News of the Restless

First, a little music to set the mood...

...because I'm really going to try for rationality and detachment here. It's not gonna be easy, because everything about this just triggers the old blue blaze of rage and pain that I felt as an ostracized, bullied child. Every time I got shut out or picked on, that blaze is what I felt. And I don't like admitting that I still feel it every time I see someone else get shut out and/or picked on. You're supposed to get over that old kid stuff, you know?

Only, here's the sad part: You don't. You really don't. And if you're honest with yourself, you admit it.

And if you're really REALLY honest, and painfully so, you admit that this shit goes on everywhere.

Okay, I admit it: This shit goes on everywhere. It goes on in supposedly liberal, enlightened, democratic-socialist CANADA, for God's sake. I know, because it happened to me.

And no, it didn't happen for the same reason as it happened to Constance McMillen. I'm not gay. I didn't have a prom date at all (at least not for MY high school's formal), much less one of my own sex. I was a shy, introverted, bespectacled, skinny, pale, redheaded, frizzy-haired, unathletic, unhip, unhot, too-damn-smart-for-my-own-good geek. And in a small town, where the narrowest definition of "cool" prevails, someone like that stands out. And standing out is unforgivable. The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And yeah, I got hammered. All through grade school and much of high school, I got fucking hammered.

I won't go into any specific incidents. I've already been triggered enough for one damn day. There are more of them than can be named, anyway, and it made going to school nauseating. And this was for a kid who enjoyed classes. A kid who really wanted to be a doctor someday; a kid whose teachers kept telling her she really ought to be a writer. Being seen enjoying the use of your own brains is apparently utterly unforgivable in a place where conformist mediocrity is prized, other than of course in athletics.

So I got hammered. And I continued to stick out anyway. I bent, but would not be hammered down. I tried to hide my brains: useless. (I still got high 90s in French without even trying. I could have slept through that class and still aced every test.) I tortured my hair with a curling iron, to straighten and feather it into some semblance of fashion: useless. (One small whiff of humidity, and foof it went.) I got contact lenses, so people could finally see that I had a pretty face and not just four eyes: useless. (They were in the habit of seeing me through their own distorted, invisible funhouse lenses. Nothing I did was going to shatter those.)

No, the only thing that saved me from the whole thing was graduating. And going to university in a modest-sized city, where things were bigger all around. And learning to be myself, instead of some cookie-cutter knockoff of every other ditzy chick with Farrah Fawcett wings in her hair. It meant accommodating my curls, accepting my introverted, geekish nature, and learning to flip the bird at convention (and sometimes, at conventional people). And it meant becoming someone radically different not only from what the others were, but from what I had been and thought I should be.

Even a nervous breakdown and the realization that I wasn't going to make it to med school wasn't nearly as bad as being forcibly flipped out of the pond like I was all through my grade- and high-school years. Even realizing I'd fallen hopelessly in love with a gay guy, and being damn near suicidal at the ripe old age of 20, was a piece of cake compared to being shut out. I could get over my thwarted dreams, go beyond the misplaced romantic interest (he's still my best friend to this day--how 'bout THEM apples?), and even get past the desire to just go to sleep and never wake up. But this? No. It follows you silently everywhere.

I thought I had gotten away from it at university, good fucking riddance to small towns and smaller minds--only to find myself suddenly struggling with all the unresolved pain, anger and stark terror of those days. And sometimes, in the dead of night, when I should be asleep but just can't, I still have those moments where I forget who I am, who I've worked so hard to become. I even forget that the town has grown, and is not the same bigoted little place anymore. All I remember is what I have yet to overcome.

And what I have to overcome is that poison cruelty that seems almost inherent in people. The same that prompted Jean-Paul Sartre to say that hell is other people. It's not inborn; it's learned. And it gets passed down through generations. Each one gets beaten by the previous one until it bears the identical scars. Then it turns on the next and starts beating on them until they, too, bear those scars...

So when I read the obscene self-justifications that some people go through, presenting themselves, the bullies, as the poor little victims of a nasty, gay revolution--well, why not just wave a red cape in front of me and every other excluded kid? I mean, it's not as if you're not just asking to get your sorry asses kicked, is it now?

And yeah, I would so love to kick every ass of every person who ever did this to another. Doesn't matter for what "reason". I don't give a shit for your justifications; spare me the "explanations", I'm in no mood to hear any of them. Don't bother to comment here; I'll either delete it or declare you a Wanker of the Week, depending on whether my mood is fair or foul. You cannot explain or justify this. I know what you did. It has a name: CRUELTY.

Cruel isn't cool, and I'm not fucking cool with anyone who's cruel. I want to kick cruel people's asses, ALL of them. I'd wear out my trusty old cherry Docs doing it, no doubt about that.

But we're not supposed to kick ass; we're supposed to be meek, mild and forgiving. We're supposed to grow beyond all that. We're supposed to Forget. I mean, it's only a silly prom, fergawdsakes. For a bright kid with a future, it's supposed to be just a stumbling-stone on the road to Better Things. It's only important to those who peaked in high school. That ain't me, right?

Well, fuck it. I haven't forgotten. And I'm not sure I've forgiven, either. The fact that a fake prom so far from where I grew up has the power to trigger all my buried outrage and bring it crashing back like it only happened yesterday, is a testimony to the power that cruelty has. It has the power to make me forget, or at least minimize, the fact that I did go to a prom, in another town, with a guy not from my high school. He liked me more than I liked him. He was not the guy I'd have gone with, had I been "cool" enough to be offered a choice of dates; still, I showed him mercy, because he was an even bigger geek than I was. He didn't know what a loser I was to all my peers. To him, I was actually pretty. For his sake I put on a brave face and a beautiful outfit. How elegant I looked in my own hand-made royal-blue strapless moiré dress and my mom's black elbow gloves (a damn sight better than these tacky little prats, that's for sure.)

And yeah, I made the dress myself. Pleated overbodice, six-inch-wide sash, floor-length skirt, the works. And the black organdy ruffled shawl, too. See what happens when you apply yourself in Home Ec, girls? And don't you guys wish your girlfriends were hot--and SMART--like me?

But this makes it hard to remember that. It has the power to make me forget that I'm not the ostracized kid anymore, that I quit being that kid even in my last year at high school, where I began to morph into an adult whom other adults actually like. It even has the power to make me forget, for a moment, just how strong I really am.

And that strength didn't come out of nowhere; it came out of being that excluded, bullied kid. Maybe it's made me a better adult, a better listener, a more worthwhile person to talk to and with?

Maybe.

One thing it definitely HAS made me is glad that I don't fit in, after all. Because if fitting in among the bullies who made my youth hell is such a prize, I don't want it. I'd have to turn into a piece of shit just like them. What's that old saying? "Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat", I believe is how it goes. Nope; no rodent here. Just a human being who doesn't need to pretend superiority.

And one who admires the hell out of Constance for taking you all on and showing you all up. She's got more class in her left pinky-nail than all of you have in your collective, pathetic, self-justifying carcass.

So yeah, bigoted kiddies, knock yourselves out claiming that you are the bullied ones, being shat on by northerners, gay revolutionary ACLUers, and people from the two coasts and God only knows where all else. Whine your sorry asses off about how everybody else looks down on you (as if YOU had a monopoly on pusillanimous shitheadedness!) Go play your smarmy phony victim card until it wears the hell out.

And it will, soon. Because it's flimsy. And because the rest of the world isn't stupid; it knows what lengths you went to in order to make sure your precious widdle prom was queer- and crip-cootie-free. That much secrecy takes planning and co-ordination. It takes a lot of complicity. It also takes massive amounts of cowardice. Not one of you kids had the stones to defy your parents, your school board, or your picky-picky peers; you are all a bunch of fucking wimps! You think you avoided "drama" by excluding Constance and her same-sex date, and a tiny bunch of disabled kids? HA! You just brought it on yourselves, ten-thousandfold. You deserve the shitstorm that you've got coming now.

And I, for one, will be pointing the finger at you and laughing when the verdict comes down against you. Because I love seeing the shoe go on the other foot, and pinching. It's not nice, I know. But it is satisfying. And it is so very, very richly deserved.

Sucks to be you, kids. Here, have another song. And try learning how to dance without that graceless booty-humping you did at your "drama-free" prom, 'kay? That shit's no cooler than your overt, deliberate cruelty was.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

This is, obviously, a short story à clef.

Once upon a time (the present), there was (is) a little red-headed Canadian princess (ahem--QUEEN!), who lived (lives) on the north shore of Lake Ontario and swore (swears!) she could see across it to Western New York on a clear day.

Well, just today, this little princess, or queen, or whatever, woke up feeling fine. Nothing wrong, which is funny because she has had rheumatism ever since she was hit by a car at 14, which was neveryoumind how many years ago, and ever since then she has been prone to joint and muscle pains on cold, damp autumnal days like today. Especially first thing upon waking. So let's just call her Woe Blight, because really, you have no idea how much of a woe and a blight such a condition can be unless you've lived with it since you were a teenager, okay?

Anyhow: Woe Blight woke up, for once, feeling less woeful and blighted by her chronic condition. Which surprised and pleased her, and which she ascribed to having worked out the night before, right before bed. (She lifts weights. Her arms look almost as good as Michelle Obama's by now. By next summer, she should have some spectacular guns.)

Unfortunately, Woe Blight's well-being was not to last. By the time she had prepared her humble lunch (bacon-and-zucchini quiche, which real men DO eat--just ask Woe's grumpy old German dad!), Woe was feeling more than a little under the cold, damp, drizzly weather. She was feeling nauseated and dizzy, and suspected she was running a temperature.

Still, being a cheerfully persistent and ever optimistic little thing, Woe Blight figured her problem was probably hunger. So she downed two tablespoons of Angostura, ate a hearty wedge of zucchini quiche, washed it down with a bottle of Moosehead.

Unfortunately, that didn't do the trick. If anything, she was feeling even worse; the nausea had spread to her chest, which felt tight and congested. So, still optimistic, Woe Blight then went out to roam the hills of her colorful little county, determined to see if a bit of fresh air couldn't cure whatever the hell was ailing her.

Well, it couldn't.

By the time she was halfway up the road to the woods, Woe was feeling every bit as woeful as she'd ever been in her life. She was hugging the shoulder and clutching her umbrella, wondering at every step whether this would be the moment when she lurched into the hawthorn bushes across the ditch and lost every last bite and swallow of quiche and Moosehead to the demon that was ransacking her little belly. (She would have blamed a poison apple, but Woe's parents are happily married for lo these past neveryoumind how many years, there is no wicked stepmother, and besides, Woe is fed up to the eyeballs with perfectly wholesome apples, living as she does among endless Ontario orchards.)

Well, about this time, somewhere between the train tracks, a cedar swamp, the hawthorn bushes, and a very surprised herd of Charolais cattle, Woe Blight met the Seven Dorks.

Their names were Grok, Woozy, Hinky, Murky, Pukey, Feverish, and of course, Dopey. They advised her to stop roaming around the hills like a maniac, and promptly get her little white butt back up the road, across the train tracks, and into her humble cottage, where the bottle of Angostura was patiently waiting on the kitchen shelf.

Now, Woe Blight usually doesn't take advice from dorks. But she knew enough to know that she was in no condition to argue. The cold felt colder and the wet felt wetter, and her innards were fast turning into a messy, curdly soup. So she got her cute little butt back home and onto the trusty cot in her toasty warm study. She slept there for the better part of the afternoon and woke up, still plagued by the Seven Dorks.

The Itty-Bitty Shitty Committee, as she had by now taken to calling them, were still there when she ate supper, and they did their level best to make the tasty quiche seem rancid and her evening tea, insipid and cloying. A couple hours later, the Angostura needed reinforcements, and Woe Blight got out her trusty angelica tincture, a true rotgut which tastes so horrible that it makes one forget, at least for a little while, whatever it is that's ailing one. Even diluted one-to-three in water, it's scary shit; it turns the water grey-green and cloudy, like a pastis gone terribly wrong. If absinthe is la fée verte, this stuff is la fée morte. But it is, or is supposed to be, a sovereign remedy for gut bugs, according to her trusty herbal guidebook, so Woe poured herself a couple of fingers of it, then topped up the glass with cold filtered water, and downed the swamp soup, cringing at every evil-tasting mouthful.

Well, apparently the scary shit is good for something, because Woe is typing her fingers to the bone and feeling no pain. Wish her luck for the morrow, kiddies, she suspects she's gonna need it...and she really hopes not to have to drink any more angelica tonight.

EDIT, the next morning: Holy moly!!!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A couple of days ago, a flying monkey 'winger calling himself Carl pooped on this entry here. I had written out a nasty little reply, but I've had sober second thoughts, and what's more, I've a hell of a lot more to say today. Since that entry's about to roll off the front page with the posting of this one, I'll copy out for you exactly what he crapped so you can see for yourself how ridiculous it is, even just on the face of it:

I honestly hope that fucking thug Chavez tires to invade Colombia or incite some kind of border skirmish. Having trained and operated with Colombian forces from 1990-2004, I can guarantee you that they would kick the living shit out of Chavez's hollowed out army.

Carl, are you a masochist? Because you sure sound like you WANT to have your ass soccer-dribbled by a female civilian peacenik.

I don't normally indulge stupid men's death wishes, but I guess I can make an exception, because in a remarkably compact form, you've just encapsulated all the collective stupidity of your ilk. So, here goes...

First of all, the fucking thug here is Uribe, not Chávez. Tattoo it on your forehead if you have trouble remembering this simple declarative sentence, Carl: ALVARO URIBE IS A FUCKING THUG.

All of South America has a problem with Uribe. Venezuela and Ecuador do because they're right on Colombia's border, and they're sick to death of having to mop up the bloody spillover from Colombia's civil wars. (They're also sick to death of being bombed and invaded by Colombia, with gringo "help".)

And they're not the only ones. Uribe took a whirlwind tour of South America lately, to no avail. It didn't matter that he wasn't giving press conferences, and that his motorcade managed to evade the huge mass protests everywhere he went; he wasn't feeling any love. Evo actually smacked him around in Bolivia, which took some serious cojones. Even the big ABCs--Argentina, Brazil and Chile--aren't buying what the gringos' puppet dictator is trying to sell.

So, Carl, I bet you're wondering what their probem is? Well, in a nutshell, it's the sovereignty, stupid! When one country just pisses on all its neighbors by saying it's gonna let the US build bases there, and it's going to collaborate in spying and terrorizing, nyaaaah--what did you expect? Imperialism isn't welcome there anymore (not that it ever really was, except to the idle rich, who were more than happy to have a US-backed death squad killing the uppity peasants so that they wouldn't have to dirty their own aristocratic hands at it.) There are any number of good reasons why the locals have been yelling "Yankee go home" for over a hundred years now. Some of them are dead now, but others could still go before The Hague, assuming that a local tribunal doesn't get to them first.

Colombia, incidentally, is rife with trial-worthy human rights abusers who are unlikely to face justice at home because the system there is deeply corrupted. Every administration since the Bogotazo, at the very least, has peasants' blood on its hands. There are corruptos in every cabinet, and Uribe himself is the biggest one of all. Hey Carl, have you heard yet that he was good friends with Pablo Escobar, and even rubber-stamped the pilots' licences for the latter's flyboys? It's true!

And that's not even touching the paramilitaries. If those aren't fucking thugs, I don't know who is. And Uribe's doing nothing to rein them in; in fact, he's actively linked to them. What does that say about him?

Now, about your fond little hope, Carl...that Chavecito will "tire" to initiate a border war. (How the hell does one tire to initiate wars? Dyslexics of the world, untie!) Sadly, you're not gonna get your widdle wish, because Uribe is now whimpering around with his tail between his legs:

Last Friday the president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, said his government was interested in repairing relations with Venezuela and Ecuador. On the same day he also said that the Colombian government had sealed negotiations with the United States to allow U.S. troops to be deployed on seven of its bases in Colombia. Chavez responded that for such actions, the mending of relations was impossible.

[...]

Chavez, speaking on his weekly TV show on Sunday, said it would be impossible to renew relations with Colombia because of Colombia's verbal attacks on Venezuela and the threat posed by the US military bases on its territory.

Venezuela also froze its relations with Colombia after hearing about the planned US bases, and then being accused of selling weapons to the FARC by the Colombian government. It withdrew its ambassador to Colombia on 28 July, reinstalled it on 7 August and is seeking alternative trading partners.

"Uribe said extremely cynically that he wants to repair relations. They are attacking us, they are slandering us, and then he says that he wants to mend relations between Colombia and Ecuador. But how? He can't. It's already impossible, there's no way to repair this," Chavez said.

That's not war talk; that's diplomatic and trade talk. It's also a plain, bald statement of facts. He's not saying "We're gonna bomb Colombia", because there's no interest in throwing good blood after bad. He's an intelligent man, disinclined to quarrel with an obvious stooge because it's undignified--and, it bears repeating, he is NOT a fucking thug.

