when the status quo frustrates.

Protest Pregnancy Day ’08: Pregnancy Kills Women!

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

What I care about is human life, and the ending of it that could be prevented, no matter how great or small that chance of the life ending might be. Lives, lives that would otherwise be in no danger at all, are being lost to pregnancy!

Like these folks, I am totally unconcerned about other people’s ideas that they have some right to “privacy” that trumps my right to stop them from entering into a situation where a human death might occur. I mean, really, what kind of moral leg do you have to stand on acting like “privacy” means you’re free to do things that might result in a living human being kicking the bucket?

You know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I am so in awe of the brilliance of this good organization that I am going to borrow their elegant and succinct “Talking Points” and make them my own, to promote my own worthy cause. With just the simple substitution of “pregnancy” for “the pill” and “women” for “unborn babies,” it seems to scan in almost seamlessly for this great endeavor! I’m sure they’re overjoyed to share with me here because, given their level of concern about deaths that might occur without you even knowing, their concern for deaths that are really obvious that you could not fail to notice occurring must be at least as great! (Any other attitude would be quite, quite illogical and even borderline psychotic, wouldn’t it?)

Let’s get started saving some lives!

(more…)

More Laugh, Cry or Go Postal? Fun

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I spent a day offsite again–my company is building a new, very large scale manufacturing facility and so we are buying all kinds of goodies for it from a whole slew of outside companies. On this occasion, the company in question was going to show us their pride and joy, a software package that simulates mixing behavior inside various types of stirred tanks. So we watched the demo in the morning, then they brought some lunch in and we had time to ask various questions more pertinent to our specific applications. I am only peripherally involved in this project so I didn’t get deeply engaged–I made a few comments about comparability of results involving various mixer designs but other than that pretty much just munched pizza and listened to everybody else talk.

After lunch was over, the simulation engineer asked if we wanted a quick tour of the shop. We all agreed that would be interesting and informative and got to our feet, and as we were all milling around securing laptops and dumping pizza trash he said to me, very abruptly, “Don’t be scared if they holler at you.”

I froze in mid-dump, then peeked around to insure that he was, in fact, speaking to me; he was, judging from the peculiar paralyzed looks on the faces of our corporate engineer and project manager standing right behind me. So I returned my attention to him: small guy, mid to late twenties, skinny with a pot belly, black-framed glasses, earnest expression. “I’m sorry?” I said, totally confused.

“The guys,” he said, and essayed a smile. Note: We had all gone round the room with the standard introductions that morning, but aside from that, this guy had not once made eye contact with me, and had only spoken to me in direct response to my few earlier queries during lunch; I hadn’t even thought he’d really noticed my existence. “They’re not used to seeing anyone like you on the floor.”

Light dawned. I involuntarily glanced down at myself, half expecting to see my quite boring business casual ensemble of button-down shirt, slacks and loafers completely replaced with a red leather miniskirt, platform shoes and a corset, but no–a snort issued from someone behind me and I straightened back up to stare at him. “I’m sorry I shaved off my moustache this morning–I just wasn’t thinking,” I said cheerily. He turned red, which pleased me enough to add, “Maybe you should let those poor guys out of their cages at night, you know, so they can mix with the rest of humanity more often, see a few girls now and then!”

Suspense! Did he pass out from mortification and/or apologize for being a complete and unprofessional moron? Nope to either one. Though I am happy to report that he did not inflict any more conversation upon me for the rest of our sojourn there. And did any of those shop floor savages holler, hoot, whistle, catcall or make any other vocal incursions upon my person? No, in fact they did not. Til the next time, signing off!

–Lisa, the Perky Girl Engineer

Laugh, Cry or Go Postal?

Monday, May 5th, 2008

I spent a recent day offsite–my company hired an outside company to design and build a piece of equipment for our manufacturing plant and the outside company had asked us to come down to their fabrication shop and vet the design, see what we thought of the work in progress, etc. With me were another engineer from our manufacturing group (male), an engineer from the corporate office (male), and a machine operator from the plant (female). The morning went pretty smoothly; I was able to identify some potential functional issues in the design that in the still-early phases of manufacture weren’t going to be much of a problem for them to solve, so everyone was relatively happy by the time we all decided to break for lunch.

