Fun with Cross-Referencing

File under Fun with Stereotypes. No, no, definitely What's Right With America. Fuck it, let's just keep it in the Marge's Irony Faves. There's nothing Marge loves more than irony used in proper context!





If it's true that newspaper's becoming the dinosaur of media, we're all screwed. When I can't start my day out with a cup fulla' joe and bittersweet pink-wrapped chemicals, some crunchy flakes dowsed in soymilk, and a few local black and white print gems like this one, I would rather just stay in bed. Fortunately, I live in a place where I can count on folks like Mr. Harrington and his kinfolk to fulfill their journalistic duty on a daily basis, even in the imposing shadow of the liberal media machine. Scott, you keep writing, and I'll keep reading, baby!

(Call me, Scott. I still need a date for the 4th of July fireworks in the park. I'll bring the hotdogs. You bring the concealed weapon.)

Improptu Stuffster Poll: What's your favorite? The subtle insinuation that the president is gay? The clever insertion of the sinister middle name? The mastery of the concept of irony? The quotation marks inserted arbitrarily in not one, but two, nonsensical places? Cast your vote in the comments box!

My hate makes your hate look like fluffington!

Guestington here. Honored to share my hate. I’ve a list of five to start, but I’ve tried to pick from within the 36-42 range of my top six hundred, because I want this to be more interesting to read than a list of the obvious things that everybody hates. For example, Rush Limbaugh, bananas, being tickled, and performance art are generally hated by everyone, and thus we’ve all spent enough time thinking and hearing about why they suck. But don’t be fooled by my rankings; I hate the following five things with a hatred so intense it makes Ann Coulter look like the Easter Bunny.

Get ready to relate!

1. 100 calorie packs. I have serious objections with the amount of packaging involved in making people feel better about eating foods that aren’t really food anyway. Why can’t you just count out seven wheat thins from a much larger box of wheat thins and be done with it? I’ve also noticed that the 100 calorie packs of the seemingly more delicious foods, such as cookies, often contain only sad imitations of what I was expecting. Actually, I think they’re all just wheat thins cleverly disguised as other snacks. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go get yourself a 100 calorie pack of Oreos next time you’re in the mood for some Oreo cookies but you are too full of self hate to allow yourself what you truly desire. You’ll see what I mean. Then you’ll eat some actual Oreos in addition to the three packs of chocolate chalk-dust coated crackers you just wolfed down.
2. Chewing gum. Gross. No exceptions.
   
3. Cold. As in, the state of feeling cold; not necessarily the entire state of Alaska. I like scarves. I like hats. I love the word mukluk so much that I knowingly use it inappropriately all winter long. But there’s nothing worse than having to endure Florida-style air conditioning without unlimited access to slippers and personal-sized space heaters. I don’t know who decided that 70ish degrees is an appropriate thermostat setting for our air conditioners when our internal thermostats are set to 98.6 degrees. And I’m not fond of winter, but my distaste turns to hatred when it refuses to back down, even into the summer. Equally perturbing is my resistance to just move to Miami or San Diego and be done with it. Because if I were to do that, then (argh!) I just know I would actually miss hot chocolate and bonfires so much that I would experience at least a tinge of melancholic nostalgia. And I hate melancholic nostalgia so much that it deserves a spot on my top ten list. (Not that I have one; I hate top ten lists.)
4. Small coffee cups. These are not to be confused with the tiny tea cups used by English people in my imagination. Perhaps I should say small coffee mugs. Undersized, actually, is a more appropriate descriptor. Who is happy with 8 ounces of coffee? It’s not just the insufficiency of the size, but the pity I feel for the waitress. And yes, I am really only talking about undersized coffee mugs at restaurants, because any respectable coffee drinker would not tolerate the undersized coffee mug in their cabinet. Who has room, with all those other decent-sized mugs that people keep gifting us? We all already have too many. We all already struggle to fit together the ceramic puzzle of the ones we have. If they’re not good enough for our homes, why do otherwise respectable restaurants (and also Waffle Houses) continue to force us to endure them? (And while I’m on the subject, coffee mugs are not appropriate gifts for your caffeinated friends. We already have too many, and we can’t get rid of the ones we have because we feel guilty because they were all gifts and many of them say things that lead to melancholic nostalgia. If you want to get us a coffee-related gift, get us some coffee. But truly, you should probably just go entirely in another direction with the gift ideas, because we’re particular about our coffee too.)
5. Babies. There. I said it. Please don’t challenge me on this one. I know I’m not alone.

A Cough-Free Man of Tea

Ned here. I've been trying to hold off on this debate until someone else posted something - so I don't come across as an overzealous Neddy - but, seeing how it took me two months to blow my first log, maybe things are kind of balancing out.

Something that makes me blow logs of a different metaphorical nature: coffee.