Now, I know you're more than a little hard of thinking, Carl, because you obviously didn't comprehend a word of my earlier entry. Since you claimed to have spent 14 years in Colombia, you ought to know at least enough Spanish to watch and understand the video I posted on the entry you defaced with your puerile war-mongering gibberish. I call bullshit on your claim, Carl--if you had spent that long in Colombia, you would understand not only Spanish, but local issues, a lot better. Your grasp of the news is that of a typical armchair general from Freeperville. You haven't "trained and operated" with anyone, in other words.

I also call bullshit on the notion that Uribe and his gringo backers would "kick the living shit out of Chavez's hollowed out army". First off, the Venezuelan armed forces are not "hollowed out", they've been purged of their SOA-trained putschists and cash-diverting bloodsuckers. That's good for morale, as well as patriotism and loyalty--all of which they have in abundance. They're also newly equipped with matériel that actually works. Venezuela has replaced its old FAL rifles with Kalashnikovs, and even has a Kalashnikov factory or two now. They've also been phasing out their dying F-16s, replacing them with some very capable Russian-built fighter planes. Perhaps you've heard of the Sukhoi, Carl? If not, let me show you it.

Venezuela don't need no stinkin' gringo hardware. These Sukhois (and the others still to come) are perfectly capable of bombing the shit out of any military base in Colombia, including the gringo ones, if Venezuela or Ecuador is attacked. If not, the planes will keep on flying just for show, as they're doing above. There won't be any border war, at least not one started by Chavecito, although he seems more than capable of finishing it. The one who will provoke the border skirmish--and who has already tried it more than once--is that fucking thug Uribe, and no other.

BTW, Carl, I'd really like you to explain to me how a "hollowed out" military could be capable of doing this:

180 clandestine drug-running airstrips destroyed, according to this EFE report from last year. They're still hard at it, too. That's why you're paying so much more for all that crack you're smoking lately, Carl--Venezuela's not playing nice with your DEA smugglers anymore. (Pretty soon you won't be able to afford any, and that's fine with me. If you wanna see "hollowed out", try googling the search terms "US economy".)

Like I said, they don't need no stinkin' gringo hardware, or no stinkin' gringo "help" combatting drugs! What they need, Carl, is for the US and Colombia to get the fuck off their turf and leave them the hell alone. Is that so hard to understand?

You can "honestly hope" whatever you like, Carl, but at the end of the day, you're just another dumbass whose hopes will, thankfully, never be realized. You need to STFU...and find better things to hope for, "honestly" or otherwise.

Personally, I honestly hope you stop smoking crack.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Well, here I am again. Same old crappy keyboard and sound card; same old crappy problems on my 15-inch PowerBook, in other words. The crappy repair shop couldn't get new crappy parts to replace the old crappy parts, so I'm stuck. You wanna know the worst part? Turns out, the guy who took 'em in mistyped my phone number, so that someone else got MY messages on their cellphone. I know 2 is next to 3 on the keyboard, but sheesh...does no one double-check? He had my old repair invoice with him, after all...complete with correct number.

And the really fun part? He e-mailed me to let me know things were ready. Or one of them, anyway. (I had no computer from which to receive the good/bad news.)

At this rate, I'm not surprised things turned out the way they did.

However, I'm happy to report (well, kinda-sorta happy, anyway) that the 12-inch baby has a new hard drive, the biggest and best-est it could get, and I'm now reinstalling Nurse Leopard on it to help Dr. Bina bring it back to what it was before it died on me so spectacularly. Wish me luck in getting all the info off my Time Capsule into the machine again...

I'd also like to thank everyone who e-mailed me for the 168 messages (why is it always 168?) in my inbox. If I don't respond to each one individually, now you know why. I'm still trying to read them all. Just know I love you, 'kay?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Funny how some songs never get old. Sad how some schticks do. Here's who needs to heed David Byrne's advice this week.

1. Newt Fucking Gingrich. Why is this worthless right-wing relic still around, never mind in the public eye? Newsflash for Mr. Cancer Divorce: the president of Venezuela is not, and never has been, an "enemy of America", but the US government has certainly been HIS enemy, and has been since even before he was legitimately elected. And you want to slam Obama for putting a stop to that? Get fucked...by your CURRENT wife for a change, you slimeball.

2. Stephen Fucking Harper. Hasn't heard yet that Latin America is fed up to the gills with "free" trade which only favors one country (hint: NOT any of theirs). For that matter, hasn't heard that Canada is also fed up--and wants no FTA with Colombia. Isn't listening. Remains tone deaf. Still can't shut up about free trade, free trade, free trade. Embarrassing Canada in general, and this Canadian in particular, soooooo badly.

3. Fucking spammers. They're generating a lot of hot air, literally--and this without actually saying anything anyone wants to hear. Or, in this case, read.

4. Marc Fucking Thiessen. Bad enough that no one from the Bush Mafia is doing hard time yet for crimes against humanity. Even worse is that some of its professional liars (i.e. speechwriters) are saying things like this:

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely. This is the secret to the program's success.

So what does that make the interrogator? A free-speech activist??? Gimme a break. This is the most fucked-up "logic" I've ever seen, and believe me, there's plenty of it out there on the right. I say we waterboard Mr. Thiessen to see how "liberated" HE feels. Perhaps Christopher Hitchens or this Playboy writer will explain his "liberation" to him in greater detail, preferably after he's strapped to the board but before the watering starts.

5. Oh shit, Sean Fucking Hannity has volunteered to be waterboarded for charity. The only charitable thing about that act would be if he were to actually drown, so no one would have to listen to him wanking on the air again! Could he take the Pigman with him while he's at it, please?

6. The Big Dick and Auntie Condi should get to watch before their respective American Water Torture sessions, too.

7. Oh, and Shepherd Fucking Smith doesn't believe it's torture. Let's throw him on a board too. What the hell, one more talking head going bubble bubble bubble...

8. The fucking young conservative anti-greens. Yeah, privatization and "market solutions" work great for the environment; just ask anyone who lives next door to a polluting plant that gets away with it, thanks to that other "free enterprise" greenwash, emissions trading. And if you're gonna get all simple-minded on us and carry signs that say "sorry for breathing", have I got one for YOU:

9. Whoever the fuck wrote this BushCo blowjob for that gloryhole of fascism, the Wall Street Urinal. Yeah, BushCo kept the world sooooooooooo safe. On whose watch did 9-11 happen again? Who shrugged off the August 6 PDB with a curt "All right, you've covered your ass now"? Who gave the Air Force the order to stand down that day? Who told the CIA to cook fake intel and the FBI to sit on its hands? Who pissed on the US constitution and shat on the Geneva Conventions in the name of "freedom"?

And why hasn't Obama had a 9-11 yet, if the US is so unsafe under him? Anyone at the Wall St. Urinal care to explain me that?

Didn't think so.

10. All those fucking media idiots out there who called Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America an "obscure" book. It's so obscure that its author was menaced by about half a dozen US-backed military dictators and other assorted fascists for writing it, and had to go into exile. Yeah. Obscure. Riiiiiiiiight.

And finally, anyone telling me what I may or may not publish on this blog. Newsflash: your geographic location (city, latitude and longitude, NOT street address) and area code, along with your IP number, ARE NOT PRIVATE PERSONAL INFORMATION. Nor is your e-mail address, especially if it's Gmail or Hotmail. I don't know your real name, street address and phone number, much less your "real" e-mail addy, and I don't care to. I do, however, know bullshit when I smell it, and I'm not inclined to be merciful to anyone who comes in here trying to convince me it's roses. If you don't want to be hung up here to dry, don't come in all wet. Fuck you very much, and have a nice day.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:24 PM | Permalink

Oh noes! I've been accused of being wrong about something going down in Bolivia, it seems. The accuser gives the e-mail address "bolivia@gmail.com", but a quickie check of his/her IP address (which gets conveniently left in my mailbox, along with the comment) tells me s/he is posting from someplace rather far from there:

General Information

Hostname: 205.160.23.2
ISP: Sprint
Organization: NAVIGANT
Proxy: None detected
Type: Corporate

Geo-Location Information

Country: United States
State/Region: DC
City: Washington
Latitude: 38.9097
Longitude: -77.0231
Area Code: 202

So of course, this person would know what s/he is talking about when it comes to Bolivia, right?

Well, let's dissect what was actually said by the commenter, and see if s/he merits the ban I meted out.*

Here's the post I put up; here's the unedited comment, in toto:

well, what can I say, but that although I expected something better from the same person who scolded me for not showing regret at the passing of Alfonsin, I see that Sabina is simply spewing hate, concerned more about scoring ideological points rather than objectively reporting FACTS.

My guess if that innocent til proven guilty only applies for those who you simpathize with? We can agree that the bolivia/hungarian dude was a nut missing a few screws. However there is absolutely no evidence that they were after Evo. The more likely scenario is that they wanted to fight his regime, but that is far different from an assasination attempt. What is really worrysome is that there is indications that these guys were executed and no gun fight occurred. Some are reporting that their hands were tied as they were shot point blank, but I won't go that far since I was not there. But the pictures and video clearly do not support the govt version of a gunfight. And yes, there is still no evidence what so ever of an plot to kill Evo other than him, and he made that call even before we knew who had been killed.

The first paragraph is a nasty ad feminam attack, no? It's indicative of a grudge-holding mentality on the part of the troll, because I had put that comment out of my mind shortly after chiding this person (on El Gaviero's blog) for being disrespectful to an Argentine former president who recently passed away, and who also happened to be the one to transition the country from dictatorship to democracy. You can get the details on Raúl Alfonsín from Otto and The Mex Files, if you like.

The second is more immediately relevant, and makes some accusations which are pretty ludicrous in light of known facts (no ideology necessary, unless of course you're a spinny 'winger troll.)

First off: No gunfight? That's funny, every major media report says there was one that went on for about thirty minutes. (Here's the Reuters version, for those who still doubt. You'll note that it is NOT Evo-friendly.)

Thirty minutes, people. That's a long time to be shooting it out barrel to barrel. Why would Big Media, no friend to Evo, report that unless it actually DID happen that way?

And what does it tell you about the guys shooting back at the cops? What it tells me is that they were pretty damn heavily armed, is what. Here's another article, with some photos (again, from Reuters, the not-Evo-friendly news agency) showing what the cops found on those guys.

Then there's the "their hands were tied" part. Um, no, they weren't, and here's some graphic (and grotty) proof:

That's Michael Dwyer's corpse immediately after the shootout, BTW. See how the hands are tied together?

Neither do I.

The tying-up happened, incidentally, when the bodies were being removed from the hotel. That is, only AFTER they were killed (and photographed for the record, as above). They were wrapped in garbage bags, and I'm guessing they had to be trussed up pretty tightly to keep the bags in place and make the bodies easier for the removers to carry. Why garbage bags? Well, either the authorities didn't have any body bags to hand (my guess is they weren't anticipating a need for them, since they conducted the raid in the wee hours, when these guys were presumably sleeping, and they probably didn't expect so much resistance). Or else (and this is less likely) they considered these assassins worthy of nothing better. Either way, get one thing straight: The decedents were NOT tied up and then summarily executed. There was a gunfight, and they lost. Period.

Finally, one doesn't have to have a partisan viewpoint to realize that yes, this is a terrorist incident, and not some cockamamie "freedom fighter" bullshit. When the parliament agrees to convene a multipartite commission to investigate the incident, you can be sure that it's serious.

Finally, there is the "fighting against his regime" bullcrap. WHAT "regime"? We're talking about a democracy here. Evo was elected in December 2005 with 54% of the vote, which might not sound like much until you realize it's the most that any elected Bolivian president in history ever got--and more than double the percentage of his nearest rival. If you're fighting against that, you're fighting against democracy, and that, by definition, makes you a terrorist. If the opposition can't take their defeats gracefully, too bad for them--but that's no excuse to try to overthrow him. The man deserves respect. What else do you think the very democratic concept of "the loyal opposition" means?

One would have to be pretty ideologically twisted to argue with facts like these, but crapagandists in Washington, DC, are as twisted as they come.

And now that we've got this much straight, let's move on to other things. I'll still be following this case as new details emerge, and as justice takes its course with the two who were taken alive. But I will not have any more patience for people trying to muddy the waters with obvious and patent bullshit.

*I don't often do this, BTW. I do, however, make exceptions to my general live-and-let-fly comment policy for spammers and trolls. Spammers get insta-dumped; the trolls get baseball rules--three strikes before the umpire calls 'em out. Since most trolls I get are one-time poopers, I have more fun with a good factual beatdown than banning them, unless they're truly and pornographically obnoxious. In which case I make an exception to the baseball rule, and just delete their comment AND ban them in one go. Since this troll has defecated here more than three times, s/he was overripe for a pulping.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Who's been playing with themselves in public? Who needs to put it away before they get arrested for gross indecency? Well, this week, it is...

1. "Dr." Laura Fucking Schlessinger. You'd think she'd learn to practice what she preached and just shut the fuck up and go back to her kitchen like a good little Hausfrau from Hell. But no. In spite of all the sponsors who've dropped her crappy show, it's still a lucrative cottage industry, this fine art of being a queen bee who hates women. Get a load of this antifeminist wankfest:

For a long time, I was a career woman and that was it. I didn't want to have a baby. But I kept feeling as if something was not there. Then one day, I was watching PBS Nova, and a one-hour program they showed on the creation of a life. I just broke down. At that time, I was 35 and had already had my tubes tied. But in that moment, I realized what was missing: this womanly part of me. So I got married, struggled a bit to get pregnant and finally made it happen after a surgery.

Now, if that's not rubbing salt, I don't know what is. The question is, whose wound is she rubbing salt into--that of people who can no longer afford to work for a living (because their employers dicked them out of everything in the name of profit, including enough money for daycare), or herself at a certain age (by which she should surely have known better than to bawl over some stupid TV show)?

Christ, Laura, you sound like a woman who doesn't do a whole lot of thinking ahead of time. Maybe you should try it sometime, like before you wax all melodramatic again for the Wall Street Urinal--or pose for some of the worst nude photos ever.

PS: That "life" you went out of your way to "create" sure turned out great.

2. Glenn Fucking Beck. Forget the fictional Bush Derangement Syndrome, this pasty doughball has a very real case of Obamamonomania:

This dude is so batshit crazy (and such a lousy, unconvincing crier when he gets "emotional" about his country) that a British comedian basically ate his lunch here:

On the not-so-funny side, he also has a massacre to answer for.

3. Camille Fucking Paglia. Turn up your speakers, kiddies, and hear the grating-voiced shrew of academic wanna-beism get it hilariously wrong once again:

Liberal hosts like to snap and snip and chortle snidely, but they are weighed down by a complacent superiority complex, a paralyzing sanctimony. They mistake irony for wit. The conservative hosts love to rant and stomp and bring down the house. They're doing breakneck vaudeville while liberal hosts are primly stirring their non-caffeine green tea.

Clearly, someone hasn't been listening to Mike Malloy. When he's done cleaning Rush Fucking Limbaugh's clock, maybe he can do hers. It sounds like it hasn't been keeping proper time for quite a while now. Just keeps saying "Cuckoo!" non-stop.

4. Maggie Fucking Gallagher. I was wondering what had happened to this tragic old trout after she took BushCo's money and ran. Well, now we have an answer: She's been busy trying to save poor oppressed heterosexuals' marriages from people who have not the slightest interest in breaking them up. Nice to know that all that taxpayer money has been so well spent. Maybe next time, the good people of the United States might want to chip in and get her one of these instead?

5. This fucking moran right here:

I don't know what he's trying to say, and I suspect he doesn't either. But I do know this: Freedom of speech is wasted on people who can't formulate a coherent thought, much less spell it out correctly.

6. T. Boone Fucking Pickens. Look, dude: I don't know what you have against state oil companies, much less ones "run" by Chavecito (for the benefit of all Venezuelans, I might add). But if you wanna run your all-Amurrican gas guzzlers on natural gas, be my guest. How fast did you say you could fart, again?

7. Spencer Fucking Bachus. I had no idea this clown was until this week. I wish I still didn't, because he sounds like the reincarnation of Joe Fucking McCarthy.

8. Whoever the fuck thought it would be a good idea to use Canada as a proxy for US imperialism--and the destabilization "democratization" of Venezuela. Not MY home and native land, not with MY tax dollars, and not in MY name you don't, assholes!

9. And finally, anyone who thinks I'm being too hard on these whackjobs. Head out of ass, and fuck you very much.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember this?

Sadly, it's more representative than exceptional. I shit thee not.

Oh come on, admit it. You know it as well as I do, gentle reader: Beauty queens are twits. It goes with the territory. They don't need no stinkin' depth; they have their looks, and in general, that gets them further than any dumbass has a right to go. They have no time or need to fill their heads with any information more useful than maybe which hairspray gives the best hold without actually looking like industrial-strength lacquer. Or which plastic surgeon does the best nose bobs and/or boob jobs.

No matter what anyone bleats about the brains or talent of any particular Miss, the fact remains that there has never been a Nobelist among them in any field. It's either dieting your way into that winning swimsuit, or saving the world; you cannot do both simultaneously. As Kim Chernin and Naomi Wolf have both eloquently pointed out, you cannot think straight and obsess over every mouthful at the same time. Your brain burns more calories than your thighs, so when you try to slim the one, you end up starving the other that much more. Food for thought, girls!

