Holidays Smolidays!

(Disclaimer: The following was written after far too many holiday cocktails and bong hits, at which point, the author was inevitably going to be pissed off and ramble on shamelessly over something, anything, and this just happened to be the spark that kicked it off at this precise moment.)

“Happy Holidays”

What does that mean exactly? Happy holidays? That’s pretty non-committal in just about all regards isn’t it? Whether you’re a Christian, a Moslem, a Jew, or just some other easily offended schmuck who likes to get pissed off at stupid shit, whatever, have a ‘Happy Holiday’. Whether it be for Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, St. Patrick’s Day, bloody Arbor Day, whatever, just be sure to have a happy one - whatever the fuck it is!

“Have a Happy Holidays!” Oh, stab me. What fun. I am so overcome with festive spirit I could just puke.

When did we become such pussies about offending everyone? Heavens forbid you should ever wish ‘Merry Christmas’ to someone, let alone someone with either an olive or a mocha skin complexion…*gasp*…it’ll be fucking anarchy! Mobs will rush the streets; statues and monuments will be defiled; pitchforks will be sharpened and torches will be set ablaze and it’ll all descend into complete and utter madness….

C’mon! Snap out of it people!

Don’t you see how ridiculous this all is? Don’t let blanketing commercial marketing strategies and all this uber-“Politically Correctism” chaos cloud your unique personalities and corrupt your proud culture heritages! I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I celebrate CHRISTMAS; and I like “Merry” ones at that. I like to have a HAPPY NEW YEARS...and I don’t give a flying rats ass who may be offended over it! In fact, if even the notion of my having a Merry Christmas, or a Happy New Year for that matter, should piss you off…TOUGH TURKEY, JACKASS!

Likewise, I’m not about to suddenly go and take offense should anybody ever care to wish me a ‘Happy Hanukah’, or whatever it is the Jews celebrate. Okay?

Ho, Ho, Ho, you dick. Deal with it.

And if you think this makes me some freak holier-than-thou “Jesusboy” or something…think again! I just happen to still think that the old-fashioned “Freedom of Expression”, the kind I remember around the holiday season growing up, to publicly express one another's holiday traditions, whether it be the birth of Baby Jesus or the holy number of days that have been counted since the birth of Venus on the final day of the Age of the Jaguar, or so speaketh the Great Plumed Serpent – honestly, I don’t give a shit - but have a happy one indeed!

Just taking the safe and easy route out and simply wishing everybody a blanket “Happy Holidays’ blows. Do you even have a reflection in a mirror? Dammit, where the whole holiday spirit gone? Simply wishing everybody a mere ‘Happy Holidays’ is about as festive as an old man pissing on a dumpster.

Seriously people – let’s balls up some and stop being so “offended” by other cultures and the differing religious perspectives around us. We’re not hairy apes squabbling over available mountainside territories and asserting our dominance here – it’s just Christmas, or Hanukah, or whatever dammit! Moreover, lets stop being so scared of actually offending somebody by offering them our sincerest, and honest, well wishes on whatever-the-fuck-holiday it happens to be, and just be truly hap-hap-fucking-happy for everybody!

mkay?

I don’t even like people who wish me a ‘Happy Holidays’. They’re like ceremonial fence sitters. You don’t really know anything about them like who they are, or what they stand for, or what false idol they bow down to at night. They wouldn’t dare give anything about themselves away or ever expect to understand anything about you. They just want you to move along in line…swipe your card here…key in your information there…and, ‘Happy Holidays’…fuck off.

Where’s the holiday love?

I’d love to lay a beat down these overly-sensitive ‘Happy Holidays’ morons and make with the happy Snoopy-dance all over their sorry asses. And that goes for all those soulless holiday marketing directors, all those extra “seasonal” store cashiers who have about as much seasonal joy as a tooth ache, as well as any other non-committal dumbass who dares stop me in a public mall to wish me a ‘Happy Holidays’.

POW!

It’s CHRISTMAS - you heathen!

Now commence with the throwing of alms to the poor….

