Mister Green

Thought for the Day

If we weren't meant to strangle geese, why would they have those long, skinny necks?

Raising the glass to Blackfive

Blackfive links to me today as a blogger he'd like to drink with. The feeling is reciprocated, even when he's not buying. (But that always helps.)

When he talks about bourbon, BBQ, and a new carpet, he may be referring to a story I told him about the time my friend Pancho was over at my place and we were drinking. I'm not sure what all we drank, but I know it involved bourbon, scotch, and beer. Yeah, just like the song, but I wish we had kept it to just one of each. Instead, the two of us drank several bourbons, several scotches, and several beers. In so doing we got stupidly, catastrophically bombed. We sat out on the patio while we attempted alcoholic suicide, and I made barbequed ribs on the grill.

Somehow in the course of sitting on the living room floor and trying to manage enough physical coordination to feed himself, Pancho sat in his plate of ribs. Then when he realized what he had done, instead of just standing up, he sort of half-slid half-rolled off the plate, ensuring a nice even distribution of sauce on his pants and the carpet. If he had been trying to paint the floor with his ass, he couldn't have done a more effective job.

All we could do was laugh helplessly while Mrs. Green, who had not been drinking and was therefore already somewhat irritated with me on general principle, tried to be upset and instead just started laughing herself at what an idiot he was.

I'll have more Pancho stories later, but they're all strikingly similar: We get plastered, he gets helpless, hilarity ensues. He has only one story on me in which I do something stupid, but if he wants to tell it he can get his own damn blog. And by that time I will have trashed his credibility to the point that nobody will believe him anyway. Preemption: It's not just for foreign policy any more.

Purdue 23, ND 10

Well, I was there and I saw what the scoreboard said after time had expired, and I'm still waiting to read in the paper that a mistake had been made. Or, if not a mistake, then this is a trick to get me to raise my expectations. Between Purdue beating Notre Dame, Indiana losing, and the Cubs clinching their division and making the playoffs, it would be only natural to be happy. Well, it's not going to work on me! I still expect Purdue to lose all the rest of their games and the Cubs to be swept in the first round! I refuse to hope! You can't make me!

I will fear no evil

All right, people. The epic showdown between light and darkness is almost upon us. Saturday, at 2:30 PM Eastern time. The gruesome, misshapen, troglodytic, subhuman, imbecilic monstrosities of Notre Dame face off against our heroes, the very embodiment of all that is right and good in this world, the Purdue Boilermakers.

I wish I could be optimistic about this. Purdue is clearly the better team this year, and is favored by 10. But the Luck of the Irish™ always seems to kick in for them. Last year, a Purdue running back got tackled and just dropped the ball – it wasn’t stripped, he just plain put it on the ground. A Notre Dame player scooped it up and ran in untouched. Then on the ensuing kickoff, the ball bounced off the Purdue return man and flew right into the arms of a Notre Dame guy at the 5 yard line, who jogged into the end zone. Purdue was down 14 points in a heartbeat and never recovered. I know the saying, “You make your own luck”. But this was truly random chance. And it always seems to be that way.

So I expect a heartbreaker tomorrow. To steel myself against this outcome, I intend to be completely in the bag before kickoff, with liberal applications of bourbon as needed during the game. This may not be, technically speaking, a good coping strategy. But I've never been one to let that stop me before.

Bookmark This

Front Line Voices is a new site started by Frank J. and Jennifer. The plan is to get real stories out of Iraq and Afghanistan directly from military personnel stationed there. There has been so much spin put on stories from these places by the media that it is difficult to know exactly what the situation is. This is a great idea.

Thought for the day

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening, too. Wait, come to think of it, I do have a hammer. But if I had a hammer, a windowless basement, and a barrel of lye, there'd be a lot less assholes all over this land, I tell you what.

Note: This post intended as humor. Mr. Green does not advocate, endorse, condone, or participate in murder. All rights reserved. See dealer for details. Your milage may vary. Void where prohibited. Prosecutors will be violated.

Dammit!

An intensely stupid federal judge blocked the FTC's Do Not Call List today. He may have had some compelling legal reason to rule that way, but I don't care. I hate, hate, HATE telemarketers.

So people I don't know selling shit I don't want have the right to steal as much of my time as they see fit by calling me whenever they like. Even if I don't answer (and if the Caller ID says "Unavailable" or "Private", I never do), I still have to go to the phone and see who it is. And then I have to listen to it ring until it goes over to voice mail. Although I have to say the number of telemarketing calls has decreased since we stopped answering the phone. They may be vermin, but some of them at least appear capable of learning.

