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

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.

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.

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!

I’d like these songs played, ideally in this order, though the order may change through the course of the remainder of my life, songs will undoubtedly be added as I remember or discover them, and some may leave the list:

Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard-Elysium/Honor Him/Now We Are Free (from “Gladiator: Music From The Motion Picture”)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood-Born To Run
Talking Heads-Once In A Lifetime
The Wildhearts-Urge
Ultra Vivid Scene-Poison
The Cure-Want
Warren Zevon-Party For The Rest Of The Night
Jefferson Starship-Miracles (single version)
Mother Love Bone-Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns
John Lennon-(Just Like) Starting Over
Curve-Perish
Tin Machine-Amazing
Guns N’ Roses-November Rain
Prince-Purple Rain
Roky Erickson with Okkervil River-Goodbye Sweet Dreams
Hazel O’Connor-That’s Life
Angelfish-The End
Creedence Clearwater Revival-Looking Out My Back Door

Yeah, I’m kinda mean, expecting people to sit through this on a rough day, but it says a lot of what I think I’d feel, were I still capable of feeling it a few days after my passing.

At least I left “Ain’t It Fun” by The Dead Boys off the list, right?

“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.

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

It’s been an endurance test to get through this. Very frustrating listen, because all 3 Van Halen boys sound fantastic (despite the production, which really tries to make loud, fast, hard, heavy rock n’ roll music sound “adult contemporary”) and no one wanted this to be a big win for David Lee Roth more than I did, but really I think it took them too long to get their shit together, if it’s even together now. Dave, bless ‘em, just doesn’t sound up to the task anymore on at least the first half of the album, he sounds shoehorned into most of the songs, and there’s little to nothing to sing along to here until about two-thirds through the record. To me, that’s just not Van Fucking Halen.

Again, no knock on the musicianship overall: Alex, Ed and Wolfie (huge improvement over Mike Anthony, sorry, purists) sound stellar here, which is going to cover a multitude of sins for most people, but damn it, I know what the good stuff sounds like and I’m not fooled by most of this. As far as Dave’s output goes, this isn’t “Your Filthy Little Mouth” good on a song for song basis (granted, I still think that’s an underrated record), and I’m not entirely sure whose fault that is. Might be that Dave couldn’t get it done, might be that the rest of the band and the producer wouldn’t get out of his way, but whatever the case was, the end results are a mixed bag at best.

If you want some highlights, “Big River” (the best of the bunch), “Beats Workin’”, “Outta Space” and “Honeybabysweetiedoll” are as good at it gets here, and the only ones that REALLY sound like actual Van Halen songs out of those are “Big River” and “Beats Workin’” (tracks 12 and 13 out of 13; yeah, the album finishes strong, but that’s still a long time to wait for the goods if you’re listening to a whole album). “Stay Frosty” is as downright embarrassing (“Hey, it’s an “Ice Cream Man” sequel!” is no way to live, man) as the first single, “Tattoo” was. The rest of what I didn’t name is great instrumentally, but cluttered and lukewarm vocally and from a songwriting perspective.

So, yeah, not as blown away by this as the rest of my fellow old farts seem to be this week.

“I WANT TO SWALLOW YOUR BIG BLACK COCK WITH MY ASS AND MOUTH

CUM FEED ME NOW”

Eric, with all due respect, that’s some “Call Of Cthulhu” sounding shit right there, son. An ass that swallows cocks? Does it have teeth, too, or does it just…swallow them? It’d better be careful swallowing entire big black cocks like that. I would hate for your ass, creepy as it is, to choke to death. I mean, how would whoever found your body explain that or process that? This is also the first black cock-swallowing ass I’ve ever heard of, so I’d of course be worried about the species going extinct if something were to happen to it. In short, please tell your ass to be careful when swallowing entire black cocks at once.

Anyway, folks, I’m not interested in Eric that way, but if you’re into this sort of thing, I’ve left Eric’s email at the top of this page.