The Pill

One day there will be another pill that we simply call "The Pill." Only the history blogs on the neural net will recall that there wuz ever another pill called "The Pill" because most pills will be long gone by the time the new The Pill arrives on the scene. By then, the little doctors--the nanobots--will be swimming in the streams of our blood and shooting us up with the cure for everything from a headache to cancer before the ills even begin to form in our too, too solid flesh. Somehow, the little doctors won't be able to do shit to counteract the effects of The Pill, though, nor even to detect the drug at all as it throttles the heart. What is The Pill? Simple: it's a suicide pill. It puts you to sleep forever with no pain in under one minute and dissolves completely so that the little doctors will record that the deceased perished from garden variety heart failure (hearts will always fail, inevitably, no matter how good the little doctors get). It'll be the blackest of black market drugs, of course , but suicide rates will shoot to the moon and--despite the most draconian measures taken by nearly all world governments for the first ten years after The Pill drops--notions about suicide will begin to change dramatically. Without fear of pain, without fear of shame, without worry that the act will enrage or greatly sadden those loved ones left behind (unless a note is offered, of course)--and all with a wee little pill that simply stops the breath and offers the most peaceful death ever invented--what percentage of the population will take the first train to Clarksville and blow this popsicle stand from hell? And which will be the first mainstream religion to denounce the notion that all suicides go to hell? We leave such speculations for another day, for the little doctors have just shot us up with a mild sedative after noting that our minds have grown agitated, infected with the most dangerous drug of all: a new idea.

The Bitter End

So, perhaps you've heard by now about the "Sopranos" series finale. If not--and if yer planning to watch it on DVD or something and wish to remain as unspoiled as Ryan Becker (who hasn't seen ANY of the "Sopranos" episodes due to his parents' repressive child-rearing strategies)--well, then, skip to another Iraq rant below.

In two words, it sucked. You can add "balls" to that if you want to hear it in three words. It's hard, in fact, not to see the finale as a pretty big fuck you to the fans from series creator David Chase. See, when you've got seven or eight seasons to work with, we expect the overall trajectory of the series to involve a beginning, a middle, and an end. Storytelling 101, David Chase!

We've been reminded a couple of times during the series that there's only two ways things could end for Tony: get whacked or go to prison. So, in the last few minutes of the show, we have the whole Sopranos family gathering for dinner in some diner...and slowly the diner begins to fill up with other folks. There's nothing overtly sinister about any of these folks, but because the camera chooses to point them out...well, the mind wanders and conjures up killers and/or F.B.I. guys ready to take our anti-hero town. Meanwhile, "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey is playing on the juke box, and the picture suddenly cuts out on one of those "don't stops" after giving us one final shut of James Gandolfini's pretty mug.

You know your ending sucked when it wuz so anticlimactic that people thought their cable went out. But this has largely been the Chase method for the last two seasons: all come on, but no coming. Perhaps that wuz his private little joke, in fact, with all the references to Yeats' (pronounced "Yeets" by Tony's dumbass son) "Second Coming." There wuz no "rough beast" born at the end of the "Sopranos," and if you wanna get T.S. on Chase's ass, there wuz neither a "bang" or a "whimper." There wuz, in fact, no ending at all. As Journey saith, "it goes on and on and on and on," leaving the audience to imagine death, jail, or just a fun night with the fam at a diner. And I know some asshole from Academia is gonna call that postmodern cool when I attend my next pop culture conference, but I just think it sucks. Balls.

Winners of the "Crazy on Iraq" Prize

There's a lot of crazy fucks offering their crazy opinions on Iraq. People that Butch Yost would prolly call up on the phone and say, "Congratulations on being a fucking gutless cunt!" because of the fact that, the more these folks clamor for more war, the surer you can usually be that they never fought a day in their life for anything tougher than dinner reservations at some club for rich assholes. Oh, there's McCain...but he's the craziest motherfucker of all, so his years in the military didn't give him any better sense than the chickenhawks have. And here's what's really wrong with the craziest of the crazies: they have finally come around to the idea that Iraq is the new Vietnam...and they're cool with it. Why? Because they believe that Iraq is our little time machine that can take us back to the jungle to fight Vietnam all over again. If we win this one, it's like Vietnam never happened. It's like we flew around the Earth like Superman and reversed time and kicked gook ass. These are some of the fucks who lead us, folks, and if they could go back to the playground and AK-47 the shit out of the schoolyard bully who fucked with them back in the day, they'd do that, too. I actually heard some Republican asshole on "Hardball" yesterday lamenting the fact that "the politicians" shut down the Vietnam war...just before we were about to win! Now, I haven't studied our exit from Vietnam in depth, but I'm guessing it wuz similar to what we are experiencing with Iraq: the public wants out of a clearly unwinable war, and it takes years for the politicians to obey the will of the majority of the American people. But you don't hear about "polls" or "the majority" or "representative government" or "democracy" from the defenders of the Iraq war anymore. These are the fools who would vote for a Saddam Hussein-style leader in America if he vowed to stay in Iraq till the war is won. Rudy Giuliani, anyone?

A Post-Father's Day LOTD

I doubt that the new HBO show "John from Cincinnati" is ever gonna match the now defunct "Deadwood" for the sheer number of "fucks" per episode (I saw online that one episode had eighty or ninety fucks, which wuz prolly average), but you gotta know that David Milch is involved in a project when you hear dialogue like this from a phone convo between Mitch Yost (dad) and Butch Yost (son):

Mitch: "Hello?"
Butch: "Congratulations on being a fucking gutless cunt!"

