Curse Well

I found this amusing brief article amusing.

Taken from Esquire’s May 2009 Issue:

THE PURPOSE OF SWEARING is to cause a small explosion. To get the right bang, you need to plant the right charge. In our bag, we carry George Carlen’s seven dirty words (shit, piss, fuct, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits) with twat, prick, and fuckface added for good measure. Honest cursing serves three basic functions:

Abuse:
Go with simple noun forms (twat, prick, cocksucker); compounds (“motherfucking tit pisser” or “cunt-licking shit-for-brains”) will only undermine your seriousness.

Blasphemy: Let the cotext do the work. Calling your neighbor’s nosy nine year old boy a prick or even a “shit sniffing faggot” will have a leveraged impact; so will using tits with reference to police officers. (“Sugar tits” works especially well in that context.)

Expressiveness: Mix forms and context. Be playful, bold, counterintuitive. Shout “Tits!” or “Ass hair!” rather than “fuck” when you hammer your thumb.

Finally, a word about fuck: in too many cases, it’s just a signifier of unhappiness – “fucking pain in the ass,” “fucking bullshit,” “Al fucking Gore” – with no potency. For optimal impact use fuck sparingly and with unusual imagery (“Did he just finger-fuck me?”) or for reverse the conventional forms (What a freaking fuck show”); alternatively, multiply it (“fucking four eyed fuck”).

The Following is an Apology from Esquire:

In the “How to Curse” section of our May 2009 feature, “How to Skin a Moose,” we presented a parody of extreme profanity and its users, contrasting exaggerated examples of offensive language with ordinary situations. The target of the parody was profanity itself and not the various people who might be its object, including gay people. But we used a particularly offensive phrase we shouldn’t have. It certainly was not our intent to cause pain. Judging from the reaction, we did. For that we are sincerely sorry.

Obama’s FISA Opportunity

This is a test blog post using Microsoft Word 2007

 

Olbermann: Criminal prosecution loophole is candidate’s big chance

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, ‘Countdown’

updated 9:14 p.m. ET, Mon., June. 30, 2008

 

The Democratic leadership in the Senate, Republican knuckle-dragging in the same chamber, and the mediocre skills of whoever wrote the final version of the FISA bill, have combined to give Sen. Barack Obama a second chance to make a first impression.

And he damned well better take it. The Senate vote on this tortured and reckless piece of legislation has now been postponed until after the 4th of July break. The Democrats, completing their FISA experience, a collective impression of Homer Simpson falling off a cliff and hitting every bramble on the way down, didn’t exactly plan this fortuitous delay.

Last week, the vote on their cave-in was imminent. But, while arguing over a piece of housing legislation, about how many mortgage lenders can dance on the head of a pin, Republicans dithered so long about protecting their constituents, the banks, that the Senate calendar got backed up.

This, in turn, gave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid some time to think.

There was one among his group, chosen to run for President, who had loudly assailed the idea of handing a get-out-of-jail-free card to corporations who had approached definitional fascism by breaking the law in concert with the Bush Administration.

But this Senator had suddenly realized, that to the large group of voters who operate with an information base that would make Cliffs Notes look like the Encyclopedia, if, in the final vote, he stood against FISA, he would hand them a rock with which they could hit him over the head, a rock wrapped up in a piece of paper reading:

“Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror stop.” Thus, Sen. Obama, was born your first second chance.

Sen. Reid was kind enough to help you out by composing an amendment that would keep FISA, which you rightly endorse, but strips out the telecom immunity, which you rightly oppose.

It’s a protest, a decidedly lame one, but in our daily world of political transactions, voting for the amendment when it has no chance of passing and has been in essence constructed as pure Obama CYA, that is a petty crime.

Whether it will do more to harm your premise of “new politics” than to your credibility as an immunity-opponent, is for you, Senator, to assess.

And live with. It would be sweet to have a pure, politics-free president, but the last of those retired from office in 1797. And while we’ve all quoted the farewell address of “The Father Of Our Nation” for 211 years now, nobody seems to want to remember that its point was to urge his children that: whatever you do, for God’s sake, don’t form political parties, some day they will kill you.

Anyway, Senator, your problem here isn’t the backlash about telecom immunity, and it isn’t really about your political fluidity on the FISA bill.

Your problem is what happens even if this plays out according to plan next week:

• You vote for the anti-immunity amendment
• The anti-immunity amendment fails
• You vote for the FISA legislation
• The FISA legislation passes
• Senator: The Republicans still run against you with the ‘elections-for-dummies ‘message: “Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror-stop.”

Because, inside the obscenity that was Charlie Black’s comment about how a terrorist attack in this country would be good for his boy John McCain’s chances for election.

Inside the inhuman calculation that Benazhir Bhutto did not die in vain, she helped McCain in the New Hampshire primary. There is a sad and cynical reality. The Republicans can scare some of the people all of the time, and they can scare all of the people some of the time. This is all they are right now. Nobody ever said it better than did Aaron Sorkin in his script for the movie “The American President”:

“Whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson (and for Rumson, read “McCain”) is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.”

Republicans, with almost no exceptions, have no true credibility on counter-terrorism, no track record of prevention or amelioration, and their president can’t even remember the name of the skyscraper he claims to have saved in Los Angeles.

And yet, somehow, the Republicans have managed to convince the public that it doesn’t matter that Mr. Bush had already completed 22 percent of his first term, when he, his administration, and his party, failed so catastrophically on 9/11.

The President and party who were at fault, were magically transformed into the president and party who would never let it happen again. An unjust… repellant… nefarious, trick. But, politically, rather a neat trick. Senator, the Republicans are going to paint you as soft on terror no matter how you vote on FISA.

Or how you vote on the Telecom Immunity Amendment. Or on the next farm bill. Last week it was Grover Norquist calling you “John Kerry with a tan.” By November 1st, it’ll be Dick Cheney calling you “Osama Bin Laden with a tan.” When you announced your support of this latest FISA bill, with or without the telecom immunity, the Republicans raced to get out a press release accusing you of flip-flopping.

You shared the exact same position, on which they are running their entire campaign and they criticized you anyway!

So, Senator, from their point of view, they think they’ve got you boxed in. Vote for FISA and you’ve contradicted yourself. Vote against FISA and it’s “Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror-stop.” Vote for FISA and against immunity, and it’s: political expediency, and Democrats soft on terror, and “Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror-stop.” This is a problem, Senator.

Because, flatly, of all the measures that can be taken to aid our damaged nation, and our de-valued constitution, the first, if not the foremost, is not blocking telecom immunity, but making sure no Republican is in the White House past noon next January 20th.  Of all the remedial efforts against the Bush Administration’s high crimes and misdemeanors, and of all the prophylactic steps against further inroads against the freedoms of the citizens of this nation and the rights of everyone else, the primary step must still come to us through the prism of politics.

Would that it were otherwise. But it ain’t. Frankly, Senator, this political tight-rope act you’ve tried on FISA the last two weeks, which from the outside seems to have been intended to increase the chances of your election, probably hasn’t helped in the slightest. There is, fortunately, a possible, a most unexpected, solution. Your second second chance.

Since the final version of the FISA bill was passed down from on high, John Dean has been reading it, and re-reading it, and cross-referencing it with other relevant law, and thinking. Something bothered him about it. Or, more correctly, something didn’t bother him about it. Turns out lawyers at the ACLU have been doing the same thing for the last ten days. John compared notes with them, and will be devoting his column at “Find Law” this week, to this unlikely conclusion:

The Republicans who wrote most of this bill at Mr. Bush’s urging, managed to immunize the telecoms from civil suits. But not from criminal prosecution. Senator, here is John Dean’s summary of his findings, which he sent me this morning. “It is clear not only from the language of the bill which must be read in the context of other, related statutes to be clearly understood, but also from the legislative history, that there is absolutely no criminal immunity for anyone in these FISA amendments.”

More over, Senator, it seems as if a lot of people have known this, for a long time.”During the January 24th, 2008 debate in the Senate, Sen. Sam Brownback noted, “The immunity provisions would not apply to the Government or Government officials. Cases against the Government regarding the alleged programs would continue.  And the provisions would apply only to civil and not criminal cases.”

In fact, Senator, just last week, Attorney General Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence McConnell sent a letter, for the record, to House Speaker Pelosi emphasizing that the liability protection, quote, “does not immunize any criminal conduct.” And if you ask, Senator, about the President responding to all this by belching out a series of pardons or a blanket pardon to those who broke the law on his behalf, Dean has you covered here, too…

It “would require acceptance by them of the fact that they had broken the law, and thus be an admission of guilt.”

“And a blanket pardon would be an admission by Bush that his war on terror has been a lawless undertaking, operating beyond the bounds of the Constitution and statutes that check the powers of the president and the executive branch.”

“It would be an admission by Bush, too, of his own criminal culpability which is why Nixon refused to grant his aides a pardon.”

Senator, sometimes it is better to be lucky, than good. Keep your eye on the wording of the legislation to make sure the Republicans don’t realize its flaws. Then vote for the amendment to strip telecom immunity out of the FISA bill. Then after that fails, vote for the FISA bill, if that’s your final answer. Then the minute the president has signed the FISA bill, you announce that you voted for it because it renews FISA and because it permits a bigger prize than just civil suits, that it allows for criminal prosecution of past illegal eavesdropping.

Say, loudly, that your understanding of this bill is such, that if you are elected, your Attorney General will begin a full-scale criminal investigation of the Telecom Companies who collaborated with President Bush in eavesdropping on Americans. And mention that your Attorney General will subpoena such records, notes, e-mail, data, and testimony, from any and all Bush Administration officials, FBI or CIA personnel, or any members of the Executive Branch, who may have as much as breathed in the general direction of these nefarious acts of domestic spying at Mr. Bush’s behest.

Wait, you say there’s a political hit waiting for you there too? Another “Obama voted uh-uh… thing terror-stop.” Actually, Senator, you’ve already gone down this road, when you spoke to my colleague, Will Bunch, of the Philadelphia Daily News, on April 14th of this year. He asked about the possibility of criminal investigations of the 43rd President and his henchmen.

“What I would want to do,” you told him, “is have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out, are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that, because we don’t have access to all the material right now.”

“You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

“Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in cover-ups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is: nobody above the law. And I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.”

Make this clear, Senator. You’ve already taken the political hit from the Right, for saying you’d seek to strip out, or rescind immunity. You’ve already taken the political hit from the Left, for saying you’d vote for the FISA bill even with the immunity. You’ve paid the political price in advance. Now buy yourself and those who have most ardently supported you something worth more than just class action suits against Verizon.

Explain that you are standing aside on civil immunity, not just for political expediency, but for a greater and more tangible good, the holding to account, of the most-corrupt, the most dangerous, and the most anti-democracy presidential administration in our long history.

Of course, if you disagree with this interpretation, if you think the FISA bill doesn’t have the giant loophole, or if you don’t think you, as president, would be ready to support criminal prosecution of well, criminals then your duty is clear.

Vote against the FISA bill, if it still carries that immunity. The Republicans are going to call you the names any which way, Senator. They’re going to cry regardless, Senator. And as the old line goes: give them something to cry about.

30 Rock Harball

One of my favorite clips from 30 Rock.

 http://www.hulu.com/watch/1894/30-rock-jenna-on-hardball

An Interesting Weekend

My father was walking off the Acela in Baltimore as he felt a chill to his core.  He came home and went straight to bed.  Thursday and Friday he was still ill, with a visible fever, chills, and chest pain.  He was thinking that he had a heart attack, so Friday night we went to the Emergency Room at St. Joseph’s, where we have gone before, and a Top 100 Heart Hospital. 

When we arrived he was quickly checked in, all the vital information was taken.  My father was directed to his room, blood was drawn quickily and vital equipment was attached.  While the nurse was drawing blood, she had to print out a label to put on the vile, so scanned his name tag using a palm pilot and printed the labels to a wireless label printer, right next to her.  In each room, there was a wall mounted computer, where the doctors and nurses could easily update the patients records, and vital data. The EKG machine, which also checked the blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature was integrated into the system.  Where at the click of a mouse a print out of his recent data showed up.  I was amazed at how efficiently all of the systems interacted with minimal user interaction. 

A few hours later after the decision was made that he was going to have a heart catheterization.   This was the most stressful part of the ordeal, while it is a relatively simple procedure, just the thought of something poking my father’s heart was nerveracking.  We were led to the waiting room, which is just for heart catheterization, and saw there were about fifteen other people waiting, at 8:00 PM.  My mother and I called family members to let them know what was going on, while cell phone reception was intermittent we dialed out using the house phones.  Family members called back on the house phone, I received text messages wondering what was going on. 

