So anyway - seems to be quite the odd little world we live on here in the last couple weeks or so, eh? My celebrity obit column has more or less imploded on itself, kinda like the Freeling house at the end of Poltergeist - you know, leaving nothing but this glimmer of light just sort of emanating from nowhere. If things like this really come in three's, then I figure we should expect two more within the next few days. First good ol' Ed McMahon, then Farrah and MJ on the same day. Then, day before yesterday we get Bill Mays (aka - the Screaming Salesman/Guy-who-single-handedly-made-me-want-to-destroy-my-TV-every-time-he-came-on-it). So technically...that's four (you can debate the pros v cons of calling Mays a celebrity to yourselves - I count him because, unfortunately, he was on my TV...a lot). I was watching CNN when the ticker at the bottom said that Billy Mays was dead. I...smiled. Is that completely awful, or just mostly awful? I mean really, the first thing that popped into my mind was "Well...at least I won't have that asshole screaming at me anymore." What's worse, Mrs. Pikey kinda smiled too when I told her...and more or less said the same thing I did. So...did she start out evil or have I turned her to the dark side after all these years? If it's the latter, then sorry baby! But if it's the former...shit, what kind of gal did I hitch myself to anyway?!?!
So...Michael Jackson. Lew Black said once that Michael Jackson had basically become a punchline for any joke - Why did the chicken cross the road?...Michael Jackson! Yeah, ok...so it works. Still, regardless of your thoughts on the man, his music, his turmoil, his...erm, eccentricities, consider this for a second: Michael Jackson's death has garnered more worldwide attention than any other person or event (save 9/11) since Elvis died. In fact, his death has done to the world wide web what no other event (including 9/11) has done since it's inception - it nearly collapsed it. The headline on CNN.com read "Michael Jackson dies and nearly takes the Internet with him!" Now that is funny! Servers all around the world were locking-up and even crashing because of the influx of people craving more information on what happened to this one man. Good or bad, love him or loathe him, that says an awful lot about the effect he had on this world. I for one have never had a real problem with Michael Jackson. I've always been a fan of his early musical output - yes...I had a Thriller jacket when I was six - fuck you very much. And argue with me all you want, but I never really bought into the whole paedophilia thing...fuck you again, I'm sorry, but I don't believe it. I give you that yes - the man was weird. Eccentric doesn't cut the mustard here - he was downright weird. He was a black man who seemingly had a child's mentality...and also had a desire to become a strange, white woman (and the bank account to make it happen). Did he place himself into the questionable position of getting too close to several young boys? Absolutely! Did he ever actually do anything illegal with them...I don't think so. But what do I know? I always saw the man who loved children and spent untold fortunes for the benefit of needy children around the world - call it naivete, call it a little gleam of light trying to escape the black hole that is my soul, whatever. That's just how I feel about the subject. "But Pikey - the guy spent millions in payoff to shut that one kid up!" Yeah...he did. That's exactly what he did - he spent millions to make a problem go away, that's not an admission of guilt. Ask yourself this...who was he really paying off? The kid, or his money-grubbing parents who saw an opportunity to make a quick buck by exploiting an odd situation that they allowed their child to get into?! Did anyone ever consider that the mere accusation was devastating to the man and that throwing a shitload of money at it was simply a way to make it go away so he could move on? It's a stretch, but it's possible! Rest in Peace Mike...you really were the King. Anyway, a person could go on and on about this shit (too late?)...
Then there's Bernie Madoff. Yesterday, he got 150 years for bilking all those people out of billions of dollars. I'll say that again - yesterday, he got 150 years for bilking all those people out of billions of dollars. I'd say he got off easy. Sure, he's 71, he'll serve (I'd guess) about 10 years of that sentence before he either dies of old age or trauma from his weekly ass-pounding. The government has seized over $160 million of his assets for restitution to his victims. That's nice - sorry you lost everything, here's a coupon for a free cheeseburger and a prostate massage! His wife, Ruth, was allowed to keep something in the neighborhood of $2.5 million in assets so as not to be left with nothing...awwwwwww...poor, poor lady! This was also to avoid prosecution as an accomplice. Too bad she's gonna charter the first flight to Switzerland she can get and start siphoning off the billions from the offshore accounts the U.S. government couldn't touch. It's going to happen...you know it, I know it, she knows it! Which in my mind makes her as big a crook as him! If there was any real justice in the world, he would've been sentenced to having his nuts smashed repeatedly by all his victims, one by one, with one of those carnival "ring-the-bell" hammers. "WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!" Then they could all take turns showing Mrs. Madoff's asshole the business end of a cattle prod. I see a reality TV show somewhere in the near future...