If the telemarketers hadn't started calling everybody in the US seventy times a day just because they have the technology to do so, there wouldn't be a Do Not Call list. (God, I wish I knew how to call that judge up and offer him my consulting services. Several times a day. Just in case he changed his mind since the last time I called.) I think there ought to be some way of establishing that "I do not want to hear from you, under any circumstances, ever. If you call me you're wasting your time, and I will make a note of the product or service you were pushing and make it a point to never buy it as long as I live. Now, piss off." (I know you're supposed to be able to tell individual companies that. But I don't want to spend hours on the phone telling each one of the 27 million organizations that want my money never to call me again.)

Maybe I'll pay to have a second phone line added. It would have an unlisted number that we give only to friends and family, with explicit instructions to guard it with their lives. The current line will be the one I give to the rest of the world, and it will not be attached to a phone, only voice mail. I'll check it every few days to make sure there's nothing important in there. But I resent having to pay extra to guard my time from people who want to make me use it listening to their commercial pitches.

Now, if there were a way that if I got called and didn't want what they were selling, then I got to punch the caller in the face - now I'd be all for that. It would sort of even things out - I get my time wasted, you get a punch in the face. It would serve as a disincentive to taking telemarketing jobs, so workers would have to be paid more, thus increasing costs and making telemarketing less lucrative. Like magic, the industry would dry up overnight! And we'd all get to punch someone in the face! How cool would that be?

I think I've come up with the first plank of my presidential campaign platform: Telemarketers get punched in the face.

Score!

I had wanted to go to the Notre Dame at Purdue football game this year. All of my old friends from school wanted to as well. But since this is always the most in-demand game on Purdue's schedule, tickets were only available as part of the season ticket package - no single game tickets available. So we got tickets to the Illinois game instead.

Imagine my surprise when I read online that ND had returned 500 of its allotment of tickets to the Purdue ticket office. I just called them up and bought 4 of them. I'm going to be at the game, and for the first time I can recall, Purdue is favored by 10 points over the Fighting Amish.

So when Notre Dame scoops up an unforced Purdue fumble and returns it 95 yards for a touchdown as time expires in the fourth quarter to give them a 1-point win, you'll know it was my fault. If only I stayed home and didn't watch the game, Purdue would bury them....

Congratulations!

Blackfive got his first Instalanche today with this post.

I didn't get involved in the whole Blog War thing, but if Instapundit can increase your 1-day total of visits to something like 10 times your daily average (as he did for Blackfive today), he must be powerful indeed. You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with Glenn.

I'll bet that when I link to him here, his visit total for tomorrow only doubles.

I am a lying liar.

I promised more stuff this weekend than I delivered. I did write something on gay marriage, but it sucks. I couldn't decide if I wanted it to be serious or snarky, and it wasn't enough of either. And since this blog is committed to the very highest standards of excellence in writing, I simply could not in good conscience post it.

Heckler in Balcony: Then how do you justify *anything* you've posted here?

Mr. Green: Shut up.

All Is Forgiven

Purdue whipped the piss out of Arizona today, 59-7. Although they pulled their starters in the second half, Purdue still scored 5 second half touchdowns, 3 of which were on the ground. Arizona coach John Macovic was so mad after the game he refused to shake hands with Purdue coach Joe Tiller.

John - get a grip. Your opponent is not going to punt on first down, and it's not like Purdue was giving you onside kicks and fake field goals with their starters in the fourth quarter. If your opponent is not trying to run up the score and you still lose by 52, your problem is the man in the mirror and the players on your sideline. Dry your eyes and get ready for next week.

Pansy.

In other news, Notre Dame lost at home to Michigan State 22-16, marking MSU's fourth consecutive win in South Bend. Meanwhile Indiana snuffed it 34-17 against Kentucky. This marks the second weekend in a row that college football blessed me with a Purdue win and Notre Dame and Indiana losses.

Some people win the lottery; I get perfect college football Saturdays. Those poor bastards don't know what they're missing.

Who Is Mr. Green?

He is the personification of wealth, fame, and power. Also, he is dead sexy.

This rare photograph may give some insight to the curious.

Arrrrrr

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day, me hearties.

Sadly, their server seems to be buckling under the load of all the wannabe pirates out there (like me) trying to get lessons, so here is Dave Barry's article about it.

Among his other accomplishments, such as winning the Pulitzer Prize and inspiring my shameless (and graceless) imitation, Dave is responsible for bringing TLAPD to prominence.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus...

... And some people are from Planet Dipshit. In double-checking at Amazon.com the publication date of Stupid White Mike for my last post, I clicked a link to Moore's book Downsize This. There is a user comment on that book from May 4, 2002 by Josh Dougherty. In it, he points to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

Article 23, section 1 says: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

Section 3 of the same article says: "Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."

Dougherty cites this as proof that "a job and economic security *ARE* actually basic and fundamental human rights."

Hmmm.

I would cite this as proof that the United Nations is out of touch with reality, and has been since its inception.