The entire time that we were waiting was about an hour, while the procedure only takes fifteen minutes at most.  When we were informed that he came out of surgery with flying colors.  We were then led into the recovery room, and we then found out that his arteries were narrower, than what they should be.   Wewaited for a long period of time, until he was taken to his room. 

We arrived home at around 11:15 PM, where we proceeded to get something to eat and go to bed.  I didn’t get into bed until midnight but it was much longer until I fell asleep, I was anxious and worried about him, all night.  That morning I was scheduled to take the SAT, I had to be at the test center by 7:45 and then my mother and I decided that we would call the College Board and reschedule the test for a small fee.  We didn’t want to take an important exam when I was up for most of the previous night and stressed out. 

When I was finally able to get some sleep, I woke up around 9:00 AM, and cleaned up the kitchen, and then gathered some items that my father wanted with him.  We arrived at the hospital at 1:00 PM, and he was still gone from his room, when he left for a CAT scan and an ultrasound at 11:30.  We met his roommate who was flown in from Havre de Grace, on Thursday and had two stints put into his heart.  He was very nice. 

My father’s roommate was also suffering from a cold, and I was instructed to wear a mask as I have chronic asthma, and numerous allergies.  We waited in his room for a few hours until he was finally discharged.  During this time waiting, I walked up and down the hall with my father, watched Scrubs and 30 Rock on my iPod, got a snack, visited the gift shop, and still had time to spare.  Towards the end, I saw a wheelchair that was left in the hall, and proceeded to fool with it for a few minutes. 

The nurse came in with the discharge papers, and instructions, and we were told to wait for transport.  So my mother went down to pull up the car, and I waited with my father.  After 10 minutes had passed we decided to take the wheel chair and wheel him down to the entrance my self.  We stopped to get something to eat, and came home.  The three of us, went back to bed for a few hours, and then got up. 

Today I slept in, did some homework, and then took my father to the grocery store.   

Saturday Night Live Quote

I was reading quotables from SNL.  This is perhaps my favorite one of the moment:

MEYERS — “A new bus in Tel Aviv has a yoga instructor onboard, who teaches passengers how to breathe correctly and relax. And if you can relax on a bus in Israel, you can relax anywhere.”

It aired on February 24, 2007 where Rainn Wilson hosted.

I Need to Quit Caffeine

Everytime, I go to a restaurant I get a Coke.  But usually within 20 minutes of finishing it, I get a throbbing headache that lasts for several hours. 

Right now this pain has been going on for five hours now, and I have already taken Tylenol. 

I dont drink anything with caffeine very often, maybe about once a week, the rest of the time it is either water or milk.  But when I go out, I just cannot resist ordering a Coke, because it tastes so good.

If you are looking for the place where they have the best Coke, I have found that Panera and Wegmans both are mixing the syrup just right. 

SNL Videos

Here are a couple of videos from Saturday Night Live:

First, Rainn Wilson’s monologue, of explaining how SNL is nothing like The Office:

Click for More

Weather

Weather this past week has been interesting.  We have had below freezing weather past few days, windchills below zero.  In Baltimore about six inches of snow fell, along with an inch of ice. 

As I watch my dog outside, who weighs 110 lbs, walk on snow, and leaves no depression.  Even when I walk, there is still no trace of us walking there. 

Today was the first day that was above freezing, and the snow and ice already started melting. 

NBC Chimes

This evening I was watching NBC as I usually do.  But this evening was strange, I kept hearing the NBC chime, everytime a show returned from a commercial and some times even during the show. Perhaps it is just my local affiliate WBAL-TV 11.   I find this really annoying.  Does anyone else feel this way?

EDIT: I realized it was the local affiliate, the sound everytime the ICE WARNING logo pops up.

My Webhost

Last Mother’s day I made a mistake, I purchased the Mother’s Day Special from Syris Internet Technologies.  It involved unlimited SQL databases, 5 gigs of space, and 100 gigs of bandwidth, all for $25 a year. 

Well for the past few months the service has been down.  It was unreliable, for my basic needs, an SQL database for WordPress, storage space, and uptime.  Sure not many people visit my website, but I do want my email to work all the time.  Currently I am looking for a new webhost, but WordPress.com seems to be pretty nice.