...and the winner is.....

Just on a whim, I did a google search of the phrases "George W. Bush is the Antichrist" and "John Kerry is the Antichrist"

Bush won: some ten plus pages of links as opposed to Kerry's rather paltry eight.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.....

Fat Furniture

The colonel and I ventured into a furniture store the other day: He wants to buy a new sofa, and my task was to make sure that he doesn't buy something that will drive me nuts.

We went to one of Our Better Stores (no Levitz for me - and nothing with the word "warehouse" in the title) and observed the available wares. It occured to me that, much like the general populace, furniture is getting bigger - but not necessarily better. We looked at overstuffed sofa after overstuffed sofa - the kind that really would inspire one to become a couch potato. Certain things we agreed on: built-in cup holders are tacky, pull-out leg rests are an abomination, and overly large furniture is for hotel lobbies and people who feel that Monica's apartment on "Friends" is the last word in style. The fact that we were able to get through this little visit to this department without violence says a lot about the dynamics of our relationship.

After what seemed like hours of soul-crushing banality, we did settle on a quasi-mission sort of leather affair that both of us could find nice things to say about. He didn't buy it of course - the colonel approaches this sort of thing cautiously, as one would a particularly dicey elective surgery - but at least we found a common ground. While I would love everything to be held in some sort of stasis circa 1964, I realize that there are people that don't share that view (philistines!) and that one does have to interact with them. Perhaps that's part of my new found maturity.

In the pantheon of taste and decency, prostitution usually doesn't rank very high. Especially closeted Republican "escorts" who engage in military fetishes. That's why This story is so delicious. It seems that a right-wing journalist who was recently expelled from the White House press corps for being just TOO partisan is a rent boy on the side!

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

"Bulldog" is just so tacky of a nickname for a hooker. Don't you agree?

A break from taste and decency

We here at danlangdon.com received some rather sad news recently. One of the sons of our former babysitter was killed in Iraq, in that stupid war that foisted off on the American people by the liars in the Bush Administration.

I never knew Thomas Houser. He was born the year I blew town for good. But I knew his mother, father and grandparents. He was only 22. And now his brother Joe is following him to Iraq.

You can read about Thomas at:
http://www.militarycity.com/valor/585184.html

I hope that America will wake up to the actions of the people in power, so that more young Americans will not have to die in frivilous wars.

In which I descend into the lowest depths.....

Dear Readers,

Last night I did it. I walked into the belly of the best. I stared down the barrel of the gun. I faced my deepest taste-and-breeding fear, and it was as awful as I imagined it would be.

Yes, dear readers, I went to a Wal-Mart.

I hasten to add, right up front, that I did not buy anything. I tried to find a way to cost them something (like going to the bathroom) but I most decidedly did not buy anything.

My first impression was that it smelled like an old K-Mart, and looked like those discount stores you see in New Jersey on the approach to the George Washington Bridge.

Then there was the music. From the “home entertainment center” came a horrible mix of country and wal-mart grade Hip-Hop. It was like an eavesdrop into hell.

Finally, there were the people. If this is the future of America, and I’m suddenly very afraid it is, we are definitely not going to be anything that other countries have to worry about. A bigger bunch of slack-jawed yokels I have never seen. I can say with certainty that I was the handsomest, most intelligent, and most tasteful person in the establishment (but that’s always true, isn’t it?)

I should have listened to my mother, who told me in no uncertain terms “That’s where the trash shops. You don’t want to go there” for she was right: Scowling, ample-rumped women ignoring their screaming trashy children. Sour looking men, angry at their circumstances, glared at cans of motor oil. Groups of teenagers, undoubtedly heading towards premature parenthood, leering at each other in the music department.

The store seems to egg on this lowbrow behavior, by sadistically making frequent screechy announcements about how the “team” (i.e. employees – nothing good ever came from a company that calls it’s employees “team members, by the way) should be in “full frontal defense” and other inane sports terms. As we all know, in Our Better Stores employees are informed about store activities with a series of chimes, or perhaps a tasteful announcement, but I don’t think this “team” would be able to remember anything of such complexity.

But something good came of this misadventure. Just as I thought I’d reached my breaking point (somewhere in the home furnishings department) the cacophony stopped and there, blasted throughout the store, was the sound of a bagpipe playing “Amazing Grace”

I hate that song. And I hate bagpipes. And I really hate bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace”. And I hate Wal-Mart. Three things that I hate, all together, and I didn’t have an aneurysm.

It just proves Nietzsche right: That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger."