Friday, October 31, 2008

?taerT ro kcirT, Dept.

fch

Yeah. This is the shit.

Family fucking Circus plunges into the Coney Island whitefish-infested waters of political humor by having li'l Dolly dress as Sarah "What, Me Talent?" Palin in celebration of a repurposed pagan holiday of darkness. And Jeffy as some sort of 19th-century stage imagining of Mephistopheles, Lord of Darkness. Wait...I'm picking up a theme here...fuck, what's going on inside the house? Is Thel cutting herself while listening to The Cure? Is Bill whacking it to The Shining?

Damn, this shit is hardcore! Props to Bil "All hail Lord Satan!" Keane.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Does This Orange Jumpsuit Make My Liver Spots Look Big?, Dept.

tedstevens

And in other news, noted irascible fuckwit, technophobe and influence whore, Sen. Ted Stevens, was found guilty by a jury of his peers. By whom, I don't mean "12 corrupt coots who think Wi-Fi is where you play your Lawrence Welk records."

Unfortunately, Teddy Boy will most likely see no jail time, and, given the mindbogglingly bad judgment of Alaskan voters, will probably be re-elected next Tuesday. But, still...the Eternal Black Mark on his long record of public service humping the porkbarrel on behalf of the Rogue State...it is, you guessed it, Schadenfreude Monday chez sobsister.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

An LCD Screen..."Lowest Common Denominator," Amirite?!?, Dept.

After the liberation of Paris, Sarge and his men are on liberty one evening, looking for the brothels of which they'd heard their doughboy fathers and uncles speak. They wander the streets and boulevards with no luck, until, finally, they enter a saloon of sorts and approach the bartender. Dumbshow and loud English both fail to communicate their need to their froggish interlocutor. Finally, frustrated beyond human endurance, Sarge drops his pants and thwacks his member onto the zinc bar. "Ah, oui, oui!", exclaims the Frenchman. "Wee-wee, my ass!", retorts Sarge, "It's the biggest one in the regiment!"

*ha ha*
Yes. I wish I could claim authorship of that gem, but it was actually delivered by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of her ascension to the throne. It's funnier with corgis.

At any rate and speaking of humor, that cruel and seductive mistress, I finally watched Sarahcuda's appearance on Saturday Night Live (available here for the time being), and I must say that, contrary to my initial impression of her as a talentless mannequin hoisted onto the national stage by cynical political paymasters on break from boning the blind underage prostitutes they shortchange with fins they claim are dubs, she is, instead, a solid candidate for her own afternoon talk show, perhaps to be carried by one of the religious channels I invariably surf past as they feature Time-Life CD sets with names like "Songs of Faith, Songs of Hope," featuring tunes with oddly defensive titles like "My Savior Lives" and "I Love My Redeemer."

I can totally see it.

It would, of course, be called "Sarah!" and would feature a live studio audience of women of all races, White and Other, in ill-fitting foundation wear poorly masked by synthetics-rich sportswear and pantsuits. Her theme would be just funky enough to not be mistaken for a hymn but not funky enough to encourage rhythmic movement while seated, lest those stretch pants rub the devil's eraser unduly. Her sidekick would be a bubbly young man, deeply closeted, to the extent that he'd have a wife and six children, all blond, named after cities in Texas. Thus, through the magical medium of television, she'd have an echo chamber in which to bray her wrongheaded notions of religion, sexuality, politics, society, media, education, science, economics and culture, and no-one would need be harmed, save the hapless members of her studio audience, who might profitably be drawn from the nation's penal population in a sort of "Dirty Dozen" program.

Next on "Sarah!": Did Jesus Ride a Dinosaur?, plus abstinence-ready fashions and three black people you'd be proud to have over for dinner!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

A Rue with a View, Dept.

But not everything is about The Divine Sarah (although I do like how the Wicked Witch of the North let her Babymakin' Man, Todd, help with the governance of the WTF? State. Were I a resident of Alaska, I'd feel better knowing that the First D00d is on the case. He's won a flock of snowmobile races, don'tchaknow, yah, you betcha, and worked in the oil fields, too. Take THAT, Jill Biden, with your lah-dee-dah Doctorate of Education and your Snobby McSnobshoes breast health awareness programs.)

No, instead, I thought today I might share with you some thoughts on our recent vacation. Your sobsister spent a week in Gay Paree, a leather bar just outside Waukesha, Wisconsin...*ha ha* I'm just joshing; I am so much more into Asian twinks than leathermen...*ha ha* just joshing again; I am totally into leather, especially on long-stemmed Lithuanian supermodels who'll show me what a worm I truly am...*ha ha* the law of diminishing comedic returns is truly making its presence felt.