You can have the right to work - feel free to come on over and clean my house any time you want to exercise that right. But to say you have the right to a paying job is nonsense. Paying jobs don't just fall from trees or grow up out of the ground. Somebody has to choose to employ you. So if you have the right to a job, somebody else - like me - must have the legal obligation to give you one, my need for help or ability to pay for that help notwithstanding.

And if it's my responsibility to create jobs and distribute them like party favors, surely there ought to be some way to ensure that I am creating as many jobs as I possibly can, right? Somebody ought to be standing over me with a stick, ready to give me a good whack if I start to shirk my duty in providing other people with their rightful jobs as mandated by the UN. Man, this whole "employer" gig really sucks. I think I'm getting screwed. That stick really hurts. I wish there were a way out....

Wait! I've got it! I'm a human, too. I have the right to a job just like everybody else! Let some other poor bastard do the job creating and the paycheck paying. And you know what? I don't want to work very hard. I want my job to be really low-effort and low-paying. Then somebody else will be obligated to give me the supplemental income necessary to make my life worthy of human dignity. Yeah, that's the ticket. I just hope everybody else doesn't figure out that they have the right to sit on their ass and make the rest of the world give them whatever they need to live whether or not they contribute anything at all. That's my job.

Now, if there were an economic system where people had the right to keep the wealth they created… Hell, they wouldn't be obligated to support me in the lifestyle to which I would like to become accustomed. I’d have to pull my own weight. I’d have to be a contributing member of society instead of a leeching freeloader. Thank God the UN’s protected me from that nightmare!

Excuse me, I’ve got to call my boss and tell him to come over to the Greenhaus and clean my toilet. I’m pretty sure it’s my fundamental human right.

I'm Alive! Really!

Blackfive chastised me yesterday for not posting more.

Bad blogger!

So today / this weekend I will be rolling out the first take on Michael Moore and my thoughts on the gay marriage thing.

A book from February 2002 and an issue that was red-hot months ago. Never let it be said that Mr. Green is afraid to opine on old news...

Back!

Man, am I tired. Got back late Sunday, worked late Monday, just now getting back to Blogland.

More tomorrow.

Gone!

I am taking off for the weekend with the wife. Blogging to resume next week, including (I promise) a look at Stupid White Mike. I actually read some of it on the train today. It made me feel dirty, and not in the good way.

See ya!

Good stuff

Blackfive has some suggestions on things we can actually do to remember 9/11.

Ralph Peters has some good thoughts on the War on Terrorism, Iraq, and realistic expectations.

Ahhh, shit.

Anybody not already in a bad enough mood should go read today's Lileks.

Quote: "Now I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon."

Read it. Think about it.

9/11

Well, a lot of people are going to be writing about this today. I don’t think I’m going to have much to say that someone else won’t have already said better, but I feel like I have to try.

I’ve attempted several times over the past few weeks to organize my thoughts enough to write something coherent. Every time I got a little bit into it and had to stop. The initial blast of white-hot rage that hits me every time I think about somebody murdering thousands of Americans has not lessened in intensity since the day I watched the towers fall on TV. It’s not so much the horror of three thousand lives lost that gets me. That’s too big to contemplate all at once. It’s each life considered one at a time that is too much to bear. When I thought about a single child whose mother or father would never again come home, it was impossible for me to express myself.

So I’ve tried to modulate that anger for clarity’s sake. I’ve not been entirely successful. But maybe I’ve succeeded enough to say a few words to the people who say that we should put it behind us and move on.

I don’t want to move on. Maybe that makes me a bad person. You can think that if you like. You can tell me all the reasons why instead of anger I should feel shame at what my country is and has done, and why I should be contemplating what we did to make them do this (as if blaming them for their actions is comparable to blaming your car for breaking down when you didn’t take care of it properly). You can tell me how provincial it is of me to be more upset at the loss of American life than the loss of any other life, and how this is the inevitable result of America’s oppressive, ignorant, racist, sexist, mindless, jingoistic, corporate cowboy imperialism. You can say those things and more, but I have to confess up front that you’re wasting your breath on me. You won’t be able to convince me to consider “moving on”. You see, it’s not just that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t.

I can’t move on because I know that the only reason they didn’t kill more people is that they lacked the means. It wasn’t because they thought to themselves, “We wouldn’t want to hijack more than four planes anyway. That would be barbaric. And three doesn’t convey the subtle nuance of our message. Four planes is just right.” No, they murdered as many people as they could. They murdered people who had done nothing to them except be American. Now, you can argue that we all bear the responsibility for what our government does in our name, and recite the litany of all its sins. Fine. I don’t necessarily agree with your list, but for the sake of argument I’ll grant it to you. So go ahead and put one two-hundred-ninety-two-millionth of the blame on my tab, as long as I get an equal portion of the credit for all the good things the U.S. has done for the world. Figure the balance. If it comes out in the red does that mean I deserve to die? (Hint: If it comes out in the red, check your math and your facts. You’ve made a mistake with one or both.)

