artbycassiday

Monday, February 24, 2014

Arizona State Department of Gender Preference Detection and Enforcement

Breaking News: In the event that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer does not veto the anti-gay "religious freedom" act and it goes into effect, Arizona legislators are scrambling to come up with a "gay" test for businesses to administer to customers prior to receiving services. "A questionnaire is a possibility: favorite color? if men answer "pink" then they are probably gay. Or if their wrists appear limp, then that's a clue. You can check their underwear, too. Thong underwear on a man is a definite tip-off. Finally, if a man orders a salad instead of french fries, you should probably err on the side of caution and refuse to serve and ask that customer to leave. Women with androgynous names like Pat, Leslie, Morgan, or Kelsey should be treated with caution as well as women wearing pants. We will be developing more sophisticated profiling methods including automated screening Facebook pages, tapping into peoples' telephone records, accessing credit card payment histories, and genetic marker testing. A simple pin prick of a finger at the entrance to the local Walmart with a computerized genetic analyzer will be able to kick out a gender preference result in seconds. We are planning to create a State Department of Gender Preference Detection with the goal of creating an instant back-ground check system similar to that desired to gun control advocates......Facial recognition software installed in all business will automate gender preference identification as soon as a customer walks in the door in the future.Our ultimate goal is to be as unobtrusive as a trans-vaginal probe or prostate exam."

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Happy Meals, Ted Nugent, the XL Pipeline, and Saxophone Jokes

A Chiropractor in Papillion, Ne has had a McDonald's Happy Meal on display in his office for two years now as an illustration that fast foods are not that good for you. "There are so many preservatives in these processed foods that it will never mold,” said office Director Andrew Rivera. A McDonald's spokesperson said all that has really happened is that that food has dried out and was preserved........like a mummy, I suppose. ******************* A Nebraska judge has ruled that Governor Heineman's giving the power of eminent domain to TransCanada violated the state's constitution, thus delaying resolution of the XL Pipeline once again. Gov. Heineman gave away the farm, and it turns out farmers didn't like that. I don't understand why people are so opposed to the construction of a pipeline guaranteed to leak that would transport dirty, expensive, chemically laden petrochemicals across the largest freshwater aquifer in the world threatening the entire economy of the midwest to be refined in Texas and sold to China. ***************************** EXXON-Mobil's CEO, while claiming fracking is 100% safe, is filing a lawsuit to stop fracking next to his 100 acre horse ranch. Um. The NIMBY principle at work. Did he think no one would notice? *********************************** Republican Ted Nugent, draft dodger, misogynist, gun crazed psychopath lunatic apologized this week for calling President Obama a "communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel." It seems that even a few Republican leaders thought he had crossed the line. You think? ******************************** I continue to believe Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have a better chance of serving in the big house than the White House. Time will tell. ******************************* Tennessee workers voted to reject a unionization effort by UAW at a Tennessee Volkswagen manufacturing plant. Tennessee Senator Corker threatened workers that if they unionized, Tennessee could make life miserable for the plant in the form of higher taxes. Volkswagen is now saying that they may not want to expand in a state so unfriendly to its workers. The UAW may appeal the election results as tainted by Senator Corker's and others' remarks. ************************ I liked the tautological sign I saw by the Metropolitan Community College bookstore seeking workers: "Looking for people who, well, like working in bookstores." ********************* The verdict came down on the Michael Dunn case in Florida. Dunn was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder for shooting into the fleeing SUV containing Jordan Davis and three friends. The jury hung on the first degree murder charge for the death of Jordan Davis in that vehicle. Dunn said Jordan Davis was playing loud music with a menacing expression on his face. Dunn will serve a long sentence, I hope. Florida's Stand Your Ground Law as it currently exists seems to allow armed individuals to pick fights with unarmed minority kids and then shoot them if they fight back. It's a bad law. ************************ And a few saxophone jokes: What did the saxophone player get on his IQ test? Drool. How do you get a saxophone player off your front porch? Pay him for the pizza. What's the least used sentence in the English language? "Isn't that the saxophone player's Porsche?" And why couldn't the saxophone player get into his house? He couldn't find the right key.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Chris Christie, Daffy Duck, Norway, and Sarah Palin, and 1,000 People from Mississippi

