Dr. Senator Bill

I don't really have that much to say about the whole Terri Schiavo thing that hasn't already been said. Yes, the Republicans overreached ridiculously and are just pandering to their base. Yes, Tom Delay was happy to talk about something besides his publicly funded sex tours of southern Asia. And yes, Peter Daniels, the Democrats were probably right to mostly shut up about this whole thing because Schiavo is nothing more than a symbol. And messing with a symbol of your opposition doesn't ever gain you any practical benefits. It just riles up their base. But I don't really care about any of it except when thinking about how it may or may not affect Democrats in 2006.

However, I thought it was kind of cool when Bill Frist decided at some point last week that he could diagnose Schiavo on the basis of a video of her brain-dead body. Bill didn't let "normal" medical procedures stop him from performing his Hippocratic duties and I appreciate his creativity. Way to think outside the box, Bill!

I started thinking that perhaps this should be a recurring theme as Bill prepares to run for President in 2008. He needs something to set him apart from the pack. After all, Bill is charisma-challenged and handicapped by the fact that most Americans don't really give a rat's ass about anything he does in the U.S. Senate and don't know him.

But he is a doctor and that's his ace. Everybody trusts a doctor! All Bill needs is to diagnose enough people from afar and he can begin to build the kind of buzz that can catapault a middle-of-the-pack politician to McCain-esque heights. Once he shows off that bedside manner to the masses, he'll be so golden that wealthy potential donors will think the sun rises in his pants.

Fortunately for Bill, that may already be happening. According to one of my sources, Bill and his team are already in the process of creating a series of advice columns where average people can write in about their symptoms and get useful pointers from Dr. Bill delivered with the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan. My source says that Frist's people are in negotiations with the National Review and the American Spectator to run the column in the next few months.

More importantly, my source has managed to obtain a copy of one of the first installments of "Dear Dr. Senator Bill." And in the selfish interest of bringing this side of Bill Frist to the public before any of my competitors, I have posted the complete unedited text below:


ASK DR. SENATOR BILL #4

Dear Dr. Senator Bill:

Lately I've noticed a horrible burning sensation every time I pee. It feels like my penis is on fire. I am also discharging a lot of mucus and pus. And not through my nose! I am gay and have been with a number of men over the last several years and I am worried that this may be an STD. What do you think?

Love,

Kyle in Greeley

Dear Kyle:

Congratulations! You've got gonorrhea! My advice is to seek immediate medical attention. But don't worry - after a quick dose of antibiotics, your case of "the claps" will vanish as quickly as the surplus!

On a more personal note, I just want to say that gonorrhea is nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, in college - when I was in my "experimental" stage - I once took on a "train" of approximately 14 drunk frat boys and ...

Umm, actually I've just been informed by my aides that I can't tell that story. Apparently what I meant to say is that this disease is God's way of telling you that he hates you and wants you to burn in hell! So please don't come near any children, you horrible gay moster.

But if you'd like to get involved financially with my campaign to save America through a combination of tort reform, low corporate taxes and stern moral posturing you are more than welcome aboard! And if that's not incentive enough you should know that everyone who raises over $25,000 gets the honorary title of "Frist-a-rito" and a stylish black "Frist-a-rito" lettered jacket!

Vote for me!

Bill


Dear Dr. Senator Bill:

I've got this ugly swollen growth on neck. It's about six inches long and really wide and super hideous. It's so ugly and embarassing that I can't even leave my house! I can't go to the doctor because I am currently unemployed and have no health insurance. And the emergency room doctors keep saying that it's not an "emergency" and won't see me. Can you help me?

Love,

Carol in Lubbock

Dear Carol:

Congratulations! You've got a goiter! A goiter is generally caused by a lack of iodine in the diet and can be treated by qualified medical professionals. But, alas, you don't have any health insurance. So my advice is to get a job with benefits! And eat a lot of salt!

If I'm President, I promise that I'll put trays of salt at every major intersection!

Vote for me!

Bill


Dear Dr. Senator Bill:

After a lifetime of indulging in rich foods and alcohol I was recently seized with a terrible pain and swelling in my right big toe. It hurts so bad I can barely put a blanket over it or walk normally. What's wrong with me?

