Cause It's Halloween

I know this is my favorite holiday of the year. I just wasn't feeling it. I'll spare you the whining and self-pity. It just didn't really seem like Halloween. I'd been planning to put my Rhino New Wave Halloween CD on my iPod for weeks, and I never even got around to that, much less the decorating and the pumpkin carving.

Just for the record, a) I love carving pumpkins, and b) I kick ass.

Watching the Office last night, I considered the "Dave" costume, but I didn't even know if I'd go to that much effort.

This morning, I stared into the abyss my closet and decided I'd go ahead and dress up. I dressed as myself from the 80s, and my costume is totally awesome. It's a costume with a relatively small target audience, but I think any of them would instantly recognize it.




Should I worry that I didn't have to break out the Halloween box?

Take Me Seriously!

I'm pretty and I have lots of money!

In a vain attempt to get us all to take her seriously, the Republicans have spent more than twice the average American family's income to give Sarah Palin a new look.

She's a one-woman economic stimulus package:

She dropped $75,000 in a single store in Minneapolis.

She spent almost $42,000 on a shopping spree in St. Louis.

She spent over 4 grand on hair "consulting", which makes the Republican's bitching about John Edwards's $400 haircuts look just a teensy bit hypocritical to those unfamiliar with the fact that the Republicans are, in point of fact, a huge steaming load of hypocritical.

She even dropped almost $5,000 at a guy's clothing store.

I'm sure that will come as a great relief to everyone currently crossing their fingers and hoping that the economy will stay afloat until the Party of Hoover gets unceremoniously kicked out of Washington so the Democrats can try to undo the damage those assclowns have managed to do in the last 8 years.

Whew... all that shopping's enough to wear a girl out.

"Probably"

Awesome.

Now stop worrying and enjoy your lives.

Unbeatable

Lex's soccer team finished their regular season yesterday. The coach said he thought it was the first time in the history of the school for any sport that both the varsity and JV teams had undefeated seasons in the same year.

The coaches added a bunch of non-conference games and tournaments this year to help the teams get in extra games to prepare for a run at state. If you add in all of those extra games, JV only lost 1 non-conference game and 1 tournament game way back at the beginning of the season. Varsity only lost 1 non-conference game. Both teams lost to Quincy. Quincy has their own tour bus, like they're rock stars or something. They were really good, and both of our teams lost by one goal.

It's not quite over yet. Varsity is hosting regionals starting next week, and JV has one last tournament this weekend. If they make it to the final, they'll play 3 games on Saturday, so they'll probably spend Sunday in a coma. There's a reason they don't do double-headers in soccer.

Lex started the season as a forward, but he seems to have settled into a midfield role. He's playing out on the left wing, probably because he can use both feet and he's got a strong, accurate kick. They're probably playing him there to put crosses deep into the box, but it's not where I would play him. I don't know that he has the endurance to play the wing. It's a little hard to tell exactly where he's playing. He missed so many games near the start of the season, and the freshmen are caught in a catch-22. If the game is too close, they don't get playing time, but if it's not close enough, then they get played in the wrong position so they don't run up the score. I think he may have played more defense than offense this year.

The bench is really deep this year, but Lex's ankle has healed up and he's playing again. He got a good stretch of play in the first half yesterday. He went in while the game was still scoreless for a change, and we got our first goal while he was in. If you ask me, they looked better when he was in. The guy he replaced has more experience, but I think they held more possession and had tighter passing when Lex was in. I could be biased.

Dumbfounded

So you may have read about the poor bastard who got beaten up for driving his car on a Wednesday. Scroll down... I'll wait.

OK, remember the police with the fists of iron? They arrested the guy who got beaten up. Because, you see, the riots were his fault.

For those of us keeping track at home, that's
a) fists of iron, and
b) heads of shit.


You want a punchline? The guy that got beaten up was one of the founders of a committee to promote peaceful coexistence in Acre. He apologized for the trouble he'd caused by getting beaten up.

Holy Crap

"For Jews, Yom Kippur is a sombre day of fasting, during which it is considered offensive to drive in much of Israel."

Just to be clear, driving is offensive. Kicking the shit out of your Arab neighbors? That's all good.

