The Temple of Blog

I Hate You Billy Bob Thorton

2009-04-11T10:48:00.012+02:00

I hate you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. What were you thinking, you stupid fuck? Do you do every goddamned thing your publicist tells you to do?

“Come on, Billy Bob, your career is lagging and we need some press. Besides, the guy’s a putz and he deserves a shit interview.”

And now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and made Jian Ghomeshi look good. Jian motherfucking Ghomeshi, who couldn’t interview his way out of a wet paper bag. Jian Ghomeshi, who never met an asshole he didn’t figure he could crawl further up. You have taken the most banal, fawning, vanilla, sycophantic, shit-stained celebrity-fellator on the motherfucking planet, and turned him into a sympathetic figure. Jian Ghomeshi now gets quoted in the paper as saying:

Our policy is that we don't allow anybody to tell us what we can and cannot say," said Ghomeshi. "...And I think that does raise interesting questions about ideas around how much journalism is to be controlled, especially when it comes to arts and entertainment and culture, and I think that that's a concern.

and the fucking earth doesn’t open and swallow him with a belch of sulphur and smoke. And why? All because someone told you to be “prickly” with the milquetoast dipshit. So now, instead of being the guy who wouldn’t know a real interview question if it kicked him in the balls, he's the unfortunate victim of your fake-assed headline-seeking outrage. Well fuck you, Billy Bob. Fuck you very much.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/616601

I am Seized by a Divine Fire

2005-03-22T00:27:00.000+01:00

I know that I haven't posted in ages, but a righteous wind has blown up my ass and I'm inspired, nay, compelled to write about it.

For the first time in my adult life, I am driven to prayer. And I am driven to pray for Terry Schiavo.

Fear not, my prayer is not quite the same as that of the millions of simpering knuckle-draggers cheering congress on as it (apparently having some idle time on its hands after surely having solved all problems with Iraq, Social Security, and the economy) votes to keep her as "alive" as a flesh-coated bowl of jello can possibly be.

Though it does start off the same.

I pray, with every fibre of my being, every waking moment and even muttering in my sleep: Please God, (please!!!!) let all logic, empirical evidence, and modern medical science be wrong just this once, and let Terry regrow a brain from the dysfunctional stem which is all she has left. Show your divine hand and grant us this impossible miracle. Please Lord, make Terry become several orders of magnitude better, that is, let her become merely hopelessly retarded with the IQ of a Chicken McNugget.

Bear with me, here is where the knuckle-draggers and I diverge. (But I am not afraid oh Lord, for I know my path is true. Though I am one, and they are many, the sheer rightness of my prayer must outshine their combined efforts. Please God, hear my prayer! I'll do anything. Become a priest. Or do the opposite and dedicate myself to helping people. Take a vow of poverty. Chastity. Mow your lawn. Anything.)

God, almighty Father in heaven above? Could you then possibly allow Terry to learn how to walk? NO! Scratch that. I ask too much. Allow her to learn how to move her leg. Just one leg, it doesn't matter which. And then allow her to accidentally push someone down a flight of stairs with that leg. And then let us all sit back and watch the show as the lying sacks of shit in congress who so sanctimoniously wanted to keep her "alive" scream for her blood.

Oh, and let this all happen in Texas, 'cause there ain't no better place in the big old world for executing the retarded.

Curious About Budapest?

2004-12-11T03:36:00.000+01:00

Hell yeah! I live here and I haven't a clue what the fuck is going on. No TV, a 70-hour workweek, and being at the beck-and-call of two diaper-filling machines means that I don't get out much. Or get much news. If I don't see it on my run to buy groceries and more diapers to be filled, chances are it will fall outside the scope of my attention.

But no longer! Now there is an almost daily English-language blog/news/website thingie called pestiside that I can turn to for all the Hungarian news I can stomach. Sure, after reading a bit you might get the feeling that the guy behind this thing has a shrine to Ayn Rand in his reading room, but that's a damned sight better than the four dead hookers buried in Budapest Sun editor Robin Marshall's backyard. No, no, I kid. His yard couldn't possibly fit more than two.

Anyways, pestiside is a fun read for anyone who can't read Hungarian sources, or who, like myself, just couldn't be arsed. The site is cynical enough to poke fun at thugs and politicians on all sides, and if it weren't for the fact that they actually had a sense of humour about all things magyar, I'd swear that it was a bunch of Hungarians putting it together.

Hurray I voted! (so fucking what)

2004-12-07T01:30:00.000+01:00

There was a referendum here in Hungary yesterday - a two parter. One question was regarding the privatisation of Hungary's hospitals, and the other was about whether we wanted to grant citizenship rights automatically to Hungarians living outside Hungary's borders. Now, leaving aside the question of which side I personally supported, (suffice it to say that if you think that trying to redraw the map to reflect some pre-trianon fantasyland isn't going to piss your neighbours off you're a fucking moron, and if you think that the private sector gives a flaming rat's ass whether you live or die in their hospitals then you're an even bigger fucking moron), let's just take a quick peek at what stance the political parties took.

