Archive for the ‘The Best of Sordid Tales’ Category
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Oh God, give it a rest already with this whole Tiger Woods infidelity outrage. For crying out loud, don’t you know? Everybody cheats: We cheat on our taxes, we cheat on our résumés, we cheat on our facepage entries for age and weight and, yes, we have cheated—or are about to cheat—on our husbands and wives.
According to the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 45 to 55 percent of married women and 50 to 60 percent of married men “engage in extramarital sex at some time during their relationship.” And that’s just those who admit to it. If you add 15 percentage points for those who are lying, 15 for people who would cheat but can’t—because they are too ugly, dumb and smelly to seduce somebody other than their ugly, dumb, smelly spouses—you’ve got a 85-90 percent chance that normal people in normal situations cheat. (more…)
Posted in (love and sex), The Best of Sordid Tales | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Responding to the recent car-bombing of a Peshawar market, Secretary of State Clinton told the Pakistan press, and the world, that the attacks were, “cowardly,” which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Just Google the phrase cowardly act and see how many people have no idea what coward even means. For example, the first three hits are links to: an article about a hit and run murder in Toronto, an assault on an elderly man by a teenager with a baseball bat, and a man who attacked an Australian Constable with a flying head-butt to protect an elderly man from being tasered—all of which were described as “cowardly acts.” (more…)
Posted in (language), The Best of Sordid Tales | 5 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
When President Barack Obama gave a speech last month that was written for the school children of America, certain politicians and pundits threw a fit.
Jim Greer, the Florida GOP chairman, called the speech “liberal propaganda.” Fox News commentHater Glenn Beck said the president’s goal is the “indoctrination of children.” The list goes on.
And what were these detestable messages being propagandized by President Obama (or, as I call it, prObamaganda)? Do your homework, stay in school, apply yourself—you know, the kind of ideas that could destroy a society should they ever catch on. (more…)
Posted in (patriotism/politics), The Best of Sordid Tales | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
It’s Thursday night, seven minutes after midnight, which technically means Friday. My column—this column—is due on Friday. The Sword of Deadline-ocles hangs over my head.
I blame Rob Garbowski.
Rob Garbowski is a good friend of mine but the other day he said something that irritated my ass off.
He was detailing the reasons he was not impressed by a recent column I had written and concluded by saying, “I could tell that you phoned that one in.”
Now, normally I welcome criticism. Constructive criticism has improved my writing a great deal over the years, not the least of which has come from Rob, who you can always count on for honest and intelligent critique.
So, I hope you take it in the right spirit, Rob, when I tell you to lick my liver-blisters.
(more…)
Posted in (about sordid tales), The Best of Sordid Tales | 2 Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Recently, I ran into a bit of bad luck. I won’t bother you with the details—they’re not terribly interesting. What matters is, I was sitting at the bar with a friend—miserable and hunched over a dirty Stoli martini while he delivered a series of irritating, consolation clichés.
He was saying stuff like, “Well, you still have your health” and “Things could be worse” and, of course, the worst consolation cliché of them all. It’s only five words long, but these five words are so repugnant, they can drive a man to stab your neck with an olive spear should you speak them.
“Everything happens for a reason,” he said, then lifted his martini and gazed upward, as if what he said was blisteringly profound. (more…)
Posted in (rants), The Best of Sordid Tales | 4 Comments »
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
W. and I have been married five years. We have no children; nor do we intend to ever have them. Now, I know, to the gleeful breeders of the world, the phrase “childless couple,” sounds so sad and bleak—as though everything in our house is gray and cold and we are just this joyless, old couple drably dipping soupspoons into our bowls of hot water and potatoes every night. (more…)
Posted in (personal), The Best of Sordid Tales | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
“I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!” —Newt Gingrich
Wow, Newt, you really are a retard.