"Pass the alligator clips, brah"

The media has gone and found itself another hip buzzword that they can repeatedly drop more often than a lubed up crack baby*. Lately, you can’t nary surf three channels in a row without hearing something about “torture”. And I'm not talking about the old-school Cure track either off 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me'; I'm talking about actual mental and physical torture here. Torture. Torture. Torture. Here some torture; there some torture; everywhere some torture torture. This hot topic is literally dripping off reporter’s lips nowadays like drool from an epileptic wildebeest. It’s all you hear about anymore for fuck sakes!

Of course torture has been a political bone of contention and a continuing topic of concern among world leaders these days, especially after the whole exposing of crimes that supposedly took place at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo at the hands of the righteous fighters for freedom themselves- the God-fearing American military.

...Oops.

But these incidents, and rightly so, have since snowballed before the world’s eye into a full blown heated debate over whether such barbaric methods of extracting information should be allowable by moral society. Umm, all this just because Lynndie England decided to host a naked pig pile and then make her best Arthur Fonzarelli impression for a soldier buddy’s camera?

Egad!

Now, President Idiot Child, who originally opposing the bill on the grounds it would hamper intelligence-gathering in the US war on terrorism, has decided to reverse his position and instead endorse the ban on torture, but ONLY after months of White House attempts to weaken the measure, which prohibits the "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of detainees in US custody anywhere in the world. Vice President Dick Cheney, the evilest man on earth, however, has other aspirations for the bill as he is still involved in the lobbying of support from other Senators to reconsider their ban proposal; to modify it so interrogators - especially those attached to the CIA - would have the flexibility to use a range of extreme tactics on terrorism suspects. What the fuck is “extreme tactics” about exactly? Whether Dick “Cattle Prod” Cheney is talking about a nice sodium pentathol enema, forced viewing of ‘Designing Women’ reruns, or the clamping downs of someones schiznits in a vice – nobody seems to knows. But I’d sure hate to be stalling at the front of the cafeteria line and keeping him from his ‘Freedom Fries’. He’s likely to go all ‘Big Brother’ and have me wisked off in the middle of the night to one of these clandestine military detention centers, or “Black Sites” as their unofficially known, and have my feet locked into a box of rats.

Anybody still unnerved yet?

Cheney, in an interview with ABC News' Nightline program, said he backed legislation to ban inhumane treatment of prisoners, but criticized what he saw as a diminishing commitment by some to do "what's necessary" to defend the country. Me thinks somebody has seen one too many Rambo movies. The moment I see Cheney in an interview wearing a red cloth tied around his head - I'm packing and moving to Thule, Greenland.

To me, its this exact definition of “extreme tactics” seems to be the key here and worthy of further explaination. I mean, sure I can understand that extrme times call for extreme measures – I love a catch phrase like everybody else - but are we really ready to sacrifice hundreds of years worth of moral evolution by reverting back to applying thumb screws and wiping our asses with pages of the Qua’ran? Oh wait, you mean we already did that?

...Oops.

It was only just recently as a matter of fact that I even learned that the US House of Representatives had passed this final legislation, the infamous “Anti-Torture Bill”, to ban the torture of detainees. Much to my dismay, I also learned that the White House stood at a vote of ninety to nine in favor of the torture ban.

Wait, you mean nine – count ‘em, NINE - senators are still in favor of torture? Holy fuck! Those are some bad ass senators that I wouldn’t exactly want to run into in a dark cloister somewhere, that’s for fucking sure! They must be the old guys who walk around the Pentagon wearing necklasses made out of ears or something. These must be the guys who think that ‘24’ is this years best Reality television show and that Keifer Sutherland is really out saving the free world from evil doers outside their windows on the White House lawn. They’d just as soon have you skinned alive if ever you should look at them the wrong way. If I were one of the other ninety anti-torture Senators I'd be locking my office door so that I wouldn't end up sucking my Christmas turkey through a tube.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if ever there were a situation where a nuclear weapon was about to detonate on my front doorstep and there was some terrorist jag-off sweating corn chips and refusing to cooperate – I’d twist the fucking piano wire myself! Got it?

In fact, I think I could learn to advocate this lifestyle all too easily. Maybe I’m speaking too hastily. After all, torture does produce its results, doesn’t it? How many severed terrorist heads simply give up their secrets? People are just more inclined to tell you the truth and get straight to the point when you strip them down and ride them up and down the hallway like a horsey**. Shit, I’m prepared to utilize torture for the rest of my every day life as well in order to extract all forms of information whether it be movie listings, road directions, or even just the time off any stranger on the street corner.