(And good luck trying to be a beauty queen without dieting; if you dare, you get viciously ripped like this Miss England wannabe.)

That said, I wonder how long it will be before the current Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza (presumably from Venezuela, but really from Mars) experiences a complete collapse of the skull. Her recent gushy gaffe about Gitmo is just as par for the course as the stupidities of Miss Teen South Carolina in the video. It's also not the first time a Miss Venezuela-turned-Miss Universe has put her foot in it; the first of the line, Maritza Sayalero, visited Chile, chatted up Augusto Pinochet, and thought he was simply divine. (No, I'm not shitting you about that, either.)

I don't like anything where women get judged directly (and let's face it, solely) on their superficial traits. But I have to admit I'm not a total militant about abolishing the beauty pageant, as inane and dangerous as it may be. I mean, we smart goodlookings will always have our smarts to fall back on if our looks fail us (and believe me, they will). What about the dumb ones? If there were no Miss Whatever pageants, whatever would become of the poor, intellectually ungifted Misses? As much as I roll my eyes over the idiocies of these girls, I'd hate to see them on a bread line or blowing creeps for crack near Queen and Roncesvalles.

Fortunately, there's a vast marketplace for female flesh that's been dieted, hairsprayed and surgically altered half to death. Miss Whatever can always find work peddling conflict diamonds, blue jeans sewn by slaves in Singapore, or--glory be!--the jewel of a beach resort that is Gitmo. At least, until her reign is over, whereupon she's free to become a billionaire's bride (or a millionaire's mistress), a soap opera star, a game-show letter-turner, even a high-end call girl...really, the possibilities are limited only by her IQ.

At the very least, she could always serve as the muse for a song like this one.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:19 AM | Permalink

So my Time Capsule FINALLY arrived today. Turns out it wasn't shipped from within Canada, or even within North America, but from Shanghai, China. No wonder it took a week to get to me. So much for the "made in California" bit, eh?

Well, one thing hasn't changed, and that's the fact that this device, like all the others, is nutball easy to get up and running. Stick a CD in my Powerbook, plug the thing in to the power supply and plug the Ethernet cable from my hi-speed modem to it, and then get the Network Diagnostics set-up assistant to walk me through it all until finally, the light on the Time Capsule went from flashing amber (indicating something amiss) to solid green (indicating Hallefreakinlujah!)

Plus, one whole terabyte of data storage and backup. No Cloud Beings needed. Suck on that, Bill Gates.

Now, to get writing on that novel again, and back it up to the Time Capsule too. With luck, this draft won't suck like the first one did (although damn, that sucky three-quarters of a first draft had its moments, I must admit.)

And now, even if this computer were to die tomorrow (although it better hadn't DARE!), I won't be quite as lost at sea. Enraged at having to shell out for more repairs, maybe--but data loss won't be so dire.

Dare we hope that with this chapter written, the frickafrack endeth? Let us pray.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The frustration continues.

Yesterday I ordered a Time Capsule from Apple; I expect it will show up sometime tomorrow, probably around siesta time (knowing MY luck, which is invariably quirky). That's not the source of my frustrations.

This, this is the source of my frustrations:

The day before yesterday, I e-mailed my best friend, who has been nothing but helpful in all the time I've been inheriting his old computers, to see what could be done about all the lost functions from my ailing baby. He was kind enough to burn three DVDs full of stuff for me. There's just one problem: Two of them are on DVD+Rs. Which neither of my computers seems to recognize, though they're technically supposed to (I checked my settings and found nothing to indicate they couldn't). Meaning the contents are absolutely unreadable and uninstallable. I can tell they're on a DVD, but my computers both can't. They just make a few diffident, befuddled little noises from the drive before spitting them back out at me again.

I was hoping to be able to at least copy the DVD+R disks to DVD-Rs on the newer pute and then install their contents to the older one, but that's impossible since it, like its big sister, doesn't think a DVD+R is a data DVD. I'm gonna have to tell my dear buddy, who spent $10 to rush this stuff out to me, that two-thirds of it are inoperable. How frustrating--and how humiliating!

So now comes the next part, in which Bina lays her head on the desktop and cries. Won't be pretty, kiddies. Look away, wouldja please?

UPDATE: Turns out the DVD+Rs were the double-layered kind--which many putes won't read. Including, as luck would have it, both of mine. Sigh--back to Square One.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oh my, a genuine, for-real can of whup-ass! Who am I opening it on this week? Read on...

1. and 2. Pat Fucking Boone and Chuck Fucking Norris. The former for dreaming of a Smedley Butler-style coup d'état that will magically install him as president of the US, and the latter for having similar notions of becoming president of Texas (someone please inform him that Texas ceased to be a republic some time ago.) And if that ain't enough to make you break out the whips 'n' chains, the sight of Pat's flat butt and saggy arms in his black leather gear should tell you that he's not merely cruisin' for a bruisin', he's downright salivating for it. (PS: Don't miss Pat's dick-in-a-box moment. Wonder who he gift-wrapped THAT spectacularly underwhelming endowment for?)

3. Tucker Fucking Carlson. He wishes he were cute, smart and talented...like Jon Stewart. So how does he take out his frustrations? By trashing Jon Stewart. Dude, I wouldn't go there if I were you. Remember what he did to that CNBC twit, whatsisname? You mess with the man, he's gonna pick you up and smush you on his forehead like a beer can. Come to think of it...hell, go ahead and mess with him, Bowtie Boy. I'll be over here making popcorn with real butter on it.

4. FUX and Fiends. Talk about shows that should be shit-canned, this dumbassery is it. Just imagine if they had it en español...but of course, they wouldn't. It would sound even dumber than Homer Simpson:

(Actually, I'm sure this is a metaphor for something.)

5. Rubén Fucking Costas. Did he figure his Nazi-like hatred for Evo would find more sympathy in Germany? Newsflash: It's been more than 75 years. The Germans have moved on. Besides, they have a serious fondness for Teh Injunz (at least, the North American Plains variety) there, and one that long pre-dates Hitler or any other eliminationist--just ask anyone who's ever read Karl May.

6. Moonunit Fucking Perino. This pluperfect airhead thinks the economy is "improving" because of the cockeyed policies of her fuckheaded former employer--and that a very temporary uptick in the Dow Jones somehow proves it? YVKE Mundial put it about right: "She smoked some crack".

7. and 8. Ann Fucking Coulter and Laura Fucking Ingraham. There are just two words for women like these, and they are BONY and BITCHES. Where do they get off dissing Meghan McCain's (perfectly lovely) looks? Oh yeah, I forgot...they're losing theirs. Not that they had much to lose in the first place. Which may explain why they're bullies; they are ugly from the inside out. If either of them had an ass, it would be so whupped, kiddies.

9. John Fucking McCain. Why the hell isn't he standing up to those bullies and telling them to leave his daughter alone? What kind of father LETS his child be bullied? One who deserves an ass-whupping, for sure.

10. People like this:

...who are inadvertently hilarious and in fact don't need me to whup their asses because they do such a damn fine job of own-goaling themselves. (Look up what "teabagging" actually means, people. Blushing yet?)

11. Jorge Fucking Castañeda. Pulling shit out of your ass while drunk now qualifies as "journalism"! Who knew? Newsweek did, apparently, because they published this acid-dropping assclown's pile-o-pucky. And of course, Foreign Policy (a magazine that's worse than worthless for actually UNDERSTANDING foreign anything) not only repeats the bullshit, but amplifies it. And the US media then wonders its sorry excuse for journalism is in a world of financial hurt? I don't. The problem isn't merely financial, it's systemic--and as this 10-year-old piece shows, it's not even new. But now, finally, karma is catching up. If people want to read fiction, they buy novels, not newsmagazines, and if they want to see fiction they turn on an afternoon soap opera, not a nightly newscast. Duh!

12. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. As usual, the Pigman's in a tizzy trying to defend the indefensible (AIG) and interest the uninterested (women). Here's a clue-by-four for the Pigman, not that he's capable of taking it: Women like men who get it. You, Rush, don't. Therefore, you don't get women. In any sense of the word.

13. James Fucking Stavridis. He thinks all those Iranian "offices" in Latin America are "fronts" for terrorist activity by Hezbollah. Actually, they're called EMBASSIES. And they're there for NORMAL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS. Trust an admiral from a country that's not clear on the concept to be unclear on the concept, though!

14. Gerry Fucking Pasciucco. If a Che shirt under a sportcoat on a balding AIG buffoon is supposed to be some kind of fashion statement, it's got Epic Fail written all over it. (Please, PLEASE tell me he didn't pair it with white jazz oxfords sans socks. That was only hip for about two minutes when Don Johnson wore it.)

15. Pope Ratzi von der Fucking Hitlerjugend, AGAIN. It's official: that "taking the Church back to its roots" thing wasn't such a hot idea after all. Would it have killed him to play hooky from the HJ? Hell, my dad was 12 when the war ended, and he didn't even need no stinkin' principles to avoid Hitler's phony boy-scout troop. He just did it. But noooo, for Ratzi to rebel even a little bit would have been a sin. And since he's decided to favor orthodoxy over sanity, he's alienated just about everyone: women, Jews, Muslims, African animists, and even his own fellow Christians of other denominations. Sweet Jesus, what a putz.

16. Larry Fucking Kudlow. Why? Because.

17. Joe the Fucking Plumber. How anyone can get horny in a roomful of conservatards is beyond me, but Mr. Worthlessfucker let his own plumbing do the talking. Or maybe it was just all that KKKoors beer he'd drunk, pressing down on his prostate. Who knows? In any case, this one's good for a can of whup-ass too.

And finally, all you dumb fucktards out there who are threatening to "go Galt" on the rest of us. Know what I say to that? GO RIGHT AHEAD! Hell, go your Dear Dead Thought Leader one better and don't just climb those mountains in the name of sovereign egotism--be brave, be true to your school, and jump off the fucking cliff. It's only logical that if you follow Ayn Rand, you should award yourselves a Darwin! Open that can of whup-ass on yourselves...go on, you know you wanna. And don't worry about all us peons out here. You're not as important to us as you believe you are. The rest of the world will get along fine without you.

I know I will.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Well, my old computer is back home from the shop today...unfortunately, with a reinstalled operating system and NONE of my work saved. My novel draft is as good as gone, and if I want it back, I'll probably have to return to Peterborough to try scavenging the old hard drive again--probably only to be told it's hopeless, as it was this time. Meanwhile, I have to reinstall all my programs, system configurations, etc., from scratch, which I'm SO not looking forward to. I don't have that many hours in a day!

I already tried FireWire-ing my other computer to it, to see if I could at least transfer my MSOffice software, Firefox, etc. Nada! Couldn't even get the hard disks to show up, much less copy anything from the one to the other. What the hell am I doing wrong? The very least two Macs should be able to do is talk to one another, but they won't!

As I recall, this was also the reason I couldn't transfer my works-in-progress from the "old" computer to the "new" one before the old hard drive bit the dust. I gave up without trying it again because I hate having to restart. Which shouldn't be necessary if the damn thing were only working right.

Damn FireWire, syncing, OS "upgrades", the whole pile of shit--worse than worthless for all they tout it so much. If they could only make stuff that works and goes on working, I wouldn't care what it looked like. OS upgrades are just extra bugs, as far as I'm concerned.

To make matters worse, I can't even reset my system preferences on the one I'm using right now, the one that was my stopgap during the Great Crash. I was briefly able to reset them to get the AirPort to work, and now that's no longer functioning either--and when I try to get into System Preferences, the thing gets stuck just as I'm selecting the network. It refuses to remember it, refuses to let me configure anything--it just fucking HANGS. And when I try to force-quit it, it wants to send an error message that, of course, won't get through because I CAN'T MAKE THE FUCKING AIRPORT WORK!!!

So now I'm back to plugging in the hated and hateful Ethernet cable. Which I hate to do, as it's just one more step that shouldn't be necessary.

To say I'm heartbroken, enraged and plain frustrated doesn't even begin to cover it. Why me? Why now? Why my computers, which I've been taking such good care of? Why won't they give me some love? WHY????

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The bumper sticker may say "Kiss My Ass" in Irish, but the car is German...like me. Here's who can kiss my little ol' lily-white German ass this St. Paddy's week...

1. Dick Fucking Cheney. For creating the Joint Special Operations Command. What the fuck is that? Ask Seymour Hersh, he knows. Basically, it's a top-secret, top-level assassination squad, answerable to no one but the Biggus Dickus Himselfus, which executes people on top-secret, hush-hush a hit-list. They can go anywhere in the world to carry out their dirty wet work. ANYWHERE. Think about that. Is it illegal? Oh yeah. Under the laws of any sane country...and the Geneva Conventions, of course. And we all know how the entire Bush Crime Syndicate felt (still feels, no doubt) about sanity and international laws.

2. George Fucking Little. Dude, if you wanna stand up for your death squad against the wickedness of Sy Hersh, you're gonna have to do better than this. Your beloved agency has been in the covert assassinations business from its very inception; they even wrote the book on it. "Utter nonsense" is a damned weak way to characterize what everyone else in the world already knows.

3. Bernard Fucking Madoff. Guilty plea? Pffft. Look for him to go KennyBoy in 5...4...3...2...

4. Jerry Fucking Pournelle. I knew there had to be a reason I instinctively disliked his "science" fiction, and Sadly, No! has finally put a finger on it. And also, hilariously, up it. (PS: Is it just my weak eyes, or does that screenshot make him look exactly like Biggus Dickus?)

5. Allen Fucking Stanford. Of course he took the Fifth. What else would one expect of a fraudster? Naturally he wants to keep his Ponzi scheme (and his money train) going for as long as he can, and to co-operate with any investigation would put a narrrrrsty crimp in that.

6. Instapissant. This one can go with Jerry Fucking Pournelle for cockamamie crapitalist "solutions" to the "problem" of people who just don't live up to right-wing "ideals". Hey, I have an idea that's right up his alley (shamelessly stolen from Rick Mercer): How 'bout we just sit all the retirees on ice floes (of which global warming should make short work) and cut 'em loose? That'll solve the "problem" of all those old-age pensioners living too long and unproductively on the public teat, no doubt. It'll do away with this perambulating, blathering encumbrance whenever he finally decides to quit parasitizing his employer, too.

7. Yon Fucking Goicoechea. Does this man have any sort of job at all? Other than inciting violence on behalf of the Cato Institute, that is? Would be nice if he got one, and nicer if it kept him so busy he couldn't play at high-level youth gangsterism anymore (he's getting too old for that shit anyway).

8. and 9. Maria Corina Fucking Machado and Alejandro Fucking Peña Esclusa. Not content to fuck with democracy in their native Venezuela, now they're trying it in El Salvador. They haven't learned a thing from past failures, either. I'd cordially invite them to come on up to Canada and kiss my ass, but they'd have to dislodge their tongues from Uncle Sam's rectum first, and have a good swish with Listerine before I'd let them within a mile of mine.

10. All the House Republicans who are with Numbers 8 and 9. The Cold War is OVER, suckas. You lost. Neener neener neener.

11. Freddy Fucking Guevara. Yup, those "white hands" kids in Venezuela are such peaceful little democrats. That must be why their quondam leader is out there speaking in favor of Nixon Moreno--a well-known thug and fugitive from justice who hid out in the papal nunciature to avoid being charged with the beating, stripping and attempted rape of a Mérida policewoman, Sofia Aguilar.

12. BTW, Moreno can kiss my ass too. Dirty coward.

And finally,

Anyone dumb enough to insist, with a straight face and not an iota of proof, that the King of Spain was "elected". Newsflash: the man appointed by Dictator Franco is not to be confused with that Brazilian carnival pudgemuffin.

Thank you, goodnight, and POGUE MAHONE!!!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:06 AM | Permalink

Well, I brought the Big PowerBook to the repair shop in Peterborough today, and a few hours later got a call back from the nice tech-geeks there. Seems the hard drive is going bad, ergo the inability to boot. It will need replacing, and will get it--with a 160-gig one, the biggest they can get for me. (I need all the uncorrupted space I can get in this corrupt old world.)

They'll also have to do a data retrieval, since I have about 140,000 words' worth of unfinished novel on that drive, as well as an aborted false start on a novella (which, frankly, can stay lost for all I care, as long as my big one's saved), plus dozens of short stories, poems, essays, and what-have-you. Gonna cost, kiddies, but it will come to a lot less than I thought; I was sure I wouldn't get away with under $7-800 in repairs. Turns out it will probably come to less than $300, counting the labor and the two layers of sales taxes.

No word yet on when it will be ready; they'll call me when it's done. I guesstimate a week to 15 days.

Big sigh. Big breath.

Now, if it had been the motherboard, I'd have been motherfucked.

I dodged a bullet this time, but all the same, I'm gonna be putting all my works-in-progress onto USB flash drives from now on.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Hey, y'all.

Just to let you know I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth--no, worse. I'm experiencing Technical Difficulties again. My handy-dandy ol' 15-inch PowerBook decided to go on the fritz a few days ago. I've just now gotten around to configuring my "new" 12-inch one for the Internets, and the "old" one is going to the shop tomorrow morning, for what I hope will be repairs.

