…and I’m an awful human being who often tracks the behavior of much more awful human beings than myself, I just checked to see if there were any Facebook Pages called “The Holocaust”. You know, so people can hit “Like” and their profile will say “(Name here) Likes The Holocaust.” (Great gag idea if you’re a completely soulless human being: if you have a co-worker you don’t like, Like one of these pages on their Facebook account from their work computer when they’re not looking.)

I found out two things on this discovery mission. First, there are, unsurprisingly and depressingly, a LOT of Facebook Pages called “The Holocaust”. Second, a few of them are for bands. Really, you guys? Like, some dudes (because from what I saw in a quick glance at the user pics for the band pages, the bands are all dudes; don’t act too shocked…) get up on stage, and say “GOOD EVENING, FUCKFACE, IOWA! WE ARE THE HOLOCAUST!”, and there’s at least a chance that this is OK with somebody out there?

Does anyone have a rock I can hide under until humanity evolves?

…but someone just offered me $140 cash (they started at $100, and went up when I said “oh HELL naw”) just to put a paid “guest editorial” on this site.

I refused it, despite being in a way financially where I could really use that kinda dough for nothin’.

(To be clear, the person who contacted me was very polite, professional, not pushy even when they raised their offer and just doing their job, so thank you, if you’re reading this, for that.)

I’ve got some small, legacy examples of referral things on this site that I just haven’t killed yet. I killed a couple that were on the Help A Brother Out page just now, along with finally changing the donation button over to WePay. I do have a Dreamhost referral link on that page, but Dreamhost have put up with me for ages and done so with a smile, so I don’t have a problem with that as long as their usual service continues on par with what I’ve experienced so far. If it ever changes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did in this merger-crazy world, I’ll adjust my sails accordingly and let you all know, loudly.

I swore off full-on ads on my sites (not just this one) a ways back, and it feels good. When you accept ads, you’re basically staking your name and reputation on someone else’s bullshit, and a lot can go wrong there. It also puts you in a position where you may need to self-censor, and I don’t even have to tell you how I feel about that.

A somewhat related story I don’t mind sharing (and may have told before at some point, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself), just because of the ridiculousness and sheer hypocrisy of it: as some astute hairy-palmed readers of this site may remember, I was using AdBrite as an ad provider for a while many years ago. Suddenly, one day, they replaced all of the non-adult ads they were serving me with porn ads. I didn’t want that. I wanted a mix of adult and non-adult content, since not everyone who reads my site does so because they’ve come here looking for smut. Well, in conversation with Philip Kaplan, the founder of AdBrite, he told me that he was unwilling to do that anymore, since it put his non-adult customers at risk of being seen as advertising on adult sites (apparently, his database programmers hadn’t wrapped their head around the idea of a non-binary solution to ad serving; I don’t know if they have yet…), and some of these clients were very big-money. Disney were namedropped at this point. Continuing on, Mr. Kaplan actually suggested to me that, if I wanted to use AdBrite’s services the way I wanted to, changing my site’s name might be a good idea. Now, I’m not sure if Philip Kaplan’s name rings a bell to any of you, but outside of programming circles and Web insider circles, he’s perhaps best known by his pseudonym, Pud, as the founder of the web site FuckedCompany. Yes, if you’re keeping score, the FuckedCompany guy, a guy who made his bones on a dirty word and actually had to fight for it himself if memory serves, told the My Big, Black Cock guy to change his site’s name, because it wasn’t Disney-friendly enough. I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions there, and Pud, if you’re reading this, I do still have the messages saved, so don’t even try to front.

Some may ask how donations differ from advertising payments and I say this: in the case of a donation, people are giving me money to continue not giving a fuck, because that’s what I do and their support suggests that they want me to continue doing it. That’s implied to be part of the transaction, just by the nature of the site (and its operator) that they’re donating toward. I may actually make that explicit on the donation page at some point soon.