So, we’re all sitting around the table at the restaurant waiting for our food to show up, and one of the two guys from the outside company (they were the senior director of sales and the lead design engineer respectively, both male, the speaker in this instance was the sales director) was talking about how hard it was to get good welders in any quantity. “Kids these days, they just aren’t so interested in the trade schools!” (Yeah, he was in his fifties. At least.) “Our shop foreman, our lead welder, his dad actually teaches welding, but–”

“Actually,” said the other guy, “it’s his mother that teaches welding.”

Blank silence, coupled with wide-eyed stare, then… “Really?”

“Yeah,” said the other guy. “She’s probably one of the best welders in the area.”

“Really?” said the first guy. Pause. “Seriously?” (The other guy nods, looking deadpan.) “You’re kidding!” Longer pause. “That’s amazing!” Still staring bulge-eyed at the other guy, very much as if that guy had whipped a two-headed calf out of his pocket and plunked it down on the middle of the lunch table. “I really did not know that–”

Our two engineers were looking anywhere but at me. Our operator was looking sideways at me with narrowed eyes. So I perked up, beamed at the first guy and said brightly, “Yeah, the next thing you know, they’ll be driving and voting!”

I may let how this scene ended remain a mystery. :)

win ben stein’s dignity.

Monday, April 28th, 2008

how does he sleep at night?

Someone should send poor Charlotte information on gender re-assignment if being a woman sucks so bad

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

Amanda can’t fisk this, but I bet I can (although I admit to being less sure when I got to the bottom of the page and saw the link to page 2).

Long story short: Women, why did we ever give them the vote?

Long story longer: Charlotte Adam just can not stop typing when it comes to talking about women, and how much they suck. I can’t imagine how she managed to get that many words onto the screen on this topic, seeing as she must have been stopping frequently to look at her own hands and/or faint reflection in computer screen and shudder or sob quietly for at least a few seconds. Maybe it was cathartic, and when she finally put the final period on the final sentence, she sighed a great sigh of relief, knowing that for a little while at least she was no longer unclean.

Charlotte has noticed that Obamamania has swept the nation, with girls going wild over the man who could be our sexiest president since Kennedy. And like our first Catholic president, our first black president can work an audience like no one’s business.

“He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female’s cry of ‘I love you, Obama!’ with a reassuring ‘I love you back.’ ” Women screamed? What was this, the Beatles tour of 1964? And when they weren’t screaming, the fair-sex Obama fans who dominated the rally of 16,000 were saying things like: “Every time I hear him speak, I become more hopeful.” Huh?

Let me help you deconstruct that last sentence, Charlotte: Whenever this one woman listens to Obama’s speeches, she feels more of an emotion called hope. You’re probably unfamiliar with this feeling, having been dead inside ever since that traumatic ceremony that marked your entry into “honorary guy” status, but basically it means that Obama’s message makes this woman feel excited by the possibility that he can make the future better than the present. The more Obama speaks, the greater this feeling becomes in her heart. Probably, it’s because he outlines policies that, if enacted, she feels would make her life and the lives of others better.

Or, it’s because she’s a stupid irrational cuntbag who poses a danger to herself and those around her merely by existing. Your call.

I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women “are only children of a larger growth,” wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?…Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true.

Women like bad television and sappy media, self-help books and romance stories; Hillary Clinton’s staff is a bunch of man-hating Amazon dykes and she herself isn’t even smart enough to fire them at the right time. Also, goddam are women neurotic.

Of course, not all women do these things, either — although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn’t some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat.

Men don’t call in sick when they’re really just taking a personal day, men aren’t hypochondriacs, men like only good television and serious books, and men don’t pussyfoot around with soft-core porn in romance novel form, no sir, they like it hard, hot and violent. (or was Charlotte’s soft-core porn remark not supposed to remind us who is driving the hard-core porn market?) Men are so much better than women it’s not even funny. There’s probably a biological, immutable basis to this, tied to childbirth because there’s no way that women can do something men can’t without a cost being extracted somehow by benevolent natural forces. Oh, and gay men count as women.

sweepinggen

(more…)

Why not just call McCain the new Jesus?