Wish me luck, this one's a pain so far.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Who, this week, might it be...to feel the wrath, the wrath of me...and the hand of Mr. T? Read on:

1. Scott Fucking Easterling. Where was this oh-so-patriotic questioner of presidential legtimacy when Dubya stole the White House--twice? For that matter, where was this publicity whore when John McCain--born in the Panama Canal Zone, which is NOT United States soil and never has been--made a (fortunately failed) bid for the White House? Funny how these buffoons all had so little to say about that. Listen up, Scotty: You people lost fair and square, and whether you like it or not, you have a legitimate president for the first time in eight years--now suck it. And shut the fuck up!

2. Sarah Fucking Palin--AGAIN. Queen Sarah the Paranoid thinks the media is out to get her--boo, hoo, hoo! They wouldn't say a word if she quit trying to keep her name out there and just went back to Alaska, where her job still patiently waits for her to DO it. Does she think she can avoid all those ethics scandals piling up behind her like so many corpses? Hey Sarah, it won't work. You fucked up, and if you truly believe in personal responsibility, then it is YOUR personal responsibility to go home and clean up your mess, and quit making new ones. And oh yeah: shut the fuck up!

3. Rick Fucking Santelli. If those who are losing their homes in the current crisis are losers, what does that make Big Bidnesses that are too big to fail--but failing precisely because they got too fucking big for their britches? Srsly, dude...the loser is none other than Y-O-U if you go down that road. Perhaps Karma will take notice of you, though, and ensure that you become the next casualty of this recession, jobwise. Meanwhile: Shut the fuck up!

(BTW, Santelli needs to STFU twice--he's such a bitch-ass whiner!)

4. The Fucking State Department. Riddle me this: How do Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all democratic, all free from state-sponsored violence and disappearances, get nothing but vilification--while Colombia, the biggest human rights abuser in Latin America (at least this decade), gets labelled a model democracy, and Peru, which also has a lot of human rights problems, is labelled "investment grade"? Srsly, I wanna know: How come human-rights offices get attacked in Colombia and no one at the State Dept. says boo? Could it be because they're too busy attacking Chavecito, Evo and El Ecuadorable--for what, exactly? Whatever their lame excuse is, they need to shut the fuck up and start criticizing those who actually deserve it.

5. Arlen Fucking Specter. Latin America is now pulling ahead of the US on human rights (all but Mexico, Colombia and Peru, of course.) This in spite of the Fucking State Dept. and its stupid fucking reports. Impunity and exceptionalism need to shut the fuck up!

6. Bobby Fucking Jindal. I guess the Repugs figured they'd do better with a non-white guy to rebut Obama in his first big speech to Congress. But why'd they have to pick a complete nimnul like Jindal, the would-be exorcist? This was so pathetic, they even saw fit to comment on it in Venezuela. Oh well...at least the man is good for a joke. But beyond that, he really should...well, you know.

7. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. There are more reasons for this than you can shake a ball gag at, but here's the latest. Rush wants to know why women don't like him? That's the simplest thing in the world: He is a repulsive, loudmouthed, loutish, totalitarian swinebag. Sylvia Plath notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of women do NOT adore a fascist, "the boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you." And yes, Rush Limbaugh is a fascist. As Mike Malloy so often says, he runs a protection racket for Corporate America. He thinks he "owns" people's minds. Anyone who thinks that, should just STFU--and I guarantee that if the Pigman did that for a change, I might at least contemplate liking him, instead of just flat-out despising him as I do now.

8. Glenn Fucking Beck. Maybe, instead of spewing ignorance about pot, he needs some medical marijuana to help loosen him up and ease the symptoms of his psychopathy. Or maybe he just needs to STFU. Either one's all right with me, as long as it stops the Walking Hemorrhoid from running off at the mouth.

9. Fucking Iggy, AGAIN. Why is this guy in the Liberal party, anyway? He's just a ReformaTory in a red tie. He is as much a corporate puppet as they are. No way would I vote for him even if he headed up a Lib/NDP coalition--which of course, he won't. To him, a progressive is The Enemy. When's the next leadership convention again? And what would it take to make him STFU in the meantime?

10. Jonah Fucking Goldberg. Again, as with his fascist role model Rush, there are more reasons to shut this fucker up than there is duct tape in the hardware store. But here's an old one that just leapt back up to bite him: His endorsement of pack "journalism". Now that a suspect has finally been fingered in the murder of Chandra Levy, do you think we'll hear any apologies out of Cheeto-Boy over all the baseless bandwagon-jumping?

11. The Religious Fucking Reich. When you're the biggest porn consumers in the land, all that pro-abstinence preaching either looks ludicrous, or makes sense in a way best described as really, really kinky. BTW, your poster child Bristol Palin has just singlehandedly proved you all to be full of shit, so now would be a really, really good time to STFU.

12. John Fucking Bolton. First the Old English Sheepdog blithely says that the UN should be destroyed, now he's out to demolish Chicago? I don't know what it would take to shut Mr. Milk Mustache the fuck up, but I have a hunch a collapsed building figures prominently in the scenario.

13. Dean Fucking Grose. Best thing to shut HIS big, racist mouth? A watermelon, natch.

And that's it for this week...but don't worry, there'll be more karmic whup-ass next week. Watch this space, and watch your mouths, kiddies.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:39 PM | Permalink

Cup of fresh-brewed bile, anyone? Here's who I'm serving it to this week...

1. Silvio Fucking Berlusconi. Careful of the linky, kiddies; it has a nude shot of an ugly old fascist with a comb-over, a bad facelift, a sunken chest, a droopy belly and a VERY SMALL PENIS. It also lays bare the side of him the media normally prefers to hide, namely his evil, evil soul. Which of those is worse, I honestly can't say. Both make me want to take up the fine art of projectile vomiting really, really soon, though.

2. and 3. Lincoln Fucking Diaz-Balart and Ileana Fucking Ros-Lehtinen. How many times have these two congresscruds been re-elected in their respective Florida districts? Her bio says she's been squatting in the House of Representatives since 1989; his, since 1993. Do the math, kiddies; how many terms does that make, respectively? Easily way more than two apiece, given that congressional terms in the US are two years long. And what have they done with the power the sheeple of Florida have vested in them in all that time? Basically, not much besides bitch about Fidel Castro and, in the case of Ileana, call openly for his assassination. And oh yeah, if you clicky that first linky, you'll see them meddling in the latest Venezuelan referendum, which is really none of their fucking business.

4. And while we're on the subject of US representatives who were inexplicably re-elected despite having done nothing but make asses of themselves, get a load of Michelle Fucking Bachmann. I didn't realize there were that many sheeple in Minnesota, but apparently they have them too. My deepest condolences to the people of Minnesota who did not vote for this dumbass. Bet you're wishing for congressional term limits too right about now, eh?

5. Allen Fucking Stanford. On second thought, the Earth shouldn't open up and swallow this scummy sumbitch just yet. First, let the Mexican drug cartels get their pound of his flesh; after all, he stands accused of laundering their money. I'm sure they're not happy that he absconded with it. Whatever they leave of him, the US federales (including the IRS) are welcome to...assuming they can find him. And assuming the Venezuelan authorities don't pick his bones clean first. They've become mighty intolerant of that kind of shenanigans down there of late.

6. Sean Fucking Hannity. For buzzing up Allen Fucking Stanford on his shitty radio show. How ironic is it that this racist swinebag might just finally be strangled with the entrails of a multinational rip-off artist he was paid to plug, instead of his Nazified pal Hal Turner? Oh well, Karma's a bitch, and she can have her way with him any which way she likes. I just hope she leaves some for the vultures.

7. Christopher Fucking Hitchens. Look, I'm as antifascist as it gets, and I'm all for sticking it to the Nazis wherever they are and whatever form they take. But I prefer that it be done in a way that accomplishes something more than a moment's petty individual snickering. And therefore, I must say that scrawling shit on one of their posters while drunk in Lebanon is not the act of a man who is "intellectually ambitious", it's just really fucking stupid. It's also totally fucking typical of Hitch, who apparently didn't learn much from having been waterboarded. Dude, use your head and stop trying to get it kicked in--you're too old, too out of shape, and too drinky to pass for a street-fighting hero anymore. (Plus, you'd look shitty with a green mohawk and cherry Docs.)

8. Sean Fucking Delonas. Cartooning Barack Obama as a crazed chimp, in a country with a long and not-so-proud history of whites referring to blacks as (among other things) "porch monkeys" and "yard apes"? That's worse than tasteless, that's racist. But then again, it's par for the course; Delonas's other cartoons reveal that hate, bigotry and the lowest common denominator are the key elements of his unfunny "humor". He's so crappy that political cartoonist/master blogger Daryl Cagle won't list him on his site. If not for the appallingly far-right New York Post and its touching habit of defending the indefensible, he'd be unemployed. Ain't wingnut welfare grand?

9. Jamie Fucking Dimon. He got bailed out along with Chase Bank, but he thinks people with mortgages should keep paying "even if they're underwater". If that's his attitude, he should do two things: Give back every cent of his bailout cash, and keep paying what he owed before the bailout. Even if he's underwater. Which I hope is exactly where he finds himself--in cement overshoes.

10. Joshua Fucking Partlow. Because repackaging old, debunked conspiracy theories, which were retracted and apologized for over a year ago, isn't reporting. Unless, of course, you work for the Washington Fucking Post, which has apparently felt a thirty-year need to overcompensate for inadvertently bringing down Richard Fucking Nixon, instead of sticking with the official story about those right-wing Cuban émigré dudes at the Watergate just being "plumbers" and all.

11. Wilmer Fucking Azuaje. First this crazy Cro-Mag accuses the Family Chavecito of all kinds of crooked dealings in their home state of Barinas, Venezuela (including large land accumulations, all so far unproven); then, he busts into a local newspaper office with a bunch of armed thugs, hellbent on destruction, because he doesn't like the way the paper covered the death of his brother (who was shot on Thursday in what looks to be a common street brawl; authorities now have one suspect in custody). And the best part? He blames it on Chavecito, of course! What's his real problem? Whatever it is, I think it's past time that he were locked up for it. Mentally unstable people should not be in parliament.

12. Richard Fucking Perle. First he authors neo-con foreign policy, now he denies that it exists and that he even read it. But his signature is on it, and he is KNOWN to be an author. Where have we heard his kind of denials before? Hint: They wore swastikas there. And it was funnier on this show:

BTW, if you want to read even more fun and damning stuff about Perle, I highly recommend Richard Rhodes's powerful work on the nuclear arms race, Arsenals of Folly. Perle, it turns out, was also a leading policy-pusher for the nuclear wing of the Military-Industrial Complex so rightly damned by Ike Eisenhower. There are so many reasons the Earth should open up and swallow this bastard that it truly buggers belief.

13. Andres Fucking Oppenheimer. Oh joy, the Miami Herald's resident narcissist-lemonist is all sour-pussed about Chavecito's clear victory. Even worse, some people take the Schloppenheimer's work for stockmarket gospel. One word, people: DON'T. He's never been right about anything to do with LatAm yet, and he's not about to start. The same kind of people who would believe him probably also lost money to Allen Stanford's Ponzi-"bank".

14. Allan Fucking Brewer Carias. This is the same creepy creature (from the Black Lagoon?) who dissolved all the democratic institutions in Venezuela during the coup of '02; see him in action here. Why the hell is he teaching law at Columbia University? Do they not value democracy or the rule of law there? I would ask why the NYFuckingT grants this vampire an interview as if he were a real, non-undead human being, but I already know the answer: They applauded that coup and called it democratic. Of course they love him!

And that about wraps it up for this week's bile-o-rama. Tune in next week, same bat channel...

BTW, I heard a rumor that Barack Obama was in Ottawa this week. I must have blinked, because I missed it.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sorry, but it's just got to be said...and this week, it's just got to be said to:

1. Stewart Fucking Parnell. If you wouldn't eat it yourself, why would you sell it--and let nine people die of salmonella from eating it? Thanks a lot for making me look askance at peanut butter, you slimy fucking motherfucker!

2. Lech Fucking Walesa, again. If you can't tell the difference between a popular Venezuelan president who has been elected and re-elected by and for his people, and a communist dictator, you're a washout. There's a reason the opposition is so weak and fragmented--its leaders are all crooks with nary a viable, democratic or original idea to peg their campaigns on. They can't even hold a decent primary to elect their own party heads! Yet you think they deserve support? It's no wonder you're not welcome in Venezuela. Go back to your potato vodka already, you sorry old walrus.

3. Steve Fucking Austria. For sleeping through history class and blaming the Great Depression on FDR--the man who actually pulled the US out of it. Also for calling him a "socialist", which should come as some surprise to those whose capitalist asses he saved by using Keynesian economics. Hey Steve:

4. Jackson Fucking Diehl. For being too damn lazy or too fucking stupid to look behind any dumbshit (and long-debunked) fairy tale that confirms every bad thing he ever "knew" about Venezuela and its Jews. Crappy journalism skillz: Diehl haz them.

5. and 6. Mark Fucking Ciavarella and Michael Fucking Conahan. Sending kids to prison unnecessarily (and without legal representation) is reprehensible enough, but doing it for kickbacks from a private prison? I'm sorry, but the word simply doesn't exist that's ugly enough to accurately describe the maggoty souls of these two crooks who did just that. Of course, they're Repugs. There's not a privatization that they don't love, and now we can see why. Fuck 'em both, preferably with a splintery broom handle up the ass.

7. While we're at it, fuck their entire party:

The words of this song just keep getting truer and truer over time, do they not?

8. Ted Fucking Haggard. The man's not "het 'with issues'", nor do is he bi. He's a Cleopatra--Queen in Denial. He's also a raving dope fiend. And one day, I fully expect to read news that he's been found stone dead, with his cock still clutched in his cold, dead hand. A fate which generally doesn't stalk those who are here, queer, out and proud.

9. Whoever would drop seriously dumbass shit like this in my comments:

Your a retard! The guy should have shot the dumba$$ cat out of the tree,and the lame cat loving freak of a neighbor. Are you a weird cat lady Becker? LOL your a sad sad fat cunt, god loves fat chicks like yourself.

Commenter name: ????????????
Commenter email address: nospam@canadian.suckwads.ca
Commenter URL: http://www.retards-of-CA.ca
Commenter IP address: 32.160.238.44

and

Becker(media cunt!) if you love SA so much please move their. And love the commie life style, you love so much. Bye Cunt.

Commenter name: Red blooded AMERICAN!
Commenter email address: USA@USA.net
Commenter URL: http://www.cunt-spoter.net
Commenter IP address: 32.160.1.225

Two crappy comments on two old posts in one day--classy.

What do you suppose this one looks like? I have a fair idea:

Ahem. Not nice of me, but then again, was he?

As you can see, Mr. Two-Face (who posted via AT & T on mycingular.net) is one and the same sad, sorry little excuse for a pimply-faced pre-adolescent git. Same IP pool, same linguistic shortcomings, same shit, same asshole. Congratulations, you've earned yourself a quick and painful ban, and your IP on display for the world to see (and some cybersleuth to trace a little more deeply than I have here, heh heh). Feel proud, mosquito-dick, because this is as much attention as you'll ever get on here.

And that's it for this week. Y'all come back here, except that last one, of course. Whom I doubt I'll see again, as these cowards love their little shit-'n'-runs.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Who's a bigger assclown than what some other assclown painted on this kitty's rear end? Well, this week it is...

1. Ashton Fucking Dumbass Kutcher. Watch this and learn how NOT to complain effectively, kiddies:

Nice house, shame about the dickweed in it. And no, I'm not talking about the guy building at ungodly hours next door. "I'm gonna lose it on him"--uh, Ashton? If you feel the need to make a crappy, kvetchy video for the whole world to see, you've already lost it. Next time, just buy a $2 pair of earplugs and use them. They worked for Jane Fonda (who is NOT a dickweed), so maybe they can work for you.

2. Kenneth Fucking Dickweed Flottman. Shit, what's a thousand or more dead Kenyans if you have a "political outcome" to "manage" to your "nonpartisan" (i.e. REPUBLICAN) NGO's liking? And to think that we peons here in the "partisan" (i.e. NOT REPUBLICAN) world wondered why Kenya erupted in violence during last year's electoral farce. Well, now we know. It was all that "political outcome management", stupid!

3. Chris Fucking Nazi Kraul. Never mind the "mob rule" (it's called DEMOCRACY) in mostly indigenous Bolivia (which, after 200-some years as a republic, finally has a nice, progressive president who actually looks like the average Bolivian.) How about the mob rule of racists writing in the English-language newspapers? Will we ever get a mainstream media report from South America that doesn't ring a kajillion alarm bells about a backlash against white people that just ain't happening? Not from the likes of this one we won't. And accurate reporting? Perish forbid! That would make it look like someone actually liked those uppity Injuns, and was making an effort to comprehend their situation. And, heaven knows, we couldn't have that. What would all the poor, oppressed white people think?

4. And speaking of poor, oppressed white people, how about that James Alexander Fucking Kluker McQuirter. Neo-Nazi and KKK connections? Ecoterrorism and scams? Way to give Canada a bad name in Panama, DICKWEED.