Beyond that, I’ve actually got a lot of work to do on this site soon. Many things need to be cleaned up, upgraded and so forth. I don’t think I’m changing the very old web site theme I’ve used for the past decade (just because I’m as amused as all get-out that I use the same theme that both The Ultimate Warrior and the sadly-gone-but-not-forgotten Way To Suck That Dick used at various points), but a lot about this site needs to be upgraded.

Then, of course there’s that small matter of me actually writing anything of substance on it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone else tell my story for me, and use that story explicitly to sell stuff I don’t use and you probably don’t need.

As I do every year, and have for over a decade now, I’d like to provide you with the information necessary to tell those cocksuckers what you really think of their fucking holiday.

Hallmark:

Email: info@hallmark.com

Or call them at 1-800-HALLMARK

De Beers:

clientservices@debeers.com

Or call them (toll-free!) at 1-888-376-9230

Kay Jewelers:

Call them toll-free at 1-800-527-8029

Here’s their email contact form. They also have live chat available via their home page, Mon-Fri 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM ET and Sat-Sun 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM ET. I bet that could be a real hoot.

If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.

Have fun!

P.S. Yes, I’m still fucking alive. No, I haven’t updated this site since November. Shame on me. I will have to give myself spankies for it. Starting to brainstorm on what the Cock means in ’13. Stay tuned.

The London 2012 Olympic Committee gives head to field mice.

Come at me, bro.

I don’t know if he’s a rapist or not.

You probably don’t know, either. I mean, you might, but chances are, you don’t.

I do get the vibe (from most widely-circulated accounts, which I freely admit can be faulty) like he’s, at the least, kind of a jerkoff to women, which sucks and which I totally can’t get behind. That’s not illegal, but it does suck and I hope he changes things up moving forward, if this has been the case in the past.

This doesn’t even get into the damage he’s done to legitimate causes by giving them this kind of ammunition (“The people who challenge our government are BAD GUYS!”), if there is, in fact, any truth whatsoever to the accusations being levelled at him, and even if he knowingly put himself into situations that could be leveraged against him and Wikileaks despite not doing any of what he’s being accused of. When you’re taking on the world, you can’t be careless.

Regardless of all of this (and because I’m a reasonable person, “all of this” is a big hurdle for me to get past), I just can’t get behind the worldwide dump that’s being taken on Julian Assange’s right to fair legal treatment, and on due process in the name of protecting the ugly, corrupt, paid-for status quo, which really doesn’t like the idea of a guy airing out their dirty laundry. They’re doing this to Assange (and to Bradley Manning) to scare off the next person who’s thinking about blowing the whistle.

They don’t give a fuck about the 2 women who’ve made the claims they have, or about any other women who might not have come forward.

From what I can tell, the people behind this whole deal don’t much give a fuck about women in general.

They just want to shut up the “troublemakers” who are hurting their bottom line, and keep doing whatever disgusting shit they were doing before Collateral Murder or any of the other leaks happened.

That’s what this is about, in case you’re just waking up from a medically induced coma or something.

And that’s why I’m against what’s happening to Julian Assange right now and support him in his continued battle against several of the world’s governments, even if I’m really not so sure what kind of dude he is otherwise.

If he did bad shit in Sweden, fuck him for doing it, and he should absolutely, 100%, you bet your ass be punished for it, in Sweden.

He should not, however, be subject to extradition to the U.S. for trumped up, bullshit charges that everyone’s admitted couldn’t stick in a legitimate court of law. None of this NDAA, PATRIOT Act “enemy combatant” shit like they’re doing to Bradley Manning. One set of charges, which he faces without threat of extradition for kangaroo court scumbaggery, and that’s it.

So, world, how about actually following the laws of several different lands, transparently, in the course of exploring whether or not he did anything illegal?

I think that’d be a refreshing change from how you usually do business.

Dear United States Of America,

Do you see this picture? This is what we do to fucking Nazis. We don’t let them patrol the streets of our towns. We don’t call them a “civil rights group”. And we sure as shit don’t let them poison peoples’ minds by giving their TV network ratings and ad money.

