18 October 2003

Found While Trundling Around The Fashionable Left Bank of BlogistanTM

This a great song by a band called NOFX called Idiot Son of an A$$hole (sorry for the potty mouth, kids...). But, unlike the link down in the Funny Farm Links Zone on the left hand side of this page, this one's a sing along!. With, like, karaoke style lyrics and stuff. Man, I wish I could play this at a gig somewhere one of these days!

Anyways,... blogging is probably going to remain sparse for the next little while. I hope to see some new vistas this weekend along with my Sig-O. Happy trails!

With Many Thanks to Xoverboard in his Vain Attempts to Overload My Puny Bandwidth

From my good friend August John Pollak over at Xoverboard, who was tickled pink with the deck of Chickenhawk cards I sent him (Hamster Alert! You are being cybernetically paged...), I get to show you a tribute to AnnThraxx Coulter from my other good friends at Agitproperties. You could even buy it printed on a T-shirt and give it to those you hold dear. Enjoy!

Buy Agitproperties Goods!

16 October 2003

The Funny Farm Fry(with a Why?)day Top Five Posts of the Week

Thursday October 16, 2003 Gregorian
Fryday 21 Wintring, 2003 Hobbit



[... Bill gets out of a cab and runs into a mall, through a cafeteria, past a t-shirt store, and into an atrium. Cut to camera shot from high in the atrium shows Bill running across towards a desk, cordoned off, in front of a fountain. Cut to camera shot framing desk, as Bill moves into shot and sits down at desk. He picks up a piece of paper on the desk, and announces to the camera (talking very fast)...]

This is the Ghost of Bill Sprint with the Funny Farm Fry(with a Why?)day Top Five Posts of the Week:

Number Five - Pen-Elayne on the Web's NY BloggerCom, Day Two;

Number Four - Slacktivist's Marriage in the Abstract;

Number Three - WampumBlog's Columbus Day Parade? Not here...;

Number Two - Roger Ailes's Recuse Me?;

And the Number One Post this Week - Body and Soul's Big Boss Man.

This has been the Ghost of Bill Sprint with the Funny Farm Fry(with a Why?)day Top Five Posts of the Week.

[... Bill gets up from desk, then runs off screen. Cut to camera shot high up in atrium, following Bill as he runs out of the mall.]



Congrats to all! Thanks for making it so tough again this week!

Crucial Update

Cubs in the World Series? Naa-aaa-aaahh! (cough)

As a long suffering Tigers fan (cough) I have memories of the Cubs and the Padres in 84, and I can sympathize with those who feel badly. But, let’s put it in perspective. It was only a game (that would have brought millions of dollars to the local economy). Sports are civilized, gentlemanly exhibitions of skill (cough cough).

I heard about the fan who was wearing headphones while he screwed up a rally-killing play. I grieve with Cubs fans, who will have to try and wear their lovable loser costumes for yet another year. But, don’t get violent about it. Although I would recommend that this gentleman seek residence and employment outside the greater metropolitan Chicago area in the interests of everyone’s peace of mind.

Besides, hockey has started already! I haven’t watched baseball since they cancelled the World Series one year because they were all too greedy. If I were in the players association, I would have organized and recorded a sandlot World Series and played the games. If I were passionate about the game, and the millions of dollars in salary were just icing on the cake, so to speak. Especially the millions and millions of dollars that keep on coming in, year after year. A few of those millions, and it would have stood out in history!

It’s just a game (that many people plan their lives around). All this fuss, so some people can hold some object for a while. And say that they were the best there is, for a time.

There’s always next year!

15 October 2003

Bummed

Neal Pollack is going to be on stage in Ann Arbor shortly. And I'm stuck here in Hazeltucky. Plus I have to go to work tomorrow. Have to! D'oh! So all I can do is gaze longingly over at a couple of websites (there's much more, but I am almost redlining on information overload as it is) and see if they will tell me about it soon.