5. And while we're on the subject of North American neo-Nazis, take a gander at Glenn Fucking Asshole Beck, the latest in a long and skulking line of right-wing America-haters:

This drives Beck to the "edge of insanity"? Dude, trust me--you are long since over the cliff. And your race to the bottom with the Man of the Too-Tight Facelift is considerably less entertaining than watching Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester doing this:

6. José María Fucking Aznar. We always knew he was a neo-fascist, and now we have proof. He actually thinks the invasion of Gaza was justified.

Guess Bush's butt isn't the only one this dickweed could lick. He's also a Likudnik-licker.

7. And speaking of Fucking Dubya's butt, it seems that we are not through seeing the mooning backside of him yet, nor will we be for quite some time. Check out this chart at Sadly, No!--and then tell me with a straight face that it's all because he inherited a recession from Bill Clinton (which just happened to become apparent as his eight years in office expired???), and that conservatives know what the fuck they're talking about on any fiscal matter under the sun. Can't do it? Then you just might not be an assclown yourself. (At least, not a total one. But if you still believe in the power of Fiscal Conservatism, I have sad news for you.)

8. The reckless shitfuck doctor or doctors who impregnated Nadya Suleman with the octuplets--and also all six of her previous children. WTF is wrong with these people? Can they not tell who is a poor candidate for IVF? Do they simply believe it is not their job to screen for mental as well as physical health risks? Can they not say NO once in a while? Or is there just no red flag that a fistful of borrowed dollars, waved under their noses, won't magically vaporize?

9. BTW, Nadya Fucking Suleman isn't exactly the Virgin Mary, either. I can understand having one or two children, or even three, by artificial fertility measures, but do the words STOP and ENOUGH not mean anything? How about that big one, RESPONSIBILITY? Suppose she had died, leaving all 14 of her children parentless. Yes, it could happen, and in her case, the risk factor was already there. An injury put her on the dole before even her first child was conceived, never mind this litter that put her name in the news. She's also depressive--a condition that childbearing won't fix, but proper psychological treatment can. And please, spare me the "only child in a dysfunctional family" excuse; this sort of thing is only perpetuating the dysfunction, not curing it. Most disgusting is all the money she's looking to rake in now--$2 million at last count. Yes, but what about the kids? For a small sneak preview of what's ahead for them, read up on the Dionne Quints.

10. I'm sure the anti-choice movement considers this woman to be a saint for not undergoing fetal reduction, but that's because they're fucking assclowns, too.

11. And you know who else is an assclown? Anyone recommending the "free market" approach to medicine, especially as pertains to fertility. Yes, Simon Fucking Jenkins, I'm looking at you. This didn't happen in Great Britain, where the system is regulated (too much for some people's liking), it happened in the good ol' USA--the only First World industrialized country where medicine lives in the Third World. Take a good look at India--there's your "freedom", marketmaniacs. And it really DOES equal slavery if you let the market take care of it all.

12. And for a whole room full of assclowns--some free-market, some enslaved-woman, and some (Goddess only knows how) both--how about that Pajamas Fucking So-Called Media concept? Down in flames, you say? Well, gee...considering how lame it was from the very outset, the only wonder is that it lasted as long as it did.

13. Now, just for a little change of pace (or clothes), how about that Andrew Fucking Dumbass Card. Because the casual look is only okay if Repugnicans do it. Or is it because the non-white "help" should never be seen by Their White Lordships without a jacket and tie? Whatever. Obama's the elected president, not the fucking White House butler. He can wear what he pleases.

14. Back to the Wild West of medicine for a moment. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Sheyla Fucking Dumbass Hershey, the latest candidate for inclusion on Awful Plastic Surgery Dot Com. She couldn't get "enough" silicone for her implants in her home state of Texas, so she's gone to Brazil, where there are no safety regs to prevent her from blowing her breasts up and killing herself in the process. Which boob is bigger--she or her silicone falsies? SHE is. And this doctor can tell you why--from disturbing personal experience.

15. Oh and you'll never guess who else made Awful Plastic Surgery already!

That wraps the bile-spewage for this week. Apologies to Greengeeta for not finding a way to fit Doug Fucking Election Rigger Schoen in there anywhere, but BoRev has all anyone needs to know about him.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:52 PM | Permalink

1. Daniel Fucking Cormier. The thing to do with a child you suspect was sexually abused is inform the authorities, right? Not according to this pervert, who thought the best thing to do was "marry" her in a bogus ceremony in a bogus church, of which he was conveniently the bogus pastor. His reasons? She "used every trick in the book" to seduce him--so sez he. Only problem is, she doesn't think so; she says he sexually abused her from the age of 9 until she was 13 (she's 19 now). Plus there's the additional problem that she is not his only sexual abuse victim "bride". And best of all, if you can read French, is the fact that this pervert has preached against homosexuality, calling it "unnatural". I have a feeling he's about to get really well acquainted with it in the federal pen. Hey Danny, don't drop the soap!--No, on second thought, please DO. Maybe then you'll understand how it feels to be the object of some, uh, unwanted attentions.

2. Bill Fucking Kristol. No, it's NOT enough that the NY Whore Times sacked him; he just fell straight up and landed at the Washington Whore Post, where he will undoubtedly inflict more of the same fact-free, reality-challenged drivel on a sick and tired public. What does it take for a derelict neo-con ideologue to get blackballed from every press outlet there is, onaccounta he writes nothing but pure crap? Whatever it is, for the love of all that's holy, let it catch up to The Bloody Kristol. PLEASE.

3. Alek Fucking Boyd. This crazy little Pinochetist shitweasel seriously thinks he's a human rights activist. He also seriously thinks he can pwn Noam Chomsky. And funniest of all, he seriously doesn't realize how hard he's been pwned by...well, Noam Chomsky. Hey Alek, let us know when your butt starts hurting from all that full-throttle autocopulation, eh?

4. Manfredo Fucking Kempff. For playing into outdated stereotypes about Bolivian indigenous people, this one really takes the biscuit. Or the buttplug. I guess Manfredo doesn't read, or he'd realize that there are no more illiterates left in Bolivia. Other than the likes of lily-white him, of course. And I agree, it certainly IS bordering on irresponsibility to let illiterates legislate. Considering that this guy served under an old military dictator who used to persecute indigenous people, I can see where he got that idea. And it's very instructive to see that Bolivia was in a state of advanced decline when Kempff was in office, no? Sure does prove his point...although, sadly, not quite in the way he intended.

5. Hony Fucking Pierola. Perhaps someone should start a Facebook group to contract a sharpshooter to "liquidate" this piece of shit, instead of Evo? That would be nice, but you know what's nicer? Getting his hate group hosed off of Facebook, and getting his name dragged through the otherwise whorish media. You know your shit stinks when even the AP just can't bring itself to swallow it holus bolus. Now, all that's needed is a Facebook ban for the cretin himself (and, come to think of it, a sweet little note to his ISP for violating their TOS), and the shit-flush will be complete.

6. International fucking banksters. What a sad statement about capitalism: Now it comes out that if it weren't for illegal drugs and the vast amounts of money they generate (which the banks then launder), the privateering scow otherwise known as the S.S. Free Enterprise would have sunk even sooner than it already has. Logical upshot: Best reason for legalization ever.

7. Keith Fucking Luke. Way to prove what every antifascist already knows: White supremacist ideology is for loo-hoo-hoo-hoozers.

8. Branko Fucking Marinkovic. Oh noes, Evo won't meet with him, or anyone else in the opposition, to water down the new constitution. Too bad, so sad, boo hoo, sniff sniff.

Oh, who am I kidding...

Yo, Branko? Go blow an artery.

9. Leopoldo Fucking López. Riddle me this: How does the former mayor of the wealthy Chacao district of eastern Caracas end up wayyyyyy over in Táchira, a western Venezuelan state bordering on Colombia? And, more to the point: How does a mayor, whose job presumably entails keeping public peace and order, end up sponsoring "peaceful opposition student protests" like this one in Táchira?

It's worth noting that police officers got injured in this riot, in which the nice widdle oppo kiddies can be seen firing guns. But since the injured officers are not from the Polichacao, I guess that's neither here nor there with law'n'order Leo, who was recently feted in beautiful, democracy-free Dubai for some meaningless glitzy shit or other.

I also note, in passing, that all those flaming tires littering the street put the dirty lie to the notion that the opposition's mayors are finally doing something about that garbage problem they campaigned so successfully on, along with all that law'n'order stuff. When will the opposition search its underwear for some gonads, man up, and take out THIS flaming, smoking, stinking heap of trash?

10. Banksters' fucking molls. Poor widdle sugarbabies, now they have to break a nail and actually EARN a living, instead of just marrying it (or, even more pathetic, schtupping it on the side.) Life is so hard when you suddenly have to limit the number of designer bags you buy on his credit card this year. Sigh...

Sorry, girls, but my supply of crocodile tears dried up long before your sugardaddies' bank accounts (and charisma) did. I spent it all on people more deserving. Now put down the sugary pink cocktails, knock off the gratuitous feminism-bashing, and get out there on the corner with the rest of your kind. If you're lucky, you might even make enough not to have to hock your entire collection of Jimmy Choos.

11. and 12. Fucking Harpo and Fucking Iggy. Christ. Why don't you two just get a room and stop swapping saliva all over Parliament Hill? And why can't the rest of us have a democratic opposition worthy of the name?

Sorry, no LOLcat. I don't feel like LOLing about this, 'kay?

13. And finally, all the usual suspects--the Polite Language Police. You know what you can do to yourselves. Now go do it.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ahem. Before I get into this week's barrel-o-bile, I just thought I'd share a little something that Jim wrote at The Scarlet Pimpernel. Something that made me sad, and made me rethink the whole notion of trying to be noble:

Sorry, I had to do 'Bina's Snarkiness of the Week since she went an got all serious on us. I really liked the cat that told people how to go away, too. And, since Otto went all Hollywood on us trying to get an Oscar....Oh, it wasn't an Oscar?...Oh, I get it, People's Cholce... NO? ..But they said something about the best analyst in a supporting role!...Well, whatever... I wanted to get some snarkiness in of my own. BoRev has been having too much of a free ride since 'Bina and Otto went and got all serious and respectable on us. :)

Serious? Respectable? Moi??? Non, non, NON!!! Ceci n'est pas un blogue respectable! Ceci n'est pas un blogue sérieux! Ceci n'est pas le snarque, ceci est la fouquetarderie!!! Tabernac!!!!11onze!!!

Ahem. Now that I've got THAT off my chest, here's who's in dire need of a flip-off this week.

1. That fucking whiny-ass little right-wing cretin who refers to himself as "Ace of Spades". He's not an ace of anything, except maybe self-pitying sexism, and trust me, that shit don't go down well with the ladies, any more than that other shit, namely Ace himself, will go down (well or otherwise) ON them. If you scroll down well into the comments, to about #237 or so, you'll see I have some sound advice for guys like him. But really, it would do the ladies far more favors (sexual and otherwise) if "Ace" and all the rest of his unsexy ilk simply fucked off.

2. Krishna Fucking Urs. If you don't want someone like, say, the president of Bolivia saying nasty things about how your country has been interfering in his country, the logical thing to do would be to stop the interfering, no? Well, no. Not according to this Krishna dude. To him, the logical thing to do is walk out and not listen to the unattractive truth. If you're gonna be that way, pal, the best thing to do is just fuck off out of the country and quit the diplomatic corps too. DIPLOMACY--Urs doin it rong!

3. Abe Fucking Foxman. Another one who can't handle even a little truthiness. Especially where Israel's actions in Gaza are concerned. Someone please remind him that human rights are for everybody, not just those who fancy themselves a Chosen People. And if he can't handle the reminder, he can fuck off.

4. Shitfuck and his fucking cronies. A whole rogues' gallery in one little item? Shit, yeah. And doesn't the air smell cleaner now that they're FINALLY in the process of fucking off?

5. Those fucking Venezuelan oppo leaders (they know who they are) who went to meet with a certain US diplomat in Puerto Rico. How much did he pay them to interfere with the upcoming referendum on February 15, and what exactly was he paying them to do? I'm sure we'll find out when Eva Golinger files the FOIA request. And she might just get it back sooner under Hopey's new directives. If so, it's gonna be extra sweet to watch their feces hit the fan. Meanwhile, they too can fuck off. (Especially the one who told off that cute journo-dude from Avila TV. Is that any way to talk to one's betters?)

6. Larry Fucking Kudlow. And all you other fucking supply-siders and John Fucking Galt wannabes. Your time is OVER. Your credibility is SHOT. Your pontifications are hereby consigned to whatever circle of Dante's hell is dedicated to liars, damned liars, and bad statisticians. Now fuck off!

7. Lisa Fucking Schiffren. So, Rev. Lowrey's benediction reminded her of the kind of rhymes posted over California's potties during a water shortage? Well, here's a rhyme for Lisa: If the 'winger bitch is white, she's a big fat piece of shite. Pee-pee, ca-ca, doody-oody-doo. Please flush, and don't forget to wash your hands. And fuck you very much, Lisa.

And finally, to all the usual suspects--namely, those whose virgin eyes I've gouged out here. If you don't like it, I have nothing to say to you that these folks can't say better.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Who could be bad enough to elicit this kind of sentiment from Jesus and me? Well, this week it's the following...

1. The fucking Venezuelan opposition. Can't they teach their kids some manners, at least, so they stop pulling shit like this?

Or, for that matter, how about their fucking media moguls, pulling shit like this?

Look, people, haven't you gotten the message yet? How many times do you need to get discredited before you learn? No matter how many times the dumbshit gringos pay off you bottom-feeders, no matter how many of these "non-violent" terror attacks you stage, the democratic process of the Bolivarian Revolution is going ahead. With or without your co-operation, and always in spite of your attempts at provocation. Now fuck off!

2. Joe the Fucking Plumber. Well, actually, his name's not Joe, it's Sam, and he's not a licensed plumber, either. He's now a Pajama Party "war correspondent", but he doesn't believe journalists should report on war, either--or at least, not the truth. (He also thinks that giving Jesus a handjob makes him missile-proof. Jesus would surely beg to differ.) So what is he, if not Joe the Plumber or Joe the Journo? He's Sam Worthlessfucker, basically. And he should get the fuck out of the war zone that he's not reporting on because he's not a journalist, go back home and get a real plumber's license, do a real job, and just fuck off already.

3. The simpletons at the Pajama Party who are now trying to put a positive spin on this sorry sack of shit. Painfully pathetic, or pure comedy gold? You be the judge.

4. The nucking futjob who planned to kill Barack Obama. No, he's not racist (so sez he), he's just antisemitic. Phew! For a minute there, I thought he just meant to kill Obama because he was non-white. Now we find out it's because he's not shunning the Jews and promising to throw 'em all in concentration camps to freeze, starve and be worked and/or gassed to death. Still, that doesn't explain his slyly defending the specifically racist use of the word "nigger". Care to 'splain it to me, Lucy? Or would you just prefer to fuck off and die?

5. Ruth Fucking Wisse. Yes, I realize that "working" for the WSJ gives one a certain licence to practise crackpot history, but what "dictator" did Bill Clinton "install", exactly? Yasser Arafat? Gimme a fucking break. That wasn't an "installation", you idiotess, that was peace-brokering--you know, the closest it ever came to actual peace in the Middle East? Yasser Arafat was not a dictator, he was a secular Palestinian party leader who later became head of a provisional Palestinian authority--one who scared the piss out of certain Israelis to the point where they actually funded Hamas to try to neutralize the threat of actual Palestinian independence he represented. And many Palestinians said he was too submissive to the Israelis--wow, some dictator! But hey, at least Dubya got rid of Saddam. Big fuckin' whoop. There's a reason I can never get this pic out of my head, Ruthie-dear, see if you can name it:

6. Andrew Fucking Bristow. Tortured Peruvian campesinos are, like, totally off limits for discussion, y'know? The main thing is that mines make money. Especially in these recessionary times, which are like a licence to print death certificates, at least if you do business in Latin America. But all is not lost; Otto tells you exactly where you can tell him to fuck off, right here.

7. And while we're on the subject of oppression in Peru, how 'bout them threatened Peruvian journalists? Where're the IAPA when you need 'em? Too busy harping on Venezuela, still? Does Human Rights Watch plan on putting out any breathless reports on this one?

Thought so.

8. The Fucking American Life League. Bad enough that they spread misinformation about birth control pills (which, for the record, do not kill fetuses--they prevent them from forming by stopping ovulation; my doctor, many years ago, told me they do so by tricking your body into thinking it's already preggers.) But now, they've got a hate-on for Krispy Kreme doughnuts--why? Because the latter used the concept of freedom of choice in its free-doughnut giveaway in honor of the upcoming inauguration of (pant, pant) Barack Obama. Who, as all the anti-choicers "know", is the mastermind of some sick scheme to rip potentially viable fetuses out of the bellies they're in and just leave 'em on the floor to die if they survive the operation, or some such shit.