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." Will Rogers * * * So as I was waking up the other morning I was watching a show on Animal Planet cable channel about a cat interventionist who was working with two cohabiting women whose cats didn't get along and which discord threatened their relationship........ I was surprised that people would let cats influence their relationship, that there is such a thing as cat intervention, much less a television show about it. Modern times I guess. * * * John McCain, the man who picked Sarah Palin to be his VP, is all up in a snit about President Obama's nominee to be Ambassador to Norway..... Are you kidding me? Who gives a sh** about who is the f****** Ambassador to f****** Norway? McCain's the guy who unleashed Sarah Palin on the lower 48 states. President Obama could pick Daffy Duck as Ambassador to Norway and it would still be a better pick than John McCain's pick for VP. * * * The Florida murder trial for Michael Dunn, who killed black teenager Jordan Davis for playing loud music with a "menacing expression" went to the jury this week. No verdict yet. I noticed the absence of the NRA saying, "If only Jordan and his three friends had been armed...." Something is seriously wrong in Florida....... That the jury is taking so long is probably a bad sign. * * * Not getting enough Republican votes to support any proposal he came up with, Speaker of the House John Boehner gave up and says he'll let a vote take place on a "clean" bill to raise the debt ceiling. He says he can round up enough Republicans to pass it, but that he'll blame Democrats afterwards. "It's just not right that people expect us to pay for things we bought," he added. "Democrats have this crazy notion that Congress should pay for things it bought; it just drives me crazy." It passed. * * * Interesting twist on the debt ceiling vote in the Senate: Ted Cruz forced Mitch McConnell to be the 60th vote to end Cruz' filibuster.......putting McConnell in the uncomfortable position of supporting President Obama's clean bill on raising the debt ceiling. Interesting inter-party feud, particularly since McConnell is facing a Tea Party primary candidate as well as a fairly strong Democratic candidate in Kentucky. Rand Paul may be eyeballing his possible Senior Senator from Kentucky status. Ted Cruz' phone-in filibuster was overridden by his own party's votes and he decided not to do a real one. It would have been great political theater to see him reading Dr. Seuss again to an empty chamber. * * * Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul appears to have given up on the Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and the IRS "scandals," and has moved on to Monica Lewinsky from the Clinton era. "This will be our battle cry for 2016," Paul says. I can see the debate now: Lewinsky says Rand. Watergate says Hillary. Lewinsky. Watergate. Lewinsky. Watergate....... Karl Rove said: “Frankly, Rand Paul spending a lot of time talking about the mistakes of Bill Clinton does not look like a big agenda for the future of the country." * * * New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is facing more and more subpoenas, accusations, and former employees taking the Fifth. It doesn't look good for the formerly high-riding Governor. The best news for Christie this week was that his helicopter didn't fly over the traffic jam on the GW Bridge on the way home from the 9-11 ceremony. * * * Finally, a thousand forgotten graves were found at the University of Mississippi Medical Center which are believed to come from the "lunatic asylum." There may be even more lost graves from tuberculosis patients, or even the Civil War said a campus spokesperson. The "lost" graves were discovered during a campus expansion survey......* * * As we all deal with difficult issues in our grand experiment in democracy and self-rule in a complicated and complex world, we can all take solace in the fact that a recent poll of Americans showed 1 in 4 believed the sun revolves around the earth......

Sunday, February 09, 2014

King David's 1963 Ford Galaxy

If you don't already have enough to think about, add these: America the Beautiful was written by a lesbian feminist, the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist, and The Star Spangled Banner is sung to the tune of an old English drinking song (which may explain why it is easier to sing while drunk). Adding to all of this is a new scientific report which carbon dates the earliest known camel bones in the Middle East to as many as ten centuries after The Old Testament says Abraham possessed some of those humped dromedaries. The pastor of my church noted that he learned this in his freshman year of college as theologians have known of this particular anachronism for a generation and have used it as evidence that those particular Biblical texts were written long after the events themselves. It would be not unlike reading in Samuel and I Kings and I Chronicles that King David drove a 1963 Ford Galaxy. Theologicans might use that as evidence that those particular Biblical texts were written sometime in 1963 or later. Some theologians would no doubt claim that it was more likely that King David drove a 1958 Corvette, but I digress. I like the fact that real life adds to the complexity and diversity of the mythology we wrap ourselves in. It makes it all seem more human somehow.

Friday, February 07, 2014

Time Travel, Jesse Ventura, and America the Beautiful

Time Travel, Jesse Ventura, and America the Beautiful February 7, 2014 at 11:11am I did my "I can travel into the future" joke in my composition class the other day at MCC. We were talking about writing about concepts and the concepts of time and time travel came up. So I said to my class that I could prove that I could travel 15 seconds into the future. I had my class count aloud for fifteen seconds as I stood there. "One, two, three, four, ...... fourteen, fifteen." " There," I said when they reached fifteen, "I did it!" I got one or two rolling of the eyes, and a couple of smiles......... as usual. I said I could also travel farther into the future but that it takes longer. On Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office report said among other things that Obamacare would create jobs, insure millions of Americans, reduce the deficit, and lower the unemployment rate. Outraged Republicans vowed to fight. Republicans, having had their panties in a bunch when a lot of peoples' insurance plans were cancelled but most of whom ended up with better plans for less money, are now trying in Arkansas to take away insurance for about 85,000 poor Arkansans by taking away their private insurance policies under the Medicaid Expansion part of Obamacare. Republicans continue to plot how to take away insurance from about 25 million Americans who now have insurance coverage under Obamacare............................. Breaking News - McDonald's has released a video that reveals its Chicken McNuggetts are in fact made out of............................chicken. Who'd uh thought. The Sochi Olympic games have started and the death toll has reached about 35 so far. "Not bad," said Russian President Putin. It also turns out that Russia has installed security cameras in hotel bathrooms with views of showers. Weird. And Pat Robertson, of all people, says Christians who believe the earth is 6,000 years old are a "joke." This is from the guy who says God sends hurricanes as punishment...... Watching various Tea Party candidates start their campaigns, I think their problem is they don't realize they are nuts. And speaking of nuts: Former wrestler, movie actor, body guard for the Rolling Stones, and later Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, is currently hiding out in Mexico so military drones won't find and kill him. Sounds like Obamacare is to blame for sure. Re. the Superbowl Coke Ad that has many conservative panties in a bunch. Why are you so shocked that so many people who speak different languages love America? Isn't that what it's all about? (Aside - Wait til they figure out that "America the Beautiful" was written by a lesbian feminist and the Pledge of Allegiance by a socialist.) ps. Happy Together is booked for June 17 at Lauritzen Gardens as part of their Tuesday nights Tempo of Twilight series. Stay tuned for details.