Now a board certification that really means something!

Given the latest gaffs by Tea Party darling, Christine O’Donnell regarding her apparent knowledge of the Constitution, as well as numerous other public mistakes on both sides of the aisle (including those so far on either side that they seem like they are on a desert isle) I’d like to propose a standard-based title of Dude of Infinite Constitutional Knowledge that you can post on your resume. Take a simple test, and, much like a lawyer uses Esq. and a doctor uses MD you can use DICK as a suffix to your name to show your constitutional expertness. Imagine how that would help your campaign for Senate by stating you're a board-certified DICK.

But to truly mean something, the test would have to be graduated - it would have to have levels. I’m thinking like the dan ranking system for martial arts. “You see that red-faced guy with the two toned shirt and ugly tie spouting off about the 10th Amendment over there? He’s a 4th degree DICK!”

Of course to BE a DICK, the test has to be pretty daunting. Given the level of constitutional knowledge that many so called “experts” actually have, the test would really have to be something special. I’ll give you a sneak peek of the test to become a 1st Dude of Infinite Constitutional Knowledge.

Question #60: How many Amendments to the Constitution are there.
A. 28
B. None (only communists amend the Constitution!)
C. 23 (after we get rid of the 14th, 16th, 17th, and 19th)
D 27

Question #79: Who wrote the Constitution?
A. Glenn Beck
B. God
C. A and B are the same
D Members of the Constitutional Convention (held at the Las Vegas Hilton).

Question #442: The distribution of the duties of government separate branches is often called the Separation of __________
A. Laundry
B. Powers
C. Liquids and Solids

Question #488: The branch of government that interprets and applies the laws of the land is called the _______________

A. Judicial Branch
B. The Judicial Activism Branch

Question #1323: Which of the following words appear in the Constitution?

I. Obamacare
II. Taxes
III. Assault Rifle
IV. Bailout

A. II only
B. I, III, IV
C. II and IV
D. II and III (well, III is in there, they just call it “arms”, you see the Supreme Court told us that Assault Rifles are also called “arms” and we have a Right To Defend Ourselves From People Who Act Nasty To Us. It’s not IN the constitution, but it’s what the founders intended so it counts).

Question #1324 Does the term “Separation of Church and State” appear in the Constitution or its Amendments?

A. Not specifically, but how the Court has interpreted the Establishment and Free-Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment and Article VI of the Constitution, indicate that government function and religious function are required to be separate.
B. Yes, it's right there, right THERE. Don't you see it?
C. No, of course not, as Pat Robinson (an honorary, certified DICK) says, the phrase appears nowhere in the United States Constitution, but does appear in the Konstitution of the Soviet Union!

Question #2900. The constitutional principle that allows Congress to pass a law authorizing the Federal Government to mandate health care coverage is:

A. The IIIrd Amendment
B. The Commerce Clause
C. There is none, it was a power grab by Pelosi, Reid and Obama to brainwash our youths into hating America (while being healthy.)
D. The Volstead Act



____________________________________________________________
Answers: D, D, B, A, A, A, B are answers that only an individual who attended public-schools his or her entire life would have answered. You've got a long way to become a DICK. If you answered C,C,C,B,D,C,C. you pass and should take the whole thing to prove you're a Dude of Infinite Constitutional Knowledge. You will also be automatically entered to win a United States Flag signed by Sarah Palin. Please don't let a democrat get a hold of it, or they may desecrate it.

A link to a blog - A blog about trout

So, more than a year ago I decided to try and chronicle my fishing adventures in addition to my anger and rant based stuff here. Both seem to be heavy on the narcissism :) It hasn't gone spectacularly, simply because I haven't really gone fishing much, but I'll link to the latest entry, anyway.


As a side-note, apparently this site had ads for the Tea Party Manifesto. Awesome. Bloody awesome. Apparently Adsense thinks my readers are right wing, racist, homophobes...


here is the link http://clumsywader.blogspot.com

Just an airport conversation

I'm going to be in an airport for most of today, so please pull out your Best of Lou Reed and give a listen to New York Telephone Conversation before reading the rest.

