Weekend Update - Apocalypse Edition

(There are legends and then there are legends. Eugene is a legendary town, what with your Grateful Dead types and your Ken Kesey types and your jeans-wearing Governors telling tourists to visit but don't stay, Oregon, and especially Eugene, is, well, mygod you gotta love this place. People can become legendary here, but they really really have to work at it. You can't just walk around downtown with a funny hat and expect to be treated like a legend. Not in this town. We demand more. With that in mind, and with the authority granted me by a young hippy girl with no top on at the Oregon Country Fair in 1981, I would like to declare someone legendary. His name is Brewster, and he and his bicycle-with-trailer apparently have been banned from riding any of the local buses, and Brewster, in his mid 40's, who has taken the art of holding a grudge to a completely new level, rides daily by the main LTD bus stations in our area. Suddenly he'll shoot a couple blasts from his boat-type air horn and then shout at the top of his lungs "L...T...D can lick my hairy, sweaty nut sack!" He's been doing this most every day, rain or shine, for over 2 years. During football season he'll preface his mantra with "Go Ducks!" Add this: a couple times a year our legendary town holds what is called a "naked bike ride" to protest something, can't remember what at this point. Participants in various stages of undress ride in a group around town during the evening hours. All harmless fun I suppose, until earlier this month when our boy Brewster decided to join in. I didn't see this myself, but the report is that when the group approached the LTD bus station downtown, Brewster was seen in the middle of pack, stark naked, honking his horn and yelling his legendary phrase. To everyone's dismay, it's also reported that our boy Brewster was quite erect at the time. Therefore, I officially declare that from this day forward, John Brewster is a Eugene Legend. But I digress ...)

• The oily disaster that is the BP Gulf Oil Spill Clusterf**k continues unabated. Mark Morford is beginning to believe this all is the sign of the coming apocalypse. He offers us two Worst Case Scenerios and then this grand finale: A new survey says that a disturbingly large percentage of Americans -- 40 percent, to be exact -- actually believe Jesus will return by 2050, likely riding on the back of a flaming asteroid (30 percent think one will hit us by then), waving a cowboy hat and yodeling as he careens toward our hapless blue dot of inequity, pain and lousy AT&T reception. This one calls for a trip to the liquor store.
• We generally love and agree with Frank Rich, a senior editorialist for the New York Times. Here he discusses President Obama's response to the disaster in the Gulf, and it's well worth the read. Click here.
• Arthur in Marin County writes: "Drill baby drill! I had forgotten what an absurd mantra of the 2008 campaign that cry had become, lead of course by Sarah Palin." Also, "In the whole discussion over the Gulf Oil spill there are some things I did not know. For example, all of the deep water drilling only started on Bush II's watch and it is now a major part of the oil production in the Gulf. No wonder people are fighting to keep the right to continue to do it. Money."
• Apparently our economy isn't in all that bad of a shape. Our beloved government is spending $517 Million to develop a blimp! to spy on Afghanistans. Cool! "This opportunity leverages our longstanding leadership positions in developing innovative unmanned air vehicles, C4ISR weapon systems, and leading edge systems integration, and moves Northrop Grumman into this rapidly emerging market space of airships for the military and homeland defense arenas," said Gary Ervin, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems sector. It's shit like this that makes me so proud to pay my taxes on time. (Sorry, that trip to the liquor store is getting to me...)
• Someone explain this one to me. Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot has been bragging about receiving a deluge of attention from women since confessing to the murder of Stephany Flores. Apparently murderers in prison get all kinds of letters filled with offers of marriage and whatever from lonely women. What? Oh, it's a fetish? Oh brother. That calls for another drink. I'm outta here. Get out there and mow that lawn.

Weekend Update - Father's Day Edition

(Endless make-up baseball games. The Kid is playing baseball, complete with uniform and cup! to protect those precious family jewels, and because of this terrible Oregon spring, the weather hasn't cooperated one little bit. So whenever there's a break in the rain they play make-up games. He's pretty good, actually. He's not afraid to slide, he's got a pretty good arm for an 11 year-old, and he's always ready to crowd the base and take one for the team. That last part I wish he'd stop doing, but what the hey. It's Father's Day, and I'm certainly the proud father in this picture. It's the middle of June fer crissakes, and we have yet to have an 80 degree day. Can we blame this on BP? But I digress ...)