Love,

Dan in Grand Forks

Dear Dan:
Congratulations! You've got the gout! You're joining a long line of patriotic American gout suffers like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Nostradamus! If you can contain your excitement you should skip right over to your doctor (well, I guess you can't do that!) for treatment!

But if you, like Carol, can't afford to see a doctor, don't worry! Dr. Senator Bill has the prescription for you! And it doesn't come from Canada!

What you need are tax cuts, deregulation and an FCC with less tolerance for indecency! Trust me, more vigilance about dirty words combined with a lower capital gains rate translates into reduced pain and swelling for your big toe. Reagan proved it!

Vote for me!

Love,

Bill





If you care: Craigslist recently confirmed the existence of the liberal media. Apparently it's really disillusioned and wants to be fucked.

Fashion Nazis off the Starboard Bow

When the Chris Barnes Corporation (CBC) flipped past U-571 on AMC today, I was momentarily captivated by the stunted growth dialogue of the submarine action-drama genre and the hideous, leather-jacket-dominated wardrobe of that specific film. I decided that somebody should make another film about the traditional battle of wills between two submarines. But this time, instead of fighting against the German/Russian/Japanese, the Americans will battle a seemingly sinster submarine manned by Fashion Nazis.

The Fashion Nazis will roam the oceans stalking American submarines staffed by otherwise attractive people who made the unfortunate choice of grabbing that ironic T-Shirt or overly baggy pair of jeans or white belt or whatever out of their closet. There will also be lots of boats filled with sexy people with tribals on their biceps and Chinese characters inked into their lower back. And at least one submarine will consist entirely of girls with bangs and a lip piercing.

The main American sub we follow will be mixed gender, with the girls all wearing UGG boots and all the boys sporting soft, professional looking black leather jackets and medium length, well-gelled hair. I don't know who will play the girls, but at least two boys will be played by James Van der Beek and Josh Hartnett look-alikes. The Fashion Nazis will all wear skin tight red jumpsuits, space helmuts (minus the visors), and very large sunglasses.

I don't know exactly what will happen in the middle of the film, but there will be lots of dramatic breathing, near torpedo misses and bad color coordinating. In the denouement, the Fashion Nazis, after a plot twist reveals them to be the true heroes, will finally achieve victory and make the world safe from pink furry boots.

Or will they?

In the postscript, set 6 years later, we will observe an underwater hipster couple decked out in matching florescent green snorkles and Chuck Taylor flippers. They will be slowly swimming towards the submarine's wreckage, preparing to reap the fruits of a hidden treasure trove of clothes that are at least six months ahead of the latest retro trend. With the possibility of a sequel clearly established, the screen will fade to black as an ominously quiet minor-themed piece of music plays.



FOR THE RECORD: Continuing in the fine tradition of local news everywhere, Seattle's KING 5 will be airing the special, "Colon Cancer: The Bottom Line" this Wednesday.

Ignore Bill O'Reilly. Find Hot Conservative Love for Christopher Barnes

So the other day I was in the bookstore where the Chris Barnes Corporation (CBC) currently makes his money. It's a pretty crappy bookstore with thousands of romance novels and an owner who threw out the store's copy of The Daily Show's "American: The Book" because she thought it was a textbook.

Browsing through what passes for the store's Politics section I found a copy of Bill O'Reilly's 'seminal' screed "Who's Looking Out For You?" and started thumbing through it. I paused at approximately Page 6 when O'Reilly warned members of the Liberal Elite not to read the book. It's not for the Liberal Elite, he wrote, threatening a house call and an ass-kicking for any Liberal Elite member who had the gall to continue reading.

I figured I should stop at that point. I don't think I really qualify as the Liberal Elite. After all, I'm unemployed and no campaign seems to want anything to do with me. But I wanted to be careful - I already have too many enemies. Plus, I was really bored with O'Reilly by Page 6. He's not exactly the most intelligent man and I don't really care what he has to say.

Which makes me wonder why the Uppity Left gets so damn excited about O'Reilly. That stupid, irrelevant man can inspire the most scathing hatred and sputtering impotence in Lefty folk and it boggles my mind.

