Ron Paul continues to be the voice of reason in a sea of choppy bullshit in Washington.  He wrote an open letter about the bailout plan that sums up my exact thoughts on this mess.  I actually wrote my congressman for the first time in my life about this (the bailout), I didn’t even receive a form-letter automatic response.   Here’s an excerpt:

 The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom?  Do we care about responsibility and accountability?  Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for?  Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government?  Do we care?

Yes I do care, the question is do enough other people care enough to do something about it.

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Deep breaths people, deep breaths.  Find your inner chi, find your core, go to your tranquility cave, take a chill pill, mellow out, breath into a paper bag, have a beer, get laid, and for christ-sakes quit freaking out about fucking gas!  Of course there is no gas when everybody runs out and tops off their tanks on their way to and from work, and then fills up random containers full of gas a la the Road Warrior.  I live in North Georgia, I used to think that people were laid back around here.  This situation shoots that theory full of shit encrusted holes.  Quick, I hear that the hurricane and terrorists are causing a shortage of moon-pies and RC Cola, you better drag your redneck asses to the sterr to stock up on that shit.  Fuck.

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This guys loves his car, I really mean it, he LOVES his car.  My guess is that he’s the CEO of AIG or Merrill Lynch and is just taking a lunch break.

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I don’t always agree with the environmentalists or environmentalist movements, but at some basic non-political level I get it.  This shit is why nobody respects fucking hippies….

Hippies Wail for Dead Trees - Watch more free videos

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I had to read this quote regarding the Russia/Georgia conflict three times and pinch my left nut to believe I wasn’t dreaming.  Who the fuck is he kidding?

Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century

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I was just on a long vacation, a very loooong vacation.  But it was a good vacation.  The problem was the plane ride.  The plane trip was from Atlanta to Philadelphia on August 1st, and if by chance you are one of the poor poor souls that happened to be on the plane with my clan, then please accept my sincere apologies.

The clan included myself, my wife, my 3 year old daughter, and my almost 2 year old son.  The plane had a 3 on a side configuration, my son and I were in the middle and isle seat on one side of the plane while the wife and the girl were sitting in the middle and isle seats on the opposite side of the plane.  Please see diagram below for a graphical representation of the hell that was a plane ride.

The day started out on a dubious note, up at 3:30 AM, an hour drive to the airport and a bitchy kid at the gate.  The boy was cranky, no, cranky isn’t quite the word.  He was fucking horrible.  After we got him into his seat and some fussing and complaining into the air, the fun started.  It began with a low moan that turned into a primal scream that came from deep in his gullet.  The explosion was like Jack Jack from the Incredibles, and a visible arc of vitriol sound could be seen from it.  After the initial explosion, he took a full box of animal crackers and with animal ferocity and strength he ripped the box into shreds showering the poor schmuck sitting next to him, myself, and the rows in front and in back of us with cookie dust and tiny pieces of shredded box.  Then he got bad.  He basically rolled on the floor for 45 minutes kicking and screaming in the most ginormous tantrum in history.  In fact he now has a record in Guinness, look it up, he’s fucking in there.

He was fine once we got there.  Little fucker.  And then somehow he could still make you smile after all of that.

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I got an email today, this email was better than 10 hate comments and 30 videos of nuns washing cars in thongs. It was a copyright infringement email. Not only was it a copyright infringement email, but it was from Gary Larson’s “people”, you know the motherfucker who writes The Farside. The Farside was only my obsession in junior high, I basically creamed my pants when I read the email. I don’t flatter myself, I was dumb enough to name a couple of images of the farside cartoon “farside1″ and “farside2″ on a post back in November (post removed BTW) so the lawyer types probably did a google image search and scraped up my post off of the bottom of the interwebz shoe. The letter was pretty cool. I’m going to frame it.

Dear totaldiatribe

Creators Syndicate, an international newspaper syndicate, syndicates Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoons to foreign newspapers. In addition we handle all reprint permissions requests for The Far Side following guidelines long established by Mr. Larson and his company FarWorks Inc. (copyright owner to all Far Side images). In short, we approve or disapprove requests to reproduce Mr. Larson’s cartoons, and carefully monitor the ways in which they appear.

We are writing on behalf of FarWorks, Inc. and Gary Larson about your posting of two Far Side cartoons on your website http://www.totaldiatribe.com/2007/11/. While Mr. Larson is certainly flattered to know you are a fan of his work, we have to be concerned about any unauthorized use of The Far Side name and cartoons, especially when they appear online.

FarWorks has a serious problem with unauthorized uses of The Far Side worldwide. As a result, it does not allow online publication of works from The Far Side. No matter how insignificant a few uses may seem, it still amounts to making versions of the cartoons available in digital form for anyone to download, which makes it virtually impossible for Mr. Larson to control future uses, something that is very important to him.

 

Please read the letter from Mr. Larson below, and respect his wishes by removing the cartoons from your website. Many thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

<Name Removed>

Permissions Department

Creators Syndicate

<Address/email address removed>

Enclosures: A note from Gary Larson

A note from Gary Larson

RE: Online Use of Far Side Cartoons

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I’m walking a fine line here.

On the one hand, I confess to finding it quite flattering that some of my fans have created web sites displaying and / or distributing my work on the Internet. And, on the other, I’m struggling to find the words that convincingly but sensitively persuade these Far Side enthusiasts to “cease and desist” before they have to read these words from some lawyer.

What impact this unauthorized use has had (and is having) in tangible terms is, naturally, of great concern to my publishers and therefore to me — but it’s not the focus of this letter. My effort here is to try and speak to the intangible impact, the emotional cost to me, personally, of seeing my work collected, digitized, and offered up in cyberspace beyond my control.

Years ago I was having lunch one day with the cartoonist Richard Guindon, and the subject came up how neither one of us ever solicited or accepted ideas from others. But, until Richard summed it up quite neatly, I never really understood my own aversions to doing this: “It’s like having someone else write in your diary,” he said. And how true that statement rang with me. In effect, we drew cartoons that we hoped would be entertaining or, at the very least, not boring; but regardless, they would always come from an intensely personal, and therefore original perspective.

To attempt to be “funny” is a very scary, risk-laden proposition. (Ask any stand-up comic who has ever “bombed “on stage.) But if there was ever an axiom to follow in this business, it would be this: be honest to yourself and — most important — respect your audience.

So, in a nutshell (probably an unfortunate choice of words for me), I only ask that this respect be returned, and the way for anyone to do that is to please, please refrain from putting The Far Side out on the Internet. These cartoons are my “children,” of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, “Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.

I hope my explanation helps you to understand the importance this has for me, personally, and why I’m making this request.

Please send my “kids” home. I’ll be eternally grateful.

Most respectfully,

Gary Larson

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In this installment of Stories from the road, our hero finds himself in Chicago.

Is the multi-day hangover a myth? Fuck no. I’ve got one. I remember the days when I could drink until 3, and then still make an 8 o’clock class the next morning (my notes would be unreadable and would smell like stale beer, but I still made the class). I just got back from Chicago where we drank like rock stars, told and re-told old stories, and realized our age all in one fell swoop. And then we re-told some old stories. The impetus for the trip was a reunion of a rugby team I used to play for, we had won a regional championship game for our division in Chicago 10 years ago and there were 3 international rugby matches scheduled for this past Saturday, so we scheduled the trip, took our pain medication, and went. I think there was a total of 18 guys on the trip.

Friday night was fairly typical reunion fare, a couple of us went to lovely Gary Indiana to play some poker while the bulk of guys went to the Cubs-Sox game. We all met up at bar/restaurant afterwards in the suburbs of Chicago. We sat around and bullshitted the night away while pounding down brew-dogs. And eventually closed the place down. I haven’t closed a bar in years.

Saturday is a rugby day. I only got about 3 hours of sleep (stupid internal clock), and after some greasy breakfast to lube up the gullet, we headed over to Toyota Park for the rugby matches. The first thing I noticed was that the parking lot was full of people drinking in groups of 10 or 15 and singing rugby songs. We entered the gate, and cracked open our first beer of the day. The time was 10:50 AM. We got into our seats on the 50 meter line and got ready for the first match (Ireland vs. Argentina, when the sun came out. I have mixed blood (mostly Irish and Scottish). This. No. Good. For. Sun. My face now glows a deep bright red and you can barbecue off of my forehead. Anyway, I moved into the shade soon after the first game, but too late. The good news was the beer kept flowing, so soon I didn’t feel my face too much.