So, forgive the righteous indignation for a moment, but when the fuck are we just going to go ahead and nuke the entire Middle East and get it over with?!?! We don't like them, they don't like us - they're never going to like us. The West is always going to be the scapegoat for everything that's wrong in their world. A world that, I might add, seems perpetually stuck in the dark ages. It's wonderful that the U.S. military is going to start pulling out of the major cities in Iraq, really it is! But the real tragedy of it all (aside from the 5000+ American lives pointlessly lost over there) is that as soon as we're gone for good, the place is going to erupt into an all-out civil war anyway! The Muslims can't even get along with each other...how the hell can anyone expect them to get along with us pathetic infidels?! Don't even get me started on Iran...that "election" was the most ginormous, stinkiest pile of camel shit in the long, sad history of camel shit analogous elections. They know it...the rest of the world knows it...they know the rest of the world knows it! The Ayatollah and Ahmenlkaasdflgksadflhse1241tdfgw45rtporjad want "the bomb"...and that wasn't going to happen with Moussavi in charge. Sorry if that all seemed kind of like a buttload of generalized angst, but if I think too hard or get into too many details - the bad people in my head start talking to me! While we're on the subject (the Middle East, not my psyche), my mom's neighbor's son Josh is getting shipped over to Afghanistan in 3 months...he's a good kid, played Horn in band, got decent grades, never gave his folks a lot of grief, so if you've got a free prayer or blessing handy, might want to shoot it his way for me.
Alright, suppose I'll cut this one off...wouldn't want Brad's eyes melting out of his head from reading too much or anything! Too late Brad? Fuck it...you'll live.
16 comments:
First of all, I want to say that I fucking love you.
Second. Ahem. Michael Jackson is OLD NEWS. I spend a lot of time sifting through bullshit "news" at my "job," back and forth between CNN and FOX and MSNBC. (I guess technically I can't use the word "between" in reference to more than two items, but fuck you too). I don't give a shit whether he was trying to stage a coup to take over NAMBLA. I don't care. I never liked a single song he wrote. I'm completely fucking neutral on the whole Michael Jackson thing. I'm not denying his influence, either. OBVIOUSLY he had an incalculable impact on the music industry. I'm not saying he didn't.
All I'm saying. Is. That. It. Is. Pissing. Me. Off.
That governor who had an affair is thanking his lucky stars that within a couple of days of the exposure, the entire country dropped everything to go mourn a pop star and cast stones at his doctor. He's like, "Holy fuck! Perfect timing, Michael!"
Because in this country, all we need is a cheating husband in politics to talk about that for six weeks on end. But now we have Michael Jackson being covered. Covered, covered, and covered again. That's fine; it is news. But "news" is not interviewing every jackass on the street who went to a Michael Jackson concert once.
So the reason it pisses me off is quite simple: I want to know what is going on in the world. And they won't tell me. I was a little late to the party, so I knew nothing of the election in Iran, just that there were riots, and it seemed important to know, and I tried to follow that story, but that's when Michael Jackson died. I watched it all go down. And down. And down, down, down. And then down some more. I actually wanted to be INFORMED on some shit in the Middle-East, but fuck the news. Maybe you're right. Maybe there's nothing to know, because it's a simple matter of circular, infinite hate. The end.
But I'm fucking sick of hearing about Michael Jackson. I'm sorry for the fans, because his death was truly untimely, being right before a major comeback tour that would have pleased many and made history. BUT. Remember what Dennis Leary says about how nice it would be to remember someone in his prime. Would you rather Michael Jackson make it to 70 and then really look like a cadaverous personification of a cross between a Todd McFarlane fever dream and the villain from He-Man? Really. He went out on a high note. It would have been nice (for the fans) if he'd died a mere two months later, but that's untimeliness for you. Personally, I wish Heath Ledger had survived to make another movie as the Joker, but I'm too busy thanking God that he made it all the way through his first one.
I was tired of the Michael Jackson stuff the day it started. MSNBC preempted the political programming for the evening to stay on the air - live - for hours. I liked a handful of his songs when I was a kid, but the "King of Pop" hasn't been relevant since about 1989.
Actually Mark Sanford (R) is keeping himself in the news by continuing to say all sorts of dumb things. If it weren't for the fact that what he's been saying is about his mistress and not his wife, it would be sweet, romantic even. It might also have started to go away. But that's why I had the "if" there. I also know that if I had done these things and then said my mistress is my "soul mate", my wife would break me into little tiny pieces.