Now, mind you, I’m aware that the company who owns the rights to the character punching Hitler in this picture don’t exactly tow the truth and justice line themselves. They royally screwed the guy who created Captain America for decades before Disney bought them, and it won’t get any better now that Disney does own them. But still, we all used to at least bullshit ourselves into thinking that right and wrong actually meant something. How about we all put a little effort into taking “right and wrong” back from the shit-shovellers in the propaganda division, the corporations and the government?

Just a thought.
-S

Dear Burger King,

Please stop embarrassing yourselves.

Love,
Scott

They’ve been on this downhill slalom of stupidity ever since the company went private again (Full disclosure: former shareholder here). Prices have skyrocketed, and they have this frat boy at a Lilith Fair mentality where they think that if they pretend to be sensitive, they’ll score with chicks.

Guys, wake up. Burger King is like the Rush of fast food. Not all women hate them, but there’s a special breed of women that like them and you’re stuck with (blessed with, in my opinion) those women.

If Burger King wants to make a comeback, I can think of a few ways they could do it. Open letter to anyone working for BK on Todd’s friends list (you never know):

1. Roll back the prices. There’s no excuse whatsoever for doubling prices on some menu items in a down economy.

2. Stop changing the fries every few years. Remember the old fries, the ones you were concerned were too much like McDonald’s before you tried to be “too much like McDonald’s” on purpose? We want those back.

3. Stop wasting cardboard. Wendy’s started doing it 6 months before you did, and it sucked there too.

4. I don’t think you need to be the Spike TV/Axe Body Spray of fast food, in fact, please don’t be that. However, those of us who do still eat at Burger King expect a certain vibe from it. It’s down-home without being “country”, it does not involve bright, California marketing exec-friendly colors, and it is kinda rugged and rough around the edges. The burgers are flame-broiled. That’s your hook, right? Let us see the grill. Show us some bricks in the interior of the restaurant. Working class folks don’t want Mary J. Blige singing about snack wraps, and to be frank, we kinda hate David Beckham’s guts. I don’t know if they eat at your restaurant or eat meat, period, but if they do and they’re game, give us Jim Gandolfini. Give us Brian Urlacher. Give us Jason Statham (actually, Statham’s vegan, I believe, but he’s not the only legit badass guy with an accent in the world; Tom Hardy?) if you really want an attractive British guy in your commercials. Tough, no bullshit, a little rough around the edges, but authentic and lovable. That’s how we see your restaurant and want to continue to see it, not that other shit.

5. Hot dogs: it’s time for one of the big 3 to step up and do them right. Partner with a leading organic meat company like Applegate Farms, who make great meats but don’t serve people slop. You want to embrace that delusion that women like to hear certain words in your marketing? How’s “organic” sound?

I’ll probably repost this over at my site and on my feed, but yeah, as a lifelong Burger King patron, this one’s kinda personal to me.

To whom it may concern, those who have vocalized their feelings on these matters so far and those who haven’t,
 
Fuck you to hell and back for thinking you have a goddamn thing to say about whether or not I’m disabled based upon how “able” I appear to you, or about how I should behave because I am disabled in order to make you feel ok about paying fucking taxes.
 
Would you prefer that I get a tattoo of the kind of agonizing fucking pain I experience internally when I’m at my most crazed, another one that’s a visual manifestation of the kind of oppressive inertia I have to wade through just to make it downstairs to feed myself most days, or yet another one of the fucking Jackson Pollock painting that a chart of my sleep and wake times looks like, just so it isn’t “invisible” to you?
 
Do you think being well-spoken or talented automatically translates to being sane, able or healthy?
 
Have you ever suffered from a neurological disorder that, at last count, 4 doctors in the world, none of whom are within 3000 miles of you, specialize in?
 