Damn you, George Steinbrenner!

14 October 2003

Found in the Comments Over at SKB

I sorta did a half assed set of Google searches and came up empty for a web site from the lovable liberal. So I am going to show you one of his wondrous comments that, interestingly enough, appear in various well known establishments. So, without further ado:


Rush's statement (no, I’m not linking to that bile-filled cesspool of a site for the original), annotated:

You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life although I waited to mention this until the press reported it. So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I said 'part' because you can interpret that to mean a small part, while I can later parse it to mean a large part. I am addicted to prescription pain medication. I first started taking prescription painkillers some years ago when my doctor prescribed them to treat post surgical pain following spinal surgery. It's his fault! But I'd rather not tell you just how long I've been a junkie. Unfortunately the surgery was unsuccessful since it didn't include a morphine pump, and I continued to have severe pain in my lower back and also in my neck due to herniated discs.

I am still experiencing that pain between doses of illegally acquired opiates. Rather than opt for additional surgery for these conditions, I chose to treat the pain with prescribed medication. Did I mention this choice to my doctor? I'm not saying. This medication turned out to be highly addictive and I became its poor, naive, innocent victim. Bad medication, bad! Over the past several years I have tried to break my dependence on pain pills and, in fact, twice checked myself into medical facilities in an attempt to do so. I hoped that no one would ever find this out and lay bare the hypocrisy of my lambasting of other addicts. I have recently agreed with my physician about the next steps. Please, I beg you, let me off my own hook by seeing this as a medical failing, not a moral one. Immediately following this broadcast, I am checking myself into a treatment center for the next 30 days to once and for all (believe this and I've got some Florida swamp to sell you!) break the hold this highly addictive medication has on me. Nevermind the death grip I had on the drug!

The show will continue during this time, of course, with an array of guest hosts you have come to know and respect. There will be no letup in merciless doublethink for my adoring ditto-heads. I am not making any excuses other than the ones I just made and any more I need to make. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. When necessary, I'll demand some liberal mercy even though I would never give any of it to anyone. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes. Still, I have to pretend that I'm not asking for mercy.

They are the role models. Gotta get the false modesty over with quickly. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. Pay no attention to all the claims I'm making right now that I'm a victim. I take full responsibility for my problem except that I want nothing to do with the incarceration that I have advocated as the token of responsibility in others. At the present time the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked by my attorney to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete. So, I will only say that the stories you have read and heard contain inaccuracies and distortions - no one can prove my addiction caused my deafness, which I will clear up when I am free to speak about them, once you've forgotten the facts. Meanwhile, please assume that the whole story is distorted and you are free to believe any right-wing fantasy you want about the media being out to get me. I deeply appreciate all of your support over this last tumultuous week. It has sustained me though not as much as the pills, which I have not been able to give up on my own these many years. I ask now for your prayers. I'm pleading for the Christian charity I have denied others at every turn. I look forward to resuming our excursion into broadcast excellence together and if possible I'll never mention this again.

lovable liberal

Crisis Management

I just spent an interesting weekend down in the Great White North. Monday, October 13, is Canadian Thanksgiving, and since my brother is living in Canada, but working in The United States, he decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner in Sunday at his place in Lasalle (suburban Windsor), Ontario. A beautiful pair of days was our reward for making it across the border early Saturday afternoon. And a double dose of unusual happenings for my baby and I as well...

It was a lovely lazy Saturday afternoon when I decided to take a break from playing PC Doctor for another little brother who lives in Kingsville. My girlfriend and I were sitting outside, waiting for my two year old niece to come up the stairs and open the gate to sit down with us. I hear her start to fumble with the gate, and then I hear her start screaming. I look over the gate to see a hornet crawling into her shirt. I grabbed her and lifted her on to the deck, and tried to keep the hornet away from her while she was screaming in my ears. My girlfriend and I managed to finally extricate the shirt and the hornet from my niece’s general vicinity, and my girlfriend found the spot under her chin where my niece had been stung.