I can’t move on because they would have cheerfully murdered my wife if they had been able to. I didn’t lose anybody close to me on 9/11. But that’s only because nobody close to me happened to be on one of those planes, or in one of those buildings. It wasn’t because the murdering bastards had no quarrel with my family. They would have relished the opportunity to kill us. They wanted me dead. They wanted my wife dead. We are just abstractions to them, but that doesn’t mean they want us to live. So don’t tell me I have no quarrel with the animals that did it.

And finally, I can’t move on because there are still monsters out there. Monsters that look like human beings but have nothing in common with me or any other human. These monsters would like nothing more than to do 9/11 again, only bigger. And maybe this time in Atlanta. Maybe Los Angeles. Maybe Sydney, Toronto or London. (America may be the Great Satan, but it’s not just about us.) Maybe even Chicago. I thought about that today as I headed into the city on my way to work. I was doing the same thing that all those people in the towers and the Pentagon were doing. Just going to work.

Perhaps it’s unsophisticated of me, but I think I’ll choose to remember. I’ll remember how I felt as I watched the towers fall. How I felt when I saw videotape of people dancing in the streets, celebrating what had happened. How I couldn’t bear to read the obituaries of the victims when they were published in the newspaper.

I’ll remember. We should all remember, because our only hope of having a world we would want our grandchildren to live in is to not let anybody come to believe that you can murder three thousand American civilians and have it work out in any way to your benefit.

Never forget.

Stupid Criminal Stories

I got my wallet back today. (I told the story of losing it on my old Blogspot site, and haven't moved it over here yet.) An employee of the branch of my bank in the same town where it was lost/stolen called today to say that she found it in the bank vault. She said she didn't have any idea who put it there or when. Everything was there except the cash. Which sounds fishy to me. Why would someone take the money and then turn it in at a bank, when I lost it in the parking lot of a record store? And why wouldn't anybody at the bank know anything about how or when it was turned in there?

Once I talk tomorrow to the detective who has the case, all mysteries will be revealed quickly. 30 minutes for the police to crack the case, 30 minutes for the prosecuters to nail the perp(s). I've seen Law & Order; I know how these things work.

Losing the Bet

Okay. So, I work with this guy who I will refer to here as the Deceitful Little Bastard (DLB), for reasons that will soon become apparent. I have worked with DLB for two and a half years, and in that period he has made it in to work on time fewer than 10 times. And that's padding it enough to be safe. It's probably closer to 5. That DLB is going to be late is just a fact of life in my office. The only question is whether it will be by a few minutes or a few hours. And this is a man who's start time is 9 AM!

So a few weeks ago we were discussing (over a fairly large number of beers after work) the new yoga classes that were being offered at work. DLB said he was going to sign up for the weekly 7 AM sessions. That's eight sessions in all, once a week. I laughed and told him he was wasting whatever money he was spending on the signup fee, as there was no way he was ever going to make it to a single one. He immediately proposed a bet: He would make it to every class on time. If he did, I had to do 10 shots. If he failed, he had to do 10 shots. Winner's choice, loser's tab.

Now, remember his punctuality track record as described above. Also to consider is the fact that I am 6'5" tall and weigh about 265 pounds. DLB is maybe 5'8" and 175. If I had to do 10 shots, not such a big deal. It wouldn't be pretty, but as long as I didn't do them all at once it wouldn't be a problem. Him doing 10 shots would be interesting, most likely colorful (in a very bad and literal way) & highly amusing, and would teach him a valuable lesson about making sure-fire losing bets. No significant downside risk for me - all upside! I laughed at him again, and did a pretty fair amount of beer-fueled taunting in front of about a dozen co-workers.

I think you can all see where this is going.

Of course, DLB did in fact make it to every one, the SOB. I would have laid 10-1 odds he would have been late to the very first one. Even after he made the first 7, I didn't think I was going to lose. Come on! This is DLB we're talking about! From this I can only conclude that he has been planning this moment for two and a half years, lulling me into a false sense of security by being chronically late. Hence his identifying acronym.

So I'm going to take my medicine, but I'm going to be planning a makeup bet sometime soon. Maybe a similar bet, but this time I'll sneak over to his house one morning, jack up his car, and borrow a couple of his tires.

It's not cheating; it's being resourceful.

Settling In

Okay, I'm just moving over from Blogspot and wow! is this way slick. I'll just be a little while in figuring out all the new supercool stuff I can do here in MT that I couldn't do there, and then it's right back to making up new drivel in my own particular....

Concord: Idiom, sir?

Mr Green: Idiom! Yes, thank you Concord.

And a huge, huge thank you to Suzie and Pixy Misa for bringing me to Munuviana. Hopefully I won't bring down the property values too much...