Sullying My Good Name

I have a favor to ask of the asshole who is out there using my debit card number. Can you try to be a little classier about it? I mean, I guess it's not that far of a leap in imagination to suppose that I spent my weekend racking up hefty charges at latinasfuckbyblacks.com and shelovesnegrodick.com, but napster?

Please, I have standards.

Casual Casualties

What a beautiful day in America. Who ever thought they'd see this day in their lifetime? Today celebrates forty-five years living in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a bright and promising future wherein all of America's children will achieve her greatest promises, no matter what their skin color or background. For the first time in forty-five years, we awoke to a reality that is better than Dr. King's dream. When Barack Obama takes the stage tonight to accept the Democratic nomination, it will be that much easier to believe that we are closer than ever to becoming a unified, harmonious society. Let's all reach out to our fellow humans and give them a giant panda hug (because pandas are black and white and all that jazz).

And yet, painful reminders abound of how far we have to go before that dream is fully realized.

Is it fair for the seamstress who lovingly crafts KKK robes to ask God to bless them before they're shipped off to guys who are going to burn crosses?

And one can only hope that our children's children will live in a world where every American can feel comfortable buying America's premiere outfitter of casual comfort:

African-American Boycott of L.L. Bean Enters 80th Year

That Really Is A Lotta Love

Watching the Closing Ceremonies last Sunday, I couldn't help but wonder how in the hell London plans to follow Beijing. They put on quite an impressive show for the world -- not without its subtleties. As Anthony Lane astutely noted,

China supports a population of 1.3 billion, and the knowledge of that resource was never far away... One townful of men and women would race on, swarm into a shape, and race off, to be replaced by the next... deep below the spectacle, there was an unspoken suggestion that it would be an extremely bad idea to go to war against this nation.

On an unrelated note, only one male athlete in the entire games was openly gay (gold-medal winner), a statistic that profoundly saddened me.

It seems that London has come up with a strategy to top Beijing and also entice more openly gay athletes to the games without resorting to vague threats of colonialism. During the closing ceremonies, a London tour bus rolled in with a cadre of what seemed to be the stars of the West End doing the robot, I imagine to represent the awkward male, white pub dwellers of London. Jimmy Page rose out of the top of the bus, playing Whole Lotta Love.

Right about the point where the lyrics go "way down inside/way down inside you/you need it need my love, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, / I wanna be your backdoor man," none other than David Beckham popped out of the bus.

Let me remind you that David Beckham looks like this:
So, while England evidently has a country to run, mouths to feed, social programs to run, blahdy bladhy, blah, and seems far less willing than China to blow its national budget for the next 600 years, they are willing to offer the opportunity to have anal sex with David Beckham. Better still, since you'll be serenaded by Jimmy Page, you won't even have to listen to Beckham's pipsqueak excuse for a voice.

I'm guessing there's people out there who would pay $40 billion for that - especially since in 2012, that'll be worth approximately £49.95. Or 20 yuan...

What a Cad

I gave Barack Obama my number, and now he won't even text me.

I even wore a dress with pockets today so that I could carry my phone around.

Siiiiiigh. Maybe he's just not that into my vote.

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Dammit, that didn't work either.

Like the Circus but More Expensive

I .

LOVE.

THE.

OLYMPICS.

Citius, altius, fortius - Latin for glory, gold, and cultural chauvinism.

I love how all other stories are trumped by the games and the surrounding media, ads, and otherwise Olympic blitzkrieg. War in Georgia? Meh. That's nothing compared to the endless Budweiser and Gillette commercials - I'm on tenterhooks to find out if the Gillette guy finally gets a clean shave and his perspiration under control so he can sleep with the cute girl and still run the meeting.

Michael Phelps hasn't had a race in four days, but the media still can't get enough of him. I think I heard this morning that they're going to change the name of the swimmer's Baltimore neighborhood from Fell's Point to Phelps Point - a move heralded by legions of gangly guys who used to get picked on.

Here's what intrigues me most about these Olympics. If the Chinese are hosting, and they're commies, how will the Cubans defect? Is that why they're getting rid of baseball?

What with all the hustle, bustle, and 40 billion-with-a-B dollars spent on the Olympics, you may have missed this li'l gem of a story - I did until alert reader Chris pointed it out:

A cloned dog, a Mormon in mink-lined handcuffs and a tantalising mystery

Almost more controversial than how many of the girls in gymnastics are not 16 years old (95.3%).

Beaky Clean Fun

Canvassers near my office building passed out fliers decrying bird watching as pornographic. "A private research group, the Good Conduct Society, has discovered Bird Watchers are more sexually active than others," the flier claims. It goes on to vilify the ostensible voyeurs, and their wicked means of debauchery:

The elderly find that Bird Watching is not strenuous. And this erotic experience can be enjoyed privately through binoculars. "Most disturbing," said the the Society's director, Anaida Krok, "are the groups of Bird Watchers seeking vicarious sexual gratification in the woods. Shamelessly, they blatantly observe God's defenseless creatures mating."

I can't help wondering if Anaida Krok is a krok o' bird droppings. I had two lovebirds growing up (true story: their names were Macaroni and Cheese), and they didn't seem too worried about privacy, forgoing the privacy of God's woods or even the broom closet to mate right out there in the open on my nightstand. Does that still count? Was I inadvertently a child bird pornographer?
I'm not making this up; you can see the hard work of the good people at the Good Conduct Society's website, stopbirdporn.org. And remember, Dot Org = legit organization. But the million dollar question for the day remains -- are the bird chastity belt wielders weirder than this li'l gem o' the internets?