The NATO-embracing, foreign investment fellating, proud "coalition of the willing" member (falling right between the military might of the Honduras and Iceland in the big alphabetical list, in case you're curious) governing party that, in a fit of irony, Hungarians have named the "Socialist" party is all for privatising the hospitals and keeping the borders and citizenship rules as is, thank you very much.

The clinically insane, increasingly extreme right wing opposition party "FIDESZ" wants the hospitals to stay public and wants to open the borders to ethnic Hungarians living abroad.

Let me get this straight. The Socialists want to dump public health care and the right wing bozos want to open our borders up. Don't tell me Hungarians don't have a sense of humour.

Anyways, the upshot of it all is that, as with most things political and Hungarian, the whole thing is irrelevant. A waste of time. Null and void. The small-minded knuckle-draggers in FIDESZ couldn't get the minimum number of idiots off their asses to vote, so even though both their initiatives won (public hospitals and Nationalism ahoy!), the overall turnout was so poor that it was declared invalid. And though I'm sad to see the, *ahem*, Socialists see this as a mandate to go on ahead and sell my local hospital to Pfizer, (after all, who better to treat me cost-effectively and know exactly what brand to prescribe for whatever might ail me), I am heartened to see the FIDESZ bozos get some much-deserved egg on their faces. Fear not though. I'm sure they'll find some way to blame the Jews.

Good old banks!

2004-11-24T01:06:00.001+01:00

Let's hear it for the banking industry! They work hard to provide you with useful financial services and to make your savings grow. They also go that extra mile to fuck each and every client over in countless exciting new ways. Take the following ad for example...

click for larger version

In case you can't make out the caption, it says "It didn't seem right to us, either". Here we have part of a multi-million dollar ad campaign touting citibank's new "identity theft solutions". Whenever a purchase is made using your card that seems at odds with your credit history, citibank's system red flags and stops it. But what if the anomoly is a legitimate purchase? What if it's something that the cardholder may be a bit embarrassed about, say porn, plastic surgery, or as shown in the ad, a tattoo of grandma's young lover's name? What then? And why in the name of all that is holy are they trying to ram this evil intrusive shit down my throat as if it were a good thing™?

Funny how they fail to mention that legally, you can't really be held liable for any purchases made with a stolen card number. So the only ones who possibly stand to benefit from all this spying on the purchasing behaviour of cardholders is the banks. They're hoping to cut off a percentage of fraudulent purchases and pass the savings on to, well, their poor downtrodden shareholders. Legitimate purchases that are caught in their web be damned! After all, there is a higher need being served here. Obscenely high profits aren't good enough. Banks want to be richer than God.

But hey, stop thinking of it as an invasion of your privacy and a cash grab. Think of it more as a candy-coated shit sandwich. Hell, at least there's a pretty advertising campaign to lull anyone moronic enough to have a citibank card into thinking that this somehow benefits them. mmmmm... candy. They must really love us, those worthless, scum-sucking parasitic fucks who don't care who they screw over.

Remember kids: bankers, and especially citibankers, would sodomize their own mother with a rusty letter opener to make a few extra pennies. If they had mothers.

Police Blotter Fun

2004-11-07T02:23:00.000+01:00

I refuse to mention the U.S. election, the shock and dismay of the rest of the world, and quite possibly the end of life as we know it. But hey, the Arcata Eye Police Log sure is a fun read.

Why I'm better than you

2004-10-27T01:14:00.000+02:00

I know it's not nice to gloat, but I now have a gmail account!!!! This officially makes me better than you. Unless you too have a gmail account, in which case I'm probably better than you for some other reason. And all it took was some judicious whinging and jealousy. In your face!!! Whinging rocks!!! (Thanks, Ms. Secret)

Did I mention that I have a gmail account?

foog.inc(at symbol)gmail.com

The things you find on the Interweb, part duh

2004-10-23T01:19:00.000+02:00

Looks like The American Conservative is endorsing Kerry. Un-American rat fuckers! Something's gotta be done. Quick, get me Karl Rove on the line!

The things you find on the Interweb

2004-10-18T02:37:00.000+02:00

Well, well, well. What have we here?

The Rude Pundit

2004-10-06T23:44:00.000+02:00

I have a new favourite political site, the Rude Pundit. Even more over-the-top than Wonkette, though perhaps (marginally) less anal-sex obsessed. But you can't have everything.

Volcano Porn

2004-10-06T01:33:00.000+02:00

I can't help myself. The window's been open for a day and a half now, and there's no way in hell I'm-a-gonna close it. Refreshes every 5 minutes. Oh yeah baby, oh wow! She's getting all hot and steamy right as I type this: Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

Wrong on so many levels

2004-10-03T18:08:00.000+02:00

I get the feeling that if Mother Theresa has any pull at all in the afterlife, then this person is soooooo going to hell.

Kids do the darndest things

2004-09-29T23:35:00.000+02:00

The one and only online baby journal that's worth reading is Jeff Vogel's The Story About the Baby. Some of it's been pulled from his site because he actually scored a book deal for it. But there's still a lot worth reading. And buy his damned book already.