Would you prefer if I just shut up and took my crumbs rather than trying to derive any joy out of what’s left of my life, after decades of being alternately neglected, antagonized, abused and…shit, the words literally just fell out of my head. That happens all the time, by the way. It’s invisible, though. Oh yeah, marginalized and…nope, that 5th word’s still gone, from like 5 minutes ago…you get the idea, though.
 
Would you rather that I stop collecting benefits and suffer or just die, instead of spending your hard-earned tax dollars that would otherwise be spent on transvaginal ultrasounds, beating people who protest inhumane behavior by the government, bombing brown people, locking people up for smoking weed and/or felony interference with a business model, or Joseph fucking Lieberman’s salary?
 
You can do what you want after reading this, but I’m not going to stop being your friend if you have feelings that come within miles of any of the above, because if I do, it’ll be way too easy for you to continue to be this fucking wrongheaded to the other people in your life who bleed in any way similar to the way I do.
 
I am a living, breathing example of mental, emotional and neurological illness.
 
It’s not always easy to understand or process.
 
It sure as hell isn’t pretty.
 
It isn’t even visible most of the time because if it were, I’d be in a padded cell.
 
No matter how fond of me you are on my good days, your fondness will never erase how completely, royally and utterly fucked up I am, how I’ve been shit on for not being able to hold it together and work the fucking fields like you can, how I’ve struggled with it in the past, or how I will continue to struggle with it for the rest of my life.
 
No matter how “together” I seem, I’m really not.
 
The best part? You’ll love this, I’ve had it laying around for about 15 years as part of a stupid pop song I haven’t been able to finish because sometimes, I can’t even finish a stupid fucking pop song.
 
“All it’d take is one bad day to make you like me…”

I saw a psychologist talking about the mentality of suicide bombers on TV some years ago, and the common denominator he drew wasn’t religion or poverty or so forth, but rather that they tend to live in areas of the world that have been forcibly occupied by other people. That occupation makes people feel desperate, they do crazy shit. Happens in the Middle East all the time, happened in Vietnam, and it’s even evident in police handling of Occupy protestors.

In American schools, particularly American public schools, there’s a different-but-similar dynamic. You’re forced to go there, you’re forced to go through their particular set of indoctrination (their way of educating, and their societal pressure to do it or be nothing; hell, even President Obama said that “if you drop out of school, you’re letting down your country a year or two ago), there’s really no way to get away from bullies (either on the staff or in the student body) and for the most part, your parents don’t wanna hear it because they’re dealing with enough trying to get through their respective days. That kind of mental and social claustrophobia breeds the same kind of desperate thinking.

Honestly, every time I see one of these terrible things happen, it’s the first thing I think of: the suicide bomber mentality.

As I do every year, and have for over a decade now, I’d like to provide you with the information necessary to tell those cocksuckers what you really think of their fucking holiday.

Hallmark:

Email: info@hallmark.com

Or call them at 1-800-HALLMARK

De Beers:

clientservices@debeers.com

Or call them (toll-free!) at 1 (888) 376 9230

If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.

Have fun!

(Full disclosure before I start: I have never seen the movie that got me started here in its entirety. With that in mind, there may be some irony in my using this quote in relation to this post, or some inside baseball that I’m not aware of, so bear with me on that, but damn it, the sentiment really struck me.)

“Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won’t just see scenery; you’ll see the whole parade of what Man’s carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so’s he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that’s what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we’d better get those boys’ camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it’s not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here; you just have to see them again! ”

-Jefferson Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”; directed by Frank Capra, written by Sidney Buchman, Lewis R. Foster and/or Myles Connolly (I wanted to make sure I credited anyone that might’ve had a thing to do with a word of this, if possible.)

Great quote, posted in its abridged version (I added the rest from IMDB) by Steve Niles just now.

Alas, by the time it was written, the fix was already in here in the States for the most part, but that doesn’t mean for a goddamn second that it can’t be true at some point in the future.

