DEAR JOHN STEWART, DEAR STEPHEN COLBERT,

FUCK YOU, YOU ASS JOCKEYS.



















For the record I realize this is probably not their, personal decision, but it doesn't matter. I can blame whomever I want.

Bittorrent, here I come.

NEWS: HILLARY WAS DEFEATED BY NON-RASCIST SEXISTS

The Obligatory "Hillary's Crazy" picture.

Fuck the NYT right in their old grey lady pants.

Has anyone, for one second, thought that maybe if Obama[-rama] wins the nomination it's because 1) the best possible candidate won and 2) people are sick of -the Clintons and -Hillary's bullshit politicking?

I don't have time to really delve into this, but I call major bullshit that Hillary's failed campaign represents an "incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few [women] pursue high office in the first place."

Obviously there are still sex-based issues in most Western countries, but Obama's eventual nomination is purely a case of the best-possible candidate winning.

WRIST SHOTS: D.C. D-RAILED

Just when I was ready to hop aboard the Ovechkin Train and ride it deep into the playoffs (I swear he scored that game tying goal WITH HIS MIND), the Phucking Philthy Lyers win in OT to derail that dream.



HUET! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING? THE PUCK IS OVER THERE! Never mind, dumb ass. Remind me to never root for a team with a French goalie.

The matchups are now set in the Wales: Rangers @ Sidsburgh (Friday), and Philthy @ Montréal (Thursday), who will meet in the playoffs for the first time since 1989.

I can't even bear to watch the Flames/Sharks game . . .

T.I.H.™: PEOPLE

This is bound to be a frequent subject...hell, our blog subtitle basically requires that we hate people, but, despite my extreme cynicism (to the MAXXXX), I am still astonished by the idiocy of people on a fairly regular basis. I just don't understand how people can be so fucking stupid, time and again. I'm probably overly judgmental of people, but so what...that's my right.

Anyway, today's people-hater column is about the "environmental" wienies who eat organic food because it's "better" for them. Let me give a little background. My family is quite a bit to the left of the run-of-the-mill leftists. They are not communists, but probably socialist. They are very aware of the impact that their lives have on the earth. They are, in this vein, very environmentally conscious. I am significantly less so, but I take a lot of my environmental awareness from them. Like for example, just buying organic for organic's sake can be stupid. Did you know that in Peru they are clear-cutting old growth rain forest to plant "organic" coffee plants because the FDA's rules state that you have to prove five years of non-utilization of pesticides for an organic label...However, if it's virgin land, there's no such requirement. So these environmental yuppies are actually doing worse for the world because they insist that their beans be marked "Organic". I know a bunch of people like this, and it bugs me, a lot...It's like the Apple fanboys or someone who will only drive BMWs, they think they're better...IT'S ALL ABOUT MARKETING, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS.

Anyway, the NY Times has an article about organic vs fairtrade vs local-grown flowers. The line that pushed me to rant: "Why would [organic flowers] matter? We’re not eating them." I fucking hate people. I fucking hate people. I lost my copy of the study that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that organic was "better" for you. I'll buy organic if it's not that much more expensive, but I'm not convinced that's it's 200% better for me than non-organic foods. If I buy organic it's because I prefer that my consumption has a minimal impact on the world, not for some selfish asinine reason that has been drummed into my head by green marketeers. (I'm plenty selfish on other fronts, lest you worry).

I heard a story on the radio today about Greenpeace taking it to the [French] auto manufacturers because of the greenwashing of their vehicles. They are selling the same cars with the same motors that they sold 5 years ago, but now these cars are "green" and they're saving the world and they're "stopping global warming" (which is the environmental cause du jour, nothing more, nothing less IMHO). Greenpeace wants them to make actual strides for environmental cleanliness. And here I part ways with Greenpeace. While I have environmental sensibilities, I also think that the free market is a wonderful thing. I hate people who buy big H2-like SUVs, but if there's a market for it, then the auto makers should make them. I would like to see the market disappear, but how where the fuck does Greenpeace get off saying that a public company, like GM (or whomever), should be forced to stop making a profitable vehicle. My weakness is high-powered station wagons (necessary specs). Some of these people want a world to exist where no vehicle has over 100hp...Fuck that.