Before you start, I really wish you could see the absolute bounty of self-important assholes that populate this tiny little airport.

Enjoy!

I was resting, patiently waiting
when I heard your phone
Beyonce, South Park, Star Trek ringtones
make me want to groan.

Did you hear how important I am
I do business all the time
Just an airport conversation
rattling in my head

Oh, oh, my, and where shall we fly
Oh, oh, my, please fuck off and die.

Just an airport conversation
blabber among us plebs
I have millions, maybe billions
I commit white collar crime

I’m so special listen to me
here in the rows of chairs
Hirings, firings, mergers, breakups
no one really cares

Oh, how sad it is that you are so loud.
Oh, how sad it is for many in this crowd

I am begging, yes I’m begging
you in the ill-fitting suit
I will snap and probably kill you
if you don’t shut the fuck up!

If you don't shut the fuck up!

I b'lieve the children are our future - sell tchotchkes and let them lead the way

I really wish I could make this shit up - it's sometimes too easy. Like throwing a worm into a tank of starving trout, sooner or later something will grab that bait and tug. Going to the airport (especially the airport on a trip to Las Vegas) is SURE to result in a blog worthy note, especially since I already dread the airport and am cynically expecting the worst

Let me tell you why I dread the airport. The airport is supposed to be one of the most secure place a civilian can go. They have checkpoints and xrays and big signs warning you of all sorts of nasty things that can happen if you bring a pair of tweezers on board. They have their own Federal Law Enforcement Agency (the TSA). They can make your life a living hell if you so much as JOKE that there is a ticking package or something of the like.

Plus the liquid. Oh, the liquid! I sit there before a trip and scrutinize my contact lens solution bottle size - making sure the manufacturer didn't up size and fuck me over. And, I wonder - I wonder far too obsessively on whether gel, toothpaste, shaving cream, etc.. is a liquid or a solid. I weigh the effectiveness of using hand soap as shaving cream (but looking like I lost a battle with a toy helicopter) against risking an international incident caused by an aerosol Colgate Shaving Cream can ( Newman was going to smuggle dino embryos in one in Jurassic Park, so maybe they're on the lookout for shaving cream canisters!). Half the time the faithful TSA agent picks apart my luggage if so much as a trial size bottle of mouthwash gets forgotten and half the time I find a bottle of water that I forgot was in a bag made it through. (Ok, once...but it was glorious!)

The airport also makes you disrobe. Not to a degree where I feel uncomfortable, just to a degree that pisses me off. In my case as I'm usually traveling for work, I'm almost always in a suit - with suspenders. So to go through the detector I have to take the shoes off, suspenders off, coat off, and then waddle through the metal detector holding my pants up with one hand and my boarding pass in another. Then I pick up my two gray bins (one for the laptop...the laptop gets its OWN bin) and waddle over to a bench to get dressed. But they do all of these things - the threats, the machines, the carefully measured liquids, the near nudity - to make things look, SAFE.

But marring this veneer of safety are the employees. Let's face it, nobody wants to work at the airport. Well, nobody that you want working at the airport is working at the airport. I think the TSA is the only federal law enforcement agency that would hire me hands down, no physical examination needed at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm in better shape than most of their entire brigade. Especially the ones they place at the EXIT of the secure area. You know, the area where, if someone really wanted to get something past a metal detector they would sneak past? Yup, they stick the most out of shape people (who find it necessary to gossip loudly about when their next break is, who is screwing who, how bad their back hurts and what they're having for dinner) at the exits of the terminal. At every single airport - without fail! Now maybe their being super clever and anyone that runs past will instantly be vaporized in the hail of bullets fired by the hidden SWAT team - but I somehow doubt it. Instead, what will likely happen is the person will get far enough inside the terminal to cause a major airport to shut down. Oh, wait - that DID happen. My bad.

On this afternoon however my ire wasn't raised by an overzealous TSA agent, it was an underzealous agent. Or a sadly out of date airport policy against solicitation. Either way, it was 3d glasses that brought the red to my face. Not just 3d glasses but 3D FIREWORKS GLASSES!