Yes, we were all fed the fucking pack of lies that our leaders actually stood for these things practically from birth in schools that amounted to not much more than re-education camps, designed by people who just wanted us to shut the fuck up and get back to the sweatshops. We were told this in school, we were told this in church, we were told this in Frank Capra’s and other folks’ movies which were supervised by greedy studio bosses and phony moral crusader assholes from Washington who threatened to shut Hollywood down if it didn’t tow the line, we were told this in super-hero comic books written by kids (literally) who were robbed of their rights by scumbag publishers, and we were even told this in the lyrics of pop songs, which were also written by people who rarely if ever were properly compensated for their labor, long before the rotten bastards who ripped people off could blame it all on mp3s.

The thing is, the people in power fucked up large when they tried to make us think they stood for these things. They actually let us talk about these great ideas, perhaps just to try and make us believe that the ideas were actually theirs in a half-assed attempt to get us on their side, but they fucked up and let the cat out of the bag. And, as we all know, they haven’t quite figured out a way to kill great ideas yet. Oh, they’re REAL hard at work on it, but no, we can still believe in great ideas and real decency (the “help your neighbor” kind), not just the kind of “decency” that passed through the censorship board after enough people got paid off and sucked off (which is more of the “Someone named Bronfman or Koch or Murdoch or Halliburton didn’t get paid, so it must be wrong!” variety). Great ideas are stronger than individual people, stronger than corporations, stronger than huge religious organizations and stronger than entire governments.

If believing this makes me not “grown up”, “crazy”, another person with no responsibilities or any of the other dismissive things that people say to make them feel better about themselves when their mortgages are killing their souls (and sadly, this part seems to be true of more than a few otherwise decent people who I do respect and want to continue to call friends), then so be it.

But I do believe.

And in whatever way I see as the most effective one (it seems to me that spreading great ideas and condemning shitty ones are my strong points, though others may have different opinions on this subject which I’m plenty open to hearing), I will continue to fight for what I believe, and for great ideas, for as long as the world lets me do so, just like Steve and Nina and Stephen and Kristin and so many others who I could spend all night naming, and feel guilty not naming individually (but I really do need to eat dinner) do.

And with that, I am off to dinner. As Checkers Drive-In bag once told my friend Dain and I, “You gotta eat.”

May you all eat well with the clearest conscience possible, and fight the good fight in support of great ideas and actual human decency rather than invented human decency.

I am exhausted by an unending avalanche of injustices that, depending on your point of view, are both big and small in stature today, as usual. Still looking for more ways to fight said injustices and get the word out to people who can do so more effectively than I can.

Talk to me, internets. Who’s being done wrong where, and what can we all do today to help make it right?

I was just driving home, and in front of my car, there was a white pickup truck with a bunch of anti-Obama, typically right wing bumper stickers on it, and unsurprisingly, there was also a Confederate flag sticker on it, too. This got me thinking, and I came up with what I think is a swell idea, but would probably be viewed in a court of law as a “hate crime”, an “act of terrorism” or some other thing that they charge you with when you embarrass fascist pond scum.

You know those magnetic car bumper stickers, the kind they make those ribbons, etc. out of so they don’t damage the car’s paint job? Well, I think someone (I’d love it if I had the cash and the logistics knowledge to get ‘er done, but I don’t; if you do, throw me a few bucks, eh?) should manufacture a bunch of those, with a picture of a Swastika on them and the words “Let’s be honest about who and what I am.” on them.

This way, when those of us with any shred of compassion who aren’t brainwashed by rich, soulless, racist old white men whose fathers and grandfathers were more or less part of the Third Reich (or who wish their fathers and grandfathers were) see a vehicle parked somewhere that has a bunch of idiotic, fascist, racist shitty stickers on it, we can add one more to the car on the sly that really sums up what those people are about without doing any damage to the vehicle.