• Let's start with some wonderfully good news, my friends. For those of you who insist on believing in god, I'm here to tell you he seems to have a really good sense of humor. Why else would he decide to send a lightening bolt down and totally destroy a 6-story statue of Jesus? Apparently god is just a regular guy. You ever have that fine, epiphanic moment when you realize an eyesore's an eyesore and it's time for some, you know, housecleaning? And what better way to rid yourself of some of the more hideous crap laying about than maybe tossing it into a nice bonfire? By the highway? In Ohio? God has those moments, too. Something about this story I just love. Mark Morford reports.
• If you have to be crazy to run for office, consider if you will Rick Barber, a "tea party" candidate for congress, who seems to be avocating the voilent overthrow of the government. Click Here.
• And speaking of idiots, here's an evangelist who believes homosexuality, headaches, and dandruff are all caused by demons - gay demons, headache demons, and demons of dandruff. And it seems that Bishop Harry Jackson was mad because the Obama White House invited the Secular Student Alliance to a meeting of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Shame, shame.
• In yachting news this week, BP chief executive Tony Hayward took a day off Saturday to see his 52-foot yacht "Bob" compete in a glitzy race off England's shore, a leisure trip that further infuriated residents of the oil-stained Gulf Coast. Well gosh, Tony hasn't had a day off ever since his oil rig exploded. What concerns me is the imagination it took for a multi-millionaire oil executive to name his yacht "Bob."
• It's called the "Active Denial System," and apparently it's some sort of high-tech microwave "pain ray" that makes whoever it's used against feel like they're on fire. And guess what? It's being "tested" right now in Afghanistan. Now if that isn't called "winning the hearts and minds," I don't know what is. God bless America.
• Check out this book review: The Overton Window is, quite simply, a failure as a piece of fiction. The book is billed as a "thriller," but it is mind-numbingly boring, with pages upon pages spent rehashing long-winded, anti-big government sermonizing thinly disguised as "dialogue." It is filled with plot holes, inexplicable character motivations, tired clichés, characters who are introduced out of left field only to conveniently advance the inane plot, other characters that exist for no apparent reason, and characters we are supposed to like who say things like "don't tease the panther." Hardly good enough for a door stop. The author? Our very own whipping boy-idiot Glenn Beck.

Weekend Update - Waiting for Spring

(I'm up very early this morning. Something woke me with a kind of foreboding feeling, like something was about to happen, or perhaps the feeling animals have minutes before an earthquake. It was quiet. That was the problem. There was no water dripping in the downspout outside the bedroom window. Must have stopped raining for a moment, I thought to myself, and turned over to catch a few more winks. And then it happened. From under the very bottom of the curtain a shaft of intensely golden light appeared on the floor. Suddenly the cat and the dog both appeared and threw themselves on the floor in the light, tummies up. "Mother!" I yelled to my wife, "wake up! It's THE SUN! THE SUN!" My heart pounding with anticipation, I yanked clumsily at the shades, pulling one side completely off its hanger. With both hands I ripped open the curtain, just as the light disappeared back into the heavy layer of grayness. But for a fleeting moment, just one wonderful moment, I saw the sun. Thank you Jesus. 50% chance of showers this afternoon. But I digress ...)

• The apocalyptic disaster that is the BP Oil Spill is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen on television news, right up there with the Katrina fiasco, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered if Louisiana and surrounding states are somehow cursed. I'm sure Pat Robertson thinks so, those oily, dying pelicans are probably gay. But our friend Mark Morford has found a sort of savage grace, a tragic and terrible beauty to it all. He writes "Behold, Our Dark, Magnificent Horror."


• Some things in America, no matter how hard we try, will ever change. Like racism, for example. The election of Barak Obama to the office of President of the United States has apparently brought some very ugly white people out of their dirty little closets. Ladies and gentlemen I give you this disturbing little story from the weird state called Arizona: Click Here


• Here's a fascinating-yet-very-disturbing Media Matters column by Ben Dimiero that once again finds Glenn Beck winning the Bad Hat Idiot of the Week Award. "The Glenn Beck Conundrum."


• You just know this one is going to be oodles of fun. The corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is finally getting under way, and right off the bat the judge appears to be just as batty as our beloved Blago. U.S. District Judge James Zagel did most of the questioning of potential jurors, a role he seemed to enjoy as he sometimes strayed from the relevant issues of jury service. He questioned 29 potential jurors on the first day of the selection process, joking with some and ripping into one whose flippancy had irked him. Watch this space.


• George W. Bush was quoted recently as he commented on the role of religion in his life, "I prayed a lot. I really did. I prayed before every major speech. I prayed before debates. It was a very important experience." Well he might want to give up a little prayer that he isn't indicted for torture. Seems he also freely admitted he had Khalid Sheik Mohammed waterboarded, and even proudly added, "and I'd do it again ..." The only thing he didn't say was "So what are you gonna do about it?"