I found out about the glasses while I was sitting and waiting for my plane to start boarding. Up comes this guy, looking like a fatter, sweatier version of Chuck Liddell, who asks me: "Hey, big guy - you like the Fourth of July, right?"

Ahh, if there is one thing a big guy really really likes, it's being called "big guy." Almost as good as "tiny." Either way I could already smell the bullshit he was peddling. "You want to put these on and look at the lights?" He was holding a "demo" pair (written in large, shaky Sharpi across the top) out to me and motioning to look at the lights.

I politely declined. That's when he started earning the sweat that was dampening his armpits and his brow.

"Wassa matter? Don'tcha support the children's hospital?" He informed me that for the low low price of $2.00, the money he earned would go to the childrens' hospital.

"Which childrens' hospital?" I asked.

He looked at me. "The childrens' hospital."

Ok, well. Maybe he forgot the name of the rather famous childrens' hospital near the University. Or maybe it was a national childrens' hospital foundation. Whatever. I just wasn't interested.

"No thanks." I said and then watched him huff with disappointment before I turned back to my magazine.

A couple minutes later I looked up to see him frantically approach person after person. I smirked (yeah, I'm an asshole) when I saw every impatient passenger rebuff his offer of saving the children through lame glasses.

And that's when he lost it. Well, that's when he lost it for the first time. Someone managed to smile at him and he let loose. "Well that's the first smile I've seen on anybody in this airport. I thought all you people (meaning all the denizens of the state of Tron, I suppose) are supposed to be nice." A sort of uneasy silence fell over the people surrounding him before it was carried away into the general din of an airport terminal.

A woman came around, presumably his travel partner, and spirited him away. That's when I started to get mad. After all of that. The careful rationing of liquids to carry on the plane. The lines. The xray. Having to unpack your shit before the scanner and put it all back after. All of that doesn't matter a goddamn bit. Sure, they got rid of the thousands of family members waiting for their mormon missionary to deplane, the love sick teenagers sneaking in one last sloppy tongue kiss before college, the mom and seven kids waiting for dad to come back from his conference. All of those people are gone from the terminal. But not the crap peddler - no matter where you are, some douche-bag selling some lame product is going to be there to throw their little sob story in your face.

The postscript to this though is rather awesome. Turns out, Mr. SweatyGuy was on my plane. Turns out, Mr. SweatyGuy was trying to sell his bullshit glasses during boarding and had two flight attendants ask him if he even HAD a ticket for the flight and then proceeded to get in a rather loud argument with his seatmate (not his travel partner) about halfway through the flight prompting the THIRD attendant to warn him to cool it or the eff-be-eye would be awaiting for him at McCarren. Turns out Mr. SweatyGuy got into an even BIGGER argument with his travel partner once we de-planed that raised the ire of a couple of blue garbed TSA agents..a couple of blue-garbed TSA agents that managed to both look like they could take care of Mr. SweatyGuy without breaking a sweat themselves. That's the last I saw of Mr. SweatyGuy - red faced, hands full of crappy glasses, frantically gesturing towards my new friends in blue.

Wontcha be mine, wontcha be mine, Won't you be my neighbor (hello, neighbor!)

The term "bandwagon" comes from one of the worst disasters of the early twentieth century. Little is know exactly what happened, but it involved a marching band and being that they were a marching band, they were all extremely cool and everyone loved them. Word of the band, and how amazing it was to be in a marching band, began to circle like the plague. Everyone wanted to be part of the marching band simply because everyone else did. The band would travel from town to town with the percussion section and the tubas in a large wagon pulled by a team of sixteen, pure white draft mules. Usually the percussionists would have to beat people off the wagon with their mallets, but one hot summer night in Allenville, Ohio a large group of people jumped on the band's wagon. More people jumped simply because they saw everyone else jump until the entire wagon collapsed in a heap of drum sticks, cymbals, broken legs and shattered dreams. 14 of the 16 mules had to be put down, 76 people died and the small Ohio town soon went bankrupt. Since that time, when people join a fad based strictly on word of mouth and desire to be "cool" it's called "jumping on the bandwagon." (And, since that time, marching bands have extreme fail-safes in place to ensure that only the really awesome people are allowed in.)