It’s basically like emotionally-charged needles are sticking into every nerve ending in my body, making me feel hurt, angry, depressed, defeated, abandoned, betrayed, and alone. It makes me feel like I can’t do anything but focus and fixate on the pain I’m dealing with, or doing destructive (not of the scale or type that I did in my youth, and not physically destructive to me, but still destructive; compulsive spending has been my weapon of choice in recent years) things to try and blot it out somehow. Yet, I know that if I get it to go away or lessen before I put as much of this feeling into words as I can, I’ll be betraying myself alongside the betrayal I’m experiencing from the people who I’ve put in charge of my care, so I have to just write as much as I can about it, while it’s here, hang onto it, try to externalize it, and hope that someone with a conscience and a soul gets to read it and decides to show some decency and compassion in the situation I’m in with them.

I fucking HATE that I even have to look for that from a person or an organization that I feel so thoroughly fucked over by right now, being a sometimes-too-proud person, one for whom trust is in short supply, and one who does like to stand up for what’s right and against what’s wrong when I recognize things as being such, but this is the way things are right now. I have 6 weeks until my currently scheduled day in court, one that will determine the course of at least my next few years, if not the rest of my life, and these people are trying to make me go away for reasons that still hold absolutely no water, ring as inauthentic, and seem to lack even the most basic compassion. Not to mention the “Hey, fuck them” I feel for putting me in a situation where someone else who exhibited very poor judgment in a great many situations that affected both them and myself may read this and get to feel even the slightest bit of “I was right” smugness. The person in question wasn’t right as it applies to this, and my even caring about what they think about this situation in the first place is still only stupid pride and a vague interest in that someone not having any more deluded ideas about The Way Things Were, but hey, fuck these people for giving me even a second of that distraction and possibly screwing the other person up further as well, when I have so many much more important things to think about.

It’s been said that being able to communicate brings us closer together and is one of our (or at least my) greatest strengths. Normally I’m inclined to degree, but in situations where my life and my personal survival truly depends on it, my ability to communicate these thoughts and feelings clearly and the least bit eloquently just seems to make the people I’m communicating them to think that “if I’m OK enough to say all of this rather than just fucking drooling on myself and illiterately begging for mercy, I must be “OK” in general”. Either that, or they just plain don’t give a shit, or aren’t paid enough or unafraid enough to stand up to the people who give less of a shit than they do. Either way, I’m mad as hell at a world that deals with things this way, and I can’t help but be mad at myself sometimes for having so much of that “potential” that I’ve heard about having for my entire fucking life, the stuff that makes certain people doubt that I could ever be weak or incapable or anything short of brilliant, to sound immodest for a moment, when the reality is that I’m a few weeks shy of 37 years old, still suffering from serious mental, emotional, and probably neurological issues that have plagued me my entire life (documented back as far as early childhood), unable to really take care of or provide for myself in a lot of the ways that count, show up for things on any kind of a sustainable basis, unable to trust, unable to forge lasting friendships and relationships with people without serious difficulty, and most of the time, unable to speak one one-hundredth of the words I’ve just spoken about my difficulties out loud in any attempt to convey the weight and severity of my issues when asked. Sometimes, I’m too riddled with anxiety to speak to people at all, even if I have no reason to fear anything from them. I was too terrified to talk to Jane fucking Wiedlin a few weeks ago without severe prodding and a few attempts, and I have at least one witness to this. It sure as hell isn’t pretty, and when I talk like this, it guts me to, because it’s never easy to be candid about this much weakness for anyone, I don’t think, but does this even begin to illustrate just how totally, royally and completely fucked I am? I hope it does.

I still feel those needles after typing this. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Do I dull them with what I’ve been legally prescribed and responsibly dulling them with over the past few years? Do I leave them there? Will I be able to get any sleep in the next 16 hours or so before I have what may be my final discussion with the people entrusted with my care about these things either way, and what shape will I show up in there if I do or don’t sleep? When I hand them a print-out of this post, as well as print-outs of several other things I’ve posted or written about in recent weeks, will any of it make any fucking difference to my situation, regardless of what shape I show up in?

If the US media decided to spend all the money they’re pissing away covering this stupid goddamn wedding in England on health care for the uninsured.

Oh well.