Shit sucks. I was friends with this particular guy for years… we both made the transition from working in food service (in the same restaurant) and into full time IT geeks (at the same ISP/Web devolpment/hosting/etc company).

We were friends outside of work as well, and along with the rest of the Hammond crew, gallons of beer met it’s end. He was a great guy and I’m lucky to have known him.

…a stealthy, ninja-like Budget rental van snuck up right in front of home girl’s car forcing her to slam into it hard enough to push her well bumper into the engine (of note: her air bag didn’t deploy but she seemed perfectly fine except for being really fucking bummed about the mess:

Budget Rental people, please make your vehicles more visible. I mean, how the hell is anyone supposed to see that?

On another note, good thing she wasn’t sporting this:

…it would suck to have your own plate going Narc on you.

Thanks to Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, and other prominent figures who truly hate America, I’ve figured out a new 10 point scale for gauging intelligence:

1. Brilliant.
2. Smart.
3. Normal, every day thinking person/worker bee.
4. Normal, every day cat that’s like “whatevs.”
5. Ignorant but aware of it.
6. Ignorant and proud of it.
7. Stupid and happy.
8. Stupid and angry, like Mel Gibson.
9. Both Senators from Louisiana.
10. Hey, there’s a tea bag on your forehead.

…and really, everyone knows you don’t throw parties around tea. Whip out a keg or an Igloo cooler full of whoop-juice and you’re talking business.

Tea Baggers: Where the hell were you when the rest of us were complaining about Bush’s destruction of the economy, education, tax burden (away from the rich and onto us), illegally revoking Habeus Corpus, The patriot Act, expanding government, not finding WMDs, and caging protesters like dogs?

It’s impossible to take these tea clowns seriously. When they can utter an ideology that’s more detailed than a stack of bumper stickers, maybe we can debate. Until then, please keep protesting against same policies that Bush put in place, creating the mess that the current administration is trying to duct tape back together.

Slightly off topic, delving into a tangent:
I don’t have the full speech, as I heard it on Mark Thompson’s excellent drive time (for me in the US Central time zone) Serious/XM radio talk program called MIP: Make it Plain. I’m unashamedly plugging him, as he’s spot on, backs himself up with citations, kicks ass in general, and to me most importantly …covers issues pertinent to the black community, Hispanics, Latinos, the many other people of color, and gives a really pure, raw perspective that a so-white-he’s-transparent man of Irish descent like myself can digest and make sense of.

Ah, who the hell am I kidding. The Irish part is true, and my family has a colorful background over in the clover country, but I’m a Louisianian, which in turn makes me an American… or at least one would hope. From what I hear, people from some states (Hawaii is a great example) are having difficulties getting it into the heads of some folks (imagine the ORLY? Owl here) that Hawaii isn’t Kenya. One’s a state, one’s a country, but don’t quote me on that because I went to a socialist public school during most of my formative years (I went to a lot of schools growing up, the only ones that really didn’t want me were private, but I don’t blame them).

Fact is, I’m sick of a lot of shit right now. I was sick of the divisiveness that surrounded President Bush, and I’m sick of the divisiveness around President Obama… and for my conservative friends (and I do mean friends, even if we’re on a different political spectrum), those of us that are unabashedly liberal aren’t extremely happy ourselves. By that, I mean the President has by no means catered to the liberal base, but he’s touted by the right wing as a left wing lunatic. But lies are lies. I support the President, gladly voted for him, and I still feel he was the much better choice than the alternative. But people need to wake up and remember that there were eight years before he took office that created the mess we’re in. Having said that, I hated the way Bush ran this country into the ground… but I supported him in the respect that I didn’t want him to fail, because wishing the President to fail is wishing the country to fail, which would be a real shitty thing to think about one’s own country.

I went from Nader to Kerry in those elections. Can you blame me?

…an honest politician to be sure.

Thanks to Kerry for the find.

Dear BP marketing execs, feel free to use this however you see fit.

Fuckers.

Cheers from the Gulf South, assholes!

But hey, got this awesome shank at a Mississippi gas station for $12: