Hey, Wall Street, We’re Fed Up With Your Bull!

The Wall Street Bull drops a load on America as the NYPD line up to protect the bankers and brokers from peaceful protesters.

Errrr, not exactly trickle down is it?

Well, I’m more or less recovered from InterventionCon over the weekend. Thanks to Onezumi Hartstein and James Harknell for their work in creating this fun convention. Shoutouts to Ari Pramagioulis of Success Communications Group, Murder Nurse, Moxie Cat and all the other great people of Cosplay Burlesque. Congratulations Mookie, creator of Dominic Deegan on your impending doom, err, I mean marriage. Fellow artists Elaine Corvidae of Rivensol, Jennie Breeden of the Devils Panties, the gang at Interrobang Studios, my next table neighbors from Singed Cat and other studios. Good luck to First Law of Mad Science and Ninjas versus Vampires. Hi Andi from a table whose weblink I can’t find. And thanks to all the people who attended and especially those of you who bought something from me!

Now, back to business. I thought I might do something about the incredibly tacky game show beauty pageant known as the second Republican Debate last week with Wolf Blitzer seemingly oblivious to his role as successor to Bert Parks (There they are–the next US Presidents!) Bob Barker or Monty Hall. Was that a debate? Then I thought, oooooooo the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a much more IMPORTANT thing to celebrate. Darn, we finally will let patriotic Americans fight for their country without prying into their private lives! But then something that seemed to be slipping through the cracks came to my attention. SOMEONE FINALLY decided to protest against WALL STREET.

Due to getting ready for three conventions on three successive weekends, plus the disaster of the basement deluge (not to mention the death of my printer), the knowledge of the existence of OCCUPY WALL STREET seems to have slipped past me. As well as most of the mainstream news! As anyone with any common sense has realized, Wall Street went through a recovery after the banking bailout, but Main Street never did. That’s because Wall Street has usurped the reins of power in the United States and the common people no longer have a voice. President Obama promised to be a force for change, but his moneyed advisors led him by the nose to ignore the plight of the people. The Republican Party fights tooth and nail to protect each and every dollar of them, their true constituency, calling tax hikes on the luckiest of us “class warfare” when the REAL class warfare has been waged on the American middle-class since the days of plaster saint Ronald Reagan. The Democrats are little better, since our endless campaign season requires them to be funded by the money boys. Too long have the media paid attention to the faux populism of the Tea Party which is more intent on punishing their neighbors for a crust of bread than taking it from the bankers who have repossessed the bakery!

I am not anti-capitalist. Bankers and brokers–like the bacteria that live in the body and are necessary to digestion–they are a good thing when regulated. They provide the grease that the wheels of commerce need to turn. But when unregulated they turn into a cancer that sucks the life from the body, from the hearts and minds and hands of the American people. And that’s where we are today, and we’re dragging the rest of the world down with us. It’s about time to stop, to re-regulate commerce, to prosecute the miscreants for the crimes they have committed, to return power to the “little people” like you and me. Whether or not you agree with me, I urge you all to watch what is happening on the streets of New York.

But you might have to really look for it–it ain’t making front page. The money boys don’t want it there.

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The Rapture DID happen on Saturday–just nobody made it …

Newt Gingrich's head explodes from his own lack of consistency..

Newt stands up for his nomination--and sits down again.

First of all, I apologize for not posting last week and not putting up a note that I wasn’t posting. I’ve been getting headaches from eyestrain–I’ve needed new eyeglasses since the start of the year but there was always something that was more important to do. Finally getting a week where I didn’t have a damn thing in the way, I went to the eye doctor the week before. That didn’t stop the headaches, of course–it just set the ball in motion.

You see, my eyes are so screwy, it takes a couple of weeks to get a prescription filled. I’m near-sighted–with astigmatism. But old enough to need reading glasses. And prisms to get the two eyes to look in the same place. Now that doesn’t seem like a lot. But it’s enough to expect the glasses to be screwed up the first time they send them back. I told the fitter this as I went to try them on. He laughed. Then three hours later when he admitted–ooooo, yes, they put the lens centers in two different places–they went back for the second try.