Unfortunately, people haven't learned the lesson of the bandwagon and, while most bandwagon jumpers don't kill themselves or a mule, it's still not a good idea to consistently jump on a bandwagon.

But don't tell that to ESPN. They are betting you will. And I know you won't disappoint them.

It's already started - the bandwagon jumping. Thousands of people, who ordinarily don't give a damn about anything outside Taco Bell, the latest color of Mountain Dew (the blue stuff rocks!) and when the NASCAR Sprint Series is going to have its own reality show, are now suddenly SOCCER HOOLLIGANS.

These are, of course, same people that REALLY GOT INTO CURLING about four months ago.

Who are the same that really LOVED POKER about 6 years ago.

The same people that embraced the Atkins diet.

Oxygen bars.

Kenny G

The list goes on.

Thousands of young and old American men and women are suddenly SOCCER fans. Never mind that most of the rest of the world has been patiently waiting for the last 4 years for this summer to come, most Americans only found out about it between reruns of the World Series of Lumberjack Dog Tricks and the Toddler Softball Superbowl. But to these newly minted soccer fans it's like they've been waiting all their life for this one particular moment.

I don't care if you actually do like soccer. As much as I'm indifferent to it, I can't help but note that about 80 billion people love it, but that's not my point. My point is that (and this is where I start to sound like an angry version of Fred Rogers) like something for its intrinsic qualities and not because ESPN or Oprah told you it's super cool. There's a team of pure-white mules somewhere, looking down, begging you to do the same.

Karma karma karma karma is a biiiiiaaatch

Karma is a bitch.

A fickle bitch.

Karma is a fickle bitch who is currently spanking me on my reddened bottom while my muffled "thank you ma'am, may I have another" can barely be heard behind the ball gag.

And she's spanking me while I'm sitting in McCarren Airport waiting for my very-bad-day to end.

I'm sure that nothing is more boring than reading someone talk about their day. But, when the author's day starts at 5:30 am just to fly to a city on time and then end up waiting 2 hrs to see the judge, then get thrown out of a cab because he called the thieving cab driver a thief and then end up having his flight home delayed 4 hours to the point where he'll arrive home 20 hours after he first woke up in the morning, it is a good idea just to humor the author and say "yes, yes it was a horrible day. Gosh how interesting, may I buy you a Talisker and hear it two more times?"

The day really didn't turn until the cab ride. I generally don't mind cab rides; they have to deal with crappy Vegas traffic while I sit in the back and warily watch the meter. And cab rides in Vegas have provided me with extremely amusing stories. But this cab ride started sour because I didn't know where I was going. Well, I did know where I was going. I told the cabbie the right address. Then I said "oh, hold on...lemme check" as he was driving away from the curb which I guess in cabbie speak means, "this guy wants me to drive around the belt loop of the freeway."

When I told him to take a different, quicker, shorter way, that apparently was too much English for this formerly-somewhat-accented-but-still-perfectly-literate man. He continued to drive towards the freeway - exactly (we were on the correct road) 180 degrees in the wrong direction and mumble at me.

So I insisted again.

And he looked blankly at me again.

Which is when words like "rip-off" and "thief" came out of my mouth. Oh, and "scam". And it's really not like I called him a thief....I merely told him I hoped he wasn't one. It was his choice at that point to follow the dark or light path.

These words were apparently some sort of healing prose, because they immediately cured him of his brief aphasia. The downside being suddenly became really, really mad.

"I no rip you off, you no know where you're going." I sort of hate to approximate his difficulty with English, but that is - to the word - what he said. Again, remarkably calm (read: "haven't said the word "fuck" yet") I merely reiterated where we were going, the cross-streets, and the best way to get there. I was still sort of bewildered how taking the freeway was needed when I didn't know the exact address, but I was not about to have to pay this dude another $20.00 just because his cab company tells him he has to use the freeway for every transaction.

