The Daily Breakdown - 12.4.08

Ah yes, let the pettiness continue...with all the half-assed rambling going on that President-elect Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, leave it to the most half-assed Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court to throw his three-quarters of a cent into the mix. Justice Clarence Thomas, best known as the premier seat-filler on the high court for maybe having only said four words the entire time he's been there, has asked the other Justices to consider a lawsuit that questions the citizenship of our soon-to-be 44th President. The matter has actually been scheduled for a conference tomorrow, leading me to wonder if the Supreme Court has ran the hell out of sensible matters to look into, and if so, why they are following the lead of the most disinterested stone-faced mute to ever occupy space in the highest level of our judiciary.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to facepalm...former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is mulling over whether or not to run for the U.S. Senate seat Mel Martinez is going to leave after 2010. While it seems by far and large margins that Jeb is the least repulsive of the Bush offspring, one has to be curious to his chances. His older brother is currently holding simultaneous spots as not only the worst president in the history of this country, and judging by the GOP's performance, a big time political liability, and you know that fact has weighed in on Jeb's mind. Sure, a 2006 Quinnipiac University poll showed that 57% of Florida voters thought Jeb was a good or great governor, but that very same poll had 59% of those same voters disapproving of the job Dubya was doing. I want to see a poll taken in the here and now, showing what not only the voters in Florida, but voters across the country think about the prospects of yet another Bush remaining in public office. I for one, welcome a day when the Bush political machine, if ever it could have been called such, finally sputters to a stop.

Closing out today's column with failure of a different sort, James Pischel's attorney, public defender Matt Graff, argued to the Supreme Court that Pischel had been entrapped, by a Lincoln police investigator posing as a 15-year-old girl, by the use of emoticons, even after Pischel had supposedly tried to break off online contact two months prior. Pischel was busted in June 2007 after trying to meet the girl for sex near a public park in Lincoln. So let me get this straight...some dipshit guy working as a state corrections officer gets busted for trying to hook up with a 15-yr-old girl, and he is going to blame the emoticons the cop used? Dumbass said he tried to break off contact online, and that's all well and good, but why the fuck did he go try and meet the chick? Never mind your Ps and Qs...maybe you should have minded your :)s or your ;Ds instead. What makes this an even bigger fail in my book is the fact Pischel had already served out his 1-2 year sentence, having been released in late-October. If they weren't going to pay this any mind then, what makes you think it's gonna hold water this time around?

Not just another Black Friday rant

So there I was, sitting in my living room, drinking my last bloody mary of the day, checking my Facebook page and watching a House rerun on USA. Rob Tinsley, a longtime friend of mine had updated his status to reflect his preparation to head out into the Black Friday shopping maelstrom, and having watched The Smoking Gun presents World's Dumbest Shoppers earlier in the evening, I sent a tongue-in-cheek reply to not wind up as a highlight on volume two. Then, after I woke up to begin my Friday, news had broken on the death of a Wal Mart worker in Long Island, New York after being trampled by idiot shoppers trying to get a bargain on a flat screen, a laptop, or whatever was apparently worth recreating the scene of third world residents trying to get to a relief package freshly airlifted by some humanitarian group.

The as-yet unidentified man, 34 years old, was working for Wal Mart through a temp service when the store opened this morning in a manner only less organized than a full-fledged riot, as a statement from Nassau County police said a group of slack-jawed morons "physically broke down the doors, knocking him to the ground." Jimmy Overby, a fellow Wal Mart employee, said the temp worker was "bum-rushed by 200 people...they took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too ... I literally had to fight people off my back." The temp worker was pronounced dead at around 6 a.m. Eastern time this morning, an hour after the store opened.

While the police added that three other shoppers had received minor injuries and were transported to a local hospital for observation, reports were also surfacing that a 28 yr-old pregnant woman was knocked to the ground and had suffered a miscarriage. True to form, I suppose, shoppers continued to flood the store, going right around EMS workers attending to the woman and the temp worker. Remember the infamous story about the woman snapping a cell phone pic of the pregnant stabbing victim in a convenience store from a year or so ago? How is this any different? Although I guess we can say, as a small victory, we haven't as yet heard of any asshats emailing pics from this sickening display.