Now, regular readers will know that I am not an excitable person. Do I get mad at the smallest things? Never! It’s the big f#$%^&s that get me angry! So I expect two tries to get them right. It’s not until we get to the third try that doesn’t work that I get PO’d! Since it takes a couple of weeks between each try. And the fourth try arrives nearly two months after the eye exam. In the meantime, I’m still getting eyestrain headaches. And last weekend, I wrote a note saying no post. But forgot to post it. Mea culpa.

Well, much has happened. It’s been a good week for sex scandals! We found porn on Osama’s hard drives. And I do mean hard! That probably isn’t a scandal to anyone except a “hardline” Islamic fundamentalist, but give a guy a break–he was a “hard” man to classify. He wasn’t a holy man. Just a man interested in holes…

Arnold Schwarzenegger showed that his commitment to family values was so high, he actually had two of them. Families, that is. One with his wife, Maria Shriver, and one with his housekeeper, Mrs. Baby Mommy. “Who iss your Daddy and vat doess he do?” Ahhh, gotta watch out for them gays, destroying the institution of marriage. That’s OUR job!

And Dom Strauss-Kahn made the discovery that power is not ALWAYS the ultimate aphrodisiac and when a woman screams NO and runs away, she doesn’t mean, “Give it to me in the face, you sexy hunk!” Not that anyone would call DSK a sexy hunk. Except maybe Claude Levi-Strauss or Ben Stein. Imagine, an economist needing to get sex by force. You’d think he was a short ugly uninteresting toad. Hey, he IS a short ugly uninteresting toad! Next Case!

And finally, a maybe. Newt Gingrich has been busily digging himself a hole to stand in by backtracking over his campaign and running over it until it can’t make an insurance claim against him. Imagine the King of Sunday morning snore fests being taken by surprise by DAVID GREGORY??? Well, it seems he’d been keeping a half mil debt at Tiffany’s for a few years. Hmmmmmm, did the third MRS. GINGRICH know about this? All I can say is–she’d better not check into a hospital anytime soon…

Sorry, the Rapture didn’t take place last Saturday. Damn! I was counting on getting the neighbor’s 60 inch TV in the post-Rapture looting!

See you next week

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Just Stand At Attention and Yell Semper Fi

SecDef Robert Gates defends the record of Marine General James Mattis who now only thinks it's a heck of a lot of fun to shoot people.

Gimme an OO-RAH!

It’s been a good week for hoof-in-mouth disease! First we have Lindsay Lohan, who was photographed at her probation hearing with her fingers on her lips and the words F*U*C*K*Y*O*U scrolled neatly on her fingernails. What she was doing with her fingers on her bottom lip is beyond me, probably playing BLERM with her lip, thinking the judge might think it was funny!

Well, I got news for you, Lindsay. The judge wasn’t all that thrilled. Would somebody PLEEZE tell that girl that this ISN’T A MOVIE! We’re not in Disney World anymore–the laws hold–especially the ones about cause and effect! Actions do have consequences. Oh well, maybe some time in the slammer (maybe 9 out of 90 days?) will have some effect. It seemed to work on Paris Hilton. On the other hands, if her friends are right, LL might spend the entire time in withdrawal from nicotine.

Then we have our new man at CentCom, General James Mattis. Since General Petraeus is taking over the post of hoof-in-mouth specialist General McChrystal, his old post at CentCom needs re-filling. Enter James Matiss of the US Marines! OO-RAH!! Another victim of hoof-in-mouth on the scope! UH-OH!

Looks like someone unearthed a video of him saying was fun it was to shoot people. He meant the enemy, of course. Even a Marine General isn’t crazy enough to mean it was fun to shoot at friends. Or random people, although that does seem to be the nature of targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. SecDef Robert Gates said we shouldn’t pay any attention to that video. It was five whole years ago and General Mattis has learned his lesson. He now knows it’s not fun to shoot civilians. At least to admit it. And if anyone asks him anything he hasn’t been given the answer for, he’ll just stand at attention and yell “Semper Fi.” Confuses everyone–works all the time.