We have websites and web pages called www.o'reilly-sucks.com, www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com, Bill O'Reilly is a Big Blubbering Vagina (actually, that's pretty funny) and the most boring preach-to-the-choir-no-shit-they're-biased documentary ever, Outfoxed (suggested motto - We report what you already know so you can make the same decision over and over again and feel better about yourself every time).

And then there was the embarassing 'protest' outside Fox News last fall where progressives - who generally make a big show of supporting free speech - asked Fox and Bill O'Reilly to "shut up." Those protesters were so pompous and full of themselves that my biggest laugh of the day was when Fox ran the ticker outside their HQ that read "Attention protesters: The Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at 6th Avenue and 50th Street."

This is not to say that I am a big fan of O'Reilly and Fox. When I tune in to Fox, it's usually with an opposition research frame of mind and I generally disagree with just about everything O'Reilly says. But for the love of God, can we stop trying to make a martyr out of a man who can't speak coherently on subjects outside of illegal immigration, tax cuts, raging nostalgia for a past that never really was, and how much he hates the Clintons? And even with those subjects he merely says one thing and then repeats it over and over again.

Bill O'Reilly will eat himself.

This is the man wrote a novel (Those Who Trespass) with a "naked and at attention" male character saying, "Drowning is not an option. Unless of course you beg me to perform unnatural acts - right here in the shower."

As one blog says, "By day he's a political talk show host, but by night he's transformed into an aquatic sex monster! He's Bill O'Reilly! He's Snorkelman!"

This is the man who was caught on tape harassing his producer with possibly the classiest series of come on lines ever:

"Well, if I took you down there then I'd want to take a shower with you right away, that would be the first thing I'd do...yeah, we'd check into the room, and we would order up some room service and uh and you'd definitely get two wines into you are quickly as I could get ino you I would get 'em into you... maybe intravenously, get those glasses of wine into you...

and

"...with my other hand I would start to massage your boobs, get your nipples really hard... 'cuz I like that and you have really spectacular boobs..."

and

"...then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I'd put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business."

This is not a man I am going to spend too much time worrying about (until his next novel labelled as a "sex thriller.")

Honestly, I even got bored thinking about him while researching this entry (after I stopped giggling about the sex related stuff). Halfway through my search I was distracted on some pro-O'Reilly website by an ad for a conservative personals site called "Conservative Match" (motto - "Sweethearts, not bleeding hearts"). Fuck Bill O'Reilly, I thought, and clicked over to conservativematch.com.

With help from our friend, the CBC, I quickly set up a profile and am now eagerly awaiting emails from eligible young right-of-center woman responding to the feral allure of "Chris Barnes."

His profile reads:

"I just like guns and girls and just having a good time. Beer is also nice. I like to drink beer while reading Carl Hiaasan. One day I hope to build a house on a nice plot of land near Ranier and retire on it, using the proceeds from my private social security account (for now though I have to attend to my small contracting business and spend most of my 9-5 dealing with taxes and regulations here in Blue State Wonderland). But before I retire I would like to have fun and find someone to have fun with/grow old together. I hope you like beer or at least red wine and weigh under 175 pounds. And please don't be over 36."

Conservativematch.com lets you know everytime someone browses your profile and in less than 24 hours someone has already been checking Chris Barnes out! And why shouldn't they? He's a business owner! Chicks dig fiscal security!

Conservativematch.com is a lot more fun than bitching about Bill O'Reilly. That's why I'm encouraging everyone to sweat out their O'Reilly rages by helping me to keep the torch of Chris Barnes alive.

All you have to do is go to the Conservative Match site and log in as ChrisBarnes (password (all lower case) - chrisbarnes). All email and alerts that someone is browsing the profile go to ilikebush2005@yahoo.com. The password (all lower case) is also chrisbarnes.

I do have a shopping list, though. We need a picture. It boosts the "rating" of our profile and gets us more hot conservative chicks for Chris Barnes. Any picture will do, but keep in mind that everything has to be approved by the site moderators. We could also use some better hobbies, activites and charities. I got sort of lazy on those.

Feel free to put up whatever you want. Go crazy. Hopefully it will help cure those nasty O'Reilly blues.