So here are the facts:

It was Yom Kippur, or, if you're not Jewish, Wednesday. In the city of Acre, an Israeli Arab (I know, right? It's like being a poor black lesbian Republican... I digress.) got in his car and drove, because it was Wednesday and he had someplace to go.

The streets were deserted "except for pedestrians, cyclists, and skateboarders." Happily for the cyclists and skateboarders, the ancient Israelites had found time off from their holy duties of burning dead animals, keeping slaves, and committing genocide to a) predict the invention of automobiles, bicycles, and skateboards; and b) respectively declare them unacceptable, acceptable, and acceptable modes of Yom Kippur transportation.

A group of Jewish youths saw him driving and felt that, while it was sacreligious to drive on Yom Kippur, it was probably not sacreligious to commit a violent assault, as long as you can gather a large enough group of holy-minded pussies to gang up on the lone driver.

So they beat him up.

Because he drove a car.

On Wednesday.

News of the attack spread, promoting reactions of "What the fuck, don't they know it's Wednesday?" and "That sounds like wholesome Yom Kippur fun," in the Arab and Jewish communities, respectively. I may be paraphrasing. I didn't go and ask them.

Anyhoo, hundreds of people poured into the streets to establish that along with "violent assault", "destruction of property" and "vehicular damage" are also activities that their cheeseburger-shunning, shrimp-hating, menstrual-cycle-fearing ancestors would probably approve of as acceptable ways to celebrate the Holiest Day of the Year^TM. Provided the violence is directed at Arabs, of course... I'm guessing they would not approve of the same violence were it directed toward Jewish people, especially on Wednesday. As I recall, they get rather tetchy about that.

The Chief of Police in Acre described it as a "serious incident" and said that they would "deal with all the rioters and those who take the law into their own hands with an iron fist." (The cliche collision left it unclear which party has the iron fist, but I'm assuming that he meant that the police have fists of iron, and the rioters have to make do with regular hands made of flesh and bone.)

You may take solace in the fact that he said "all of the rioters" will be dealt with, unless you excuse yourself and have a quick look at the past performance of the Israeli justice system. Fewer than 10% of police investigations into settler attacks on Palestinians even make it as far as an indictment, much less a conviction. You may also want to note the disparity between the 205 cases that were opened in recent years and the police knowledge of at least 407 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians so far in 2008 and another 366 incidents last year, in the West Bank alone. Knowledge of incidents prior to 2007 may be assumed, although it didn't come up in the article.

In the light of these statistics, one may be excused a certain level of skepticism that "all of the rioters" will be dealt with, no matter what kind of fist with which the police chief may be equipped.



Look, I'm not saying that Judaism is any more or less ridiculous than any other world view based on the principle that an all-powerful entity lives in the sky and has nothing better to do with his time than obsess over a project that he spent a week on eight thousand years ago. What I am saying is that even if you do believe in that crap, some people don't, and that means that you don't get to tell them what to do. They have their own crazy-ass world view that they have to follow. They don't have time to follow yours too. They're busy, I don't know, not drinking beer, or figuring out how many is too many wives, or worrying about cartoons, or some shit like that.

Oh, right... also, before you form a group of violence-prone pedestrians and approach me while I'm in an automobile, you may want to consult your giant-slaying, manna-eating, witch-hunting forefathers about how to celebrate Vehicular Manslaughter Thursday, because I'll run over your asses. Fair warning.

Happy Thursday.

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Oh, I hope I can get my Ph.D. in English. - ds

Two Observations, A Suggestion, And A Pizza Place

First, let me just say that calling yourself a "maverick" is a lot like giving yourself a nickname; if you do it without irony, you're kind of a douche.

Second, I don't need to hear your opinion on nuclear weapons or nuclear power until you've done at least enough research to find out how to pronounce them.

And finally, if I may, what these debates need is a shot clock. As soon as a candidate strays off point, the clock starts, and if they don't get their ass back on topic before the buzzer goes off, the rest of their time is given to the other candidate. If you're not going to make them answer the questions, then we might as well just let them each read their list of talking points and then show an episode of Scooby Doo.


...but not one of the ones with Scrappy. I hate that little bastard.