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

Un-be-fucking-lieeeeeeevable. I’m really sorry it’s all gloom and doom from me when I find the time to post these days, but I am fed up with the defeatist language of the Democrats. It alternately depresses me to the point of inaction and sends me into a frothing tizzy accompanied by incoherent thoughts.

Allow me to do my best to sum up my feelings: THE DEMOCRATS ARE FUCKING IDIOTS. Every day, I become a tiny bit more convinced that the game is rigged and they’re trying to lose, because nothing else explains the astronomical levels of incompetency that pervade every campaign and every candidate and every organization.

The most recent example: Hillary Clinton, in an attempt to beat a fellow Democrat, basically showered her sum-bitch Republican opponent with gold, frankincense, and mer. [I had to include the frankincense and mer or that would've been a golden shower. And what she said was the opposite of peeing on him. Unfortunately. /digress.]

Listen to this:

“If our nominee is running against someone with the legendary background of John McCain — Democrats need to think about this,” Clinton said. “Because we’re picking a nominee we expect to win. We cannot take four more years of more of the same.”

The LEGENDARY BACKGROUND? I realize the man was a PoW and all that, but come the fuck on. Why not just call him bulletproof? Why not just cut off any attempts to assail his character now and forever? If Hillary runs against McCain, this quote will be thrown in our faces the entire time. “Even tax and spend liberal demon Hillary Clinton thinks John McCain is ‘legendary.’ Vote McCain! Paid for by the Committee of Shitbirds to Elect John McCain.”

It gets worse. Well, maybe not worse, but it stays pretty damn bad.

“When I think about running against Senator McCain, if I’m so fortunate to be the Democratic nominee — you’ll never have to worry about being knocked out of the ring,” Clinton said to cheers. “I think I can go toe to toe with John McCain every single day.”

Oooooh boy! We MIGHT have someone who THINKS they can maaaaaybe go toe-to-toe with the Republican! Aren’t we full of bravado! Gosh, what a novel idea, expressing that perhaps you’re the equal of the person you’ll need to defeat to become President and just maybe shove the country back on the train tracks.

I can’t believe the Democrats are fighting amongst themselves to point out who best measures up to the awesomeness of the Republican candidate. This is political suicide. And worst of all, it’s a goddamn lie. John McCain’s a tough guy who went through some rough shit. He also sold his soul to get this nomination. And his voting record is disgusting.

Until someone in the party calls these hypocritical bastards by the names they deserve to be called, Democrats will never win. You’d think someone would’ve figured that out by now.

Preznit Creationizm

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Call me a cynic, but now that I am finally accepting the cold hard truth of the world (namely, that Al Gore will not even attempt to be my next President) I have little faith in the Democrats winning a presidential election. Our candidates are either pro-war, formerly pro-war, pro-torture, weak-kneed on health care, and/or previously defeated on another ticket. But forget all that. The *real* uphill battle comes from the media’s historically relentless assault on popular national Democrats and the unrealistic try-to-please-’em-all campaign approach they always seem to take. (Oh, and the creative ballot counting strategies employed by their opposition in certain swing states).

Jimmy Carter won on the heels of Watergate because he wasn’t Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford. Bill Clinton won because Ross Perot split the vote. LBJ was able to serve before running. In other words, we haven’t sent out a candidate who won a first term primarily on his/her own merits in a straight-up two-party election since 1960.

1960.

And — hate to say it — but that election might have been fixed, as well.

So if the Democrats continue the trend of suck (gambling 101: always bet with a streak), who will be rolling out ill-conceived domestic policy, rolling back our bodily rights, and rolling over poorer countries beginning in 2009?

Maybe Mike Huckabee.

Giuliani, dubbed “America’s mayor” after the 9/11 attacks, supports abortion rights and gay rights, positions at odds with social conservatives. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney once held similar views but now opposes abortion rights. Arizona Sen. John McCain has had trouble gaining ground among some Republicans who note his crusades on immigration and campaign-finance reform. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who presented himself as the answer for conservatives when he made a late entry into the race in September, has turned out to be a less than energetic campaigner.