Line of the Day

Chris: "You remember that show After M.A.S.H.? Funny how it sounds like 'aftermath.'"

TXB: "I believe that's what they were going for."

Gook Geek

Since Tim made a reference to doing weird things with the penis... My 3-year-old said the following, "My pull your pee pee off- and pee pee go away- and you grow big boobies." But nothing beats what a co-worker's 3-year-old said to an unknown woman in a shopping mall. The kid grabbed her butt and said, "Are you a ho?" Any good ideas on how to get this kid off the bottle. He calls it gook geek.

Highlights of "Hostel, Part 2"

I guess I feel like a little less of a chump seeing lame "Hostel 2" rather than prolly lame "Ocean's 13" this past weekend...but not by much. In case you missed it, here are the wacky highlights:

- Dude from "Hostel" that survived the underground rich fuck torture ring gets decapitated (off screen) in the first ten minutes of the film and the kitty cat is shown licking the blood off his neck stump (who's ready for breakfast?).

- First chick (the ugly one) gets hung upside down, nekked, and is then gutted by this other nekked chick (who looks much better naked) with a scythe (yes, a scythe--look it up)...and her blood runs into a bathtub and the hot chick with the scythe takes a bath in her blood (as if hot chicks didn't have enough privileges already).

- One of the chicks (the really hot one) scheduled for torture bites the nose off some dude who's supposed to make her look pretty for her torture session. At least...I think it wuz a dude.

- Said chick later gets chainsawed to the head but doesn't quite die from it. She apparently dies off screen.

- Last chick standing (the medium hot one) gets over on her rich fuck torturer, cuts his dick off, and feeds his dick to sum dogs. The dogs forgo the usual ritual of burying scrap penises for later and just start chowing down.

- After that, LCS (who's hot AND rich) buys her way out of Torturetown and, in the end, uses the scythe to decapitate the bitch what lured her into the trap in the first place. Local mini-street hooligans play soccer with the head in the last few seconds of the film.

None of the above is in any way fabricated or exaggerated. If you could promise me that all the above activities would happen to the major players in "Ocean's 13," it might have been magic...

In response to Ben's post about Abe, I would like everyone to know that Reagan's home state is ILL as well. In some areas in northern Illinois one can find various images of Reagan at every turn of every road. They find no use for honest Abe.

My head is going to explode!

Only 18 months to go until the elections, and the stupidity is in high gear! Brownback is just pissing me off. I terrifies me that ANYONE takes this guy seriously! I love what Nicole Bell from C&L has to say about Brownback's comments: "Isn’t it amazing how the party that tells you that you shouldn’t trust the government to make decisions for you has absolutely no problem allowing the government to make decisions over women's bodies?" Well said, Nicole. I'm going to check into his stance on birth control and Plan B (emergency contraception). My guess is he is a giant fucking hypocrite! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! 18 months away and I want to scream until I'm hoarse.

Possibly Useless Information

For those of you who are Illinois residents, I discovered today that your I-Pass works on the West Virginia Turnpike. I don't know if IL and WV are the only two states that have this express pass reciprocity or not, but it's worth checking out. It saved my dad $3.75.


Abraham Lincoln is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. As I was driving from my parents' house in DeKalb to my boyhood home in Tennessee last week, I drove among my fellow Illinoisans with Honest Abe's face on their plates and left the Land of Lincoln for Indiana, which now declares itself "The Boyhood Home of Abraham Lincoln" on all welcome signs. Call me ignorant, I was never aware of this until last week. Indiana is suddenly touting its Lincoln connection like "shucks, maybe we should get in on this hot action." Go to this website to find out more. Spencer County, IN has gone all out. Anyway, then I was in Kentucky, which we all know is the "Birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln." Oh sure, they're proud of it now. They made Honest Abe one of the Five Stars Over Kentucky, along with Muhammad Ali, Colonel Sanders, and two horses. Or was it six stars? It was something like that. Then I get into northeast Tennessee and drive past Lincoln Memorial University, "honoring the legacy of Abraham Lincoln through rigorous scholarly training" or some such thing.

And there was actually a lot more, but I'm going to bed now. What really got me was that Indiana thing.

Slutwatch

Can we get off this Paris Hilton bullshit already? If you made a list of some of the stupidest shit America could do to make us look like total jerkoffs in the eyes of the rest of the world...well, Bush already aced number one on that list by invading Iraq and then fucking up the aftermath. But I'm gonna put "Reporting 24/7 on whether or not Paris takes a dump in prison" as number two (pun....heh...not really intended, but welcome). The cable newz fucks aren't trying to lay claim to even the slightest shred of relevance or credibility anymore. I think on MSNBC there's a couple of anchors who are just a martini or two away from saying on live T.V., "Can you believe how fucking lame we are...reporting this shit? When I went to journalism school, they never had a course on 'How to Cover Worthless Rich Skanks For Hours At a Time.'" Seriously, come on terrorists...no one's really gonna miss America when you blow us all up...and just in case you ever get hauled before some war crimes court for your actions, just set your VCRs now and tape all this reporting on Paris Hilton. You'll have all the defense you need.

President Paul??

Ok, kiddos - Ron Paul is apparently kickin' it in the debates. Read here and check it out for yourself! Hey, at least he ain't Guliani or the comical Romney. Don't worry, my heart is still with Obama! (Although, Edwards looked good in the debates.)