Shopper Kimberly Cribbs was quoted by news sources as saying "They're savages. It's sad. It's terrible." I would not go so far as to drag down the good name of savages by comparing them to this gaggle of low foreheads. Savages earn that name for a reason, but rational people, the same people who make transactions in stores everyday, do not trample people to save a couple of bucks on a fucking DVD player.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in Bentonville, Ark., would not confirm the reports of a stampede during the day-after-Thanksgiving bargain hunting, but said a "medical emergency" caused them to close the store. Yeah, fucking right. At what point, when the cash register tape told them the day was a boom profit, or when the crime scene tape became an issue of aesthetics?

Not that this tragedy is the first indication that something needs to be done about Black Friday sales, but rather one of the more compelling. How hard can it be to operate businesses with a modicum of civil order 364 days a year, but allowing blind eyes all around the fucking day after Thanksgiving? The answers may not be all that clear, but they are there, not the least of which would be holding these retailers accountable for the chaos they inevitably engineer, in the name of making up the slow parts of their sales year.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I would put good money on the barrelhead that not a single person entering or leaving that Wal Mart had an ounce of guilt, even upon hearing the news. That may be "terrible," or "sad," as Cribbs put it, but those people could not truly give a damn, as they have already made a dent in their holiday shopping, and good for them. Hope there isn't a crowd in hell when they get there. I'd hate to think of the inconvenience these soulless idiots will encounter.

Your weekend in entertainment news: Could someone please repo Paris Hilton's SAG card?

Pop singer Pink, whose music I sort of consider a guilty pleasure, passed along the details of an alleged argument she had with alleged musician John Mayer recently, after the douchebag reportedly made the comment that he "only shags really stupid women." Really? Good fucking thing I had not previously confused Jessica Simpson and Cameron Diaz as intellectual beacons in the entertainment industry. And honestly..."shag?" I know Mayer's an insufferable schmuck and all, but don't you think one of the fabulous people he bends over a couch somewhere would bother telling him the whole "Austin Powers" thing has faded from the pop culture jargon here in the past few years? Seriously, can't this idiot die in a plane crash, or a drug overdose, or from rough sex gone bad in some hotel room with a flock of third world hustlers?

In her recent interview with Britain's The Sun, Pink went on to say she "doesn't believe him as much as he believes him." Not only is that fairly amusing, but pretty on the mark, given Mayer's reputation for having a much, read MUCH, higher opinion of himself than really anybody on the planet, other than his gaggle of douchebag fans. Only Dane Cook baffles me more for being famous with little to no discernible talent whatsoever. Then again, in fairness to Mayer, at least he writes his own material, which is more than I can say for a good portion of Cook's alleged stand-up routine.

But what I would like to know, is how is Jennifer Aniston handling her new-found, and as rumored, recently regained status as one of the "really stupid women?" Guess we'll find out whenever a sex tape surfaces...

...Meanwhile, as Pink was dragging John Mayer's dumb ass through the mud for his supposed fuckery, Tara Reid reared her ugly from the neck down, commenting that she would never do Playboy, in an interview with People magazine. Has People run out of shit to write about? What in the name of holy damn is Tara Reid doing these days that would interest anybody, let alone the readers of People, despite the fact the readers of People would be fascinated by the bowel movement trends of celebrities even further down on the food chain that Tara Reid?

Reid, in the course of her interview, told the magazine that the only person who sees her naked is her boyfriend, who "thinks I'm sexy, and that's all I care about." Isn't that fucking special? The D-list celebrities always get the sweetest boyfriends, don't they? She'd better hope the royalties don't dry up anytime soon. I'm just saying. Not to mention, how is it that the people who have legitimately NO shot at gracing the pages of Playboy, unless fully clothed,are the first to insist they would NEVER pose for the legendary periodical? Last time I heard, and in the interest of full disclosure, I am a Playboy subscriber, they were most assuredly NOT interested in having her mangled ass do a spread. I would even be so bold as to suggest that even Penthouse and Hustler would not consider it, not even for a split second.