And if that doesn't work, you might try the miracle-longshot cure - watch Rocky III. If anybody can make you forget your irrational hatred of Bill O'Reilly, it's Mr. T! Mr. T is awesome in that movie! He's like a steroid enhanced Bigger Thomas on a lot of meth let loose in a boxing ring!

So just sit back, relax and watch Mr. T kick the shit out of Sylvester Stallone, disrespect Carl Weathers, talk dirty to Talia Shire and drive Burgess Meredith to a fatal heart attack.

He rocks!

Corporate Sadism

When I was younger a few friends and I would play football or baseball on a small field surrounded by several rows of condominiums in my neighborhood. We played there for a series of months or years with no complaints from the neighbors and no consequences beyond a slow erosion of the grass around home plate.

At some point this red-haired kid moved into one of the condiminuns on the third base side of the field. Looking back, this kid seems to be a caricature of every 12 year old loud mouth I've ever met. Or perhaps the 12 year old incarnation of all those Hockey Dads that you read about.

Every third time or so that we played ball for a couple of months, the red-haired kid's insults would inevitably fly at us, generally from beyond the safety of his fence. I don't recall being particularly worried. Though I wasn't really an alpha 11-year-old, I had a healthy respect for numbers and there were a lot more of us.

But that red-haired kid could shout out some pretty stupid insults. There were the usual lame 12-year-old "you're mother's a gigantic smelly whore" and "you're gay" lines. But the line that stuck in my mind happened on a day when he actually came out from behind the safety of his fence. On that day, after an escalating exchange of "fuck you" volleys, he uttered his piece de resistance: "Nice socks, I bet you jack off in them."

I think the incident quickly cooled after a little bit of early adolescent pushing and shoving. But his verbal thrust remains etched in my memory as possibly the stupidest insult anyone has ever uttered to my face.

If that red-haired kid is still alive today and has somehow migrated into more-leftist-than-thou politics I am mortally certain that he is writing 300 to 500 word screeds against corporations on independent media web sites. Not the kind of intelligent anti-corporate pieces in which the writer clearly has at least some sense of the history of business in this country and several rational points explaining specific ways that corporations have become too powerful. He would be writing the kind of half-assed I-got-through-part-of-a-Chomsky-essay-once manner that ends with a central argument consisting of "CORPORATIONS SUCK!!! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!" That stuff really bugs me.

But, of course, business interests in America do leave themselves open to juvenille insults from leftist mental-rejects. If it's not one industry defaulting on the pensions of its workers, it's another industry laying off thousands of workers after arguing for a tax break that it promises will trickle down to the same workers. That kind of behavior filters down in a very simple way to a certain kind of brain.

And even if you can reason away certain instances (or at least cite a motive beyond pure evil and hatred for the working class) of bad corporate behavior, you are still left with generic corporate culture -- that disturbing combination of staid bureaucracy and a yearning to use cutting edge human resources theories in order to create a healthy and productive team attitude. And that is never pretty.

The Stranger made a good case for this a couple of days ago when they posted some audio they claim emanated from the higher-ups at Starbucks. You can listen to that here or read The Stranger's account, which is funnier than mine.

According to the story, at a recent "Leadership Conference" for the Starbucks management team, the lower level managers were appalled when they witnessed a number of very glammed-out upper management members appear on the stage with fake guitars.

Allegedly, the group was introduced as "Jefferson Starbucks" and proceeded to perform to a song called "We Built this Starbucks on Heart and Soul," set to the tune of "We Built This City on Rock and Roll."

Some choice lyrics included:

Say you won't slow down/Or rest at this place
Say you don't know how we grew/to this kind of place
Knee deep in the mocha/making coffee right
So many partners/working late at night

I don't know what you think or random red-haired wanna-be rebels think, but my reaction is, "Jesus, that's creepy."

Bright Eyes V 50 Cent's Entourage

Conor "My life is just like yours except I'm young and rich and live in a loft in Manhatten" Oberst has been getting a lot of press lately -- a fact which the good Reverend Banks reminded me of on the phone today.