Coffee: smells great, less filling. That's because it induces vomitting. One time in college, while in the desperate throes of a panicky all-nighter, I'm not proud to say I turned to coffee. I'd heard a lot of buzz around town about the brown bean. I figured now more than ever I needed that buzzing in my brain to carry me through. It was about 4:19 in the morning. I was slogging into one of the hardest hours, typing about one word every ten minutes trying to get a ten page paper off the ground. I felt like the Wright Brothers must have felt for years as Momma Wright cursed their sorry asses up and down the dinner table. "Failure," my Mom's voice rang clear as the swiftly approaching day, while I sheepishly fiddled with the font size and scanned the thesaurus looking for phrases to replace my one syllable words. "Here goes nothing," I said to my sleeping roommate, a false bravado, as I spooned a pot's worth of freeze-dried instant orange-flavored coffee into my mouth. I swallowed. I swallowed for my Mom. I swallowed for all my Luddite ancestors who paved over the Bering Straight with their frozen and dried coagulated blood just to get me to this free world. I swallowed with tears in my eyes.

Then I blacked out. I came to in a parking lot about 10 blocks away - skippin' rope and singing songs of a simpler time. When I got home, I took a good long look in the mirror - eyes recessed into dark sockets, hoarse singing voice, bulging calf muscles, and hair that looked like I tried to fornicate with a light socket in a bath tub. I haven't touched the bean since. Oh, if you got it, I'll sniff it up and down like this is my last day on God's green earth and God took away my other four senses and dropped me off on the outskirts of a Guatemalan farming village with a booming command to "experience nature at its finest young brotha" or my name ain't Nedd Ludd. But I don't smoke that shit any more.

I do, however, still smoke tea leaves. Especially the various herbal mint flavors. Then I compose quatrains and make up new dances to go along with them. This one involves a lower body "running man" while wiggling your fingers as if you're playing the clarinet and sticking out your tongue like a jack-ass: "poetically prophetic/ like a brewed tea leaf in yo' empty mug brutha/ waste not want not is my song/ cutting up a rug as I fire up a bong."

[If you or any of your friends want to submit a video of you or any of your friends attempting this dance while singing the quatrain, it will be posted.]

Coffee Versus Tea

When this topic was posed to me, I thought, how can I choose? Tea, who is there for me at the first sign of a cold and stays with me during those long sick days. Even coming back around on hot summer days, adorned with lemon, sweating seductively into a cardboard coaster. Oh, and there are so many varieties….When I visit my sister I drink black tea with milk and sugar, other times it is green tea I crave. I have never been one to refuse a cup of Sleepytime and yet I think mint is my all time favorite.

All that being said, the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen to my bed is akin to a siren’s cry. I get up knowing I will soon be in the sweet embrace of caffeine that will carry me through the day. I have to shake the thought of a tangy cup of lemon zinger and remember it is coffee who sustains me. That black tea with milk and sugar my sister is so fond of making only gets me through to unearthing the old french press she has banished to her garage.

I am a fair-weather friend to tea. I’ll see tea at a party and we can pick-up where we left off, never skipping a beat. We’ll make plans for lunch or to get together at the pub some night after work, but we both know neither of us will call. Tea has grown used to hearing my hoarse voice pleading, beckoning it when I succumb to my seventh cold of the year and it always comes to my rescue.

But, it is coffee I need. Coffee who at 22 made me feel like a haggard old bag lady when I dismissed it one morning. Coffee who when neglected exacts its revenge in the form of fatigue and headaches. Maybe it does taste like a shoe, but I don’t care. It’s my shoe.

Teas and Coffees. And, Rush!

In the world of hot beverages there really are only two contenders. If you think yerba matte is close, you're off. If you love hot cider, great, that's not on normal folks' radar. You got coffee and tea.

I begin the majority of my weekdays with a hot tea. I've never cared for coffee. The taste, simply, reminds me of a shoe. And, I don't always want the caffeine coffee brings to the shoe-like world in which it resides. Sometimes I just want a hotty that will warm me up and leave my taste buds saying, "yes, i know what's going on here. It's a Tuesday. Peppermint, yo!"

I've included photos for you to admire. Either the photography is akin to an orgy or your souther regions ain't a-workin'!

Several weeks ago while drinking my morning peppermint tea I stumbled on a lil' news story about my favorite conservative talk-show host: Rush. I've taken the liberty of attaching the clip below, so you can enjoy Rush's latest. In it Rush concedes his hope for an Obama failure. If Obama fails doesn't that, too, mean this country fails? Maybe it's just Obama's "socialistic" tendencies that he hopes fail. I'll admit that I don't agree with everything Obama does, but I can tell you that had an analyst on any side of the issue said, "I hope he fails" about Bush that individual would have been clearly labeled, by several of the rights more vitriolic talking heads, "un-American" or "anti-American" faster than you or I could say Joe Ray McCarthy.

I won't do that, because I feel the term, in itself, is un-American when applied to dissent. I think Rush has crossed a line, though. This isn't merely dissent, Rush.

Seriously, who takes this guy seriously? I've also taken the liberty of adding some Bill O'Reilly gems below. Enjoy!

Let me know what you think!