Enjoy your whale meat. (yes, I know it's Sea Shepherd Conversation Society members who were being held on the Japanese whaling ship, but this cracks me up to no end). I don't like whaling, but I find it delightfully ironic that they the Japanese whalers offered to feed the protesters whale meat.

NSFW: DREW CURTIS IS A BIG FAT ASSHOLE

I go to Fark from time to time...usually those times when I'm looking to kill 15 minutes or 3 hours, I happen onto their site to check out some of the crazy happenings of the world. It's like Yahoo! Odd News, but on a much grander scale...I never thought of Fark as any type of revolutionary thing...Although the idiots that spend their days on there are fucking scary...They have Photoshop contests that are posted at 12:51pm and there are 5 photoshopped pics up there by 12:55pm...That's dedication or something.

Anyway, I read yesterday that Drew Curtis, Fark's creator, was trying to copyright/trademark "NSFW". Obviously, like everyone else in the free world I said (and here I'm avoiding the obvious 'WTF'), "what a fucking idiot."

Today there's an interview with Drew (audio) and he explains himself. He wants to "make a statement about the state of copyright affairs." He does a good job at convincing the local DJ's (who wouldn't, they're local fucking DJs) that he's not looking to make money off of this. But who's he kidding. If he could go after (or send his little asshole minions from Fark.com after) every established site that uses NSFW...Holy shit, he'd make a mint for the three hours it took for the internets to make a new acronym.

I'm just going to get out ahead here and start the copyrighting procedure for DIBD (Drew is a big Dick) and DIBA (asshole) which will eventually replace NSFW in the lexicon. Patent pending, patent pending.

T.I.H.™: IDIOT REPORTERS FROM HELL

STUDY ABROAD QUERIED AFTER ITALY KILLING screams the fucking absolutely worthless headline on MSNBC today (edit - it's actually an AP article).

As with most main-stream media reports about things of which they know little, this story just enrages me to the point that I can't even think clearly...My brain just feeds out a stream of profanities.

It's hard (for me at least - I searched Google for a total of 2 minutes!) to determine the exact number of American students that study abroad each year, but if we consider that the American Institute for Foreign Exchange has 50,000 students exchanged each year (so one-half are Americans if it's a "true" exchange), that's 25,000 students for one program. Let's be conservative and say that it's double that (I'm sure it's more, but I don't want to over-estimate). That's 50,000 US students that go abroad every year and study at a foreign school. How many are arrested for murder or suspicion of murder? As far as I can remember the total number, after accounting for statistical variation inherent in this type of higher math, is one in the last 10 years or so (so 0.10/year). Yet all of the sudden we're going to start questioning study abroad programs. FUCK YOU NBC (and you too Billy G, since you prostitute your name to this "news" source) and the AP.

Some of the arguments against study abroad (which as a really short aside was an incredible experience for me. It very influential in my transition from a US college student to an adult): The students are going to these places to drink and do drugs (did anyone have any problems getting alcohol at their US university when they were under 21? drugs if that was your thing? yeah I didn't think so); It's only the "English-speaking" (Brits & Aussies count) who are raising Cain in the streets of these pristine "European capitals" (any reporter who has ever set foot in a European capital knows that it's not just the "anglos" who are running rampant...every weekend all types of students run amok in all the cities of Europe - just like...wait for it...the US. Amazingly college students will be college students, sans geographical limitations); it's obvious that these foreign bars are targeting anglos/Americans "out to get drunk" because the bar signs are in English!!! (and the restaurants in NYC are targeting the French only because they have Boeuf Bourguignon & Filet Mignon on the menu and sommeliers on staff). Fuck you MSNBC and the AP.

Quote of the day: “For [the foreign students], it is a new world. They come here, have fun and get trashed in the evening.” (Holy shit, 'cause that is so much more different that what I did as a college student in upstate NY - we all just sat around every night and watched prime-time TV or discussed the history of the Chinese dynasties).

