Windows Keeps Locking Up, But I've Got This Reach-Around... Did I Say "Reach-Around"? Work-Around.
Is this post late?

Why yes, yes it is.

But I've got a wife home from work and a kid home from school. That means going places and doing things and people generally bothering me by asking me stuff. If my family weren't such a rich source of blogpost material, I would have ditched them long ago.

I have very little time to work up anything so Byzantine and ornate as a typical Bucket post today, but I would like to share my shock and outrage at the following cover of Time Magazine's "Persons of the Year" issue:

First of all, shame on Time Magazine for going so tabloid. For them to run a cover story about how Bono has shamelessly come between Bill and Melinda Gates. It's embarrassing for a publication whose reputation was built on phone conversations with Karl Rove and shark attacks.

Also I'm not sure I want to know the details of a story that involves Bono having sex with Bill Gates.

Wow, that sentence is going to get me some interesting search-engine hits.

OK, so Bono isn't actually splitting up the marriage of Bill and Melinda Gates. My point of contention is with the composition of the cover photo in general.

First mistake: putting Bill Gates out in front, overlaying the others, so that the first thing the eye is drawn to are his full, supple, besweatered man-boobs.

Second mistake: Bono's sunglasses. Less the photographer's fault there, I admit.

Third mistake: Melinda Gates relegated to the background. She's less featured in this picture than Bono's left shoulder. I admit it, it's a magnificent left shoulder so boldly and age-inappropriately denim-clad, but come on. Melinda Gates is in there for a reason. I have no idea what that reason is (I prefer Newsweek), but she deserves better. Stupid patriarchy.

Finally, unrelated to everything else I've said thus far, it's the time of the year when we all get out our Stalker Notebooks as Pops tells you in advance where he's going to be the next day.

Everyone ready?

There will be no Bucket tomorrow as the missus, the sprogs and I will be ensconced in the warm embrace of the Happiest Place on Earth, the Dizzle-nizzle. That's "Disneyland" for the un-Snoop-ified. There my family and I will celebrate the true meaning of Christmas by spending $4 for a Coke.

Meet you there. I'll be the tourist-looking dude pushing a stroller.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.5


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 2:23 PM   

 
With Angelic Host Proclaim
Expect short posts this week as I am surrounded by family and loved ones and all sorts of other things not conducive to blogging.

I know you're all dying to know what Pops got for Christmas this year.

In terms of material things, I got bupkes. Exactly what I asked for, incidentally.

Actually, that's not completely true. My wife and I got each other the same thing we've gotten each other every year since we've had kids: massive credit-card debt. It's become so predictable, I don't even bother wrapping it anymore. It's one of those special, special gifts you have to not save up all year in order to be able to not afford it when the holidays roll around. It's the kind of thing you can only manage with lots intense and special lack-of-planning.

She doesn't know this yet, but I've already gotten her (and myself) the same thing for next year.

Beyond that, I did get one other thing.

Keep in mind that some gifts can't be measured by size or shape or debt-incurred. Some speak straight to your heart.

This story is slightly complicated, but it's worth it.

Last Wednesday, devoted first-generation Bucketeer, the lovely and talented SJ put up this post about someone called Raul Julia Levy. Not Raul Julia, but apparently (not for sure, but apparently) his offspring.

To her post I made the following comment:
I would never have sex with that man. Mostly because no tabloid would pay me for the story if I did. I'm holding out for Wilmer Valderrama.

Har har, right? Juvenile, crude, lame pop-culture reference. Predictably Popsian. Not particularly offensive, I don't think, unless he'd had his heart set on having sex with me. Anyway, I forgot about it right around the time I made the comment.

And then, as if borne on the wings of Christmas angels, yesterday I got the following e-mail:

yo se lo que puedes hacer con tus dos titulos de histotia pendeja metetelos por el CULO



Raul

And it says it's from rauljuliajr@hotmail.com .

All of the joy and wonder of Christmas, right there in my free e-mail account (which is, to be fair, popsbucket@hotmail.com ). The only thing dampening my joy was my lack of familiarity with Spanish. I put it through BabelFish, but apparently BabelFish doesn't like translate abuse and potty-talk.