Go have another cocktail, hang out with that boyfriend who must dig you a lot more with the lights off, and leave the interviews off your list. I'm glad you know there are problems with your stomach. We're ALL glad you know that, cause quite frankly, we're tired as fuck of hearing about it, and especially seeing it. For someone who has a problem with the way her stomach looks, don't you think you could find a shirt that doesn't quite draw attention to your B-grade plastic surgery mishaps, which you call your "battle wounds." "Battle wounds?" Maybe that's what caused the problem. What the fuck, did you pick a fight with the plastic surgeon in the middle of the fucking procedure? Fucking dolt...

...Yeah, I hear ya. It has been a bit since I had anything nasty to write about busted-ass skidro Paris Hilton. Been a busy time for me, what with the election and everything. But rest soundly, my faithful readers...America's favorite cockstainer is back...AND WITH A NEW MOVIE!!! I'm sure you have been anticipating this as much as I have, if only to rip her on it, cause you know I have absolutely NO interest whatsoever in seeing it. More disclosure here, people: I have only sat through one Paris Hilton movie in its entirety, and that was House of Wax. Yes, to answer your first question, I do still feel it when it comes onto rain. To answer your second question, yes, I have seen parts of One Night in Paris, and no, I have not seen the infamous sex tape all the way through. I saw just enough, through web clips, to show that only with Paris Hilton could one become famous with a sex tape, and not even look like she knows how to suck a dick. Only in America, and only with Paris Hilton.

But now she's supposedly a singer, and an actress, and with Repo! The Genetic Opera, which opened this last Friday, now being inflicted upon unsuspecting theatergoers, the legacy continues. Early reviews are in, and unsurprisingly, they are less than kind. Why then, I wonder, do studios keep giving her a shot? Doesn't Repo! now hit the list as the second, third, or maybe even fourth movie Hilton has done that has been described as "easily one of the worst movies of the year, if not all time?" God knows I was just as curious as you were, so it was off to IMDB.com, which not only lists Hilton's other infamous movie from this year, The Hottie and the Nottie as the #15 worst movie of all-time (it was previously gracing the #1 spot until Disaster Movie came along) and her 2006 celluloid abortion Pledge This! (also known as National Lampoon's Pledge This!), which is currently listed as the 9th worst movie of all-time, but also her flick The Hillz (2004), which is currently racking up 24th worst movie honors. Three and now possibly a fourth mishap residing in the Bottom 100 movies of all-time? What a resume. We're talking about stuff ranked below Manos: The Hands of Fate, Glitter, Gigli, and even From Justin to Kelly. From Justin to Kelly, for fuck's sake!

I would say this is what the studios get for involving someone who wasn't even very convincing as an accidental porn actress, but then again, I'm not saying anything you don't already know. To further complicate matters, it seems as though the only reason she was in the movie was to piggyback it to notice, if not fame. LA Times critic Mark Olsen noted this, as he writes Hilton is "never glimpsed in anything but brief, fleeting shots and her hoarse bark of a singing voice is used as little as possible."

I, for one, will not lose any sleep over missing the experience of witnessing this steamer, in theaters, on DVD, or even on an airplane. Sometimes, there's a lot to be said for not liking to fly. That said, I'd rather be in a 747 plummeting to earth than waste a minute, a second, a dollar, or a dime on a Paris Hilton project.

Mississippi Burning II: Dumbass Boogaloo

What an absolute shock this story was when I found it. Not even a week after the presidential election, and already, the red states are showing their asses in small, yet remarkably unrefined ways. WLBT TV reports on officials at Puckett Attendance Center telling a woman's daughters that they were only allowed to mention President-elect Barack Obama in history class. Not in any other class, nor in the hallways, but only in history class. No word on whether or not this mysterious decision applies to the cafeteria, the buses, or the parking lot. Only in red state Mississippi, where yes, they did go for Sen. John McCain, could politics collide with limericks in just this fashion:

"There once was a school in Puckett,
that didn't like the election and said fuck it..."

I'm not exactly a poet laureate, so I'll allow you to finish it, if you can. Hell, email me your best shot, and I'll reprint it here.