Anyway, I just happened across this article and couldn't resist the urge to point out the absolute lunacy of it all.

Further proving that MSNBC is a highly reputable news source - the #3 viewed article today is "Did Reese and Jake join the mile-high club?" That, my friends, is hard-hitting, spare-no-feelings, news reporting right there.

Fuck you MSNBC. Oh and lest you forget, Bettman Sucks.

5 THINGS I HATE (T.I.H.™) THIS WEEK

I've been looking for a name of a semi-irregular column to write for OH and I hope to have found it...Using the simple, but straightforward "Things I Hate" line, I'll try to do a column from time to time (usually when the bile rises enough that I must get it out).

1. Now that the French Rugby Team has lost, I don't know who to root against for the Final...I guess the English, the drunken louses that they are, plus the RSA team is just so much more fun to watch...Watching the rose-emblems play is like watching the pre-strike Sabres play hockey. They can win, but it ain't pretty.
Anyway, this isn't about England, of course, it's about Le Quinze de France. I meant to post before, but didn't get around to it, but I hate, absolutely hate how the French are the biggest bandwagon jumpers in the history of, well, history. A month and a half ago, no one in France, save the South-west where rugby is popular, followed rugby at all. Then all of the sudden the French team started to win, people were proud to be French again, they were flying le tricolore for Christ's sake...No one ever flies the flag here, but Saturday they were on cars and buses and in windows. Maybe I just don't get it as a person or maybe I just don't get it as an American, but the whole 'pride via sport' just baffles the shit out of me. You're proud of your country or you're not, but winning against a rugby team from a country of 4.1 million people doesn't make you any more or less of a country in my eyes. Hey at least they didn't celebrate their soccer victory over the Faroe Islands (it's the town barber in goal!).

2. France again: The government has proposed DNA testing for immigrants who wish to take advantage of the familial regroupment. In France, if an immigrant gets formal residency s/he can bring their family to live with them. The government has proposed a voluntary (yeah, I agree with the protesters on this, nothing is 'voluntary') DNA testing the members that wish to come to France. They're dropping N-bombs (Nazi), they're talking about creating a national-database for immigrants, they're using terms like 'purity of blood', they're talking all kinds of bullshit. All of their complaints are complete bullshit to me. Yes, many immigrants are honest people and yes, we should respect everyone the same, but I cannot, do not, see the crime in asking someone who is requesting to be given permanent residency to prove that they are who they claim they are. The anti-testing agents are saying that people are sometimes adopted: Ok, make it clear to the immigration officials from the beginning and there's no problem. I just can't see how this is a problem, except when there's something to hide. I hate to take party lines here, but this reeks of the Left seeing a chink in the government's armor and and seizing on it...

3. “You shouldn’t have to buy a G.P.S. [to find a commercial route from LI to Upstate NY]”. Guess fucking what: YOU DON'T HAVE TO. Anyone who knows me, knows more-or-less how I feel about SUVs and especially about large, asinine, my-dick-is-so-small SUVs. Here's the scenario: You buy a Hummer H2 and some holier-than-thou guy in a Prius flips you off, you're tempted to run them over and they jump onto a Parkway that says "Passenger cars only". What do you do? Do you take the risk and go after him or do you stay on the interstate because you're driving a land-tank?
This NY Times article discusses the complicated mess that the tri-state parkways are for driving (it was created by bureaucrats, what the fuck do you expect?). This is hilarious:

[H]earses are allowed on the Merritt, but not if they are part of a procession. In New York, they are banned unless they are, among other funereal duties, part of a procession.

Anyway, they have some priceless quotes from the Chevy/GMC dealer in Bedford Hills, where they would like to sell more 3/4 ton pickup trucks, but can't really because they're too heavy to driven on NY parkways:
"[M]any people considered a GMC Sierra 2500 pickup with crew cab and diesel engine, at about 9,000 pounds fully loaded, a family car." Yep, I cross shop Chevy Impalas with these all the time.
"They can seat six comfortably, and some people want them to plow their driveways." In Bedford Hills? People are going to drop $60,000 on a truck, then plow their own driveways. Ha! Right after they climb to the summit of Mt. Marcy and haul in the 20 face cords of wood for the winter. Get the fuck out of here.

Oh and the quote above? Some rich kid from LI went upstate to buy a miniature horse. They had a horse trailer that couldn't take the parkways so they had to buy a GPS! Little tidbit: Google maps. It just took me 2 minutes to do there is only a few miles in the middle of the Island (and you have to avoid the Garden State) where they have to go out of their way. Oh and it was free, unless I had to print it, in which case you have to count the $0.0001 for paper and $0.005 for ink.

4. Hollywood. And the people who write about it...I usually avoid Time and Newsweek and their ilk like the plague, but Julie happened to procure a couple of magazines during one of her recent drug-mule runs. I was reading Time's article on "Nobody likes westerns, so why are they so good?" They state two facts and I see two glaring errors. #1, I like some Westerns - High Noon, Unforgiven, some Leone stuff, etc. As much as I like a Spaghetti Western here and again, they were not "good" movies. So then the article goes on for three pages talking about how much no one likes Westerns, while steadily stroking Brad Pitt for making "Blahblahblah Jesse James blahblahblah coward blahblah" (yeah that title is just too fucking long). Then they have the money-shot quote from James Mangold, the director of the remake of "3:10 to Yuma"

John Ford could just run amuck, carving out trails between sacred burial grounds and monuments. Now the environment is so protected in these national parks that we had 350 rangers watching every move if we step on one indigenous plant.

You heard it in time first, the Western is extinct because of the Department of the Interior. Fucking government. I wonder if it ever occurred to these dicks to rent private land from people? I'm sure that there are ranchers who would hire out their land for filming...

5. The "Service" Industry. Why is it so difficult to get someone who is supposed to be providing you with a service to actually provide you with said service? This is an ongoing problem here in France and of-late a really big pain in the ass. I don't get it; people are supposed to be getting me information, which would allow me to pay them money. But they don't do it. So I don't pay them...Simple as that.

Bonus: This is just to get the "Bettman sucks" tag on this post, but why the fuck hasn't anyone in Philly other than the two league-minimum-losers gotten in any trouble? I saw that Jeff touched on this, but it is fucking outrageous that those cunts (yep, I said it) up in Toronto just don't give a shit...They took a lot of heat about head shots and stuff, so they've decided to dish out the penalties, but I am convinced that it's just a way to shut up their critics (don't worry faithful readers , Open Hockey will always criticize Bettman, no matter what); I don't think they really care one way or another if people take/give head shots.

COMMIE LOVING ASSHOLES

I realize that this makes the last three posts mine, which is highly irregular, but I've had a lot of bitching to do lately and Kammann has been getting to know EL VOSTRO MAGNIFICO in highly intimate, non-blogging ways. Anyway, I just put Fark.com's RSS feed on my yahoo! and now I have occasion to get upset at stupid people on a daily basis.

Anyway, some people are mad at Google. Why you ask? Google changed the Google Logo to show the Sputnik in the second "g" on the 50th anniversary of the launch.

They see this as honoring the Soviet Union and claim that Google does nothing to honor American heroes, as any true "American" company should do...They have also celebrated the Chinese (fucking commies) New Year for the last 4 years, and not once have they celebrated that holy of holy holidays Christmas...Opting instead for the catch-all "Happy Holidays."

The anonymous site owner of zombietime.com, who created a competition to make a Memorial Day Google logo "to prove to Google that it wasn't too hard" said:

"I have no problem with Google commemorating obscure holidays or some of the trivial anniversaries that they note, just so long as they also make special logos for the more significant holidays."

WHAT? Who the fuck is he to tell a company with a $190 billion market cap what they have to do? Oh right, the owner of a site with some articles and pictures of middle-aged San Francisco gay men.

I just want to say one thing: The most beautiful thing about capitalism is: You don't have to use Google, you fucking putzes...

