woo hoo!


we're #1! we're #1!

and don't you forget it, man.... ya want some o' this??? HUH?!?

(forgive me... lack of nicotine.)

suspended

please allow 5-7 days for new blog entry... i'm starting my third day of non-smoking... goin cold turkey...

thanks

screwed again

here's a shocker: evidently, poets die young.

the life expectancy of good vs. bad poets remains to be seen, but i believe that once you put pen to paper (or fingers to a keyboard, as the case may be), you seal your doom.

ahhh yes


glad to know that shane is still just being shane.

maybe i'll have something more substantial a bit later.

maybe.

born and bred

i'm ashamed.

olive branch

at his little press conference last night (that the administration deemed necessary to be televised, dammit), bush had a slight problem remembering any mistakes that he has made since the events of September 11.

in good faith, and in our own special little way, we here at GWP would like to help the current president's memory along (if you have any that we missed, please feel free to add them under Comments):

1. war in iraq
2. justifications for war in iraq (hussein was a terrorist, got WMD's, etc.)
3. patriot acts I and II
4. millions of lost jobs
5. ridiculous medicare reform policy
6. dangerous foreign policy and attitude toward UN
7. no child (who can afford it) left behind
8. promoting divisiveness and mistrust in all levels of government.

we're just trying to help.

really.

victory!

some blogs are merely words, floating around on the vast expanse of the internet, read by countless eyes and immediately forgotten or discarded... but some blogs make a difference...

bowing to immense pressure and bitter, painful scorn from your crack team of loyal journalists here at GWP, judge scalia yesterday issued an apology for his deplorable behavior...

we again remind you that El Gran Puerco Blanco stands for the truth (no matter how difficult), justice (no matter how brutal) and the american way (no matter how misrepresented)... yes, folks, remember - the properly applied power of the Pig can move mountains...

thank you for reading, goodday, and God Bless America... (insert audio track of that opera guy who opens all the yankee games singing the national anthem)

to the moon, alice

hey... now that we're nearly finished polluting our own planet, we can spread our shit around the moon. if, of course, ya got $6M bucks to piss away.

ladies and gentlemen, it's a fucked up world.

more on scalia

so it turns out that not only was the destruction of press recordings unfair (to say the least), it was probably illegal, too.

of course, this is merely a drop in the bucket of abuses that have been perpetrated by our "officials" since 9/11, so it should really come to no surprise to anyone.

updates

okay... i've finally added the ability to comment...

let 'er rip.

stefani

my wonderful wife has (finally) put her site up...

just the beginnings now, but give her all the love you can... there's also a special message from The Pea for all those who couldn't make it to her third birthday party.

you know who you are.

and so does she.

supreme justice, or else

it seems supreme court justice antonin scalia is letting it all hang out lately.

dig the irony:

"Last year, Scalia was criticized for refusing to allow television and radio coverage of an event in Ohio in which he received an award for supporting free speech.

Scalia, who was appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1986, told students that the Constitution's true meaning must always be protected.

'The Constitution of the United States is extraordinary and amazing. People just don't revere it like they used to,' Scalia told a full auditorium of high school students, officials, religious leaders. "

ahh, i can see it all now... scalia standing in front of a podium, pontificating on the sublime wisdom of the concept of freedom of speech while federal marshalls run around the crowd confiscating recording equipment like sonny corleone at his sister's wedding...

does the right honorable justice scalia fear something from having his words recorded? judging from the incident reported last january, and the obvious hypocrisy inherent in the above quoted remarks, one would tend to think so.

it all boils down to yet another reason why NO ONE should ever be appointed to a position of power for life.

ten years later

frontline on pbs last night aired an incredibly powerful documentary on the horrors of the rwanda genocide and UN inaction... if you get a chance, look into it.

it's painful, but it'll do your soul good.

the crimes of the intellectual

sorry for the delay in posting, gentle reader(s), but my attention has been diverted to other matters the past few weeks...

a few quotes i'd like to throw at you-

"In some Christian denominations the intellectual life is looked at askance; anything beyond basic literacy is regarded as presumptuous." - Library Journal

"We [the German air force] will be the terror of our enemies, those Jewish elitists and intellectuals... I want in this army iron men with a will to action... When the Fuhrer in his Reichstag speech said that we would no longer tolerate the suppression of ten million German comrades beyond our borders, then you know as soldiers of the air force that, if it is to be, you must back these words of the Fuhrer to the limit. We are burning to prove our invincibility." - Hermann Goering*

"It is 'deeply offensive and contemptible' to hear 'elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail' dismiss progress in Iraq since last year's overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the elder Bush said in a speech to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association annual convention." - Bush the Elder

at first glance, one might draw the conclusion that herrs bush, goring, and the fine folks of the fundamentalist christian community are advocating the opinion that our society should consist solely of mindless, drooling idiots blindly following whatever mandates are put in front of them, not criticizing or offering better ideas or methods.

not exactly... it's interesting how fascists have always used the excuse that anti-intellectualism is a stance against "haughty educated types, who have no experiences in common with the common man, believing they know what's best for them, or pushing them around like pawns in pursuit of nebulous or lofty goals" (thanks, ian)... in earlier - or simpler - times, this would generally be ascribed to the western idea of the Great Evil of Communism...

bush's choice of the phrase "elites and intellectuals", by which (i assume) he is alluding to dissenters of the war in iraq, shows exactly how out of touch the thinking of the "ultra-conservative republican" (for lack of a better phrase) is in a world where the communist arch-enemy no longer exists...

* from "berlin diary", william l. shirer, copyright 1941, alfred knopf publishing, pp 94-95.