Naturally, when the girls' mother called the school, rightfully so, with a little "what the hell?," no explanation was given, nor was any school official ready to speak with WLBT when they called for some answers. Personally, I don't think any explanation is needed. Mississippi is a state full of hicks, always has been, always will be, and you'd be hard pressed to argue, based on the actions of the apparently bitter muckety mucks at the Puckett Attendance Center.

re: Eric Momtgomery's call on Probably Uncalled For last night

So what, you got your feelings hurt because I called you a fat bastard? You ARE a fat bastard! You contribute nothing to society, other than selling bootleg DVDs (as admitted on another talk radio show recently), and watching pirated PPV online. Both, last time I checked, are illegal, and you should be ashamed of yourself. You fat bastard.

You want to yell, scream, whine, and cry over MY show? Get over yourself. With all the BS you have talked over the years about being involved in professional wrestling, in various roles, that makes you a public figure, and therefore fair game to the satirical commentary on Probably Uncalled For.

For someone whose only comeback is to call me a druggie, memory serves of a time you advertised (against company policy and against our wishes), a WWA show I promoted and told the masses they could get high at the Shriners Club!

Do whatever is it you think you can do, ya fat bastard, cause the last thing I will ever do is sweat over it. You've never accomplished a thing in your life you can be proud of, and you are flat delusional if you think you can get my show shut down. You're worthless, and this is just further proof. Go get a job, and then keep it, and try to move on with your life. If a caller or someone in the chat room brings your dumb ass up, then yes, it becomes a topic of conversation. Otherwise, your fat ass definitely isn't worth the effort.

Thank you for your time, and support of my talk show,
Thomas Keister
Host, Probably Uncalled For

For God’s sake, someone buy Palin a helmet before she hurts herself

So let me get this straight...Sarah Palin, who bounced through five colleges to get her degree, still does not have any idea what the role of the Vice-President of the United States is?

How the hell has she managed to make it this far in life, let alone politics? While I can't say much about bouncing from school to school, as I am on my third, when I was in 8th grade, back in 1989-90, I had to take and pass a class on the U.S. Constitution to graduate and move on to high school. One of the things I learned...that the Vice-President does not run the Senate! The Vice-President is merely president pro tempore, which is just a title, and votes only in the case of a tie. The Vice-President does not help craft policy on the Senate floor, or anything of the sort. My mom, who had to take the same test back in the 50's, also knows this.

I'm sure Palin would love to be VP, where she can meander around in sweeping circles on the White House lawn, looking for things to shoot, but in the last few weeks, she has shown she wouldn't even be qualified to be "Queen of Alaska," a job more suited to her acceptance of a successionist movement in the very state she plays Governor of.

The running joke has been that Palin is not smarter than a 3rd grader, in reference to her latest swing and miss on the question of the role of the Vice-President (for those of you scoring at home, that was strike 4!), but I am now starting to question whether or not she is truly smart enough not to walk into shit without the help of her handlers, or perhaps one of those tennis balls on an antenna, like you see with people who can't pull into garages in their SUVs.

McCain keeps swinging...although he struck out three weeks ago

Some of my friends who are becoming politically interested (which, for some of them, only happens every four years, lamentably) have been asking me if Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has suffered a stroke of some sort. Even my co-host on Probably Uncalled For was wondering the same thing after seeing clips of a recent speech where McCain's at-times awkward body language suggested that perhaps some sort of neurological damage had occurred.

Nope. As far as I am aware, Sen. McCain is perfectly healthy...at least physically. Mentally, the guy's a racehorse that should have been taken out back and shotgunned a half-dozen races ago.

After voting on the pork-laden Bailout II: The Sequel, and voting for it, McCain then assailed the bill itself, calling for President Bush to veto the bill, no matter what the circumstances were. When pressed by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough as to why the bill contained so many ludicrous earmarks, including those I mentioned on my show, for railroads, auto racing tracks, and Puerto Rican rum production, McCain's answer was to the effect of "that's how the system works, and that's why it needs to be changed."