Now, it should be noted that I do not intend for the word “retard” to be insulting to our mentally handicapped brothers and sisters (Newt gives retards a bad name); rather, “retarded” is meant in its truer, original sense, as in, “regressive,” “stunted” and / or “expressing non-progressive thinking or behavior.” Because that’s exactly what this is—yet another flailing neo-conservative, detached from power and still clinging to the same, goonish, approach to global affairs that nearly ruined us in the first place. (more…)
Posted in (patriotism/politics), The Best of Sordid Tales | 5 Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Since Miss California’s mumble-tastic response to Perez Hilton’s question about gay nuptials, there has been a lot of chatter in the media (again) about the definition of marriage.
A recurring argument by the traditional-marriage crowd, or, as I like to call them, the Anti-Gay Relationship Orthodoxy (AGRO), is that marriage has always been defined as a union between one man and one woman. And guess what? They’re right! In every dictionary I checked, marriage is primarily defined as a union between one man and one woman. What they don’t say is that most words have multiple definitions, such as the words in my trusty American Heritage 3rd Edition, which additionally defines marriage as, simply, “a close union.”
This is not the only problem with the AGRO argument.
(more…)
Tags: the definition of marriage
Posted in (civil rights), The Best of Sordid Tales | 4 Comments »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
When Rick Warren read his prayer at President Obama’s inauguration, the hairs on the necks of several million gay people stood erect. After all, it was Warren who equated homosexuality with polygamy and pedophilia.
Conservatives tend to agree with Warren, such as Mike Huckabee, who forecast that allowing gay marriage would lead to matrimony between “man and animal,” and James Dobson, who openly worried that gay nuptials could lead to “marriage between a father and a daughter.” (more…)
Posted in (civil rights), The Best of Sordid Tales | 2 Comments »
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
You know, it wasn’t until the Presidential debates that I discovered how utterly stupid is our President Bush. Before then, I was always the guy who argued in defense of the President’s intelligence. Not that I was a Bush fan or anything, I always believed you can not be an idiot and be the President of the United States at the same time.
Then came the debates and oh man did Bush look like someone who just fell off the turkey truck. Especially after the third debate, when he was asked if homosexuality was a choice and he responded, “I don’t know.”
Holy mother of wow!
How could a thinking human being in the twenty-first freaking century still believe that homosexuals choose to be gay?
(more…)
Posted in (civil rights), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Like most of the world, I was overwhelmed with emotion last Tuesday night when the people of the United States elected Barack Obama for president.
Wow! How’s that for poetic irony. Just when we thought we were helplessly enslaved by an administration of nearly insane, power-starved, mostly-white, science-rejecting megalomaniacs, in walks a smart-talking, free-thinking black man to emancipate us.
Also, I have been taking extra pleasure in pondering all those hardcore racists out there who must be quite aghast as they watch black people on TV dancing in the streets and sobbing tears of joy. In my fantasy, I imagine some skinhead knucklehead pacing in his living room muttering racial epithets to himself. Perhaps there is a shotgun in his closet, perhaps he will put the shotgun in his mouth. This is my fantasy, so it ends my way.
Yes, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, was a day when you truly felt proud to be an American. But then, on Nov. 5, I read something that changed all that.
(more…)
Tags: 70 percent of black voters, 70% of black voters, gay marriage, interracial marriage, miscegeneation, no on proposition 8, proposition 8, yes on proposition 8
Posted in The Best of Sordid Tales | 19 Comments »
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Probably by now you’ve heard of the U.S. Army veteran named Jim Broussard who recently cut down a couple of flags above a Reno bar because the bar owner (a Mexican-American) was flying a Mexican flag above the Stars and Stripes.
When Broussard heard about this abomination, he marched down to the Cantina El Jaripeo and–with television cameras rolling–cut down both flags. He tossed the Mexican flag on the ground, raised the U.S. flag to the camera and blurted, “I’m Jim Broussard, and I took this flag down in honor of my country.” Then he ranted for a few more moments and ended by saying that the bar owner would have to fight to get his flag back.
Now, it is true that the flag code prohibits flying the U.S. flag below any other.
Naturally, there has been much discussion about whether Broussard’s actions were patriotic or criminal, but I think an even better question is, “Should flying another flag above the U.S. flag even be illegal in the first place?”