Seriously, though, we were in Paris for six lovely days. And following are some snapshots of, and observations on, this lovely land of the lovely–

1) do the French exile their fat people to Corsica? Devil's Island? Alabama? Because, really, the herds of the morbidly obese who galumph around Choc City and its suburban dewlaps do not find an analogue in the Big Brioche. Now, I myself ate much in the way of animal fat enrobed in rich sauces, chased by agglomerations of sugar, cream and chocolate or nuts (the "Paris-Brest" at Le Bistro Paul Bert...nomnomnom) and returned home to find I'd lost a pound-and-a-half. So, yeah, maybe French calories work in reverse. Like French tanks! *ha ha* See how I worked in that trenchant reference to Gallic failures on the field of manly combat? It's in honor of the upcoming bicentennial. 200 years since France has won a war. There's gonna be parades'n'everything.

2) now, one possible reason behind your sobsister's weight loss might've been the vigorous exercise regimen to which I subjected myself once arrived in Paris. Each day, as we walked down the street, I would aerobically whip my head right and left to catch the lovely mam'zelles in their softflesh'd trajectories, the same question trailing behind each of them: "Avez-vous des frites pour accompagner ce milk-shake?"

3) in that vein, we're walking behind a family on the Quai Anatole France: a guy, mid-40s; his little son, eight or so; and his daughter, 16 or a smidge older. The guy is Pierre Average, wearing some schlubby jacket, noticeably middle-class in tony Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the boy is a good-looking little fellow, not wearing anything particularly distinctive; and the daughter...yes, the daughter. Honey hair just below shoulder length, blue eyes, bright smile; she's dressed quite fashionably or, at least, well. Suede-ish jacket, tan miniskirt, kneehigh boots. What makes this vignette memorable in my foie gras-bleared memory is the fact that this young woman was possessed of an ass like you read about. Particularly if you're the sort of person who reads books or periodicals featuring post-pubescent heroines with asses like a) two puppies playing in a sack, b) two melons on a miniature see-saw or c) you read about. In short, she was an eye magnet. Not that your sobsister is personally into that whole Lolita/Barely Legal/Daddy's Little Hotbox continuum of sclerotica. I am merely a camera. More Brownie than Hasselblad, perhaps, with just a hint of Lomo, but there you have it. At any rate, down the street walks this happy family scene: schlubby père, playful fils, eye magnet fille. Little Pierre (which sounds like a sweet pet name for a fella's tallywhacker) is hopping up and down and running all around, just a bundle of energy. So, he starts playing with his sister. By spanking her and running away. Spanking her and running away. Spanking her and running away. She's laughing and trying to avoid him. But he always manages to land solid spanks on her ass. I turn from this spectacle to observe grown men, chainsmoking, weeping with bitter envy. The ghost of Maurice Chevalier croons, "Sank heffen foor lee-tall gurrls..." And...scene.

4) as intimated above, the women of Paris wore boots, mostly knee-high, some higher. Leather, brown or black. Or they wore Chucks a/k/a Cons née the Chuck Taylor® All-Star®, in a wide variety of colors and heights. Here's what they didn't wear: UGGs and flip-flops. Here's what else they didn't wear: baggy sweats with their alma mater's name stamped on their ass. Here's a generalization: women in upscale Paris do not allow childbirth or childrearing to interfere with their patriotic duty to look fabulous. Mom fashion dans la ville: knee-high boots, skintight jeans, snug top, leather jacket. Grandma fashion: leather pumps, leather pants, silk blouse or cashmere sweater, leather jacket, Jackie O sunglasses. Here's what I didn't see in Paris: muffintops. Even on muffins.

5) on the flight over, the Eastern European fellow to my left asked me if he could have my half-eaten salad. (And here I would normally launch into an extended diatribe about how astonishingly crap United's food is, but, instead, I'll content myself with noting that the "balsamic vinegarette" accompanying said salad was both offputtingly peppery and searingly acidic; perhaps originally intended to prime furniture or repel garden varmints but repurposed for human, or, at least, "coach passenger," consumption.) I gladly gave him my leavings, which he quickly wolfed down. Later and in the same spirit, I asked a passenger a few rows back if I could have his wife, whom he'd barely touched. His hatred of me was palpable.

6) one of my personal sightseeing highlights for the trip: the catacombs of Paris. While not recommended as an excursion for those who might have "issues" with being 100 feet underground in a seemingly interminable low, dark, narrow passageway scored by seeping water or in a labyrinth of rooms lined with the skulls and bones of six million dead Parisians, it is an enjoyable escape from the commonplace tourist scene. Plaques in each room, written in the three languages of educated man--Latin, Greek, French--offer useful advice from the Bible and the classical canon regarding one's ineluctable proximity to death. All in all, a lovely getaway for the whole family, particularly if the whole family enjoys being reminded of its mortality. Not, as I mentioned previously, for the bathophobic...and I don't mean HIPPIES! AMIRITE?!