He continued to berate me including telling me to get out of his cab. Sort of an empty threat I thought seeing as we were moving 30 mph down the road. It was around this time that he began firing the first in his several volleys of uncool expletives

Which is when I went "uncalm" and said a bad word in adjective form. Not "the worst word," but something that can only be said on HBO or Showtime. Actually two - (word)ing stop this (word)ing cab you smelly (feminine hygiene product) and let me out. (I figure the "smelling" fact was a given seeing as I was in a cab in Las Vegas).

Further angering the man.

To his credit, he complied with what I asked him to do and did, in fact, stop the cab. In the middle of traffic. And so I got out. And then he tried to run me over (read, he tried to get away while I stood in the middle of the road).

So, I'm not sure if it it was the "douche" comment or if it was something I did yesterday or the week before or in another life but karma clearly had it in for me. And that clearly wasn't the end of my very-bad-day.

I'm sure you're anxious to hear me rap about how my experience in the airport has been but I'd rather not tempt the fates about blogging about my patience waiting to see if Delta is going to fly me home tonight just to lose it later (like last time). So I'll bid you all a good night and hope that we can share a Talisker soon. Because I need it.

Just as soon as I get this ball gag out of my mouth.

Said sugar make it slow and we'll come together fine...

I am an extremely patient person.

People are always saying, "you have the patience of an elephant" or "gosh, you have the patience of Job." And, I always respond. "Yes, yes I do."

I am also a bald-face liar; which is what brings us to the February entry of "As the Tron Churns".

Last Friday I attended the Symphony. In college, going to the symphony was almost a weekly occurrence because we were music majors and the tickets were cheap. Now that I'm a big boy, I must pay big boy prices, which has limited my attendance. Not for Dvorak.

They were playing Dvorak's 9th Symphony and therein lies my beef with the classical music business. They treat almost every composer like a One Hit Wonder. If one makes a request for Beethoven, they play the 5th. If one asks for Soft Cell they play Tainted Love. Want to hear Vivaldi? You get the Four Seasons. Ask for Dexy's Midnight Runners you get Come on Eileen. And, if you want to hear anything by Anton Dvorak, you'll be listening to the 9th Symphony.

There is nothing wrong with the 9th Symphony but it is to his 8th Symphony what Touch of Grey is to Althea. What Blowin' in the Wind is to Desolation Row. What Nothing Else Matters is to Master of Puppets. What Barbie Girl is to Cartoon Heroes. The 9th is good, the 8th is better. But, the good people at the symphony chose to play the 9th and so I was there.

And if that's all I had to complain about the evening, I would be wasting your time.

I'm getting there, just have a little patience.

Everything was going just peachy until about half-way through the 2nd movement. This is the Largo, the Power Ballad of the piece. It is slow. Super slow. And quiet. And the audience was loving it. You could have heard a pin drop. But, I didn't. Instead of a pin I heard Thhhhhhwwappp.

That's right. Thhhhhwwwap

If you want to know what this sounds like. Take a small magazine and quickly thumb through all the pages with your thumbnail. It goes....Thhhhwwwwaap. A small magazine. Or maybe a program printed on glossy paper.

It was someone who was fidgety and messing around with their program, right? I mean I've gotten bored during the symphony. Hell, I've become bored writing this post.

But it wasn't boredom. It was sheer malice. It was sheer malice by a little old lady with gray poof hair. I had looked around after the fourth or fifth time fully expecting a kid who just wasn't quite into it. Instead I see this older woman staring straight ahead. Fingers poised on the edge of her program. And she is still staring forward - like STRAIGHT AHEAD. And I'm staring at her. There is no possible way she couldn't feel my glare. Any normal woman would have turned and at least made eye contact, even if to say "What the fuck, sonny?" So I turn around. And then I hear thhhhwwwaap thhhwaaaaap thhhhwaaaap.