I don't care what you think, I actually like Google's use of obscure dates and references in their header. The fact of the matter is that the Soviets did beat the US to space with the Sputnik, I think that it counts for something and there's no reason that we should censor a 100% private company because we don't want today's kids to know that the "USSR" actually existed at one point.

Ok, I know that the point is that they should give "fair" coverage to red-blooded American dates...Ugh, why don't these people start focusing on important issues, like reducing carbon emissions and saving Antarctica...kidding, of course.

I'm actually embarrassed that I spend so much time on this non-story...I need to start hating important things, like bears and cheats named Dida.

EVERY ATTEMPT AT MASONRY

Right, so this post hasn't the slightest thing to do with masonry, but its about failure in general. Well, not failure per se: What's the word, I'm looking for...ah, incompetence...right. I'm not a superstitious person in general; I like the number 13, I walk on cracks, you know stuff like that; but today is one of those days that I am sure I'm going to avoid all people because I think that everyone is just fucked today.

1. I've been trying to figure out a way to get money from France to the US...I still have outstanding things in the states to pay (damn Sallie Mae), but without any income in the US, I have to find a way to transfer this from €uros to Dollars and from France to the US (I'm hoping that the dollar just take a huge shit and it turns out that my student loan is only worth like 50euros or something). Along came Paypal with, what I thought, would be a solution...Yet, it seems that they can't even make a website that works. I jumped through the 80,000 hoops to prove that I'm not a drug lord or supporting the Taliban with my "payments"...I get to the "Send Money"...I try to send from my French paypal persona to my US paypal persona and..."You can not use your credit card to complete this transaction at this time." Ok, fine, I'll use my bank account. I jump through 20 more flaming hoops to put my banking info in there and...."You can not use your credit card to complete this transaction at this time." Well no shit...That's why I'm trying to use my bank account...Fuck that. I go to email them to ask how the fuck I can pay if I can't use my credit card or my bank account...Food stamps? bartering? food-for-oil? I don't know. So I click through the 15 screens to get to the customer service request thing and "Page Not Found." Ok, no problem...I'll go through the US site and request info "Page Not Found." Ok fine, I'll call them, even though this is France where any number that would be a 1-800 number in the States is the equivalent of a 1-900 for pay number...so I paid 21 euro cents a minute to listen to Muzak...after 10 minutes I gave up on that too. So now I'm in Paypal purgatory...I need a new way to launder my money to the states...any ideas?

2. Our air conditioner/heater (it's one unit) is on the fritz (and not on Fritz-ha!) and we need to get it serviced...being that it's only 4 months old, it [had goddamn better] be under warranty. Julie spoke with a woman at the company*, who needed more technical information than Julie could give...So the woman said she'd call me right away...that was over 3 hours ago...It comes back to the for-pay lines...I don't want to pay 25cents a minute to talk to this woman who's supposed to call me.
*great aside: In France, customer support or customer service is called Service Apres Vente (SAV); literally After Sales Service...so using the same format this is of course the "ASS department".

3. La Poste has corporate programs where I can get a volume discount if I buy different shipping options in advance...I ordered them about 10 business days ago and was told they would be here in 4-5 business days. Of course I haven't seen them...Contact La Poste..."No no sir, everything is in order. You should probably get them today or tomorrow at the latest at '25 rue...'". "Umm, did you just say 25? 'Cause I'm at 13." The asshole who ordered these took down the wrong address.

I swear, if France didn't have this overwhelmingly huge bureaucracy that's it pillared on, the whole damn country would be on par with Nigeria and Bangladesh for efficiency and all other first world traits. And of course, being that La Poste is one of the biggest groups of incompetent bureaucrats in the entire country, you'd think that it would be ripe for other groups to come in and do that...Fed Ex is here and in a partnership with...wait for it: La Poste!! And UPS costs like 4 times more for exactly the same [lack of] service.

Don't get me wrong...if I were in the US, I would also hate the US as much as I do now...It's not that France is worse than the US...it's just that I'm here, now.