7) the Louvre is full of many people of all descriptions. No small percentage Asian. Like, a LOT. We walked up the long staircase to the Winged Victory of Samothrace, weaving around and past large clots of humanity, ascent arrested, to hear their tour guide's energetic explanation of what those big-nosed barbarians were up to, exactly. I'd love to know, for the participants, how this all fits into their cultural and intellectual cabinet. Does everyone know the Mona Lisa and Liberty Leading the People? Is it a Big Deal to have schlepped all the way from Busan or Shanghai or Osaka to have seen it and other Old Masters? Or is it simply the Sort of Thing One Does when abroad? After leaving the museum, we stood across a narrow internal road from two Asian couples. If I had to guess: Chinese. And by "Chinese," I mean: vice-assistant manager at the No. 3 People's Melamine and Lead Paint Collective. The men were both dressed in the kind of generic gray suit that, despite pants and jacket being cut from the same cloth, still looks mismatched. The kind of suit a Zhejiang farmer wears to a court date, with the label of a brand like "Flying Dragon" still visible on the sleeve just above the wrist. The women both had dyed orange hair--and I mean, Halloween orange--permed to full curl. They were dressed in snug red wool dresses that combined with their hair color to poke onlookers in the eye. What does "Paris" as reality and concept mean to them? I would've asked them, but, after staring into that maelstrom of red and orange, it took a while for my eyesight to return.

8) you can buy things in Paris that you can't find back home. Like "Pall Mall" and "Lucky Strike" cigarette rolling tobacco. They probably also have Everclear baby formula, but I didn't see any. As a nation, we're pretty laissez-faire. Which is quite French-sounding, I know. Translated, it means that we sell things overseas whose toxicity would feed a dozen law firms for years.

9) dang, but those Frenchies make good bread!

At any rate, just a taste of your sobsister's sojourn into deepest Paris. Or at least arrondissements one through 13. With that, our whirlwind trip to the City of Lights sputters, coughs and comes to a noisy little end. As they say on the Champs Elysees, À bientôt. Which, spelled backwards, is "Natures."

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Que Sarah, Sarah, Dept.

Your sobsister was watching the teevee just the other day, some televisual feast or another, possibly involving puppies dressed as U.S. presidents. And, just after viewing puppy Coolidge, the network cut to an ad.

In it, people were having the kind of fun one only associates with New Year's Eve, the last day of school and Heaven. All sorts of people: white, young, attractive, white. And the reason they were so rooty-toot-tootin' happy was because they were glugging down some Sunny D!

Sunny Delight, the announcer brayed, it contains five percent real juice!

And two things immediately sprang to mind. The first was: who the fuck brags about a fruit juice product that only features five percent real juice? Doesn't that immediately--and, no, I'm not going to say "beg the question"--raise the question: what comprises the other 95 percent?

Though one might default to "bull semen," one might be wrong, both because bull semen is frightfully expensive and because Sunny D's ingredients are, in fact, as follows--

Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Concentrated Juices (Orange, Tangerine, Apple, Lime, Grapefruit). Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Beta-Carotene, Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Natural Flavors, Food Starch-Modified, Canola Oil, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Sodium Benzoate To Protect Flavor, Yellow #5, Yellow #6

"Hey, Mom, can I have some more sodium hexametaphosphate?!?"
"Well, Billy, it is used in industry as a thinning agent for suspensions and slurries, such as might be used in certain ceramic techniques; as a whitening ingredient in dental hygiene products; and as a dispersing agent to break down certain soil types...so, yes, darling, pour yourself another tall, icy-cold glass!"

Upon further reflection on Sunny D, a beverage perfectly and absolutely repellent in concept and execution--why drink actual, you know, fucking juice when you can drink a micturition of water, high fructose corn syrup and less fruit than the vermouth one waves over a bone-dry martini?--I had a moment of sweet epiphany, the second of the two things that, as I mentioned way up there, sprang to mind.

Sarah Palin is the Sunny D of American politics. Sure, you see people of every description--white, bigoted, illiterate, benighted, white--having heaps and heaps of fun around her. But when you look at what comprises Sarah P, you realize that the sweetness is artificial, the substance is minimal and the balance is repurposed toxicity.

"More Sarah P., Mom, pleeez?!?"
"Billy, you little scamp! If I weren't so numb to the degrading conditions that comprise my existence, I'd brain you with this frying pan. But, more to the point, drink a case of Sarah P., my beamish boy! Maybe you, too, will grow up to be a crack'd vessel for the bile and nightblack humours of powerful men."

Saturday, October 04, 2008

From the page:

"NEED SARAH PALIN LOOKALIKE ASAP FOR ADULT FILM (LA)

Looking for a Sarah Palin lookalike for an adult film to be shot in next 10 days.

Major adult studio.

Please send pix, stats etc. ASAP

Pay: $2000-3000

No anal required"


Boy...I bet Sarah P. wishes she'd seen this advert before she took her current gig, which makes her do book-larnin' and thinkin' and stuff. And the très ironique bitch of it is: her current gig does require anal! Who'da thunk, right?

What the ad doesn't mention, however, is that this film will also feature adult cinema legend Lexington Steele in the role of "Barack Oh-Bang'er."

Baked Alaska!, coming soon to your local stroke emporium.