Desperate to know what was said, I referred the matter over to the lovely and talented Kati, whose blog is the Official Pops' Bucket Department of Teen Angst and Spanish-Language Translation. She also sometimes functions as the Bucket Ambassador to Armenia, but that status was provisional and then revoked when she returned from Armenia and was not caught smuggling hash out in balloons in her stomach.

According to Kati:

It says (or at least the best approximation of it that I can give you would be): I know what you can do with your two degrees in history asshole, shove them in your ass.

Anyways, that cracks me up. A lot.

Normally I would be offended that Kati would take such pleasure in seeing me misused in a foreign language, but I must say it also cracks me up. A lot.

It's a Christmas miracle.

Thanks, SJ. Thanks, Kati. Thank you, Jesus. I am one happy blogger.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 11:54 AM   

 
Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #24



Munich

starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Ciarán Hinds

directed by Steven Spielberg (Amblin', Duel, Always)



Of all the genres of film there are out there for people to enjoy, I can say without reservation that my favorite is the woman-and-repairman-talk-in-double-entendres-and-then-do-it genre. Some people call this "pornography," but remember, they said the same thing about Elvis Presley. Prudes. They would remake the same film starring Pat Boone and in the end, instead of doing it, they would, like, let the repairman fix whatever was ostensibly broken or some shit. And then pray. Bo-ring. If I wanted to be bored about religion, I'd go see Narnia. But at least there I'd get talking animals.

My second favorite genre of films is the Israeli-hit-squad-exacting-bloody-revenge-on-Palestinian-terrorists genre. It's a much less prolific genre than the first one. Basically all we've got is Raid on Entebbe. Which I haven't actually seen. So my first-hand knowledge of this genre isn't all that extensive, but I'll tell you, it sounds like it would be fascinating.

This Munich is directed by Steven Spielberg, which seems great on the surface, but we have to keep in mind that there are two Steven Speilbergs. There is the one who makes exciting stuff with lots of blood, monsters and/or things blowing up (Jaws, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds). You know, stuff I could actually watch.

Then there's the other Spielberg, the "serious" Spielberg, who makes long, boring, ponderous message movies with crushingly depressing endings and little bits of horrifyingly uncomfortable bits of psychological terror sprinkled in for good effect (The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan) all washed down by a big, frothy glass of fully-aged schmaltz. They're generally hailed as modern masterpieces, but I always found them sort of disjointed and scattered and ultimately disappointing. It's like he thinks we don't need space-aliens to hold our interest. The height of Hollywood arrogance, in my opinion.

I've read several reviews of Munich and I have yet to find one single reference to space-aliens. The signs are not good.

Further, the screenplay was written by Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer prize winning (red flag!) playwright (two red flags!) responsible for gobbling up hours and hours of HBO screen-time that could have otherwise been spent re-running Sopranos episodes with his d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e talky-talky-talky Angels in America. I'm worried that Munich might drag a little bit during the 3-hour stretch in the middle where everyone sits around, completely motionless except for their mouths, jabbering about nothing, glorying in their own nauseating cleverness and then having gay sex.

Regular Bucketeers know that I am all about the gay sex movies, but somehow I don't think that's going to be the focus here.

The central character of this movie is played by Australian hunkaman Eric Bana, most famous for his roles in The Hulk and as Hector opposite Brad Pitt's dick in Troy. No word as to whether or not he gets stripped to the waist in Munich, but judging from that track record, I'd say the odds are at least 50-50. So that should draw the ladies.

But what's in it for me, the poor, downtrodden hetero white man besides the random messy deaths of foreign people who may or may not be terrorists? Even the deaths are supposed to be "meaningful" and "plot-related", which immediately dims my ardour. It's all supposed to be about the morality of revenge and crap like that.

The last thing I want to do in a movie is learn something. That's the same reason I walked out of Arachnophobia; not because I was terrified and perhaps--perhaps--had wet myself but because it kept trying to inform me about spider biology and stuff. If anything, I need to walk out of a movie theater less smart than when I walked in. That's the whole point of entertainment: to bring us all down to the same stupid, stupid level so we can be fed the same thing across the widest demographic base as possible. It's our patriotic duty. Remember after 9/11, the president didn't ask us to join the Army or volunteer for the Red Cross or anything like that. He asked us to consume. And we can't all do that if we have different tastes informed by different levels of education and interests.