And I'm not the only one bothered by this. People are shushing. That sort of quick sshhh that you make when you're trying hard not to explode. She finally does make eye contact. For a brief moment. And instead of a hint of a smile to indicate humorous intent, or even like an "oh no?! I'm ashually bothering you?" she just looked at me with a smirk of defiance and made one long thwwwwaaaaaap And she kept doing it. Through the 3rd movement.

Through the fourth.

And I am all the while plotting this woman's demise.

She was too far away to grab the program - even during the break between the movements. But don't think I didn't envision my lightening quick reflexes snatching the program out of her hands and whapping her once on the nose like a bad puppy. Any move to pick the program up would surely have resulted in my banishment from the venue for life as well as falling out of my chair and ripping my suit coat and slacks. She was behind me, which threw out any Godfather-esque retribution (picture my Clemenza to her Carlo Rizzi). She was too far away to whisper death threats against her and her children. It was bothering other people, my laser glare, so I was content to just listen to what I could hear of the symphony over the growing echo of her program thwwwiping and thwwwaping. She couldn't have bothered me more if she had sat directly behind me and lightly scratched the nape of my neck with a peacock feather. Or a rusty needle. Or the teeth of a saw.

When the symphony finally ended and the audience shot to their feet (seriously, if you can manage to finish a piece of music here in this state while staying alive and not bleeding over the audience you'll get a standing ovation) I still had no grand plan. I couldn't reach out and pinch her bat wings. Or crush her granny glasses.

So I just talked to her.

Well, not at her. Just about her. Loudly. To my girlfriend. I was complaining to A while staring straight at the old woman who was turning redder and redder. And that made me happier and happier. The culmination of which was my commenting on her lack of manners considering how damn old she was. She nearly fell over the people in front of her trying to get out after that.

If there is any theme to this collection of rants online it is that I have the maturity level of a 12 year old boy. But, I also have the sense of justice of a 5 year old which is: if you make me mad, I'll make you pay. So while I can't scratch, kick or bite you, I'll just publicly humiliate you. And that never leads to my own public humiliation. Never. Ever.

So, to my beautiful girlfriend, I'm sorry. To the patrons around us, I'm sorry. But not to you, you program flipping crone.

Too many puppies....

Puppies shouldn't be used for live bait. Not only do puppies make horrible noises when you thread a hook through them, they tend to poop all over your boat.

I'm clearly insane, but not as insane as the person that told me I should join a group on Facebook called "Stop The Use Of Puppies For Live Bait" When I saw that, a little cry escaped my lips. It turns out that not only were Puppies being used as bait, they were being used as LIVE bait. FOR SHARKS! Sharks with TEETH. Teeth that EAT PUPPIES!

Then I read up on it and in less than five minutes found out that puppies AREN'T being used for live bait. Or dead bait. At least by a large enough group of people. I mean SOMEWHERE I imagine SOMEONE used a live puppy to catch a shark, I'll grant you that. But that doesn't mean there is a National Live Bait Federation: Puppy and Kitty Chapter that is suddenly saying "Oh shit, now that Facebook knows, the WORLD will know!!!"

And that's what every single person should do if they care about puppies being used as live bait. They should maybe get a little more information. Why? Because if it sounds too absurd to be true IT PROBABLY IS!

But that's just not as much fun, is it? It's not fun to find out that the situation isn't as bad as you first think it is. Why bother educating yourself when you can just get OUTRAGED over it.

It doesn't just stop at the dead puppies. It keeps going right past the dead puppies, down the hall past the dead horses, dead monkeys and right up to the Death Panels. Yup, the Evil Death Panels that will surely kill grandmother. If one was really worried about Meemaw being sentenced to death by an Obama Death Panel, wouldn't you bother to read up on it a bit? Naw - why read when you can just get outraged!?!

The snarky moral of the day is this. Lern to reed! No puppies are being used as live bait, Ms. Left-Wing-Vegan-Weirdo and no death panel is going to kill gramma, Mr. Right-Wing-Doucher-Alarmist. But you both are going to kill me - which was probably your goal in the first place. You see, someone told me about this conspiracy.....