He is, however, an interesting case study in the "Do As We Say Not As We Do" Republican mentality. If this were a Democrat there would be HUGE cries of unrighteous indignation and feigned moral outrage from the Right because that is exactly what's happened in the past. Former NY governor Eliot Spitzer, you fucked high-priced call girls? Caught, resigned. Slick Willy, you got your willy slicked? Caught, nearly impeached (over a FUCKING BJ!!! His successor starts a phony war that costs real money and real lives all for what? So history would judge him well for being a "Wartime President" - asshole). So where are the moral outcries from the Republicans?
word verification: cancen
"I hope you get head cancen!"
I think there still are moral outrage cries. I hear them, anyway. I don't know who they're from, but they're all around, or else people wouldn't still be talking about it.
Bill Clinton's whole thing was more a matter of wanting to impeach him because he lied under deposition or some crap. For everyone who said he should have been impeached because he's horny and unfaithful, well, get the fuck real. One thing's got nothing to do with the other: not that I'm condoning infidelity, but what's that have to do with being a president? In the case of what's-his-nuts from NC, the idea is that they're talking about him being forced to resign or whatever because he left without telling people where to find him in an emergency. So I haven't detected any double standard here, but then again I haven't caught much more than the most basic knowledge about the case. Because I'm uninformed? Well, yes, but... BECAUSE ALL I FUCKING HEAR IS MICHAEL JACKSON MICHAEL JACKSON MICHAEL JACKSON. Although, to be fair, I was sick of the Sanford story after about two minutes. I mean really, what's more to tell?
It's also interesting that you say this when every time Sean Hannity opens his mouth is to complain about the same thing from the other side: "If the same thing happened with a Democrat instead of a Republican..." about pretty much every other issue.
I actually heard Glenn Beck utter the words, "Thank God for this network because..." then something about how it's the ONLY place to find NEWS news.
Michael Jackson proves that the news is solely about ratings. Nothing more. Nothing. Because, like Herr Vogler said, people actually cancelled entire programs because a prominent 80's singer died. And then they covered nothing BUT that story for the better part of the following week.
Anderson Cooper, I'm looking at you.
Fucking Anderson Cooper.
Well, I think we've pretty much said everything here. Except that the Iranian guy with the funny hat is a douche.
Fact of the matter is that yes, people like Clinton and Sanford are (were) factually being condemned as a result of their actions following an infidelity - but the reality is that we are a nation of prudes and hypocrites. And the very idea that one of our leaders has a sex life at all, let alone that they're getting a hummer from someone other than their spouse - is cause enough for outrage.
It's bullshit...but there it is.
Hypocrites. The politicians with the biggest mouths, the biggest (bullshit) agendas, and (typically) the closest ties to moral fiber and traditional family values will be the first ones caught in photos at an underage, minority, midget, gay orgy.
It is inevitabur...
It doesn't matter which side of the fence a particular politician lives in. As soon as a rival on the other side exposes a soft spot - they pounce. Republican, Democrat, or other...DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY becomes the war cry. We say we condemn them for lying, or abuse of power, or failure to serve their constituancy...but in fact we really just don't want them dipping their wicks into the honey pot. Especially if we can't have a piece for ourselves.
At the end of the day...it's nobody's fuckin' business who was fucking whom!!! That's between the man and the woman he promised himself to for however long he promised himself for. But Americans make it their business anyway.
It seems vaguely manipulative of the politician's enemies. No politician cares that much about the sexual morality of their opponents; they're just seizing the opportunity to turn as many others against them as possible, just to serve their political ends. Like you said, they pounce.
So which is it? Should he be left in office because it's unfair to discriminate based on an ongoing relationship that may or may not have even been sexual? Or should we stone and castrate him simply because the right would have done the same to the left?
I'm confused. I mean honestly, if this senator has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, why bother talking about him at all? Priorities, man!
What?!?! Did something happen to Michael Jackson?!?!
Michael Jackson?!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
So...two Jews walk into a bar...
Michael Jackson!
What do you get when you cross a Pollock and...
Michael Jackson!
Why don't blondes ever...
Michael Jackson!
A man comes screaming into a doctor's office. The doctor asks, "What seems to be the problem?"
The man replies, "MICHAEL JACKSON!"
WOW! That really does work! You don't even have to finish the joke. Just skip straight to the punchline and voila...hilarity ensues!!!
That reminds me of a Lewis Black joke:
"Dick Cheney"
word verification: thogion
Thogion poetry is the fourth worst in the universe. But they don't get mentioned in the Hitchhiker's Guide because we sentient beings seem to like to organise things in threes.
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