Fuck it! CHINESE WATER TORTURE FOR EVERYBODY!

Now how does one become a Senator?

* Yeah, I know, there’s a warm spot waiting for me when I die.

** Or attach electrodes to their scrotum, or threaten to rip their arms from their sockets – whatever your particular poison happens to be.

King Bomb

Congratulations Peter Jackson – you just made my shit list you skinny fucker!

Honestly, well done on loosing the triple chin and all, but fuck you for butchering one of my favorite movies of all time. Where 'War of the Worlds' somehow managed to still be enjoyable and credible for me, King Kong managed to be about as much fun as crib death.

Don’t get me wrong, if you like big monkeys wrestling with T-Rex’s, stampeding brontosaurs, big man-eating creepy-crawlies, and no integrity whatsoever for original plot or character development, then this is the movie for you. If you like your big monkeys digitally programmed on mega-computers capable of tracking and directing satellites in space - by all means, have at 'er. I however, being the snobby traditionalist that I am, I prefer my big monkeys in grainy black and white stop motion photography. Personally, I would rather have been poked in the eye with a sharp stick than to have wasted my money on this latest computer-generated blockbuster disaster. Sitting through over three hours of this travesty of moviemaking was like being the last man waiting in line for a Bangkok prostitute.

Think of the things I could have been accomplishing instead of simply strip-mining my brain with this computer-generated drivel: meditating, working out, wacking off, getting drunk and staring at the walls, or even learning how to say "Peter Jackson is a dead man" in mandarin chinese. ANYTHING would have been better than wasting my time watching this movie! Shit, I could have memorized the collective works of Dylan Thomas in three hours if I had known how shitty the alternative was going to be.

Even by just the one and a half hour mark, I found myself without popcorn and with a growing urge to lodge my big toe into the trigger of a Winchester shotgun and pull a Kurt Cobain right there in the 7th row. It was that fucking bad! By the time Kong and his Faye Ray wannabe bimbette, played by Naomi Watts, had finished their giggly Meg Ryan 'Perkfest' and staring longingly into each others eyes while skating in Central Park I was ready to go all Ted Bundy with my rolled up ‘Coming Attractions’ guide garnered from the lobby.

Fortunately, I was able to restrain my inner rage by sympathizing for the theater employees in the ridiculous faggy elf costumes standing in the theater lobby advertising some upcoming stupid Tim Allen Christmas hokem flick. How many Christmas family movies is this guy going to make for fuck sakes anyways? Seeing those poor minimum wage bastards standing there sadly hocking DVD's* made me consider putting them out of their misery with a sympathy slaying. And believe me, after 3 and a half hours of computer monkeys and Jack Black's eyebrows I was ready for some ritual murdering.

But back to the debacle at hand! FUCK PETER JACKSON!

I am starting a petition right now to have Peter Jackson hunted down and flogged before he commits any more cinematic evils. Now, I know how you all loved ‘Lord of the Rings’ because you all love your elves and fairies n’ shit. I must be the only person in the world that thought Tolkein was about as boring as a Brandon Fraser movie. Heaven’s forbid the people should ever go without their elves n’ fairies. But this was a landmark Hollywood gem, from 1933, that should never have been tampered with.

Bastards.

Personally, I snoozed most of the way through the LOTR trilogies. It all seemed a little, well, gay to me. Maybe if I had smoked more dope than a DEA incinerator I would have given more of shit about Gandar the half man-elf, or whoever. What can I say? I was more inclined to read things of more sustenance and stimulating dialogue - like the old copies of Hustler squirreled away from the local Barber’s garbage can.

I’ve just never likened to fantasy very much. For me, enthusiastically absorbing that much elves and fairies would only be one short step from going all ‘Too Wong Fu’ and take to wearing burlesque-like alien costumes and joining some weirdo group of “LARP-ers”** on Wednesday nights to eat Cheeto’s and debate over who has the smaller penis.

Have the creative juices in Hollywood dried up so badly that we have really have to resort to this kind of shameless rehashing of classics from the Golden Age of cinema? How long before we’re being primed with regular commercials for the new remade release of M*A*S*H*, starring Jim Carey and Will Ferrell? Where does it end? Makes you want to chug Drain-o, doesn’t it?