On Sunday, we headed over to our brother’s place (there’s six of us – four males and two females - and I’m the oldest) for a wondrous feast including turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, carrots, corn, and salad. My Dad, one of his sisters, and one of his brothers were also there – and my brother had the wisdom and foresight to pick up some beer from the Big Buck Brewery over in Auburn Hills, Michigan. So by sevenish on Sunday night, we were all feeling nicely sated, and were settling down to the business of arguing discussing current events, and enjoying the wonderful evening that we were lucky enough to be able to appreciate.

Well, this brother’s youngest daughter, as near as I can tell, was playing with her insect collection. She keeps them in a glass jar, and I guess it was the time of evening when she has seen some cool bugs before. Or, she was trying to bring her collection out to where all of us grownups were sitting and show the adults – she was trying to find a way to say “Look at me!” when she has three sisters and two cousins to compete with for the adults’ attention. I’m not a child psychiatrist, so of course I’m guessing. Whatever the reason, she decided to bring out a glass jug, and start mucking around with it.

Her Dad (my brother), my girlfriend, and I were out on his patio, having some beers and talking about life, the universe, and everything. Andy (my brother) says to Andrea (his daughter) to be careful, so she doesn’t break the glass jar she’s playing with. Well, the next thing we know, we hear a crash in the immediate vicinity. Andy sees his daughter standing in the middle of a bunch of broken glass, and so he grabs here, lifts her up onto the stairs going inside, and tells her to get inside and get the cleanup utensils for Dad. And that’s when the screaming starts.

Andy brings Andrea into the house, and starts talking to his wife. They yell out, with quite a bit of anxiety in their voices, for us to look around the patio for the tip of my niece’s toe. Unbeknownst to us, when the jar dropped, it sliced through her second toe right at the knuckle just below the toenail. I’m telling you, it was very weird to look down and see a tiny little piece of toe, complete with toenail, just sitting there on one of the patio stones.

At this point, my girlfriend, who works as a nurse in an ER, involved herself in the action. She told everyone what they needed to do (put the piece on ice, where to put pressure to stop the bleeding), and more importantly, she kept her head in a crisis situation, calmed down the players, and got them to pursue a course of action that would solve the problem. Within minutes, they were off to the hospital for some of that wonderful subsidized health care that Canada is known for.

We stayed around for a bit, but I had to work the next day, and so we took off before my brother and sister-in-law got back with my little niece. They informed us later that night that the people at the hospital were able to sew the toe back on relatively easily. Now all we have to do is wait and see if the surgery will take.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to put mad props to my baby into the public record. She handled this crisis situation with poise, and managed to be the voice of reason that calmed everyone else down. She was also able to analyze the events, remember the proper procedures, and enact them in unfamiliar (to her) territory. Did I mention that this was the first time that my sister-in-law and her children met my girlfriend? And the first time my girlfriend got to see my brother’s house? It was also her first meeting with my aunt and uncle (Dad’s kin), who I’m pretty sure are all of what’s left of that generation in my Dad’s family.

So, now I’m sitting here wondering if there is some sort of cosmic ‘Kick Me’ sign on my back. I’ve been involved, over the last year, in the Rush Limbaugh transcripts project (which has been plagued with problems almost form the word go) and Open Source Politics (which recently lost the services of its’ driving force). I am currently employed by Kmart (I was hired a year before the bankruptcy – basically just before they made the inspired decision to lure Chuck Conaway into the CEO’s position). My girlfriend has had her house broken into since we became an item. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of unusual happenings experienced in my personal blast zone. Over the last year.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just the law of averages catching up with me.

And on the other hand (which I might be saying if I were Zaphod Beeblebrox) it’s time for me to go to work (which I would never be saying if I were Zaphod Beeblebrox). Computational abilities seem to be restored, but for some strange reason I’m still a little gun-shy about things...