One of the loose collective of my friends — The Defeatist-Malcontent-Anarchist Slacker Collective and Bait Shop — a Vet who’s trying to get his band going in upstate New York doing kind of boogie rock with metal overtones, spends time he should spend doing something like picking up bottles for the return fee on a Marshall Amp blog, and one of the folks on it posted something about a piece of software that my pal had not heard of. He tossed it out to the collective, and one of the guys explained that it is really kind of an auto-cad system that enables engineers, architechts, and marketing types to overlay everything and walk the customer through the whole bloody thing. He then commented that if he wanted to go back to working for somebody else, he’s take some classes…and then realized what he just said. Commented that he hated his life, and went off to drink copiously in the pine woods of Maine. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, music by Mike Farrell
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Dear Harold,

Boy! I am certainly feeling a little silly this morning. It seems my faith in Woody Harrelson, the Mayan calendar and the world’s demise in 2012 has been exceedingly misplaced.  According to you, the end of the world actually begins this weekend. Saturday—right after the six o’clock news!

[Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, religion & philosophy by Jody Lane
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10. When Sarah Palin said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords should be “targeted,” she meant targeted with a surveyor’s scope

9. Sarah Palin used the term “blood libel” in a completely non-Jewish Christian context, referring to people who claim that wine in church isn’t really the blood of Christ

8. When Byron Williams, who got into a gunfight with police trying to attack members of the Tides Foundation in San Francisco, said he had been influenced by Glenn Beck, he really meant the singer Beck (“Odelay”)

7. When Sarah Palin complained that the shooting in Arizona had been unfairly politicized, then suggested that the gunman was perhaps a “left-leaning criminal,” she meant one of his legs was shorter than the other

6. When the mother of Gregory Lee Giusti, who was convicted of threatening former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blamed Fox News, she actually meant the news that Redd Foxx had died

4. Tea Partier Sharron Angle’s suggestion of “Second Amendment solutions” for an out-of-control Congress was a misquote; she actually referenced the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments

3. Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “don’t retreat, reload” was a reference to wash loads

2. When a relative of Charles Wilson, who was convicted of threatening Sen. Patty Murray, said he was “under the spell that Glenn Beck cast,” he really meant he’d been drinking Beck’s beer.

1. Whenever Sarah Palin uses the term ‘Democrats,’ she of course means ‘shitheads who should be taken out’
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: black helicopter watch, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, damned lies, politics & government by Bob Sullivan
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A friend of mine recently referred to her life as a mountain. Apparently she started climbing it years ago without realizing, then one day looked down and discovered how high up she’d gone. She also discovered that it would be nearly impossible to get down off of this mountain and start the climb up a different mountain. By different, I think she meant the one on which she had assumed she would end up. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, ends & odd, getting older by Van McCourt
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My father-in-law recently faced up to the adult equivalent of “there is no Santa Claus.” Specifically, he discovered that, if the shit ever hits the fan, nobody is going to wipe his ass for him. Well … Maybe that’s unfair. He actually realized that, in case of disaster, he can’t count on “the authorities” to charge to the rescue.

Hmmm … I phrased it better the first time. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, getting older by J.D. Tuccille
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The local news informed my mother-in-law that Maytag was recalling dishwashers because a heating element could cause a fire. She has a Maytag dishwasher and so do we, so we googled Maytag dishwasher recall. Maytag had set up a page on its site for the recall. We entered our model and serial numbers and were able to schedule an appointment online for a repairman to come to our house and replace the faulty heating element. They’ve already repaired my mother-in-law’s machine — it took a half-hour — and will repair ours this week. The company seems to have handled this well and tried to minimize inconvenience to customers.

My father-in-law was over the other day — neither of our machines had been repaired yet — and when someone mentioned that we were just about out of silverware, he said something like, “You can’t run the dishwasher until they have fixed it.” [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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10. Once you start driving a Toyota, you’ll never stop!

9. Look out, we’re comin’ through!

8. Toyota. Moving forward! Whether you want to or not!

7. Click! Vroom! Yikes!

6. Have you driven into a Ford lately?

5. Toyota. Get the Feeling. Of Terror!

4. Accelerating the future!

3. Holy cow, even we had no idea the Prius could do 100!

2. The power of dreams! The reality of nightmares!

1. Give us a break!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: announcements, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, damned lies, trusted media & news by Bob Sullivan
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10. “Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck both claim paying taxes contributes to socialism.”

9. “Wealthy people who are exceptionally good-looking should be exempt.”

8. “On April first, I got an e-mail saying that, as part of the stimulus package, there was a tax moratorium this year.”

7. “Trying to use the Qualified Dividends and Capital Gains Tax Worksheet, I got a severe brain cramp.”

6. “My buddy at the post office said he could backdate my return.”

5. “After I claim all the voices in my head as deductions, it turns out they owe me money!”

4. “This year, in the box labeled ‘For Office Use Only,’ I just plan to write ‘Approved – Send massive refund!’”

3. “Fill out a tax form?! I can’t even get my VCR to stop blinking ‘12:00’!”

2. “My accountant said I could deduct my late fees.”

1. “I just woke up from my New Year’s Eve party.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, damned lies, money, politics & government by Bob Sullivan
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Thirteen Misconceptions Surrounding National Shelve Your Indie Novel in the Superbookstore Month

1)  America did not carpet bomb any lawless tribal regions with remaindered and pulped copies of confiscated counterfeit Indie versions of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.

2)  103,017 bottles and cans of Coke and Pepsi staged a walk out from 7-11 freezer space across the country in protest of the marginalization of indie novelists and collusive practices across the country. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, damned lies by Alex Kudera
5 Comments »

While I wasn’t old enough to have clear memories of Reagan’s Presidency, I’ve heard the stories and read plenty of articles about how the news was almost daily describing the plight of the homeless in America.  To watch the 6 o’clock news, you’d have thought we were all living in a van, down by the river and that only the elites owned double-wide trailers.  Then, almost as soon as Bill Clinton took office, those stories vanished.  A bubble began to inflate. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, health & medical by Mike McGowan
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