(On second thought, maybe I shouldn't mention fucking in conjunction with these people. The last thing I want them to do is anything that might lead to reproduction, because the world's already screwed up enough by these people as it is, and doesn't need more of them.)

9. Rick Fucking Fascist Warren. Somehow, I don't think the real Jesus would want his followers to be a Hitlerjugend. For the thousandth time: Obama, ya shoulda gone with Barry Lynn.

10. And last, but certainly not least, George Dubya FUCKING Bush....

...who can hereby sit and spin on his own fucking finger. For what? For eight years of unadulterated shock, horror, war, terrorism, economic fuckery, ecologic catastrophe, and just plain sheer hell. In two days we'll be seeing the back of him, and it's none too soon. Whoever kicks his departing ass first, wins.

Ciao, motherfucker. Y'all don't come back now, y'hear?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This goes out to anyone who'd call me, or any other peace activist critical of the actions of Israel, "disgraceful apologizers for Muslim aggression against Jews".

I suppose I should put out the welcome mat for all you whiny little trolls, so here it is:

I'm gonna go right on criticizing until they stop giving the world shit to criticize. And if you don't like it, you know where to shove your double standards.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Fast away the old year passes, falalalala, etc. Time to bid the Hardcore Stupid adieu, also, on a speedy trip to Fuckovia. Here's who gets it (for not getting it) this week:

1. Rod Fucking Bruinooge. The actual question on whether a fetus is a person was settled around 1988 in Canada; it's why we have not had any abortion laws since then, and why a solid majority of Canadians are cool with that. But shhhh, don't tell it to Rod. He seriously thinks that there is a "debate" to be "reopened". Why? Because he's an insecure little man who (a) thinks kidneys are valued more than fetuses, and (b) fears that all his precious homunculi will be spurned by the poor wretch with the misfortune to be his wife (who, I understand, has recently popped out another one). Rod, on the grounds of sheer stupidity, which I hope you haven't passed on to your offspring, you are hereby cordially invited to fuck off. (Preferably into a wad of Kleenex. Spare your wife for a bit, 'kay?)

2. And speaking of homunculi and the judicious use of Kleenex and/or sinks, how about that Dennis Fucking Prager? Does a man even exist who is more likely to inspire revulsion and emetic reactions to the very idea of him planting a slimy gob of homunculi in one's belle chose? Seriously, I think even his dominant hand is reluctant to have sex with him. Can you blame it?

3. Richard Fucking Fifer. Martín Torrijos, go wash your hands. And use antibacterial soap. The slime, it is a-catching.

4. The Fucking Moonie Times. Alvaro Fucking Deathsquad Uribe is their pick for best foreign leader of the Fucking Year That Was. Why? Because he's best at killing campesinos and dressing up their corpses as FARC guerrillas, why else?

5. Alberto Fucking Gonzales. Paul Krugman is searching for the right word to describe this hubris-ridden whiner and torturemonger. I think "asshole" about covers it.

6. Roger Fucking Simon. Will he ever write anything I'd want to read, and do I fucking care?

7. Pickles Fucking Bush. She's just had her very own "beautiful mind" moment. And after the 20th, it'll be fading into Xanaxed oblivion. Not a minute too soon, either.

8. Michael Fucking Dare. You're not funny and neither's your racist Magic Negro song, so here's a "gracious but heartfelt fuck you" right back at you. And until you're clear on the concept of satire, which by definition has to be funny as opposed to merely lame, you can go right on fucking yourself.

9. The Fuckwitted Fucking Fuckheads at RaptureReady.com. Something tells me these morons will be left with one more Great Disappointment this year. But hey, at least they'll all have their hair and nails done for the occasion!

10. The Fucking Miami Mafia. So they're all still chewing their toenails about the Cuban Revolution now being 50 years old, and with no end in sight? Here's me, registering what I think of them for that:

(See, Otto, these cat things ARE useful after all...LOL!)

11. Anyone who's so fucking naïve/stupid/in denial/head-up-ass as to claim that racism isn't still a major, MAJOR problem in the US.

And oh yeah,

12. Anyone who thinks oppressive verbal wingnuttery is "free speech", but my blue language should be censored or spelled with asterisks, pound signs, ampersands and interrobangs. Fuck you very much, but it's really the other way 'round.

G'night.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Personal Responsibility". A personal fave of mine. This guy gives it the best skewering I've ever seen.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, whose chimney did Santa poop down this week? I don't know, but I sure hope these people got some of his turds, and I hope they're NOT made of chocolate:

1. Rick Fucking Warren. Just imagine if the next president of Iran were welcomed into office by a rabid jihadist advocating for, say, the assassination of the president of the United States? It would cause an international diplomatic incident, would it not? Well, guess what: it's going to happen on January 20. Only--my whoopsie!--the inauguration in question is not gonna be that of a new Iranian president, but a new US president. And the assassination-monger in question isn't a Muslim jihadi, but a so-called Christian. One from the same ranks as those who accuse the soon-to-be President Obama of being a Muslim and in league with terrorists. Makes you think, doesn't it? Well, DOESN'T IT???

2. Pope Ratzi von der Hitlerjugend. For Gawd's sake, how much more embarrassed can we Germans of the world get? Yeah, the gays are the real cause of global warming--it's all those hot guys having the hots for each other. And overpopulation (a logical result of being against birth control) and overconsumption (a logical result of thinking mankind is the centre of the Universe) have nothing to do with it. Uh-huh. This is the calibre of the brain that's sitting on the Throne of St. Peter, my friends--fear it. I'm not Catholic, so I thank heaven for THAT small mercy...but remember, this guy is trying to control members of MY country's parliament, and those of many others, too. Not to mention there's that Nazi-collaboration thing in my ancestral country. They may order priests and Catholic politicians not to get politically involved (in progressive causes), but I think it's the popes who really need to get the fuck out of politics.

3. Marjorie Fucking Dannenfelser and Team Fucking Sarah. Stop smearing the honorable name of Susan B. Anthony with your stupidity, hate, racism and skirt-wearin' sexism, you Palinite bitches.

4. All those fucking bailed-out execs. Hey, here's an innovative idea: instead of asking for more money from Washington, how 'bout you guys kick back into your respective businesses the 1.6 BILLION you received last year?

BTW, some of us would really like to know where the current cash bailouts are going. It's a safe bet that it won't be to the hard pressed workers producing your obscene profits, salaries and bonuses for you, if the Republic Doors and Windows case is any indication.

Trickle-down, my ASS.

5. Ollie Fucking North. Say, weren't you still supposed to be rotting in federal prison? What the fuck are you doing on the FUX Snooze channel? Oh yeah, now I remember...same thing as you were doing during the Iran-Contra hearings. Never mind!

6. Fucking Alberta, particularly Fort McFuckingMurray. A whole town, a BASTARD? Hell, yeah. It's the fucking oilpatch, and they're already sworn to serve the big oil companies, not the people. When the jobs don't pay enough to put a roof over someone's head (and those prairie winters are a BITCH), something is wrong with the picture. But you see, that's where the province of Alberta deserves a fat thump on the head: they believe in letting the "market" take care of things, while getting government to stop helping people off people's backs. Or at least, that's what all their right-wing demagogues politicians say. Behind their rosy blah-blah, however, lies a long and sordid list of poverty stats. Would it kill them to build affordable social housing, so that all those job-seekers from out east have someplace to stay where a drunken Ralph Klein won't stagger in, flinging money at them and telling them to get jobs?

7. Bernard Fucking Madoff. Was there ever a more singularly appropriate surname? He made off with over $50 billion in what's got to be the biggest Ponzi scheme since Wall St. (which I often think is just one big Ponzi scheme anyway) was founded. But what really galls me is that he is responsible for the suicide of one man whom he took for over a billion. I bet he has not the grace to be ashamed even of that.

8. Dick Fucking Cheney. Finally, the truth comes out: The Big Dick DID leak Valerie Plame's identity to Novakula. Go fuck yourself, you Big Dick.

9. Jackson Fucking Diehl. BoRev wonders if he gets his "facts" from the Great Gazoo; I say he pulls them from his big wazoo. Or that of the Venezuelan opposition. Same shit, interchangeable assholes.

10. Bruce Fucking Pardo. Okay, all you bitter divorced males out there, this one's for YOU, too. If you can't pay your divorce settlement, take it up with the judge. Explain your situation in detail, and keep your fucking cool. Get the payments postponed until you are in a position to make them. And if you're emotional, do the primal-scream thing until your rage dies down. And if you can pay, but just plain don't want to? Go fuck yourself. But whatever the case may be, do NOT do what this fucker did, which is dress up as Santa, shoot a little girl and set a house afire in an elaborately planned bombing, killing nine people. Not only that, but he booby-trapped a rented car, which could have blown up the police who investigated the crime (and was probably meant to.) And the kicker? He was found in possession of $17,000 when the police turned up his remains. That would have paid his $10,000 divorce settlement and then some. He was also in possession of an airline ticket to my home and native land, but apparently changed his mind and just decided to off himself. Good, because we don't fucking WANT the likes of him. Give us your Iraq war resisters instead. They don't want to kill, which makes them the polar opposite of this mo-fo.

11, 12, and 13. Stores that rely on holiday sales to make up the deficit for the rest of the year, stores that hold post-holiday door-crashers, and most of all, the people who are dumb/greedy/assholish enough to run to such sales and get into fights just because they think they can get a big bargain on big-ticket merchandise.

Which leads me to 14. Anyone who'd shoot each other or trample store workers to death during a door-crasher, be it pre- or post-holiday. You people are sick fucks and beyond saving.

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals...

...and a happy New Year, too.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:00 PM | Permalink

The weekend is here, and the bile is boiling. Here's who gets a potful of what I got cooking, dumped on their oh-so-worthy heads this week...

1. Barbara Fucking Kay. Yes, folks, the National Pest's resident Christianist culture warrior is hyping the "war on Christianity" meme, right in time for the holidays! Only, of course, she cleverly wraps it in fear of Marxists and Raelians, with a pinch of the standard islamophobia. And her brain-dead fans, who can also go fuck themselves, eat it up like candy canes. The fact that she's hypocritical about "heritage", however, did not go unnoticed by one perspicacious commenter:

So, when we try to teach children cultural relativism, we commit the sin of being anti-heritage. But when Québécois are pro-heritage, we are depicted in your columns as xenophobic anti-anglos.

You are hard to please, Ms Kay.

But seriously, I can't believe a textbook would say that Raelians are 25,000 years in advance... I'd like to get the exact citation, page and book...

Heh. Rightard pwnage achieved.

2. Dana Fucking Perino. The Valley Girl of the White House, Moonunit Perino, thinks the US is not an occupier but a "guest" in Iraq. Like omigawd! Like tooootally! Since when are guests allowed to trash the house and beat up those who live there with impunity? That's, like, totally grody.

The ORIGINAL Moonunit, on the other hand, is like totally bitchen.

3. Abitibi-Fucking-Bowater. Not only are they environmental poison, they're also shameless. They shut down a plant in Newfoundland, costing hundreds of jobs, but they still want timber rights and the right to profit from a power generation plant in the town and province they fucked over? Premier Danny Williams (my new hero!) decided to make like Chavecito, and said "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya, because we're taking back everything you took from us and we're leaving you with the same you left us--NOTHING. And if you try to sue, you're in for a helluva fight, because WE make the laws around here, and you'll lose even MORE money!" Happy New Year!

4. Jim Fucking Flaherty. Proof, if anyone ever needed it, that conservatives--big C or small--should not EVER get their fat little fingers on the purse strings of a nation. Flip-Flop Jimbo promised us a surplus shortly after the farce that was our last election; now he springs a deficit on us. Say what you will about Paul Martin (and I could say plenty), but he never gave us a holiday surprise of THAT nature. I say we take the lumps of coal out of Jimbo's stocking, and lob them at his head like a pair of Iraqi shoes.

5. Whoever the fuck is in charge of Russia's economy. One thing hasn't changed since the Berlin Wall fell, and that's the way reality keeps getting swept under the rug over there. Only now, the rug's not red anymore. But maybe, once more, it soon will be, at the rate things are going. Conditions are about ripe for a second revolution, and maybe this time, it really WILL be communist:

...instead of more fucking state capitalism as usual.

6. Any Sarah Fucking Palin apologists out there (say, in Toronto) who think that it's acceptable around here to change the subject to Barack Obama, instead of answering my perfectly reasonable and fact-based questions about her. Next time you try that, it's this for YOU, my little fuglies:

...because what you're doing is called trolling, and it stinks the joint up.

7. All you dumbfuck white supremacists who'd saddle your kid with a name like Adolf Hitler or Aryan Nation. It's bad enough that you're passing on your mentally defective genes and preaching perversion, but do you have to compound the curse with a monicker like that? What has your child done to deserve such abuse?

8. Human Rights Bee-yotch. No further pwnage necessary here, though, since better researchers than myself have already done the job rather nicely.

9. Rick Fucking Warren. Throw him under the bus NOW, Barack. I don't care how much he tithes or who endorses him. Bigots, homophobes and right-wing hatemongers have all got to GO, if you are serious about change we can believe in. Never mind this "reaching out" crap. When have the Religious Reich-tards ever reached out to the gays, other than to hit them over the head with brickbats, or to try to convert them into something they are not? Fuck Warren--go with Barry Lynn, who doesn't give away insane amounts of money because he doesn't MAKE insane amounts of money. But he does walk his talk, and more importantly, his discourse is always sane and civilized. Can your theo-con megachurch leader do that?

10. All the Intelligent Fucking Design freaks out there. If there really IS an Intelligent Designer, then please explain to me why things like fetus in fetu tumors exist. Seems to me a REAL Intelligent Designer wouldn't inflict weird shit like that on an unborn baby. I seem to recall all you theocons saying that the unborn are innocent and therefore must be "defended" from medico-surgical abortion. Well? What do you say to this, eh? You can't have it both ways!

11. Karl Fucking Rove. What are you, a shoe queen? Go join Auntie Condi in the closet, she needs help sorting out her Ferragamos. Maybe she can spare a few old pairs for me to hurl at Dubya's gut--forget his head, I'm gonna aim too low for him to duck, and too high for him to jump.

12. Fucking Argentine human rights abusers. Otto and Lillie have the details of how several prominent pieces of shit have been let go by the lame-o Argentine "justice" system because their due process isn't processing duly.

Auntie 'Bina isn't surprised, because she knows that a lot of judges from the bad old days are still around and still ordering their old brothers-in-abuse released, using every dumb-ass legal loophole and technicality you can imagine. If any of these fuckers actually DO get pinched, Auntie 'Bina predicts they'll pull a Mario Ferreyra and get lifelong impunity.

13. Sherry Fucking Johnston. What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? No, NOT lipstick. It's OxyContin! No shit, they found a whackload of Rush Limbaugh's drug of choice on Bristol Palin's baby-daddy-momma, the woman who brought that self-confessed "fuckin' redneck" into the world. Granted, it IS Wasilla, the meth capital of Alaska. And it became that way during Sarah Fucking Palin's tenure as mayor. But still. Is there no shame anymore in a governor's daughter getting first knocked up out of wedlock, and THEN shotgunned into marriage--to a drug-lord's son? Or is that normal there, too?

Oh, BTW, if this is anything to go by, it's possible that Palin's own son was one of Johnston's clients. Before he got shipped off to Iraq, of course.

14. Norm Fucking Coleman. Just concede, already.

15. And as always, anyone who spells things with asterisks. Fuck off!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Who's so shitty they could piss off Hello Kitty? Read on, and find out who gets flipped off this week...

1. Michael Fucking Ignatieff. Shit, what do we have democracy for in this country if a man who LOST a Liberal leadership race still gets awarded the crown, sceptre and keys to the city? Never mind that he's an Intellectual and an Acclaimed Author of Erudite But Incredibly Boring Books. Intellectualism is fine with me; Pierre Trudeau had it too, and used it to patriate our Constitution and give us a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is more than any of his conservative critics could ever do. (Especially since they HATE rights and freedoms.) No, what really rubs ME the wrong way about Iggy is his incredible arrogance, which is out of all proportion to his substance. Comes, I guess, of being descended from Russian aristocracy (no, I shit you not.) And also from being the product of private schools, the Ivy League and Oxbridge. How can someone with so little actual CanCon become PM? I don't know, but I have a feeling he won't stop until he gets the keys to the hallowed halls of Parliament, and its most coveted executive washroom, any which way he can. After all, it's his teenage ambition. But if he thinks he's on course to become the new Trudeau, I have sad news for him.

2. Any of the Tory voters out there who love Iggy--because of his remarkable Machiavellian resemblance to Harpo, and because he's no Trudeau. Fuck off, the lot of you.

3. Bob Fucking Rae. Or should I say, Rae Finkle:

Laces out!

4. Stéphane Fucking Dion. Just because.

5. Branko Fucking Marinkovic. Or should I say...

6. Sarah Fucking Palin, again. This impersonator stands a better chance of being president than you:

...so suck on that. And shut up about Canada; you can't see us from where you squat, either.

7. The fruit-bat from Funchal, Madeira, IP# 85.241.109.112, who thinks Venezuela is ruled by a communist, despite a massive heap of evidence to the contrary. Mmmmmmm, Kool-Aid.

