SEX, TATTOOS & VIOLENCE R US - #5

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NOTICE
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, unfamiliar with the ‘Sex, Tattoos & Violence R Us’ format, I guess, told me that he “had trouble following” issue #4. Hmmm… I wouldn’t think it necessary to point this out but . . . ‘Sex, Tattoos & Violence R Us’ is simply a collection of unrelated items posted in a single Blog installment. To paraphrase the “Notice” Mark Twain placed at the beginning of ‘The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn’: Persons attempting to find a Motive in this Blog Bit will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a Moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a Plot in it will be shot.

Now, do we understand each other? In ‘Sex, Tattoos & Violence R Us’ each Bit O’Smart-Assness following each Big Purple Headline is an entity unto itself. The subjects change with each new subject and none is in any way related to the former subject or the next subject, unless I say so (and I rarely say so). Always be watching for the next Big Purple Headline which will indicate to you that a new topic is about to be addressed. In fact, I think I see one of those Big Purple Headlines approaching now . . .

.SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE BACHELOR
Last weekend, Brother Nappy and I were going somewhere and somehow my conversation turned to the tendency that some women have to neglect their figures shortly after getting married. Nappy put it more bluntly: “As soon as a wedding ring is put on a woman’s finger, she picks up the fork.”
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PRESIDENT BARACK “USAP” OBAMA WINS THE 2009 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
There’s no comment necessary when you can read my mind.

REWARDING REBELLION AGAINST GOD AND GOOD TASTE
The Nobel Piece (O’Crap) Prize; the Academy Awards; The Emmys; The Grammys; The Golden Globes – win a major award in "this world" and you can be pretty sure that YOU SUCK!

I think the hottest places in hell are reserved for those with the most trophies. (“Hey, that’s a beautiful Trophy Wife you’ve got there, Bud!”)
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NFL WTF?!
A couple of Sundays ago, the Seattle Seahawks were wearing the most atrocious neon lime-green football jerseys ever seen. Yesterday, the Denver Broncos may have topped them - attired in these goofy, crap brown and piss yellow Ronald McDonald uniforms. How they managed to beat the evil New England Patriots dressed like that I’ll never know. (I’m just grateful for the victory.) But I have two questions: Who the hell in the NFL is responsible for all these ridiculous retro uniforms that NFL teams are wearing these days? And has the lamebrain been fired yet? (If not, why not?!)

America’s favorite sport is fielding these butt-ugly uniforms every week now, and this has been going on for a couple of years. You turn on the TV and you think you’re watching community college football or something. Look, there’s a good reason that teams eventually abandoned these old uniforms and updated their looks. These old styles were at one time deemed inferior and THAT’S WHY THE TEAMS CHANGED THEM! Does it make any sense at all to trot out these horrible old uniforms that were later replaced with something better? The game officials on the field are perhaps dressed worst of all; they look like neon orange Great Pumpkins. ‘Get A Clue, Charlie Brown!’

I wish NFL teams would just wear their modern jerseys and screw this stupid retro idea. And I wish that baseball would quit with the ‘God Bless America’ bit and go back exclusively to ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’ during the Seventh-Inning Stretch. Enough is ENOUGH!

BUSY SCHEDULE
Speaking of football: Yesterday I overheard Brother Nappy in the other room yakkin’ on the phone with some bloke about joining a new gym. The salesman invited Nappy to come down and check the place out and my brother said he would if he found the time, but as he explained, “There are several things that I need to get done today, including watching football.”

I don’t think The Napster heard me, but I was laughing out loud in the other room. That Nappy’s a funny dude . . . I just wish he’d clean up the kitchen and stop waking me up in the mornings.
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DUSTING OFF A DAISY OF A QUOTE
The other day, I placed a new book about edible plants into one of my Revelation Boxes (large plastic containers filled with survival necessities in preparation for what is surely comin’). While I was poking around in there I found my favorite compact Holy Bible (with the “Dusty Rose” cover) which my Ma purchased for me years ago. And opening it up, I rediscovered a great quote written inside the front cover that I’d so forgotten about that it fell into disuse.

I once used this quote frequently. I don’t know who came up with it, but I’m dusting it off and you can expect to see me tossing it about every so often again, now that I’ve unearthed the gem:

DARE TO BE A DANIEL;
DARE TO STAND ALONE;
DARE TO HAVE A PURPOSE FIRM,
AND DARE TO MAKE IT KNOWN.