(more…)
Tags: American Flag Code, Cantina El Jaripeo, Jim Broussard, Reno flag controversy, U.S. Flag Code
Posted in (patriotism/politics), The Best of Sordid Tales | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
For a long time now, I’ve been meaning to take one of those alcoholic screening tests, if for no other reason than to determine whether I am a bona fide alcoholic or just a fun-loving boozer who has it under control.
I guess the reason I never got around to taking the quiz is because I’m a little scared of what I might learn, and also because I’m usually too hungover to concentrate on exams.
Today, however, I finally decided to take the test. After a little research, I chose the John Hopkins University Hospital Alcohol Screening Quiz. The quiz asked a series of yes-or-no questions. Before proceeding, I made a pact to answer them honestly and completely. Here are the results:
(more…)
Posted in (boozing), The Best of Sordid Tales | 6 Comments »
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
Have you heard about the proposed bill by the Alabama lawmaker to ban gay-oriented books from schools and libraries and state funded universities?
“Homosexuality is not healthy for America,” said Rep. Gerald Allen in a recent press conference, “it doesn’t fit what we stand for.”
If passed the bill would not just ban books about homosexuality but would also ban books written by gay authors, which would mean no more William Burroughs, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams or that raging queen G. Gordon Liddy.
(more…)
Posted in (civil rights), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
As much as I can’t wait for the new Padre’s stadium (PETCO Park) to be finished, I just can’t resolve the fact that so many people’s homes and businesses were involuntarily confiscated and then bulldozed to accommodate our somewhat pathetic, insatiable need to be entertained by games.
I’m talking about Eminent Domain. (more…)
Posted in (civil rights), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Have you heard about Conservapedia? It’s a relatively new online encyclopedia that boasts a conservative bias. Aside from its Christian conservative leanings, Conservapedia looks and operates similar to Wikipedia, with the entries posted and edited by anyone who wants to.
Conservapedia was created by a high-school teacher, Andy Schlafly, in order to offset what he believed was a liberal slant on Wikipedia. And offset he did. From the minute you load it, you can see the conservolasses dripping all over the thing.
(more…)
Posted in (rants), The Best of Sordid Tales | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Have you been following the John McCusker Catholic homosexual burial debacle? What a holy roller coaster ride that has been. It all began when the family of John McCusker, the recently deceased owner of a couple of gay friendly nightclubs, arranged to have his funeral service at Immaculata Catholic Church.
(more…)
Posted in San Diego Local, The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
“The Prohibitionist must always be a person of no moral character; for he cannot even conceive of the possibility of a man capable of resisting temptation.”
–Aleister Crowley
I’ve been waiting for this moment. My long anticipated date with the Green Goddess is tonight. But will I live to tell about it? Or will she make me cut off my ear and wrap it in newspaper like Van Gogh?
The Green Goddess I speak of is absinthe–the notorious, mysterious, allegedly hallucinogenic, herbal, highly alcoholic, bitter, translucent green beverage that is barred in the United States possibly because it supposedly causes in its users episodes of madness, violence and epilepsy.
(more…)
Posted in (boozing), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Monday, April 16th, 2007
Originally published in San Diego CityBeat circa November, 2002
Have you noticed how awful every song written about September 11 is? For two straight evenings, I traversed a maze of web rings like Songs of Memory and Heal the Pain We Bear - consisting of dozens and dozens of 9/11 songs by obscure, mediocre artists.
For two nights, I listened to their laments about our national tragedy. Oh Christ, how I twisted in my headphones; each website, each song – just another jagged stone in an avalanche of suck.
(more…)
Posted in (religion), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
Sunday, April 8th, 2007
The exhausting debate over whether the phrase “Under God,” belongs in the Pledge is a potent distraction from the real problem with this thing. The real problem with the Pledge of Allegiance is that we have a Pledge of Allegiance in the first place.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” The whole thing seems a little Orwellian for my taste: The systematic programming of American Youth, the assembly-lining of an idea, the pressure to conform – it’s all there. What’s worse, we are asking children to pledge to an entity about which they know very little: These kids know nothing about foreign policy, nothing about history, or war, or death. They don’t even know the words of the pledge. (more…)
Posted in (patriotism/politics), The Best of Sordid Tales | No Comments »