So I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Spielberg and his Smart-Guy deep-feeling movie. And this is knowing that the cast includes Ciarán Hinds, HBO's Cæsar himself. I have no interest in examining the depths and nuances of the human soul. The moral ambiguity of revenge-killers against targets whose guilt or even complicity is ambiguous, well, it all just sounds so... ambiguous. Four syllables, that word. If you have to use that many syllables to describe it, count me out. You can't even put an exclamation point behind it: ambiguous! See? It just looks stupid.

No aliens, minus. No cartoony Indy Jones Nazis, minus. No genetically engineered dinosaurs, minus. Possible gay sex, plus. Talky talky talky, minus. Ambiguous... eh, either way.

Best I can do here:

One (out of 3) on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

Your odds-on favorite for Best Picture then.


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 11:06 AM   

 
Pass The Tookie 'Pon The Left Hand Side
I don't know a lot about morality. I think my side business breeding and selling midgets to circuses to feed the lions is proof of that. So I'm not going to sit here in my special midget-hide blogger chair and tell you "I know this" or "I believe that." That would just be unseemly.

What I will say is that if you're Saddam Hussein, you shouldn't get to complain about being tortured. Just like if you're Paris Hilton, you shouldn't get to point out other people who are being tacky whores. And if you Donald Trump, you don't get to decry the breakdown of the traditional family.

What I'm saying is that sometimes our actions disqualify us from taking personal stands on certain issues.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly haven't turned into one of those eye-for-an-eye Republicans who thinks it's a good idea to torture Saddam Hussein. I'm more of the lily-livered Democrat type who thinks there is merit in acting and being better than your enemies by not torturing people.

That said, if somebody did knock Saddam around a little bit, well... It's a shame and all, but come on. Unless we're talking about chopping off appendages, car battery nipple clamps or us killing members his family,* there is no moral equivalency. He's going to have to try a lot harder if he wants to elicit international sympathy for his plight; his mangey, bearded, crazy-man plight.

I think Saddam could learn a lot from the example of Tookie Williams. I'm not saying founding a murderous street gang is the same as being a full-time military dictator with occasional flurries of genocide, but their fates look like they could end up being the same, so what has Saddam got to lose?

Tookie, to his credit, said all the right things about peace and turning a new leaf and non-violence. Plus he wrote a children's book warning about the dangers of gang-life.

Then look what happened: public outcry against his execution, hundreds of people at his funeral, including Snoop Dogg, who cried. That's right, the man who on the 1992 Dr. Dre album The Chronic included a piece called "Deeez Nuuuuts" cried. In public.

This can be a lesson to Saddam. At this rate, there's no way Snoop Dogg is going to cry at his funeral. If he follows his present course, the best he could hope for is Vanilla Ice looking sort of stoic. But that dude will show up anywhere.

It sounds stupid, but maybe Saddam should write a children's book warning kids about the dangers of rising through the ranks of an armed political party, seizing the reigns of a nation in a bloody coup and then reigning over said country in defiance of the international community for roughly 30 years. Sure, you get the private plane and all the rape rooms you want, but in the end they find you in a spider hole, all balled up and twitchy, looking like a dirty Moses with no teeth. And then, at the very end, you get executed by revenge-minded citizens. Total downer. If that doesn't put kids off dictatorship, nothing will.

If he's any good at pretending to be sincere, he might even get himself nominated for a Nobel peace prize. It sounds nuts, but hell, Arafat got one.

All of this will be for nothing if he doesn't take the most important step for jailhouse redemption: Saddam has to find Jesus.

OK, maybe not that exactly. I doubt that would go over too well what with all the crazy religious-based political parties over there getting elected to stuff. Is there such thing as a born-again Muslim? If there isn't, Saddam has to get busy inventing that shit. It probably sounds distasteful to him, but if born-again Muslims are anything like the more public born-again Christians in this country, it's all about marketing. You can be a hypocrite in private so long as you SAY the name of your Lord and Savior (whomever that may be) over and over again whenever the cameras are looking.

