You can't get there from here...

When did we start caring about the damn Iowa caucuses?
Was it when one of those clodhopper hillbilly governors the Democrats are so fond of won one?

No really...I don't remember Iowa being at all important to the electoral process when I lived there in the 60's. Iowans are not typical voters by any measure; so why should we care who the hardcore clowns who vote in these things are in love with?

Have you been paying attention to some of the things being said by the incurable sociopaths who want to be our head honcho? It doesn't matter which party you prefer, there is enough cow flop being broadcast in the "tall corn" state to allow farmer Brown to ship the entire herd to the Omaha Steak folks and call it a career. It's embarrassing.

Whatever you want, you can have. Just ask.

If you have never read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", I suggest that you correct that error of omission immediately. She saw all of this coming more that fifty years ago. The government can't run anything. It can only get in the way of the doers and thinkers who made this country great. We are dangerously close to promising ourselves unearned and undeserved goodies that will kill what made us the envy of the rest of the world. Sad.



Ayn Rand


Look at poor Mike Huckabee. He apparently thinks that he can rid us of the IRS. He's proposing an end to the income tax by replacing it with some unspecified sales tax. FAT CHANCE!
No, Mike...It ain't going to happen and you know it. We'll just end up with a new sales tax AND and income tax. Nobody ever gets rid of a federal agency. Once they're created they self perpetuate because NOBODY has the guts to close one down. And, how about the accountants and lawyers who have built entire practices around the fact that we can't figure out how much we owe? It's an industry unto itself.

So, get ready to laugh your ass off at all those Iowa caucus attendees. They are about to cast their ballots for one of these lying bastards who knows full well that real change in Washington is a sucker's game. You can't get there from here...We're too far down the road for that.

Looking for Laughs?

When was the last time this guy made you laugh?



A prostate exam is funnier than Al Franken



Lucky for us, Mr. Franken is now Minnesota's problem.
But, maybe that is just me. Humor is subjective.
All I know is that Al baby never made me laugh. And, that includes the period before I knew he was a whining liberal wienie.

On the other hand...Bob Newhart and Fred Willard can cause milk to come out of my nose just by showing up. My dad hated Newhart and would actually leave the room if he was on TV.
Go figure.

The reason I bring this up is that with the writers' strike looking to go long term we will all soon be forced to go hunting for yucks in new and different places. Reality shows amuse some of you, but frankly they merely make me want to hunt down and kill each and every one of the unbelievably stupid participants.

Lately, I've been ordering lots of TV classics fill the comedy void at our house. Shows like Sgt Bilko, the old Newhart shows and one of the funniest classics of all time...Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" still hold up as incredibly funny and entertaining fare.

Of course, it's always hard to beat the comedy of politics.
Hillary and the rest of the pathetic sociopaths running for president in the new year will have us all peeing our pants with laughter...until we wake up to the fact that THIS REALLY IS THE BEST WE CAN DO.

In the meantime, I suggest you check out what Amazon and others have to offer.







Tell ' em Groucho sent ya...

Hand to hand combat on the 24th

I'll be out there tomorrow.
Will I see you? Or, are you one of the finished? You know...The people, usually of the female persuasion, who are sitting at home smugly admiring their nicely wrapped and well thought out purchases resting under the tree for all to see.

Gutless! That's what you are!
It takes a real man, (granted...he's an idiot), to risk life and limb Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. The flying elbows, the smell of cheap perfume and fruitcake, ahh...that's what the season is all about. Shopping coupled with all the excitement of a "Steel Cage Death Match" produced by the WWF, it's the quintessential Christmas in America.

I may cheat just a little and confine my shopping to Home Depot and the grocery store. (I'm thinking a nice ham or a power drill for Linda this year.) Maybe I'll even buy Santa a drink when he takes a break. Have you noticed that fat tolerance is high just before Christmas? (In a couple of weeks, Santa will be just another fat guy taking up too much space in an already crowded world.)
I saw this picture of a sleigh with flamingos in the Chicago Tribune. I'm wondering if Home Depot or Lowes might have a set for the front yard. Talk about a home run! I can just see the look on Linda's face. Let me know if you've seen this elegant yard art anywhere. Okay?

Or...here's an idea: Maybe I'll just make up a story about ordering something fabulous that,...DAMN THAT FEDEX!, hasn't arrived in time for the big day. Yeah, that's the ticket. Now I can sleep late tomorrow. Brilliant! They should put somebody like me in charge of Christmas every year!

Like you have a better plan?

It's all about the MARKETING

Striking writers are settling in for a protracted battle with the Hollywood big shots.
In an effort to add some dollars to the guild strike fund they have created a "writers' swag" website which sells t-shirts promoting their cause.

Having been screwed blue by broadcast management types myself, my sympathies belong to the computer toting geeks who provide the funny and mostly intelligent dialog mouthed by overpaid actors. So, in a show of support, I logged on to the writers' website to see what I could buy. To my dismay, they were out of shirts in my size. I made a mental note to try again.

WOW! When I checked again I was gratified to see that these guys and gals are not only great writers...They know how to move merchandise! Instead of a picture of your basic striker tee, they now had they lovely Katherine Heigl of "Grey's Anatomy" modeling the now impossible to resist striker-wear.


I ordered FOUR for Christmas giving and am giving serious consideration to requesting seven more for my back-to-school wardrobe. (Wait a minute...I don't go to school. See how effective good marketing can be??)

So, there you are. They're the perfect Christmas gift for that special someone. Check it out at: strikeswag.com

I didn't think it was possible to find a gift almost as good as one of those leg lamps from "A Christmas Story", but I did.