Since the super-sensitive 24 year old with better hair than I released his two most recent discs we have been treated to another shrill cacophony of voices proclaiming him the "voice of a generation." I seem to remember this same load of crap the last time he put something out.

Not that I am totally and irrevocably opposed to Oberst. He's got a few catchy songs and if I were still 18 or 19 I might be more sympathetic to his infectious brand of life-is-such-a-hard-beautiful-puzzle-that-makes-me-depressed-but-is-ultimately-made-okay-by-a-good-melody folky pop. But, alas, I'm 27.

Plus, I inherently distrust anyone under the age of 30 who hails from the Midwest and has made it big in New York. There's something about being raised with an inferiority/lack of culture complex and then being suddenly thrust into the bright lights when you still look reasonably youthful and attractive and have enough time to make up for your deprived childhood that makes the breed rather distasteful to me. Of course, I'm just an old, bitter asshole.

But old and bitter or not, my conversation with the Reverend Banks reminded my that I wasn't completely alone on this one. I remembered that The Stranger had a piece several weeks ago by Zac Pennington which made me smile. After admitting that he's "been something of a blushing apologist for Conor Oberst's many missteps," Pennington fired the following volley:

"Conor Oberst has grown into an immature and relatively uninspired songwriter who's been lucky enough to fill a vacuum of a media hungry for an easy savior. I for one refuse to accept that a halfhearted, self-satisfied folk singer with a bleak Peter Pan complex is the new voice of my generation just because they prop him up on a stage next to Bruce Springsteen and call him "'the next Bob Dylan.'"

Good for you, Zac. You tried. But as nice as they are, bad reviews still leave us with the annoyance that is Oberst. The realization of my current half-hearted daydream would solve that, though -- I imagine that somehow, some way, something will get started started between Oberst and 50 Cent.

50 is easier to take than Oberst in a lot of ways. But the main one for me is that right now there are no middle-aged white men who wish they had started that band/wrote that novel dreamily reviewing The Massacre and declaring 50 Cent to be the voice of his generation.

Instead we get Kelefa Sanneh, in a recent NY Times review, making a suprisingly tight case comparing 50 Cent to the What's the Matter With Kansas concept of a Republican politician who makes promises of a conserative social nature (i.e. regarding god, gays and abortion) to get elected but upon taking office offers mainly policies of a conservative economic nature (i.e tax/service cuts that do not benefit a poor, rural constituency).

"Then, in early 2003, came his 'Get Rich or Die Tryin,' one of the most successful hip-hop debut albums of all time, and success meant that 50 Cent had to stray from the 'old fashioned values' that got him elected," Sanneh writes, before comparing 50's thug-love songs to the tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of society that we have come to expect from Republican politicians.

I know for a fact that on one will ever write a review that cool about Oberst because Oberst is too damn pure and filled with that sickeningly good kind of indie rock ambition to ever have anything that cool written about him.

It's a long shot, but if someone would just happen to tell 50 Cent that Oberst has been saying some very complimentary things about Nas, I wouldn't complain.

50 probably wouldn't care, but you never know.

It's not all bad in Kansas?

Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas" has been all the rage over the last year with coastal and urban leftists who can't imagine ever condescending enough to set foot in Junction City or (the Oasis of the Plains) Colby, Kansas, but still can't quite figure out why Flyover Country doesn't see the world exactly as they do.

Not that I am personally chomping at the bit to relocate to Kansas. I have been to Colby twice (once on the Greyhound and once to sleep, get my oil changed and unsuccessfully hunt for a Suburu Legacy headlight) and I have no desire to go back to a place where fundamentalists outlaw the teaching of evolution and the Attorney General's goons knock down the doors of women who have the nerve to exercise a constitutional right. As pretty as I found western Kansas City when Steiling and I would tool around town on occasion and as much as I enjoyed that time I got absolutely hammered at some convention and had to crawl across the lobby floor to the hotel elevator, I would never want to spend more than a couple of days in or near Kansas.

But I do get mildly aggravated at the large chunks of the Leftist Zeitgeist that ignore the middle of the country except to mock and then express such shock that George W. Bush can put together a (small) majority of the electorate.