He should think about it. "I am the President of Iraq and this court holds no jurisdiction over me!" That dude is soooo easy to execute. Fun even. "I am a humble Muslim and I commit myself to the mercy of God and of his representatives on earth." Aw, man. Sure, it would still be easy to execute him (he is Saddam after all), but maybe he'd get a one or two person candle-light vigil then.

Or ooh! A Presidential Medal of Freedom.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.6


Pops


*= yeah, OK, so we did that one. But those kids were assholes.
- posted by Pops @ 11:23 AM   

 
Solstice
Ah, winter. Here at last.

The air turns chill, halls bedecked with holly boughs, Sugar-Plum Fairies streaming out of the methadone clinics to spread seasonally appropriate cheer, mornings waking to new snow fallen in a soft, even layer under a wide, unbroken crust of crystalline particulate ice lit to sparkling by a low winter sun.

At least that's the impression I get from the Christmas cards I've been getting. Wintry landscapes all looks so jauntily festive, but it just seems damp to me. After all, snow is just a bunch of weaponized water you can't drink. When I see snow, I see half a street-long mud-puddle in potentia. All that snow has to melt some time. But my snow=water fixation might be somewhat skewed by the fact that the only snow I see falling happens inside those little globes with the plastic villages inside. Intellectually I know your house doesn't have to be under (to scale would be roughly) 60 feet of water and then have your entire house and its immediate environs lifted and agitated by the hand of a giant in order to get snow, but with so little personal experience with it, I just can't be 100% sure.

Plus there's all the shoveling and the associated freezing that frankly I'm happy to do without.

Winter in Riverside means we have 4 out of 7 days per week under 80°. Usually. Just not Christmas Day this year, apparently. Today, this first day of winter, we're supposed to dip waaay down to about 76°. To ward off the chill, this is the time of year where I generally start wearing underwear again beneath my shorts.

It also means that, as of today, my oldest boy is off for Christmas Vacation. It's not "Winter Vacation" because he goes to Catholic school. They want me to know very specifically that this is Christmas vacation. In the spring we get Easter vacation, not the pagan "spring break," which is fine because I think at 6 years old, my son is too young for Jello shots anyway.

While I appreciate the no-alarm-clock period of my life resuming for this oh-so-short period of time, it does mean that I have to find some way to entertain three children instead of just two during the day now. They kill a couple of hours every afternoon sewing shirts for the Kathie Lee Gifford Collection up in the attic with the pack of refugee kids who also live here, but I can't leave them up there all day. The last thing I need is another hostage situation.

How this affects you, my loyal Bucketeers, is that fresh Bucket might be delayed by an hour or so every day as I leave behind Gluttony (for now... I'm gearing up for Saturday and Sunday) and indulge in a lot more Sloth. Hopefully the overall dip in personal commitment will not be reflected in the quality of my blogposts.

Alas, it is too late to save this one.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:48 AM   

 
Lex Majoris Partis
"It is the multitude which possess force, and wisdom must yield to that." -Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson said a lot of great things. Most of them after he was done banging one of his slaves. Or many just before. And some (probably) during.

You know what's sad? Whenever I hear or see Thomas Jefferson anywhere, I immediately think of slave-banging. That's wrong, isn't it? I don't think of the Declaration of Independence or two terms as president or the Louisiana Purchase or the extraordinary breadth and scope of his great gifts as a human being. It's a straight line, Jefferson-pow!-slave banging. It's gotten to the point where every time I see a nickel I sort of mutter "slave-fucker" under my breath without realizing it. Let me tell you it's gotten me into trouble more than once with the cashier at Big Dawg's Barbecue & Soul Food Joint. Just to be safe, I always pay with my debit card there now.

For all this, I blame Head of the Class. That was the show in which I first heard the name Sally Hemings. Goddamn Robin Givens. It wasn't bad enough she ruined Mike Tyson, she had to stick that in my head as well. For this I shall never forgive her. I'm going to tell her so next time I see her playing Mallory in Family Ties: The Musical at the Sir John Gielgud Wild West Steakhouse and Dinner Theater (try their famous Texas hash, made with real hash!).

The quote at the top of the post was supposed to remind me to talk about what I wanted to talk about today before I got distracted by the slave-banging thing. For that I apologize. But I think I can move past it and get to what I was getting to.

