all in the past. This is the present. So let’s talk about what just happened, which I guess is also technically the past. But its much more recent, so its different, right?  Well whatever. Here are…the links!

    “Ooh, I can still catch a whiff of my fart up here!”

    You want to know what narcissism is?  THIS is what narcissism is. I mean…Christ, what an asshole.

    Trump met a celebrity in the Oval Office to discuss criminal justice reform.  And the leftists went apeshit. Especially Jim Acosta over at CNN.  Strangely enough, his on-air outburst on the matter doesn’t square too well with his reaction to Obama meeting with celebrity John Legend doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason.  But Jim gonna Jim.

    California legislators figure out another way to get peoples money. And what smarter place to put the money of a quasi-legal endeavour (that spelling is for our Canadian brethren) than in the bank run by the state?  LOL, anybody dumb enough to participate in that circle-jerk deserves whatever they get.

    Its the art we deserve, America.

    I’m just going to repeat the lede of this link word for word, since I doubt I can capture the essence any better on my own:  STX Beats Lawsuit Over ‘Happytime Murders’ Trailer With ‘Ejaculating Puppets’. That is all.

    Joy Reid is back in the news. Since homophobic comments didn’t sink her, let’s see if the 9/11 truther insanity does.  Seriously, she was on a panel yesterday on MSNBC for “everyday racism” with noted anti-Semite Al Sharpton. That’s quite the pair to be hectoring us on how we view other people.

    “My old man is a TV repairman. He’s got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it.”

    He wasn’t drunk. He’s obviously not an Asian woman. So this is the most reasonable explanation. But still, I think the Red Cross should take some money away from all those people they help with the money they get the fat-ass salaries they pay their executives or their massive marketing budget and at least replace the dude’s porch.

    And in local news, Houston philanthropist and all-around great guy given honorary doctorate from Baylor.  I can’t think of a nicer guy to give the honor to.  Well done, JJ.

    Happy Birthday, guy.

    Have a great Thursday, friends.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links

    I am living the definition of technical consultant – I learned yesterday what I need to implement for my client today. Next step is to take the certification practice tests until I can hit 7/10 reliably and go get a certification so I can bolster my resume and keep living a nice life by knowing how the Googles and Stack Overflow works. Search Engine Optimization as Programmer Exo-Brain, if I were writing an article on it. It beats being an actual subject matter expert.

    It seems like once a day, I agree with DJT. h/t SugarFree

    Well, its twice today. SLD, I’d prefer a more comprehensive and permanent solution to the problem of FDA processes, but its something

    Business Insider thinks there are no winners in the Trump economy. Oookay. I have my own quibbles with the economic policies of this administration, but there is more winning going on than a Charlie Sheen cocaine orgy right now on that front. All the same bullshit “student loan debt, collapsing infrastructure, rising interest rates”. You know, things the government would do best to touch least.

    Bare-knuckle boxing (state-sanctioned) making a comeback? Now what can I can do to get people to my orphan fights?

    Stay classy, Florida Woman. (This is why I have my own damn pool)

     

    Sometimes you just want to crank it up and rip the… touchscreen off? My kids also have no idea what I mean when I shout “THE VOLUME KNOB AIN’T A RATCHET, IT TURNS TO THE LEFT TOO!!” I guess I’ll have to translate that from my dad’s language to my kids’.