It’s all provided an opening for Huckabee — an ordained Baptist minister who has always opposed abortion and raised his hand at one debate to say he didn’t believe in evolution — to attempt the unprecedented.

He’s leading in Iowa right now and blah blah blah, but did you catch the last part of that quote? He’s freely admitted he doesn’t believe in evolution. I know that view exists among general peoples and all, but did you ever in your life think America would elect — or even *threaten* to elect — a man who openly rejected Darwin’s theories?

If he were to win the nomination, you know he’d garner a minimum of 45% of the vote, and probably at least 48% even if he loses. That means that, even if he *isn’t* nominated, I live in a country where almost half the people willing to vote wouldn’t care that they’d be electing a person capable of rational denial to the extent that THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION.

Maybe this shouldn’t shock me. After all, signs of our open rebellion against common sense and logic are everywhere. We have an economy running on imaginary money and a dollar that’s in the international toilet. We’re raping and pillaging foreign lands for stated reasons everyone knows are false. We have no sense to provide basic care to our own citizens. And we’re too lazy to do anything about warming the planet past the point where millions will certainly die.

If we elect a creationist, I am moving to high ground in a foreign land and never looking back. And that doesn’t make me a quitter, it makes me a self-preservationist.

Why I still hate Democrats —SO MUCH—

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

You know who doesn’t normally have a lot of power? A dude actively disliked by over 60% of his supervisors.

Someone should really tell that to the idgit Democrats in Congress, though, who bluster about rights and justice and then bend over and stuff a poster tube in their ass to give the Republicans better access to the good stuff:

Under pressure from President George W. Bush, the House of Representatives has given final approval to changes in a terrorist surveillance program despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power.

Ooooh, serious objections! I’m shitting my pants. I bet all those Republicans who *almost* didn’t get their way are still tossing and turning over those objections and their ramifications. If there’s one thing that puts fear into the hearts of facists everywhere, it’s a serious objection. Heck, Dick Cheney called me the other day because he heard I seriously objected to the war in Iraq, and he just wanted to make sure I knew my feelings were duly noted.

(more…)

They must of been one hell of a pair of pants.

Friday, July 13th, 2007

When I first heard about the $54 million dollar lost-pants lawsuit, I (like everyone else) thought ‘damn, that guy has some serious problems.’

And it turns out, I was right! How about that? After losing the suit and being held up for general scorn, the man just can’t stop himself from going back for more:

A customer who sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants has asked the judge who threw out the widely mocked case to reconsider, saying she committed a “fundamental legal error.”

…The motion comes less than a week after the South Korean immigrant owners of Custom Cleaners asked the judge to order Pearson to cover $83,000 in legal fees.

“(The) Plaintiff’s motives have been clear — quite simply, to harass Defendants and to attempt to utterly destroy their lives,” attorney Christopher Manning wrote.

Those poor laundry owners. After two years and the threat of a multi-million dollar judgement hanging over their heads, it no longer matters if they were trying to screw the guy out of his pants or not. They’re dealing with a crazy person, and have well learned their lesson about guaranteeing satisfaction. If this sees the inside of a courtroom again, can the judge demand that Pearson see a doctor, maybe get a prescription to calm him the fuck down a bit?

8-year-old Nazi girl oppresses persecuted Bush family with liberal hate speech in sedan rally

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

Charles Morse tried to unseat Barney Frank in Massachusetts. Twice. In 2006, he had to give it a go as a write-in candidate, and it appears he totalled a whopping 145 votes.

Where do losers like that wind up after the bootprint finally fades from their pinched up asscheeks? Why, World Net Daily, of course. And Newsmax. Morse writes for both of them, as well as oh-my-god-is-that-really-their-name Enter Stage Right, the source for today’s gem.

It’s also worth noting Morse wrote a book called, and you can’t make this up, “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism.”