Anyway, it’s been a good week for misstatements–looks like the only guy NOT getting into trouble has been Paul the Octopus. What’s that? Even the Germans want to turn him into sushi for not predicting them to win the World Cup? Hey football fans–he’s a psychic, not a witch doctor. Get it straight! Paul did. Besides, he’ll taste awful with wasabi!

But we all have to agree–Paul is one cephalopod who doesn’t just suck for a living!

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Or maybe it’s just the hot air cloud over Rush’s studio…

Too big to nail?

Well, our natural world seems to be having its fun with us as a huge ash cloud erupts from Mount Eyjafjallajokull (Eye-ya-falafel-cul?) and cuts off Europe from air travel for several days. This is not the first time such a huge cloud has occurred: there was the famous Mt. St. Helens eruption back in 1980. The centuries have been dotted with darknesses “enveloping the whole of Europe” as the description of one 5th century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that, curiously enough, signaled the start of the Dark Ages (although the Dark Ages could have been presaged by an eruption of Mount Etna in 417, on whose dating, I, in an earlier incarnation as an historian, wrote a paper on in 1990 (Olympiodorus’ Eruption of Mount Etna: a possible dating of 417. EOS: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 71:329-334)). Rush Limbaugh has been having fun with it, calling attention to Obama’s statement on the passing of the health care bill that the world hasn’t ended yet. I certainly hope the Almighty has better aim than to punish Europe for OUR supposed transgression, so I shall assume that Rush-boy is being ironic, should he be capable of such complexity of thought.

But with such a global disaster, it might be better to look for a more global transgression, and I think we have our candidate at Goldman Sachs. Their financial manipulations–along with other august companies–managed to pull off a global economic disaster, yet their CEO Lloyd Blankfein had the effrontery to make a positively BLASPHEMOUS statement that he was “doing God’s work” while bankrupting the entire world. Now if I know one thing about Our Lord God Jehovah, you can kill millions of people and He won’t bat an eyelash, but say one thing wrong about Him and all Armageddon is gonna bust loose. On top of all, Goldman Sachs has the sheer CHUTZPAH to announce 5 billion dollars in bonuses to be paid to its executives–you know, the ones who bet short on the world disaster they themselves engineered–and you say, enough is enough.

The teabaggers have it all wrong–the cause of our ills is not the government–tho it’s not helping by spending 20 times the amount that could eliminate world hunger on a military that has gotten itself bogged down in the middle of a desert for 8 years. It’s these bankers who think God’s work consists of lining their pockets with our money. They’re no better than the guy who is going to the track and convinces you to bet on a certain longshot that he says he has a tip that it can’t loose. Then, when he goes to the track, bets all YOUR money on the favorite and after the race, picks up one of the losing tickets off the floor to give you with the lame explanation that he’s never gonna listen to THAT TIPSTER again. It’s beyond time that they should be sued for fraud. It’s about time that they should be INDICTED for it!

In the meantime, Europe is enjoying a slower pace and beautiful sunsets. Maybe Mt. St. Palin in Alaska will explode in a few years and we’ll be the lucky ones

I went to a small con this weekend in Alexandria called T-MODE and had a great time. The advantage of a small con is its size–you can meet everyone and do everything. Naturally, you have a bigger selection of activities at a big con, but you always wind up missing some things you would have enjoyed. The organizers of T-MODE called it “fun-sized” and that it was. I got to hear a lovely singer Emi Meyer (also on MySpace–beautiful woman, beautiful voice, beautiful music) and hip hop artist Shing02 and DJ Icewater. I had a TAIKO DRUM LESSON from Doug Manring (Power Kix Drum Team and Real School of Rock) as well as meeting the new voice of Haruhi Suzumiya and a great singer herself Cristina Vee. Also there were our friends from the webcomic Geeks Next Door, who gave sessions ON webcomics, and Interrobang Studios, whose artist Sarah Martinez, gave a great session on surviving Artist’s Alley. I didn’t get to meet the vocal artist Mega Ran (aka Random) or voice actor Todd Haberkorn, or Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the US–I did have to run home and feed the kitten occasionally LOL. Oh and I nearly forgot, I got interviewed for Vidgle and I hope to have up a link next week to my podcast with them Congratulations to the organizers–I had a great time. My personal photos will be up on my Flicker account later this week.