The other matches of the day were fairly uneventful (England vs. Scotland, and US vs. Canada), my only comment is, we fucking suck. All told we were at the field for 7 hours boozing it up. We headed back to the wonderful Holiday Inn (nuthin but the best for our lot), and had a few more cold ones while we sat around and argued like little bitches about what we were going to do that night. In a moment of drunken clarity we came to the conclusion that some people are planners, some people are do-ers, and some people tell the do-ers what to do. And the do-ers get paid the least and do the most work (i.e., they’re fucked). But I digress. We eventually found a planner who planned an elaborate plan. The plan was, walk across the street to a sports bar. We’re fucking idiots. So a person that tells the do-ers what to do said “hey fuck-nuts, we’re leaving” and we left. Problem solved.

After some food and beer and shots and mustard and a little side of burning rage, we decided (again we needed a planner for this) to head over to a more “exotic” bar. In other words, we found a strip club. We ended up at the strip club and even the burning rage issue went away for some reason. All I could say was “god-damn we drink a lot” when I saw our bar-tab at the end of the night. We got a cab at 3:30 AM and headed back to the hotel. The last beer I finished, 3:20 AM. That’s 16+ straight hours of boozing it up if you’re keeping score at home (assuming I’m doing my math correctly course, remember the multi-day hangover thing?). I realized how old I am when I only got another 3 hours of sleep again (fucking bullshit stupid internal clock!!!).

I’m done… where’s the tylenol?

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The wife and I saw the film Stop-Loss this past weekend.  I had never heard of the term stop-loss before I saw the movie, it is basically the ability of the US Army to involuntarily extend a soldier’s enlistment contract past the initial end of service date in the time of war.  That is where the rub is, we haven’t declared war on Iraq, we have a nebulous war on terror (it might as well be a war on cockroaches or martians).  Overall it was a decent movie, it won’t win any awards, but it definitely gets the message across that our soldiers are getting fucked in the ass on this one.  When I say fucked in the ass, that isn’t just with the stop-loss, it goes for the whole nasty mess the assholes in charge of our country have gotten them into.  There is a decent comment thread about stop-loss on the movies blog site here, comments are mostly from military men and women.  I will leave you with a poignant comment from a soldier that is currently being stop-lossed:

I am grateful a film is out about the Stop-Loss issue. Many of us have been “Stop-Lossed” and sent back to Iraq after our contracts with the Army have been fulfilled. Some of us never came home. After having served my country for 11 years, it is shameful that we, as soldiers, are subject to imprisonment if we fail to uphold our end of our contracts with the US Government, yet it is perfectly legal for the US Government to not uphold its end of the bargain. We all accept and do what is required of us while serving our country. But when our “time is up” and “duty fulfilled” they force us back and demand more. Personally, I believe that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Rumsfield, should be held personally accountable and legally charged for the death of every soldier that was deployed under Stop-Loss. We did our duty, now let us go.

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Don’t worry, I’m not turning into a sports geek blog, but I really hate this time of year in terms of sports and I have to get this off of my chest.  For me, the time between March Madness and the kick-off of football season is a dead zone for sports.  Baseball fucking sucks, the NBA play-offs are boring as hell, and does hockey still have a league?

As far as baseball goes, the players are pussies, they won’t play in the rain or snow (or if the ump farts too loud), and they are overpaid prima-donnas.  The league minimum salary is $390,000 in 2008 and the average salary from 2007 was  $2.8 million, seriously let that sink in and remember that 2.8 is an AVERAGE.  Compare that salary to yours and think about what they offer in return for such huge salary’s… entertainment, often times shitty entertainment.  Anyway, 2.8 mil seems a bit low, isn’t it time for them to strike again?.

The season lasts 17 and half years with a 10 year play-off, and it’s like taking a cheese grater to your scrote to watch it on TV.  Granted, it is kinda fun to go to the ballpark every once and a while, but let’s face it, it is normally just an excuse to get wasted.  I think the reason hard-core baseball fans are such fucking stats dweebs is because the game is so mind-numbingly dull that they have to fill in the time with worthless trivia.

Jebus… I can’t wait until football season.

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