8. The creepy cretin who's been plying Otto with requests for personal info that he's not entitled to. Lamest. Menace. EVER.

9. Mario Fucking Vargas Llosa. Those who can, win elections fair and square and keep on winning them; those who can't, fuck off to Spain in a huff. Then they keep their names in the news by kvetching about the winners of other countries' free and fair elections, and meddling where they're not wanted. I'd like to see him try that schtick here in Canada--he'd be laughed out of the country. We, like Venezuela, have constitutional and parliamentary provisions in place for the removal of any truly bad leader. (It's also worth noting that Chavecito is NOT proposing any alteration to those parts of the Bolivarian constitution, nor is anyone in the Venezuelan national assembly.)

Of course, if this sore loser (to the stupendously crooked "El Chinito" Fujimori, no less!) had managed to win election--not that he ever could--he would probably feel very differently about constitutional amendments. But this presupposes that he would have run on something other than the discredited neo-con/neoliberal shit he still espouses, the same that's fucked the world (and his own neglected country) up to where it is now. See why I say he couldn't win an election?

10. Mark Fucking Belling. Not only a racist, but a victim-blamer. And about as fugly a specimen of white malehood as I've ever seen. But of course, white kids don't EVER join gangs. Let alone make the news for doing so.

11. The stupid fucking London police--first for not being able to tell a Brazilian electrician from a hairy, scary terrorist, then for lying about their own misconduct. And the fucking coroner, for trying to bar a full public inquiry--because it would embarrass the cops. Nail their heads to the wall--it's the only place where they'll serve a purpose anymore.

12. F.W. Fucking de Klerk. He spent 20 years of his life enforcing apartheid in South Africa; now he's "worried" about Venezuela. Why? Apparently, they're just not racist enough there anymore; they even have a tri-racial president who, after 10 years in power, is still hugely popular. Yup, apartheid has failed in Venezuela--the sky is falling! Personally, I find it just amazing that anyone could award a Nobel peace prize to someone responsible for...well, things like this. Or that anyone would invite him to speak anywhere, instead of burying him in the dustheap of history where he belongs. But no, he just had to open his mouth about a country making more progress on every front than his, and spout lies about it. I do believe this merits a "fuck you very much", no?

13. RAI Fucking 2, the Italian state channel (owned by Berlusconi the booty-humper), which sanitized the gay out of Brokeback Mountain. Excuse me, what was the whole storyline, again? And talk about timing--this happened right after the Vatican contended that universal human rights don't extend to Teh Gheyz. The Vatican is right in the heart of Italy. You do the math!

14. John Fucking McTernan. Someone please explain to all these brain-dead religio-nutters that real fascists style themselves as ultra-Christian, and for that reason, basically HATE the homos. (Remember what the heterosexual Hitler did to his gay follower, Ernst Röhm?) Someone please also inform them that it's quite possible to be a Christian, fascist, heterosexually married, AND a closeted queen. Jörg Haider certainly was all of those. I respectfully suggest that the Christofascists quit projecting, stop beating on the homofascists (real or imaginary), and recognize how much they have in common with those they claim to loathe. It may be more than you think, folkies.

And that concludes this week's barrel-o-bile. Tune in for more next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

And now, a message from our sponsors:

All right...down to business, and beatings to be administered until morale improves. Here's who needs to fuck off this week:

1. George Fucking Dubya Bush. For continuing to blame the "intelligence failures" for the nonexistent Iraqi WMD he didn't find under his fucking desk, either. Why can't he just fucking admit that he told them to cook up a pretext for his "pre-emptive" war on a country that he KNEW was disarmed, that he KNEW couldn't fight back (not in conventional warfare terms, anyhow, although it's still keeping up a remarkable guerrilla effort), that he KNEW had nothing he wanted, except a fuckload of OIL? Oh, I know...it's like trying to get the Fonz to admit that he was "wr-r-r-r"...

...only, the difference being that the Fonz was actually cool, and decent to boot. And he never started any rumbles, although he sure as hell finished them. Dubya? Snort, snort. I like YVKE Mundial's characterization of his blatherings: "George smoked some crack." Sounds about right.

2. Grover Fucking Norquist. Hey, I have a terrific idea: How about we keep governments the size they are, and drown all the loony capitalist ideologues in the bathtub instead?

3. Saxby Fucking Chambliss. Remember how this chickenhawk coward screwed Max Cleland, a triple amputee and Vietnam vet? Seems this dipshit's dipped in Teflon. He should have lost, especially on account of his perverted creepiness. Spare me the talk of how feeling up your own pre-adolescent granddaughter is just a good ol' southern custom. This man is the walking embodiment of conservative hypocrisy. Lucky for him he chickened out of 'Nam, or he'd have been fragged.

4. Speaking of people who should be fragged, how about that Sarah Fucking Palin? Doesn't she have a state to govern, and a knocked-up teen daughter to shotgun into an ill-advised marriage, or something? Oops, wait, she's doing a piss-poor job up there, or rather her puppet-mastering separatist hubby is; maybe it's better for the people of Alaska that she's ho-ing around the Deep South for her ol' buddy Saxby instead. Still, one wishes she'd spare a thought for her kids, instead of just hauling them out to parade around when it's convenient for her to be seen as a "loving mother". Could she at least do that, please, before the youngest three also turn out badly?

5. and 6. Andres Fucking Oppenheimer and Simon Fucking Romero. Whenever you two little narcissist-lemonists decide to start actually reporting news instead of pulling it randomly out of your butts while snockered, let us know, 'k?

7. Perez Fucking Hilton: For catching Teh Stoopid about Venezuela. They've been having gay pride events ever since Chavecito got elected. And not a single one has been banned. There are also plenty of LGBT Chavistas. Stands to reason, since the Bolivarian constitution grants implicit protection to LGBTs, even if it doesn't (yet) green-light same-sex marriage. I guess it's asking too much for a skanky gossip blogger to do his homework, so he can just fuck off. (BoRev, bless his soul, thinks so too.)

8. All those dumb fucking people out there who claim that the Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition is "illegal" and that the Harperites won a "mandate". No, it isn't, and no, they didn't. Did you kids sleep through Social Studies class? Here, let James Laxer set you straight. And then, you all can just fucking SHUT UP, ALREADY.

9. All those OTHER dumb fucking people on the "business news" channels who keep pushing the myth of the $70/hr Detroit autoworker. How much are these fuckers being paid per hour to spout junk about people who actually work for a living, i.e. people most unlike themselves? More than most anyone in Detroit, I'm sure, with the possible exception of the CEOs who flew in on private jets to beg for bailouts. All of THEM can fuck off, too.

10. Michael Fucking Weiner, a.k.a. "Savage". For advocating genocide on the "tribal" areas of Pakistan in light of the Mumbai attacks. And this is supposed to resolve WHAT, exactly, especially considering that the Indian authorities managed to kill all the fuckers in Mumbai? I have a better idea, albeit in a similar vein (which I hope will illustrate the imbecility of the man by turning his own argument right back on him): How about wiping out, with nukes, all the Red States rednecks who listen to this piece of shit polluting the airwaves with his fuck-headed racist diatribes? No audience means no revenue means no more "Savage Nation". Don't like my modest proposal? Hey, it's identical to his, but it might actually bring better results. Just think of how much nicer the United States would suddenly be if he and every last one of his noxious little penile polyps fans just all fucked off at once. In a big puff of radioactive smoke, no less.

11. That also goes for Jim Fucking Quinn and all his "peaceful" listeners. Hey, I don't wanna live with that kind of people. Wipe 'em the fuck out! Let "their" God sort them out, right?

12. All those fuckheads who STILL keep claiming Obama is not a US citizen by birth. Look, I know Hawaii isn't on the mainland, and that it was the last state to join the union--but it's still unquestionably, and legally, US soil. If you people are going to question who was born on US soil, how about looking closer at John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone--which is not, and never has been, legally US soil? And if you're not gonna do that--FUCK OFF.

13. Robert Fucking Novak. For being such a conscienceless, self-centred prick. Just shut the fuck up and kick the friggin' bucket, already, Novakula.

14. Bill Fucking Kristol. Put down the crackpipe, old boy. And step away from the Kool-Aid pitcher, too.

15. Jim Fucking Karygiannis. For reasons already noted.

16. Sean Fucking Avery. $3 million a year to talk trash about his ex-girlfriends and others? Hell, for that kind of money, I'll put on hockey gear and mouth off on the ice without even touching a puck. I'll even throw in some extra spicy language for free about Sean Avery, God's gift to women! Whaddya say, NHL? Do we have a deal?

17. Last, but not least, Stephen Fucking Harper. Got all night? Neither do I. Just google for what he did during the past week, if you still don't know why I am so fucking sick of him.

And have a lovely week, y'all.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yep, it's that time when I get PMS--Pissed at Morons' Shit.

You know you want it. I know I need it. So, with no further ado, here's my list of all the people who really need to fuck the hell off this week:

1. The 200-some-odd fucking morons who stomped a Wal-Mart worker to death today. I don't know what the urgency was--full bladders and a need to use the WallyLoo, maybe? Whatever it was, it couldn't have been the goods; WallyWorld is full of crap. No, I don't shop there, partly on principle and mainly onaccounta I hate the atmosphere. Big boxes give me the willies. Especially when things like this happen.

2. Stephen Fucking Harper. For playing politics like a cheap fucking fiddle. First he threatens to pull federal funding to the parties (his own being the only one that can survive currently without it, go figure), then, when the Liberals, NDP and Bloc threaten a nonconfidence vote and a coalition government on that basis, Harpo sez "j/k, haha--friends?" Frankly, I hope they find their 'nads and shit-can him. Hell, I'll even put up with another annoying election call if it gets him off our backs for good. Two minority parliaments in a row, and he still thinks he gets to play Napoleon with a bad French accent? Va baiser ma fesse, Harpo!

3. The fucking Venezuelan opposition parties. For acting just as dictatorial and immature and tantrum-y as Harpo, and considering that their poll numbers are about as bad as his, maybe that explains everything. But still, is it any excuse for threatening to burn a community centre, sending biker gangs to beat up poor folks in a PSUV-supporting neighborhood of an oppo-controlled state, and murdering three Chavista union leaders? Do they seriously suppose that violence and intimidation will do for them what democracy won't? Have they forgotten so soon that these same people that they love to stomp on, are far more numerous than they, and they have long memories? Apparently, yes. For that, they deserve to get fucked--legally and constitutionally, of course. When's the middle of the gubernatorial term again? That's when they can get hit with a recall vote.

4. The fuckheaded fucking fucks who shot up Mumbai. Don't know who they are, don't know what they want, don't care a shit. What I do care about is that innocent people died and a beautiful landmark hotel got torched for no good reason. And that fucking burns me.

5. The fucker known only as "the British Josef Fritzl". This creep goes his Austrian counterpart several "better" (or worse, rather) by impregnating not one but two of his own daughters--19 times in all. Not only is he a pervert, he profited off it by stealing the welfare money that the daughters got to help them care for their deformed children. And you want to know what's most sickening about him? The things he says in his own defence. Castration's too good for him, and so's hanging. Hmmm, what do you suppose that leaves?

6. Glenn Fucking Beck. How the heck does a hatemonger who has "violence fantasies" about Michael Moore...end up writing a sticky, gooey Christmas book? No shit, I saw it in the drugstore today; put me in a very un-holiday mood to see his ugly, hemorrhoidal mug on the inside back cover flap (yes, I checked to make sure it was really him). If this is supposed to be some kind of image makeover, it's an epic fail. Bound for the remainder bin in 5...4...3...2...

7. Lori Fucking Drew. The bitch who harassed a sensitive, depressed teen to death on MySpace is getting off mighty lightly, considering what she did. Isn't she old enough to know better? I'm younger than she is, and having been bullied myself, I definitely do!

8. Anyone who still has the gall to say "Support the Troops" after hearing what the US has done to Afghanistan. I don't care how much "care" they take to avoid "collateral damage"--it still fucking happens, and what's more, the reason behind it is not clear, nor is it just. Why don't they question the validity of their mission? I do all the time.

9. David Fucking Frost. Do I believe he should have been acquitted? Hell no. His crass conduct throughout his sexual exploitation trial is an indicator of his true character. Plus, there's the whole creepy Mike Danton thing. Why would Danton try to kill this thug unless there was something seriously perverted about him? There have even been recorded phone conversations indicating seriously hinky doings in their relationship. Frost needs to fuck off in the worst way!

10. Lou Fucking Dobbs. Admit it, asshole, you're a racist. And once you're done that--FUCK OFF!

11. Anyone who objects to my choices of persons who should fuck off--or, as usual, my saying so.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. Focus on the Fuckery. They showed their "family values" by spending moocho dinero on Proposition Hate. Now they're laying off staff. I should be grateful, I suppose, that they aren't converging on Washington in private LearJets to beg for a bailout. But what I really wish is that they would (a) focus on their own fam-damnily for a change (i.e. the workers they're screwing) and (b) JUST FUCK OFF!

2. All you fucking fuckheads in Freeperville who fucked Dan Rather. Guess what, y'all: He had your boy's number all along. Aren't you ashamed? No? Well, then FUCK OFF! You wouldn't know good reporting if it bit your ass off, and I hope it bites off more than that.

3. Newty Fucking Gingrich. As if it wasn't enough that he fucked over not one, but two former wives to marry his respective mistresses (watch out, #3!), now he's accusing gays and secular humanists of "fascism". He's a fine one to talk; he's the one that made up that fucking fascist word list to smear innocent people and decent politics out of existence. Hey Newt:

4. Evita Perón Marisabel WHO? A threat to WHOM? I don't know who should fuck off first, the soap-opera queen or the anglo media who keep touting her as the antidote to that evil, toxic Chavecito. Does anyone take her prospects seriously, besides these clueless anglos? The big guy is doing his due diligence. What's SHE doing? Going around shaking hands, kissing babies--and uttering forgettable platitudes, when not turning around and accusing Venezuela's most pro-woman president ever of being a machista. Yeah, that's a winning strategy. Oh well, on Monday morning, reality will dawn, and she will have to go home to her tennis pro and STFU about Chavecito again.

5. Ayman al-Fucking Zawahiri. Excuse me, what did you call Barack Obama again? A "house negro"? For what--acknowledging the pluralistic politics of his country, instead of trying to convert it all to Islam against its will? People like you give a venerable faith a bad name. And just who the fuck are you, old man, to call up the name of Malcolm X? There's a word for what you're doing, and it is HERESY. Or, if you want to put it in Arabic, fitna. Fuck off, already, and let the Americans heal their own religious divisions without resort to your absurd vision of theocratic monoculture.

6. Conrad Fucking Black. I know that concepts like justice and accountability are foreign to the filthy fucking rich (who got that way by filthily fucking everything and everyone in sight), but could Lord Convict please try to understand the meaning of the words, even if they're not as polysyllabic as he can get? And failing that, would he kindly refrain from asking for undeserved clemency, and just FUCK OFF?

7. The little fucking godbags who went to the Castro District in San Francisco to rub the gays' noses in it when Proposition Hate passed. If y'all are so all-fired Christian and all, why don't you go show you really do love your neighbors--your GAY neighbors--by refraining from preaching bullshit at them? And if you don't like them, or what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, fine--be that way if you want, but just stay out of the neighborhoods where they live. No one asked you to bring your fraudulent, false gospel of bigotry in there. Straights are welcome in the gay community; I know that from experience, because everytime I've ever been in the Church/Wellesley area of Toronto, I was made welcome regardless of my orientation. Maybe that's because I didn't go in there to preach at them and deliberately incite violence. I went to socialize, to shop, and to just soak up the friendly atmosphere without fear or judgment. Can y'all do that too? And if you can't, then just FUCK OFF.

8. Roger Fucking Stone. He doesn't regret dirty politicking, but he DOES regret helping Bush get elected via...that very thing? Gee, talk about regrets that ring hollow. And then he makes the lame excuse that he was doing it because he owed some other Repug fucker a favor? No excuses, Roger--you know you wanted to do it. You know you liked it. You would still do it in a heartbeat if anyone else tapped you for a "favor". Why? Because you're just plain perverted that way. You get off on it. And that makes you culpable. Go fuck yourself, you freak.

9. The entire fucking Prince/De Vos clan. For funding hate and spreading war throughout the world. May the demons play soccer with their heads in hell, if a hell there is. (Personally, I don't believe in hells, but for people like this I'll cheerfully make an exception--or nine.)

10. The fucking CIA. There are more reasons for this than you can shake a stick at, but let's just say this one really takes the biscuit. Shootdowns of innocent aircraft over South America, all with CIA "help"? This ain't the gang that couldn't shoot straight, it's the gang that can't fucking stop shooting! Too bad they aren't doing it in their own mouths.

11. This bunch of fucking ex-Bolivian racists in Washington, DC. Not only can they not accept that Evo won legitimately, they also can't accept that he's doing a better job in his sleep than a dozen of them could do hopped-up on triple espresso. And how do they express their "disagreement" with his politics? By lobbing racist insults at some indigenous dancers who happened to accompany Evo to the event. Srsly, people, what the fuck is wrong with you? Besides the obvious, that is?