You know, it doesn't make it any easier when they make a movie about Jefferson and they get hot-ass Thandie Newton to play the exploited slave-girl. Sure, slave-banging is wrong, but come on. It's Thandie Newton. You can't blame Jefferson for betraying the principles he espoused or for exploiting his power-relationship to take a run at Thandie Newton. She's even got that English accent thing going on.

I'm sorry. It got away from me again. I was going to talk about democracies and majorities and the responsibility of the executive (such as it exists) to shape policy informed by the will of the governed when they speak in sufficient numbers. I'm just sure I was going to quote Tocqueville or something, but I can't really remember what I was going to say exactly...

OH YEAH!

US to cut troop levels

That's right. I was going to talk about the president being responsive to public opinion on this whole War On Terror thing and give him credit for recognizing the force of the multitude and fashioning it into governing wisdom. All this flak he's been getting about Iraq and finally we see some movement from the administration. It's almost too good to be true. Let's look at the headline again:

US to cut troop levels in Afghanistan

Aw, man.

Dude, wrong country. Aren't we supposed to be crawling all over Afghanistan and the Pakistan border smoking Osama bin Laden out of his hole? Dead or alive, or am I the only one who remembers that?

And all this hullabaloo lately has been about Iraq. That's a totally different country than Afghanistan, man.

Bah. So much for wisdom.

The worst part of the article is where it says "most of the 4,000 troops from the Louisiana-based Fourth Brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division will not be sent to Afghanistan early next year on rotation as previously scheduled."

All those soliders looking forward to getting the fuck out of Louisiana and going someplace quiet like Afghanistan are now being told that they have to stay. That just seems cruel to me.

Of course Louisiana also makes me think of Jefferson, who also once said: "This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."

And yet it was not a difference unfortunate enough to persuade him to keep it in his pants. And I've been to museums, I've seen Jefferson's pants. They can't have been easy to get it out of. Lots of strings and hooks and whatnot. But then again, he had some powerful motivation. We are, after all, talking about Thandie Newton.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.3


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:04 AM   

 
(No Longer) Wanted
Monday Lite usually means I spend about half or less of my regular time allotment on a blog post in the wake of what usually is a Sunday night masterpiece.

The non-masterpiece status of last nights post in conjunction with the dire and desperately needed public service I am about to provide all of you has compelled me to work nearly twice as long putting together the bulk of today's blogpost content. We're talking almost double digits in terms of minutes used. Don't thank me yet.

First, be terrified:

US freeing Saddam's "Dr Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax"

They're just letting them go. People with names like that, "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax". Now granted, not everyone can control what their name is. Brian and Marybeth Festering-Pustule are fine neighbors, if a little lax with where they let their dogs do their business.

But these people, this "Germ" and this "Anthrax" got their names by reputation. Now they'll be out running around on the streets germ-ing and anthrax-ing all over the place.

You, citizens, should be wary of these two. Avoid them at all costs. They are presumed armed and sickly. I have combed through the evidence and put together this composite sketch.



On the left is Dr. Germ and on the right is Mrs. Anthrax. In case you weren't sure.

Dr. Germ has no feet not because I ran out of room on my MS Paint screen but because my best information tells me he was rendered foot-less while experimenting with a killer strain of gout. Hoisted on his own petard on that one. You plays with fire, you gets burned, even if your name is Dr. Germ.

The good news is that you actually have to run directly in to him in order to risk exposure. His business is germs; less so chasing.

Mrs. Anthrax is a whole different kettle of fish. You can see she seems to be flying; this is her at her most dangerous: weaponized and airborne.

She has a ring on her left ring finger and is called "Mrs." Anthrax, but there is no mister back home. She is married only to mayhem. And the destruction of all things American. That's right, on top of everything else, she's a bigamist.

The symbol on her flowing gray angel-of-death robes looks like the "anarchy" sign, but don't be fooled. That's just to lure the Goth kids in closer.

If you should see either of these people, for God's sake take a picture and send it to me. It will mean that my blog has inspired someone to make ridiculous costumes and then wander into public view. Then I will KNOW I have made it.

You have been warned. God keep you safe. Our God I mean, not theirs. Their God wants you to get anthrax.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 0.4


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 1:41 PM