So, dear readers and crazytigerrabbitman supporters everywhere, I implore you to make your voice heard. Sharpen up those throwing spears and fire up the roasting pits, it's high time we gathered our pitchforks, fly to New Zealand, and find that Jackson bastard and see that justice is served. Leave no sheep unturned!

Lets stop the insanity now and send a message to Hollywood before it's too late for decent cinema; before Ebert and Roeper explode and die of complications from severe gastronomical pains.

* They looked like spry-looking little match girls, all sadly pleading for people to buy their wares so that their drunken managers won't flail them with switches.

** "Live Action Role Playing"

R.I.P. "Tookie" Williams

So, Stanley “Tookie” Williams has finally been executed.

Let me be the first to say: Whoo-fucking-who! It's about friggin' time!

The former Crips gang co-founder was executed yesterday shortly after midnight after receiving a lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. The former gang member has currently been living on Death Row since 1981 when he was convicted for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned.

Up until this point, Williams has maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration claiming an unfair trial and has thereby created a national debate on the validity of Death Penalty issue. Williams was the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Now, all of a sudden, Hollywood celebrities and capital punishment foes alike, including singer Joan Baez, actor Mike Farrell, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in the movie "Dead Man Walking"; and former Rolling Stone love newton and hanger-on, Bianca Jagger. Isn't there not some hurricane benefit going on somewhere that they all had to train their uber-egos to crusading for convicted murderers?

In fact, over 1000 people, both supporters and opposers, gathered yesterday outside the gates of San Quentin to be part of the state's highest-profile execution in decades. Some people carried placards supporting Tookie's innocence; others just showed up for the hot cocoa. However, even his final appeal to California Gov. Schwartzenegger couldn’t save his life in the end and at 12:35 AM, he was proclaimed dead as a kipper on a cracker. Shit, you know you’re really fucked when your last chance for life rested solely on the shoulders of the Terminator, huh? Ol' Ahnowd has no problems letting people fornicate with corpses, but kill somebody in cold blood and he goes all 'Total Recall' and volunteers to flip the switch himself.

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Schwarzenegger wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption." Fuckin-A, Ahnowd! I guess all those years of steroids and cheap floozzies have finally subsided from your brain.

The popular solution for those arguing that Tookie should live is that he be granted clemency and be subject to live imprisonment without the possibility of parole. What kind of logic is that? Why should hard-working taxpayers dollars be earmarked for this motherfucker’s upkeep? I realize already that the cost of the state to successfully execute someone is not significantly less that that required to house and feed convicted felons – I wouldn’t dare take that stance on this debate – but don’t you think that that money would be better served footing the electric bill as opposed to purchasing nice, soft four-ply toilet paper for him to wipe his ass with and to continually restock his collection of DVD’s in the prison’s rec room?

I’m not exactly sure why so many people were up in arms about this pending execution in the first place. We should be dancing in the streets the fucking moment the lights begin to flicker. Sure, he renounced gang life in his final years and even authored award-winning children’s books helping to undermine gang activity on the streets. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature. So fucking what? What do the Swiss know unless it involves clocks or chocolate? There’s a reason why Hitler rolled over the Alps first. Tookie, however, has never apologized, admitted, or shown the slightest remorse for the four people he brutally murdered 24 years ago. Maybe he really was super pissed at having been shorted on his 'Big Gulp' or finding Dim Sum stains on his bed sheets...whatever, four people (and probably hundreds more), are dead as a result.

I don’t care if he’s spent the last 20 years tatting doilies at the local seniors retirement home or helping to rehabilitate orphaned baby seals…FRY HIS ASS!

I have no such qualms with the old “an eye for an eye” philosophy of judicial retribution. If I had my way, I’d have him castrated live on pay-per-view and have him fed to wild boars. At the very least, knowing California, have him locked away in a room with a loaded Colt. 45 and a non-stop Jerry Springer feed on television. Shit, why not enrich the whole experience and just auction off the task of spiking Tookie’s vein in the final minutes to the highest bidder on Ebay? It's high time that we as a society went all 'Colors' on his black ass anyways.