Methinks Chuck has a little too much Hitler on the brain, though, because the poor guy really has no perspective when it comes to Nazi analogies:

I’m driving my 8-year-old daughter home from school along with some of her fellow students and I hear giggling in the back seat. Asking to be let in on the joke, a young girl blurts out a vulgar and ugly little ditty about President Bush, the type of limerick that might have been told by a Nazi child about a Jew back in the 1930′s.

Kudos to Chuckie for such a subtle and considered opening to his essay expressing confusion over the liberal hatred of The Dubya Mafia. I, for one, can think of no better way to demonstrate objectivity than comparing an 8-year-old’s joke about the most powerful man in the world to Nazism. Also, kudos to him for letting his daughter hang out with a modern-day war criminal right in his own Volvo. That really shows tolerance for your enemies.

Or maybe it shows cowardice. I suspect he failed to confront this hatemonger with the truth behind her words, because it looks as though he was also too scared to ask where she heard them:

This is not the first time I’ve heard a little child spew hateful trash about the President. The impressionable child no doubt picked this little gem up at the breakfast table of her good liberal parents.

Really, the kid was right there, and probably restrained by a seatbelt. Was he seriously unable to ask about the limerick’s origin? Also, didn’t his kid just hear it from another kid? Why did it “no doubt” come from liberal parents? The Chuckmeister may be disappointed to hear this, but building your whole article around a faulty conclusion about the behavior of small children may not be the best way to build a career in journalism.

It also helps when your article contains fewer than 20 falsehoods. Let’s see if his musings on why we hate Bush pass the test. (more…)

This is what happens when you let a woman write about what it means to be ‘manly’

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

What does it mean to be a man in a world where women refuse to follow last century’s script? Well, Laura Sessions Stepp doesn’t fucking know, but she does have a deadline so here, enjoy some random quotes surrounded by some stereotypes, and a completely inappropriate and random reference to Johnny Depp.

If you’re wondering what it takes to be a man these days, check out Johnny Depp’s wrist.

Well, that’s not where I’d start, but OK. Mmmmmm, Johnny Depp. Now there’s a guy I wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers…oh, wait, he’s the ambiguous exemplar. My mistake, I was too busy drooling to notice how gay he may or may not be*.

As the unconstrained Capt. Jack Sparrow in the newly released “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” he wears a wisp of white lace tied just above his left hand.

A token of his feminine side? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just what Depp said it is: a trophy piece from a young woman.

That’s right, Sessions Stepp starts her essay (I’d say article, but please) on the tragedy of blurred gender roles with a strained reference to an irrelevant fictional character wearing a single band of lace, ignoring two things: one, that Jack Sparrow already explained that it’s a friggin’ prize from a ladyfriend (score!) and two, even if it wasn’t it wouldn’t matter because Jack lived during the late 17- or early 1800′s** and it was fucking OK for men to do all kinds of fruity things then because back then, they weren’t considered fruity.


ppv1n06s Juan e Haidee - by Alexandre Marie Colin, 1833
Mr. Darcy and Don Juan: Two of history’s most famous poofters

But a good writer never lets context get in the way of a good point, so already we know the rest of Lauren’s essay it going to be golden. (more…)

School administrator’s investigative career foiled by super villian “Caller ID that does not automatically adjust for Daylight Savings”

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

A student near Pittsburgh spent 12 days in juvie hall because someone forgot to reset the clock on the caller ID.

Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline…They believed they’d found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.

Unfortunately, the school forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. The time stamps left on the hotline were adjusted by an hour after Day Light Savings causing Webb’s call to logged as the same time the bomb threat was placed. Webb, who’s never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour before the bomb threat was placed.

Ahh, the legendary incompetence of school administrators. Well, at least they can defend themselves on the basis of their excellent investigative work and cool, even-handed treatment of the boy.

Webb gave an insight into the school’s impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied ‘she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”’

‘They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,’ he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: ‘Well, why should we believe you? You’re a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.’

Cody, this is your chance to realize the dream of every high school student in America. Now that you’re no longer sitting in juvie for daring to call the school hotline, get a lawyer and don’t back down until every administrator in your (hopefully former) school has been replaced by someone who can tell his or her ass from a hole in the ground.