Damn. That's the equivalent of repeatedly pissing on the floor, and saying that is why a mop is needed. For someone who is attempting to suddenly recast himself as a candidate all about the change, playing the same old game, and then asking for another at-bat the day after the last pitch has been thrown, serves as a perfect example of a guy who really needs to be nudged into hanging up the spikes, as it has become more than apparent that Sen. John McCain isn't even sure which way to run around the bases anymore.

Does this guy own a Farking calendar?

I know from personal experience, as a blogger and author, that sometimes I've encountered a slow news week or writer's block, where you just don't have that much to work with. Given the way last week went, as I was without power for over five days due to remnants of Hurricane Ike kicking Kentuckiana's ass, the inability to react to current events and post to the blogs was irritating, but I countered by writing up a 6,000 word or so piece, which we plan on releasing as an ebook in the coming weeks. Not only did I keep busy, but I managed to at least stay current.

More than I can say for some of the submitters to Fark.com, the popular website that collects news stories from all corners of the Internet, offering often hysterical comments next to the link. (In the interest of full disclosure, my May 15, 2008 article, "These numbers wouldn't even make sense if you were high" was submitted by a reader to the site, no doubt thanks to a reference to Fark in the article).

Today, in between football games and checking on my fantasy teams, I was perusing Fark (a daily ritual for me), when I saw the story of some clerk with a single-digit IQ accepting a $200 bill featuring President and idiot savant (sans savant) George W. Bush, giving back $50 in change on a grocery purchase in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. I thought this story sounded familiar...

...and for good reason, I would discover upon closer examination. The story in question was from June 1, 2007.

WTF? I'm guessing that not only does that Farker not own a calendar, but also is not very political, as there is a veritable treasure trove of stories, either involving John McCain's latest round of "What I meant to say was..." or Sarah Palin's newest asshat behavior (and trust me, folks, there is hardly a shortage of those going around). The fans of Fark would no doubt enjoy those more that rehashing some nonsense that happened over a fucking year ago.

Maybe Fark could use a "classic" or "archive" tag to go along with "stupid" or "asinine."

Ain't no way I'm putting this in my pipe and smoking it

Okay, so let me get this straight. According to a report on Boston.com, Amy Winehouse is now taking a stab at Buddhism. A source, in remarks to Britain's The Sun, said that "Winehouse was introduced to Buddhist chanting by one of her musicians, chanting in the mornings and just before she sleeps", and that "She says chanting is filling her life with positivity." Um. Okay. But I'm guessing since Amy Winehouse is involved, there's has to be a hook. Some massively dumbass thing that makes this story so fucking newsworthy.

The article mentions that "doctors reportedly fear (Winehouse) could be brain damaged after a recent cannabis overdose."

Ah, so there it is. Ahem...What the Fuck? A cannabis overdose? A cannabis overdose? Somehow I'm utterly fucking baffled and not very surprised at the same time. You can not honestly expect anyone, even the people who read Boston.com, apparently, to believe that there is such a thing as a cannabis overdose? That's even dumber than the perpetual mention of Amy Winehouse by MSM and the blogosphere. Yes, I know I'm doing exactly that just by posting this, but seriously, how can you see something as completely ass stupid as that, and not write about it?

All the dozens, hundreds, thousands (?) of ways that Amy Winehouse could have earned her suspected and/or rumored brain damage, and this was the best one they could come up with? What the hell, did they sit around the doctors' lounge with a fat blunt and benchmark this?

You'll excuse me now. It isn't 4:20, but it is breakfast...

Did the guy get shotgun on the ride back?

Wow, Kentucky has really outdone themselves this time, with a sheriff traveling 4100 miles, round trip, to extradite the wrong man! Of course, the trip was not a complete waste, as the sheriff got in a little sightseeing along the way, including Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and a souvenir t-shirt. Forty-one hundred miles, with gas hovering near, at, or over $4 a gallon, depending on the geography? As I said...wow.

All they have been talking about in the news, as far as the Commonwealth of Kentucky is concerned, is the cash crunch- cutting back on funding for matters like education and other much-needed agencies, yet this miscarriage of justice can happen, with apparently no repercussions for the said sheriff or the higher-ups that signed off on the excursion. Just business as usual, I imagine.