EVERYBODY RHUMBA!!!!!

part III

we talked for the better part of the morning, walking through the rainy streets of beijing, passing a bottle of half-rancid saki that we found in a dumpster near the american embassy back and forth... he told his stories (chasing a shaman from ft. worth to the jungles of southern ecuador after getting burned on bunk yage, trying to convince the secret service he was spiro agnew's illegitimate son, etc.) and i told mine... and slowly, over this time, i realized how special this guy really was.

and still is. happy birthday, ian...

NOTE: The preceding posts are works of alcohol and marijuana-inspired fiction and do not necessarily represent the opinions of GWP, The People's Republic of China, PETA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Ike and Tina Turner, the corpse of Josef Stalin, Xiang Hoa Porcelain Company, the International Brotherhood of Village Witchdoctors Local #193, the Republican National Committee, the City of Otumwa, Iowa, or the endangered species of panda bears worldwide. No Chinese bathhouse attendants were harmed in the production of this blog. All work copyrighted 2004 by GWP, Inc. All rights reserved. E Pluribus Unum. Goodnight, thanks for reading and God Bless America.

part II

we stumbled out into the cold, rainy chinese night... ian's hand was dripping blood from the cuts the mug gave him after he smashed it a concrete bench and imperiously shouted to the attendants to "bring it on", waving a large broken shard around with evil intent... i thought it wise we split the scene immediately...

"did i evuh dell you de WEAL weason i'm in tyna?" he managed to half-speak... the paragoric and saki chasers had made his tongue somewhat numb... "nope", i replied, somewhat cautiously... he went on to explain that he came to beijing through the "back door", as it were, latching himself on to a diplomatic envoy sent by Nixon a few years earlier... he had been trying his hand at a panda aphrodisiac made from a crossbred monstrosity of bamboo and ayahuasca... funny thing is, the damned thing worked... pandas were hornier than ever and humping everything in sight...

except for each other.

unexplainedly, the food/drug caused uncontrollable panda erections in males while inducing heat in females, but for some reason, the pandas wouldn't fuck other pandas... no monkey, small bush, patch of mud, furry animal, nature photographer (animate or otherwise) or jungle denizen was safe from the amorous exploits of the bears... "had to shoot one of 'em in the kidney just to get the bastard offa my leg", he explained, showing me the panda tooth necklace he wore strung around his neck... "ever had a 600 lb panda try to get in your ass?? not comfortable. so i sez fuck the endangered species act..." his voice was beginning to falter and crack... he needed another drink, and desperately...

to ian on his birthday

part I

i sit here on tuesday night, nursing my third beer, and my thoughts can't help but turn to the first time i met ian... it was in an illegal bathhouse in beijing, 1975... he was gulping paragoric from a dirty brown mug that had a flaking profile of stalin on one side and "World's Greatest Uncle" in fading cyrillic on the other... i had wandered in offa the street, looking for a drink and whatever else may happen... he had evidently been quite a fixture there for the past week... seems he was taking advantage of a recent promotion by the Chinese government involving 10 free bathhouse visits for becoming a member of the Communist Party... he had showed me his little Red Card early on that evening that had seven holes stamped out in it to form a crude likeness of Chairman Mao...

"boy!" he bellowed across the empty pools (the place had been dead for hours... guess no one seemed to be interested in "cleanliness" at 4am on a wednesday night, even in beijing). ian, to his sneering, giggling delight, had been giving the spa boy a wicked time for the past three hours... he turned to me, leaning over precariously in his lime green reclining patio chair... "bastard doesn't even speak Xeno-Pyrennic Basque, the fucking yellow savage...", he hissed... i grunted assent... "boy! i'm not getting in that fucking bath until you clean the dead mantises outta it!"... the steaming water in the pool at which he was gesturing wildly was cystal clear... he glowered menacingly, one hand firmly clenching his mug , the other squeezed into a tight red fist which he shook brazenly at the simmering attendant... the entire scene - the coffee mug, the lime green patio chair, the heavy smell of the bathhouse, the frantic arm waving and fist clenching - produced a quite unnerving effect... i frowned and lit a cigarette... shit, this is gonna get ugly...

lemme tug on your coat a second...

life is filled with uncertainties... fraught with danger, etc... there are, however, a few universal truths:

1. shakespeare's plays were actually written by christopher marlowe (screw you, ian).
2. republicans eat their own.
3. texans shouldn't be presidents.

inre #3, to wit:

there have been four "texan" presidents, whether born there or politcally established from: Eisenhower, Johnson, Bush the Elder and the dreaded Son of Bush.

Ike got us out of Korea... this was obviously a good thing and there was much rejoicing at his determined american leadership, etc. etc.... he was considered a great american president upon his departure from the office... of course, he also turned a blind eye to McCarthyism and the evils it perpetrated, as well as promoting hatred of western ideas in the middle east with his "Eisenhower Doctrine"... no one's perfect, you might say...

Johnson was the first president to commit troops to Vietnam... also stirred things up in the middle east by allowing israel a free hand in the region... 'nuff said about that...

Bush ruined what economy was left after Reagan got ahold of it and started a war in the middle east... granted, other than these two items, he was about as exciting as a wicker chair, but hey, war is war, right?

and then we come to the present-day Bush... TWO middle eastern wars... millions of jobs lost... LITERALLY countless accounts of scandal, corruption, avarice... well, let's just say his bloodlust, impropriety and greed are well documented and leave it at that.

four men. four TEXAS men. and they all seem obsessed with fucking with arabs.

makes me wish santa ana had won at san jacinto.

the only viable alternative

well, the way i see it, it's either Kerry or Guns and Dope in 2004.

Dubya is simply not an option.