ATHEISTDICK PSEUDO-SCIENTIST CALLED OUT AND PUSSES OUT
On October 8th, I happened to tune in for a few minutes to Michael Medved’s radio talk show. I can’t stand that phony conservative deceiver, but I do listen to maybe 15 minutes of talk radio most days, just to keep up on what the big stories of the week are.

Michael Medved happened to be interviewing Richard (“Dick”) Dawkins about religion and atheism (a.k.a. “Evolution”) and one caller really called Dick out. He proposed that Dick publicly meet Dr. Stephen C. Meyer in a formal, civil debate on the subject of Darwinian Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. How do you suppose that atheistdick pseudo-scientist responded? You know Dick Dawkins, right? The zoologist who once blatantly lied in one of his books about there being a computer model showing how the human eye evolved? The strident God-hater who got his butt handed to him on a silver platter by Ben Stein in the documentary ‘EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed’ ? (You really should make it a point to see that movie if you haven’t already!)

Well, Dick responded to the debate proposal by declining it. His reason? He claimed that just debating Dr. Meyer would be giving undeserved “respectability” to Meyer’s position. Ha!-Ha! Can you believe that sh#t?! PUSS!-PUSS!-PUSS!-PUSS!-PUSS!-PUSS! Dick reminds me of the little boy on the playground who protests, “I WOULD fight you, only I don’t want to get my new pants dirty.”

DICK!-DAWK! DICK!-DAWK! DICK!-DAWK!
With No-Show Defenses like that, time is seriously running out for Darwinism. Why, I’ll bet that even some Airheadzonans are beginning to question the idea of Evolution. And when one of its loudest, most obnoxious proponents like Dick Dawkins is afraid to meet one of Intelligent Design’s most respected authorities in open debate, it’s only a matter of time before EVERYONE comes to realize that Darwinism still hasn’t developed a leg to stand on.

Speaking of Talk Radio . . .

(IT’S JUST) YAK
I can’t understand how anyone could spend much time listening to radio talk shows, much less calling into them. Listen to a variety talk show hosts for a week and you will discover that all of them do almost ALL the talking. They constantly interrupt their callers, often not even allowing their callers to get to their main point, let alone actually getting the opportunity to develop it for the listeners. Frequently a caller will be kept on hold for 30, 40, 50 or 60 minutes, only to have the host finally get to him or her and say, “We’re up against the clock and need to go to commercial break. Quickly, in thirty seconds…” Now that would really tick me off!

Plus, the hosts will always “Silence” the caller and then dump him/her if the host is not faring well in the debate at hand.

Over a decade ago, I called the Bob Mohan show here in Phoenix when Mohan (supposedly a Conservative) was going on and on about so-called “Separation Of Church And State.” It was obvious to me that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and clearly did not have a genuine understanding of the U.S. Constitution on this issue (or probably any other, for that matter).

So I called in and got on the air and I was making Mohan look like a fool. At one point, Mohan got mad and blurted out, “Wait a minute! Maybe you’ve never read this! Are you familiar with THIS?!” and I could hear him fumbling around through papers on his desk trying to locate something. I went with my hunch and said, “Is this what you’re trying to find?” and I began reciting the First Amendment. Mohan says, “Yeah! That’s what I was going to say. What about that?” So, I started politely explaining the actual meaning of the First Amendment to him and he got even madder, made some final snide remark and disengaged me from the phone line.

The next caller intended to disagree with Mohan too, but he prefaced his remarks with, “I hope you’re not going to hang up on me like you did with that last caller.” Mohan told an A-List Lie and said that he had not hung up on me – that our discussion had simply ended there. Then a woman called in, and while she was having a noncontroversial discussion with Mohan, he said, “Could you believe that one caller [meaning me]? He thinks that… ‘such and such and so and so’.” I was glad to hear the woman back me up and say, “Well, that’s not exactly what I took him to mean--” Mohan interruped and quickly changed the subject.

Anyway, Talk Radio is merely propaganda, even when it seems to be colored a shade ‘Conservative.’ If you want to really increase your understanding of politics, you’ll need to read well-researched books; there’s just no way around that. Talk Radio is just unsatisfying spin from The Red Team.