Blog lite

2004-09-29T23:31:00.000+02:00

I've barely begun this damned blog, and already I'm slacking off. But I have an excuse. I promised my wife that I'd contribute to her blog, leaving me little to no time to indulge myself here. Give me a break, it's her birthday. Let me humour her for a few days, and I'm sure I'll slack off there too. Meanwhile, you can read about a killer idea I had. But you'll have to read about it over there.

www.funfunsex.com

2004-09-28T02:09:00.001+02:00

What the hell is this???

Frank and the Fora

2004-09-26T01:34:00.000+02:00

(sounds like a 50's a ccappela group)

Since Frank magazine, Canada's (formerly) Satire and (formerly) humour magazine, has shut down its online fora, I'm at a loss as for where to go to get my fair share of online abuse. Former Frank forumites have emigrated to two places. Most have moved to an ez-board site, and a few are hanging out at the lower-key, lower-traffic dooneyscafe.com Forums. Unfortunately, the ez-board is missing some of the more interesting (former) forumites, and Dooney's isn't weasel-proof.

Ah well. There's an interesting piece on the imminent death of Frank at betterlivingcentre.ca.

And now for a couple of reasons Frank has sunk so fast.

1. While alienating regular readers with broad pronouncements about how the mag was going to be "less puerile" it in fact managed to actually become more puerile and less entertaining. This is no mean feat, since we Frank readers love our puerile, we do! But more puerile from "humour" writers with no sense of humour seems, well, just puerile or something.

2. There appears to be an ideological shift going on. Frank was great because it slammed everyone across the board, regardless of political affiliation. The new unimproved Frank, however, seems keener on kicking those who are down. Far as I can see, there ain't a lotta yucks in afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. Bashing welfare bums and civil servants for the simple fact that they live off my tax dollars is neither good muckraking nor funny. And if I wanted to hear how shitty some moron thinks public healthcare is, I'd buy the Toronto sun.

We're all liars

2004-09-23T02:25:00.000+02:00

Okay, I promise that this'll be the last blog-bashing post for a while. But I can't help myself...

Even though there are at least 6 online profiles that list "ennui" as an interest, I'll be damned if I could find a single one that listed "online pornography." Far be it for me to criticize my compatriots in this big warm happy loving family of blogo-people, but methinks that there is a certain lack of forthrightness here.

Why Blog?

2004-09-23T00:57:00.000+02:00

Ordinarily I avoid all things blog like the plague. It's not that I have any objections to a geek circle jerk where the sheer irrelevance of it all is just barely masked by the fog of self-importance. It's just that I don't want to jump on any bandwagon that would have me as a member.

Well, that, and the whole geek thing.

But something has happened to weaken my resolve. It seems that blogging is dead. I know, I know, it sure looks pretty vibrant for something that's supposed to be dead. Then again, so does Avril Lavigne's career, so what's your point? (if you were to read this in a year or two, this barb would appear particularly funny and ironic. Which in itself is ironic, seeing as irony is another dead thing that just won't shut the hell up already. But je digresse....)

So why the death knell for the blogosphere - that is, if you need any further proof than the coining of the term "blogosphere", an oh-so-cool catchy catch phrase everyone is just going to love and use every day, you betcha!

(information superhighway, anyone?)

Anyways, I'll tell you why...

Blogging died when the outside world started believing the hype. The first nail in the coffin was when both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention bent over backwards to please the bloggers this year. Hell, they even let them use the toilets and everything. (no big deal, but if I recall correctly, the Dems restricted the real journalists to porta-potties) No doubt about it, the bloggers were mollycoddled like nobody's business. Sure, bloggers may be unkempt lunatics, (so the reasoning goes), but they have a vast audience.

Unfortunately, the train of thought stopped short of the realisation that said vast audience is composed of like-minded unkempt lunatics. Political bloggers are all preaching to the choir. Ain't nothing new getting through the tinfoil hats of that audience. People are more likely to have their vote swayed by a particularly satisfying bowel movement or a sudden toothache, than by anything read on a blog.

And today, I came across an article entitled Triumph of the Bloggers on cnn.com, where blogs are credited with causing Dan Rather and CBS to cave on the whole are-the-Bush-documents-forged/aren't-they-forged affair. Woohoo! (thought I). Nothing spells the end of a trend like the notice of the mainstream media. If blogs are now news, and CNN is using words like "blogosphere" (did I mention I hate that term?), then blogging is dead as a doornail. Finished. Kaput. Gone the way of the hula-hoop and correct spelling. Buh-bye.

So where does that leave me, other than chortling in fake-mirth? Why, furiously blogging away, of course. And while everyone else deserts the whole premise like rats fleeing a sinking ship, I will remain a steadfast blogger. And when blogging enjoys a Renaissance in ten years, a sort of retro-hip chic much like disco enjoys here and now, I'll be smugly telling everyone that I was wise to the coolness of blogging before they were and how that makes me better than they are. For once in my life, I'll be ahead of the curve. And I'll still get ignored at parties. But at least I'll have my blog. And even if somehow they take my blog away from me, at least I'll still have my sanctimony. They can't ever take that away. Oh yeah, baby. Mine, all mine.