12. The fucking DEA. Bugging Evo's phone? What were they expecting to accomplish with that? I have no idea, but they haven't accomplished anything--other than get their worthless drug-smuggling asses kicked out of Bolivia. And about fucking time. Now, if only all the OTHER countries where they operate could tell them to fuck off, too.

13. The Big Three Fucking Auto Execs. For showing up to beg for bailouts...in private fucking LearJets. Meanwhile, who's bailing out their "downsized" employees, who've had to rely on subprime mortgages to furnish for them what the Big Three Profiteering Bastards could and would not? This is right up there with the big AIG bailout bash at that fancy resort, BTW.

14. The rich fuckers at the so-called National Review, or as I like to call it, the National Re-Pew. They want MONEY for their stinkin' crap? They should give all their readers and sponsors their money back. And just go fuck themselves already.

15. That motherfucking fucker who beat up two lesbian moms outside their kid's school in Oshawa (and in front of the kid!) right after Prop Hate made the news. Was he emboldened by the passing of the worst bill of the year? You fucking betcha. I hope he gets a cellmate who really likes him, if you know what I mean.

16. And finally, any fouquetards du jour whom I happen to have missed. Including, once again, those who object to my use of le mot juste.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:15 AM | Permalink

1. and 2. Sarah Fucking Palin and Joe the Fucking Plumber. Both of you--scram. Your 15 minutes are over, and your country doesn't need you. If you really want to save it, just shut the fuck up and go the hell away. Do NOT run for president, do NOT pass Go, do NOT collect $200. Just get lost, preferably in a thawing muskeg bog.

3. Osmel Fucking Sousa. Considering that your ideal woman is a cartoon, who the hell are you, a wrinkled old man, to tell lovely young women that they aren't lovely enough? Oh, that's right--you're the beauty pageant king of Venezuela, that country whose many exportable commodities happen to include (surgically enhanced) female flesh. And of course, victory in beauty pageants is a prerequisite to female success, or at least in getting an oil tanker named after oneself. Because heaven knows, our gender has nothing to offer other than looks, and even those are not good enough. I hereby cordially invite you to drink yourself to death on cheap Scotch in an atmosphere of plush, salmon-pink irrelevance.

4. Dennis Fucking Miller. Yes, we know you're a washed-up, unfunny has-been. Why do you keep insisting on reminding us? Even in your glorified-fratboy salad days, you weren't all that, Ms. Thing. Jumping on the "9/11--Never Forget!!!eleven!!!" bandwagon won't give you talent. So please, Dennis...just go away, go away, go away.

5. George Fucking Dubya Bush. Yes, I know we have to wait until January. But the world is weary, and January is a long way off. And nobody misunderstimates the damage you and your executive orders can do in the meantime. Or the pardons you can hand out to all your felonious friends. Or all the embarrassing photos you can appear in. So, Dubya...go choke on a pretzel. Go crash a million-dollar fighter training jet. Go get terminal road rash. Or whatever. Just GO, already.

6. Gonzalo Fucking Sanchez de Fucking Lozada. Why the double "Fucking"? Because that's what Bolivia got from you, you big gringo corruptocrat-with-a-bad-accent. So go do it to yourself for a change, preferably in two orifices...and if that ain't enough, Goni, I'll rip you a new one and lend you a broomstick.

7. And that goes double for your lawyer, Greg Fucking Craig. I do NOT want to see that scummy shyster advising Barack Obama on what kind of relations he is to have with the future White House dog, never mind Bolivia.

8. and 9. and 10. Speaking of advisors, I strongly advise the future President Obama to get rid of Austan Fucking Goolsbee, Jason Fucking Furman, and Kenneth Fucking Griffin. Financial "advice" such as theirs is the last thing he needs if he is to get his country out of an economic crisis created by neoliberals and neo-cons promiscuously swapping saliva with one another. (They can all do that in prison, when they're not squabbling over the dropped soap.)

11. Alvaro Fucking Uribe. Has Colombia not suffered enough for the past 50-odd years? Does this crooked little tyrant really need a third term? Does the world really want to see how much more crack and yuppie nose-powder one country is capable of producing, at the cost of another couple thousand murders and now, investor riots? Or will the man on whose watch it all took place just please fuck off?

12. Felipe Fucking Calderón. All the drug-war grandiosity notwithstanding, we know he stole the Mexican election. And we know with whose help he did it. We even know why. But all of that might makes nothing right, because a criminal cannot restore law and order in a country that has never truly known it. Fuck off, Felipe, and let AMLO finally take his rightful place--cleaning up the Augean Stable you seem hellbent on leaving behind.

13. Alan Fucking Garcia. Under his lardy gut, Peru is so fucked. And sadly, the Peruvians know it and can't do shit about it. In a mountainous land of geologic instability and frequent earthquakes, one can hardly be blamed for wishing the Earth would open up and swallow him. Could it do that, please?

14. Angela Fucking Merkel. Why? Because. And where does she get off criticizing Chavecito, considering who she pals around with? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, Angela...now go lie someplace other than the Bundestag. You're an embarrassment to German women all over the world, including me.

15. Nicolas Fucking Sarkozy. For singlehandedly turning France uncouth. Casse-toi, pauvre con.

16. Stephen Fucking Harper. For reasons too numerous to enumerate here at this unholy hour.

And finally,

17. Anyone who objects to my use of the fuck-word here. Who asked you? Fuck off.

And to the rest of you, a very pleasant good night.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

You HAVE noticed, yes? Good.

Well, here's the story: My best friend and geekus maximus has helped me improve this site with the latest edition of Movable Type. We did it to help secure the blog against hackers exploiting weaknesses in the original version I was using.

Unfortunately, the latest edition of Movable Type could use some improvements of its own, such as being able to recognize entries created with Tinderbox, which I use to write my entries before uploading them here. It currently doesn't, and we're both still scratching our heads trying to figure out how my last six entries could disappear into the ether (though they still show up on the post count, they aren't counted as current entries, so I can't categorize them or make them show on the main page anymore either), my blogroll became such a mess, and the mysterious date of "December 0000" has shown up in my monthly archives (I suspect that's where the "missing" posts were disappeared to, probably by the Chilean DINA or its Movable Type equivalent.)

For now, it looks as though I'll have to generate my posts on the "write entry" page of MT, which will take some getting used to. It's kind of sad to stop using the old Tinderbox Trainblogging template, which has served me so well up till now, but until we get this glitch straightened out, it looks like I'll have to post the "lame" way. Grrrr.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What century is this again?

Rev. Sergio G. Roman sounded the alarm against miniskirts in an online publication to prepare Catholics for a church family-values forum next year in Mexico City.

"When we show our body without prudence, without modesty, we are prostituting ourselves," wrote Roman, a Mexico City priest.

Continue reading "Yep, that Catholic church is sure progressing..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 6:58 PM | Permalink

Hey y'all.

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth; I've just been a bit under the weather lately. Sick as a dog, too ill to blog. At least, anything that would make sense. Or anything other than how brutally Montezuma avenged himself on me the other day for eating fresh strawberries. 48-hour summer gut bugs are such fun, aren't they? And just to make things truly excruciating, two words: No Kaopectate.

Plus, my ear got waterlogged on Saturday, got worse on Sunday, and on Monday morning had to have a date with a dropperful of hydrogen peroxide and a squeeze bulb full of warm water. Yes, I think I got all the wax and there was (thankfully) no sign of infection, but I spent half of the morning feeling semi-deaf on the right-hand side, and a bit wonky as a result while I chopped veggies for my all-from-scratch chicken noodle soup. Then my ear finally drained--twice--and I finally got some blessed relief, but I think that before I retire I'll keep my date with the dropper and syringe, just in case.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

And so are you, and so is everybody else I know.

I'm talking about people who actually use the Web to read what they want, read JUST what they want, and not bother to give crapitalism its pound of flesh (or hour of eyeball time).

Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.

The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

Continue reading "Yes, I admit it. I'm one of these too." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Christmas begins now in August. Christmas has become the Beast that just cannot be fed!"

--Lewis Black

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

OMG, this was just too good to pass up. Reuters is so Chavecito-obsessed lately, I think they're letting their secret fantasies slip...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would not shut up for Spain's king but, over the weekend, he heeded a higher calling to stop talking -- his bladder.

Surrounded by a throng of reporters at an OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia, the president, who enjoys the media spotlight and often answers questions at length, excused himself.

"Look I have to go," Chavez said in comments aired on Venezuelan state television. "For a while now, I have needed to go to the bathroom and I am going to pee ... Do you want me to pee on you?"

Continue reading "Forget Clinton's cock, Reuters has a new obsession" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The video of the tasering of Robert Dziekanski speaks for itself.

The videographer mistakes him for a Russian (unable to distinguish the language from the victim's native Polish). But what's unmistakable here is that the man was NOT so violent that he had to be forcibly subdued, let alone in the manner we see here. He was frustrated enough to throw some furniture--looking around to see if anyone was paying attention, meaning this was not done out of blind rage or that brand new bullshit excuse for Taser deaths and police brutality, "excited delirium", but with the intent of getting the airport authorities to help him.

And after more than ten hours of unexplained delay and waiting and inability to contact his mother who was supposed to meet him at the Vancouver airport, it is quite understandable that he'd be anxious. Who wouldn't be, as a new immigrant in a country whose language he couldn't speak, whose customs (and immigration procedures) he didn't understand, and whose authorities apparently couldn't be bothered to dig up an interpreter and help him out?

We are not a police state, but things like this make me wonder what's becoming of us.

Robert Dziekanski was buried today in Kamloops, BC.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Behold, the Complaints Choir of Helsinki:

"And the Finnish language is bloody difficult to learn!"

Happily, there could be a chapter starting near you--clicky here!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Better still, let the Rude Pundit enumerate the ways he would NOT have sex with that ghoul.

"Perfect" THAT, bitch.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, I didn't die, although it certainly feels like I just came back from the dead. My high-speed modem kacked out on the night after the provincial election. Hence, no FLFB (or any other B for that matter.) Meanwhile, I'll be playing catch-up...AGAIN. Let's hope this is the last of the computer emergencies for this year (or any other.) I hate being offline!

On the off chance that anyone missed me--thanks, your concern is aways appreciated.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Way to support the troops, Boil Butt!"

Anthony from Sweden, aka Malmo Blue, calls in at about 5:30 in this YouTube (which he made and posted.)

Way to give ol' Boil-Butt the red-ass, Anthony and Mike!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ahem. To the tune of Depeche Mode's "People Are People":

Continue reading "Bullshit is Bullshit" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New York firefighters (and bereaved relatives of dead firefighters) shatter the myth of the then mayor's "heroism" on 9-11:

The terrible truth is, Giuliani did not even meet the minimum standards of acceptable conduct. The non-functioning radios that cost over 300 brave souls from the FDNY their lives are just the tip of the iceberg. The disposal of their bodies in the Fresh Kills "landfill" (that's a garbage dump in plain English!) and the strange business with the Scotiabank gold (worth more than firefighters, dead or alive?) is certainly damning.

Any Repug who thinks he can run on his 9-11 record can now think again. The party that made 9-11 the disaster it was, from start to finish, should frankly be buried in Fresh Kills along with all those firefighters.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sorry, folks, no Festive Left Friday Blogging today. I had nothing prepared, and worse, I had my first moment of pre-senile dementia. I forgot what day it was in my state of general discombobulation. Must be all that negative Falwellian karma reverting on itself that's got the Earth's magnetic field flipflopping, or something.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh lordy, here we go again. One Delores Williams, writing for Associated Content, horks up a hairball composed of some of the most poorly reasoned propaganda I've seen yet:

At Midnight, President Hugo Chavez took control of privately run oil fields in order to gain control over the four Orinoco Belt crude projects. These oil fields were held by American companies such as Chevron, Exxon mobile, BP PLc and ConocoPhillips. This means that Chavez's government can decide tomorrow not to send any more oil to America, and there would be little these companies could do.

Well, well. Only one paragraph in, and already the urge to shout BULLSHIT! overcomes me. That's gotta be a new world record.

Continue reading "Hello, what part of sovereignty do you not understand?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 8:50 PM | Permalink

Namely, a HACK. See why, before greedhead Viacom pulls THIS, too:

Continue reading "Let's call Barbara Walters by her right name" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first heard the "We are all (insert name of plucky little hard-done-by country here) now" meme, I was put out by it. It was a little too simplistic an expression of empathy for the victims of the 9-11 tragedy, and besides, it was a bit bass-ackwards, seeing as 9-11 was more like a cold shower of welcome-to-the-world reality for Americans. So when Le Monde proclaimed that "we are all Americans now", my first thought was, I'm unspeakably sad for those whom this has affected, but count me the fuck out of "we". I'm still a Canadian and a citizen of the world, and no amount of terrorism is gonna change that!

Continue reading "We are all shitheads now" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The Pentagon has just informed the world that the 2,500th US military death in the Iraq pillage has occurred.

That's right: 2,500 dead US military for the sake of a lie. And OIL.

And in the meantime, there's no end in sight.

The Unknown Soldier is dead. Long live the Big Lie.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I say BULLSHIT.

A fine Mississippi fella named Herb, who posts as GoldenEagle53 on Mike Malloy's board, shared this with us last night:

As you can see, this is nothing but a thinly veiled bit of right-wing racism.

Continue reading "And they say they're not racist?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Pardon the indelicate and unladylike language, but when you see what follows, I'm sure you'll agree with me for using it:

Possibly even more earsplitting than the chatter about Katie Couric's plans to leave her post at NBC's "Today" show for the "CBS Evening News" is the talk about whether she can cut it. Again and again commentators have mouthed off on whether they think she has the "gravitas" to handle the position. An article in the New York Observer asks an interesting question: What is gravitas? It's not Couric's oft-cited attributes (or weaknesses, depending on whom you ask): her legs and perky giggle. (Never mind her interviewing skills or ability to hold her own on-air for three-hour stretches.)

How exactly has the term gained traction as the defining characteristic of a worthy evening news anchor? It seems that "dignity" or "trustworthiness" would be sufficient. If you ask Connie Chung, gravitas requires something more specific: balls. Well, the Observer says that "delicacy prevented" Chung from actually defining it as such, but the suggestion was made nonetheless (leave it to Broadsheet to throw delicacy to the wayside). She did say that "it is essentially a chauvinistic word."

Continue reading "Okay, this really fucking pisses me off..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:19 AM | Permalink

Here's a little free advice for y'all: Don't EVER watch "1984" all in one sitting. It will depress the shit out of you.

In fact, even in two sittings, it's damn near unbearable.

That's what I've been up to in my spare time, these past couple of days. Getting the shit depressed out of me. By a goddamned movie.

Continue reading "A shot of Victory Gin (and tonic)" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm trying very hard not to laugh over this...honest I am. But get a load of the latest bizarre directive from the FAA:

Space tourists must be screened to ensure they are not terrorists, according to proposed regulations from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

The draft report's suggestions aim to prevent a terrorist from destroying a spacecraft or using it as a weapon.

However, the report has no strict proposals on the health of any would-be space tourists.

Continue reading "Space tourists = space TERRORISTS?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More and more, the "miserable failure" Google-bomb of George W. Bush's biography is looking like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every which way you turn, that man is going nowhere but DOWN. His overall approval ratings are headed for the sub-basement; the war on terror is costing the citizens more than it's saving; the war on Iraq has lost popular support; the way he handled the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe--or rather, didn't--is getting the blood up both above and, at long last, below the Mason-Dixon line. Anecdotal reports from friends behind enemy lines tell me the Bush bumper stickers and magnets are fast disappearing from cars all around them, and surely it's not just because the price of gas is in the stratosphere (and racing for the ionosphere). No, it's not the vicissitudes of the marketplace, no matter what the diehards may say; something much more momentous is at work here: People in America are finally waking up to find their house gone.

Continue reading "It takes a hurricane to level a whorehouse" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:36 PM | Permalink

...a rant about little yellow ribbons.

Ever notice how something so innocent and innocuous has been completely HIJACKED by the evil, filthy warmongers? I have. For the past couple of days I've been noticing around my hometown, a proliferation of bumper stickers--little yellow ribbon loops with black writing on them.

Well, I hate to say it, but I automatically jumped to the conclusion that my town--on the north shore of Lake Ontario--had suddenly spawned a proliferation of pro-Bush wingnuts.

WTF???

So I resolved to do two things: (1) Find out, first, what the writing on those little yellow ribbons says, and (2) if it IS a pro-war statement, start printing flyers and fact sheets to slip under the windshield wipers of any parked vehicle I see sporting such a sticker.

Well, today I finally got a chance to do #1. And it turns out that the yellow ribbons are NOT pro-war, but pro-cancer-research. They're issued by the Relay For Life, which raises funds for the Canadian Cancer Society. The same that recently helped my mom, a breast cancer patient, make a confident choice of lumpectomy, radiation and tamoxifen to treat her early-stage disease.

I guess I don't have to print up any flyers now, but I'm still angry at the warmongers for hijacking an innocent symbol and causing so much confusion.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)