"IS THAT A BICYCLE PUMP IN YOUR POCKET OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME?"
Hokey-Smoke and Hoo-Wee!
Some of these new inflatable women they’re making these days are really . . .
uhm . . . well . . .
just see for yourself:
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That hair color would take some getting used to (it’ll probably wind up on some NFL jersey next Sunday). Nevertheless, I would consider trading in my girlfriend Ariel for a newer, enhanced, T-T-Triple D model like those available nowadays, only Ariel would kill me so bad I’d wish I was dead.
[*Credit the great Jim Stafford for that line.]

rLEE-b ‘N’ ME
A few days ago, I was reading my ol’ friend Arlee Bird’s Blog “Tossing It Out.” [You too can read it by clicking RIGHT HERE.]
.He asked this question:

>>[I am curious to know what works for other writers. Do you write the story as you have planned it or does it just come to you while you are writing it? I would imagine there is some of both involved, but which method is most effective for you and how well does it work?]<<
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So, I replied with this:

rLEE-b ~
When writing anything, I always have a pretty good idea of where I’m going with it first. I once read that Joseph Heller wrote ‘Catch-22’ by just writing the first sentence that came into his mind and then building upon it, allowing the story to create itself. I’d like to try that someday, but my mind is so analytical that it would be an unnatural method for me and I suspect I’ll just end up with a mess.

So, I always have a pretty clear idea of points A and Z and sometimes a few letters in between, usually just a mental outline (would that be an “inline”?) and I fill in the spaces between the “Letters” or “Plot Points.” But for me, the most enjoyable or satisfying part of writing is the “magic” that occurs while I’m filling in those spaces between Beginning (A) and Ending (Z). Along the way, totally unforeseen things almost aways present themselves – analogies, wordplay, puns, a unique or funny phrase, a previously unrealized connection between two things, etc. When these ideas suddenly present themselves by flashing into my mind from seemingly nowhere, that’s when I’m having fun with the writing. I don’t particularly enjoy the “act” of writing, but the payoff for me is when some imaginative or clever thought explodes into my mind while my fingers are clicking on the keyboard, and then I get to go off and explore that new idea which seems to have come from God because it was previously unseen by me.

Back when I was writing reviews for Amazon.com, one day I decided I was going to write a review for a product called “O'Keeffe's Working Hands hand crème.” When I put the blank piece of paper on the table in front of me, all I knew in advance was that I really liked the product and I was going to title the review “I’ve Got To Hand It To Them...” Beyond that, I had no idea what I was going to say. So I wrote the title down and then just started writing. In about 5 minutes the entire review was completed and required almost no rewriting at all. I just stood back, laughed and thought: Where the heck did THAT come from? In this case, the entire piece of writing was “magic”, rather than it containing just a few bits of magic within a preconceived trip from A to Z. Although this wasn’t my favorite review which I wrote, in a way, it was the most fun, and I always referred to it afterwards as “my magic review.” (Maybe I’ll post it on one of my Blogs someday.)

Anyway, for me, writing really is like taking a road trip: I always know where I’m starting from and where I intend to end up, and there are a few things I expect to see along the way, but the highlights of the trip are usually those unplanned things that happen on the way, the things I couldn’t foresee that I would experience. Sort of like the time a friend and I were driving from N.Y.C. to L.A. and intending to see the Florida Keys during the trip. Although we did reach L.A., we didn’t see The Keys because we got sidetracked by our curiosity along the way and wound up lost one night, on foot, in the Okefenokee Swamp and surrounded by alligators. At one point, we feared we might have to sleep overnight in there. The story we were able to tell later was much more exciting than it would have been had we driven right through Georgia and straight to The Keys.

Well, I got to thinking: Why put off until tomorrow what I can post today?

So, I have posted just below this installment of ‘Sex, Tattoos & Violence R Us’ the O’Keeffe’s Working Hands Hand Cream review which I referred to above. If you have time and dry skin, check it out; if you don’t have ‘em, toddle off.

This has been another fine Stephen T. McCarthy & Ariel O. O’Airedale production, brought to you by our sponsor LONESOME DOGG SALOON: “Go where the locals go to get hammered!”

Back Issues:
SEX, TATTOOS & VIOLENCE R US - #4
SEX, TATTOOS & VIOLENCE R US - #3
SEX, TATTOOS & VIOLENCE R US - #2
SEX, TATTOOS & VIOLENCE R US - #1

Forerunner to S. T. & V. R US:
7 Remastered RANDOM THOUGHTS + 1 Previously Unreleased BONUS TRACK And 1 ALTERNATE TAKE
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