So in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I'd like to grab my crotch and smile in the general direction of Tiffany Muller and Topeka's 9th Ward. Muller, the 9th Ward's 26 year old Councilperson, survived today's primary and will advance to the April 5 run-off. This is not something that I usually would give two shits about, but there are two sets of special circumstances here:

1. Tiffany Muller is a lesbian.
2. One of her opponents was Jael Phelps.

Jael Phelps is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the bigot best known for picketing Matthew Shepard's funeral and roaming from town to town with a big block of granite reading, "Oct. 12 1998, the day Matthew Shepard entered Hell."

His charming website, summarized beautifully in its title, www.godhatesfags.com, has a constantly updated feature letting us know how many days Shepard and Diane Whipple (the San Francisco woman mauled to death by a pair of Presa Canarios) have been in hell, claims that the Tsunami was punishment from God (due to Thailand's sex trade, general will-of-the-Lord capriciousness and that old standby, idolatry) and informs us that God apparently hates Sweeden.

Jael Phelps was in the race specifically to advance that perception of sanity and she failed misreably! As did a Phelps-approved referndum that would have overturned a city ordinance giving gays and lesbians a modicum of protection.

Out of 4,148 votes cast, Jael Phelps got a grand total of 202 votes (4.8 percent) while Muller received 1,329 (32 percent). The referendum went down by six points.

Of course Muller didn't get the most votes. Some fool named Harmon got 1,935 votes (46.6 percent). My guess would be that Jael Phelps got the gay thing into enough people's minds that they couldn't vote for Muller, but they still didn't want to roll with the absolutely crazy, whacked out bigot. So instead they went with a third option to in order to feel vaguely open-minded.

And 47 percent of the voting public thought that there should no protections for gays at all.

"'We aren't part of their message of hate; we do this in love. This is not an issue about (Phelps). This is an issue about what the homosexual movement is trying to do in Topeka, Kan,'" one referendum supporter said to the NY Times.

Meanwhile Harmon's votes plus Phelps' votes equals 51.5 percent.

Hooray for Topeka.

Rainy Monday

The rain came back to the Pacific Northwest today. Not that it should really be surprising, but we had been dry for something like three weeks. So it was a little obnoxious.

I had a fun-filled day sending along resumes and pausing often to stare out our large picture window at the soupy-gray mess outside. What a great way to feel great about yourself! Thanks Olympia!

Meanwhile, as if the rain and the unemployment weren't enough, I learned the other day that my life-long dream of making $100,000 a year and walking up to random strangers to bump them roughly in the shoulder and scream, "I'm better than you!" is a seriously dated life concept.

According to that arbiter of all that is holy, The New York Times Sunday Styles Section, it's not good enough to make $100,000 a year anymore. Nope, now you have to make at least $200,000. Goddamnit, do life's little bitch slaps ever end?

"'It's the new black,'" according to Bill Coleman, some head honcho-type at Salary.com.

"'It's the players,'" he continued, "'who make $200,000.'"

Well, shit. Here I am still dressed in last season's bright, festive colors, making quotation marks with my hands in a doomed effort to be clever and clearly not pulling in anywhere near $200,000. And people can certainly tell.

But before I go off on some high-horsed rant against both the playas and the game, I should probably admit that it's my own fault for taking the time every Sunday to read the Sunday Styles section cover to cover (yes, including the society weddings). It's a bad habit, it lowers my opinion of myself and probably my IQ, but what the hell am I supposed to read before the coffee kicks in?

Besides, where else would I learn about the habit my social betters have of calling their social betters from the funerals of the (formerly) even-better-off just to prove that they've arrived?

Or the new breath mint -- for your lips?!?

Or the inherent joy involved in following Javier Bardem around for a Night on the Town:

"Mr. Bardem gave the CD to the driver, who slipped it into the limousine's player and cranked up the volume. As if it were a mike, Mr. Bardem held his fist up to his mouth and began to croon along with Edie Veder. When the chorus began the driver joined in and the two of them belted the song out into the night.

"'I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star in someone else's sky, but why, why can't it be mine?'" Mr. Bardem sang, and then added gravely, "'Now that's poetry.'"

You may waste your Sundays, but I swear I never waste mine.