Sure Smells like Christmas...

I've been putting off doing Christmas cards for several days now.
It's not that I really mind doing them. After all, it is the only time most of us reach out to old friends that we don't want tossed overboard on the sea of time. The folks that you shared a job, neighborhood or foxhole with at some point, but it was so long ago that you're not certain there's enough left to sustain a phone conversation. Well, at least a few of them fall into that category. The rest are just on the list.


I always know it's time to do the Christmas cards by the smell of the decorated tree down the hall. It's funny how the sense of smell is one of the more powerful touchstones that we have yet we relegate it to a lesser status. People never mention "falling in love at first smell". No, it's sight and hearing that get the nod when it comes to romance but smell can be the most powerful stimulus of all.

There was a girl in my fourth grade class; her name was Joan. She was gawky, skinny and not especially good looking but she used to wear some (probably cheap) perfume that was undoubtedly of the dime store variety which made me swoon whenever she walked by my always messy fourth grade desk. I have no idea what it was, but can recall it to this day and would most assuredly marry her on the spot if I were not already off the market.

Whenever I smell Carter-Hall pipe tobacco I invariably look for my dad. It was his smell.

Sometimes a scent can haul up nearly devastating emotions. In 2001 just a couple of days after 9-11 my wife, Linda, nearly died from complications involved in a liver operation at UCLA Medical Center. It was one of the darkest periods of my life. I would spend my days visiting her in the intensive care unit and then return to my hotel in the evening to watch non-stop TV coverage of the tragedy in New York and Washington, D.C. This all came close on the heels of a sudden cessation of thirty plus years of hard boozing. In the words of Rodney Dangerfield, "It was rough I tell ya!" To this day...whenever I catch a whiff of the liquid soap that all visitors were required to use before entering the ICU, my knees buckle and I have to brace myself. To my nose and my brain it's September of 2001 all over again and it scares the bejesus out of me.

Then there is the olfactory stimulant that has laid waste to more wallets than any tax collector or woman of the evening. The smell that leaves you with a mountain of monthly debt and nothing but heartache after the "new" is gone. I refer, of course, to that most expensive perfume...the NEW CAR smell. Try not to succumb to it this Christmas. Not even if they promise you that big bow.

Time to sign-off. Linda is baking and I smell Christmas cookies.

Santa too fat? Grease the chimney and get over it!

Santa is FAT.
He is supposed to be fat.
And now, on the cusp of the evening when fatboy gases up the sleigh and sets out on his sacred mission to bring all kinds of useless but cool gadgets to all the chimneys in the free world and assorted communist countries some clueless morons want him to lose weight.
Where do these nitwits come from???!!!
These health freaks want Santa to set a healthy example for all the good boys and girls by looking like Slim Whitman. Please! Santa is like your uncle Louie...a fun loving gasbag who always knows where the cookies, beer and dad's good booze are. (Not necessarily in that order.)

If these clowns are serious about the health thing, let them set Santa up with a January package at the Lavender Lips health spa to be followed by a February stomach stapling. We cannot let them have their way!
What's next??? An intervention for Rudolph???? (You've seen his nose.)

No, a skinny Santa simply will not do.

And while we're at it...
I want the fat goober to get his pipe out of mothballs. Fire that baby up with some good ol' stinky Carter Hall so that we can see that head encircling wreath and smell his trail. Also, an ass pocket full of good whiskey would do wonders for North Pole Fat's Christmas Eve disposition. ( They're making wonderfully safe plastic flasks these days.)


I would also like to mention that it is absolutely imperative to maintain the current Mrs. Santa in her present condition. The old boy seems to have done a really good job of picking out a caring and sensitive helpmate who is an inspiration to us all.


And to all a Good Night.

OH NO!

Here we go again.
It rained in San Diego last Friday. Supposedly it was the most rain to fall on us since a day in 2005. (Something in excess of an inch of precipitation.) Now, it is supposed to start raining again tonight. Already the TV stations have their "Storm Watch" reporters at the ready telling us breathlessly that they will be the FIRST to have the latest on the wetness.

Christ!

This must have the folks in Buffalo and Detroit peeing their pants.


Sometimes living in paradise can be such a bitch.

Global Warming? You don't know the half of it...

So there they were, all the weather prognosticators with their maps and pointers.
I think it was last Wednesday. The standard line went something like this: "We expect some clouds and a slight chance of scattered showers over Southern California as we head toward the week-end."

Naturally, it poured heavy rain all day Friday causing mud slides and traffic mayhem in a corner of the world that considers anything over ten inches of annual rainfall a "wet year". DAMN those meteorologists!! Can't they get anything right?
But wait...Aren't these the same guys who currently have their panties in a bunch over global warming? The very same clowns who can't tell us if it will rain tomorrow or be hot next week? They're absolutely sure that the earth is warming at such an intolerable rate that we're all doomed to have oceanfront property in the future whether we like it or not??? These guys?

Frankly, I've always been a little chilly. I'm the guy who's constantly sneaking up the thermostat when nobody is looking. So the prospect of not having to carry a sweater or wrestle somebody over the setting on the car air-conditioning is my idea of heaven.

However...if we are indeed destined to experience a global hot flash in the near future I am very worried about some of the "fallout" from this phenomenon.
I am talking LITERAL FALLOUT! I refer, of course, to a major increase in the number of fat guys in speedos hitting our newly extended beaches.



Think about it.

The horror...the horror!






Stop global warming NOW!!!!