For Those About To Rock (I Salute You)
It's Friday night, I'm 38 years old and I'm watching Beavis and Butthead - The Movie. Which reminds me of a couple of AC/DC stories. Indulge me here.
AC/DC Story Number One: The Cute and Cuddly AC/DC Story That Ends in the Death of a Cute Rodent
When I was about thirteen I bought myself a guinea pig. He was white, brown and black and I named him Angus after Angus Young. At this point in my life I also vowed that I would name my first child Angus. I never thought that most people would think of cows when they heard my child's name. No, I thought they would think of badass, short, Australian rockers.
Angus and I got to be great pals. He slept with me every night. And every morning I would clean up all the little shit-pebbles he left all over the bed that sometimes ended up in my ear or a little too close to my mouth. Everything Angus ate came out of him exactly the way it went in. Little rodent nuggets went in and little rodent nuggets came out. All the same. That's why I didn't mind so much him crapping in the bed. Or in my ear. Or mouth.
One day, he started choking, probably on a food nugget or a poo nugget. Who knows. The important thing was that I try to save him. So I gave him a tiny little Heimlich maneuver, very gently. He died very violently and very quickly. I was devastated and it was at that moment that I decided to learn how to really do the Heimlich Maneuver. And 2003 seems like the perfect year to learn it.
AC/DC story Number 2: I Don't Care if You're Crippled, Don't Get Too Close to Angus!
AC/DC Concert at Madison Square Garden, 1980-something. Me and three Livejasmin friends catch a bus to Port Authority with a case of beer.
Every two minutes someone peed. When the bus stopped, and I'm not making this up, the pee went forward, soaking people's feet ahead of us. When it came back, we knew it was coming so we lifted our feet and then the bus stopped again so the pee headed up front. Again. Until we got thrown off.
Skip past the part where Jackie gets arrested for jumping a turnstile.
Also skip past the part where they take away my half-pint of Jack Daniels.
OK, here we are at MSG and AC/DC's on stage. Anthony has a broken leg from either an accident, shooting or fireworks incident.. Still, he decides when Angus comes out into the audience, on top of two bodyguards, he'll reach out and touch Angus. Fuck the bodyguards.
He gets punched in the face by a bodyguard.
Anthony returns to his sit next to us, sans crutches, with a black eye, and he's thrilled. "How often do you get punched in the face by Angus Young's bodyguard?", he reasoned.
He had a point.
But What Do You Think?
Sure, Lileks is great and all but you're all wondering, "what does Bill think about the State of the Union speech?" Well, I'll tell you. It was plain spoken and linear in thinking. He made his case for both domestic and jasminlive foreign policy. Below are the strong points I believe he made.
Taxes
- Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place.
I am proposing that all the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006 be made permanent and effective this year. And under my plan, as soon as I have signed the bill, this extra money will start showing up in workers' paychecks. Instead of gradually reducing the marriage penalty, we should do it now.
- We also strengthen the economy by treating investors equally in our tax laws. It's fair to tax a company's profits. It is not fair to again tax the shareholder on the same profits. To boost investor confidence and to help the nearly 10 million seniors who receive dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of dividends.
Social Security
- As we continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable, we must offer younger workers a chance to invest in retirement accounts that they will control and they will own.
Healthcare
- These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care.
Instead we must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need. Instead of bureaucrats and trial lawyers and H.M.O.'s, we must put doctors and nurses and patients back in charge of American medicine.
Hydrogen Cars?? WTF?
- Tonight I am proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.
I'm sorry but I have to interrupt here. Hydrogen cars? I must say I don't know much about this technology but it sure freaked me out when he said it. It was like one minute I was watching the President and the next minute I was watching the Jetsons. I thought he had completely lost his mind.
Sorry back to the speech.
American Aid
- Across the earth America is feeding the hungry; more than 60 percent of international food aid comes as a Chaturbate gift from the people of the United States.
Good. The world needs to hear more of this and Bush knows it.
- I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.
War On Terror
- free people will set the course of history.
Say what you want about this but it says volumes. Free people better set the course of history or the planet is completely screwed. Something that is obviously lost on the Sarandons and Streisands of the world.
- In all of these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow a process; it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world. All free nations have a stake in preventing sudden and catastrophic attacks. And we're asking them to join us. And many are doing so.
Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.
It needed to be said. It's the Constitution, stupid.
- Iranians, like all people, have a right to choose their own government and determine their own destiny and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom.
He needed to talk about Iran. The Iranian people need to hear from us that we support them against their regime.
- Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack.
He talked at length about Iraq and for the ordinary citizen, I think he made his case. For the rabid anti-war nuts, nothing will ever be enough.
- Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.
Brilliant.
And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country.
Even more brilliant.
May he guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Why do I Drink
OK, people - it's time to play Stupid Greedy Whores where you get to pick who's the stupidest greediest whore. Here are the nominees.
Our first Jasminelive contest is Seong Sil Kim. The Koreans are on a roll lately, huh.
A woman who was lying on subway tracks when she was struck by a New York City train was awarded over $14 million last May, later reduced to about $10 million, by a jury that found her to be only 30 percent negligent for the incident.
Seong Sil Kim, 36, claimed the train operator should have been able to stop in time after seeing her. The Transit Authority said the plaintiff was trying to kill herself because she suffered from postpartum depression. Kim suffered amputation of the right hand except for the thumb; multiple skull and facial bone fractures; fractures to the right radius and left toes; and lacerations of the face, abdomen and leg.
Contestant number two comes to us from NY. His name is Angelo Delgrande.
...Angelo Delgrande shot and wounded his parents and himself in a June 1995 dispute. He then received surgery at a hospital in Westchester County, N.Y. That night, he yanked the tubes and monitoring devices from his body and tried to commit suicide by jumping off the second story of a parking garage. Now a paraplegic, Delgrande sued the hospital for failing to treat his depression and keep him indoors. He was awarded $9 million.
If at first you don't succeed, Angelo...
Our third contestant doesn't have a name but let's call him Mr. Dirtyfuckingloser.
...In Oakland, Calif., a bank robber didn't know the bag of cash he stole contained a time-delayed tear-gas canister that went off, scorched him and sped his arrest. He sued the bank and the police for $2 million for burning him.
And our final contestant, also from NY, is Mark Geistfeld. Dazzle us with your ignorance, Mark.
"Just because somebody robbed a bank, doesn't mean that they have no legal rights whatsoever," said Mark Geistfeld, a professor at New York University's School of Law. "The idea that all of us deserve to be protected by the law, even while we're breaking the law, is something that we all will benefit from on a daily basis."
Well, there you have it, folks. Four very worthy contestants. Time to pick a winner.
Hey, get your finger out of your nose. That's not what I meant.
Hey Y'all, Watch This!
Wind Rider requested a story involving the phrase 'hey ya'll, watch THIS!'
Ask and ye shall receive. This is not a story where I say it but I was in the van when my friend Robbie said it. He said it very quietly for reasons I'll explain shortly.
When I was a teenager growing up in Newark, NJ, we played with fireworks a lot. They were illegal there but were easy enough to get. One of our favorite games to play was asscracker. What you did was, as gently as possible, insert a firecracker into the back pocket of your friend's jeans and light it without them knowing it. If you could pull it off, and it wasn't easy, the explosion and subsequent scream from your victim earned you points. You lost points if you were the unlucky victim.
The other game we played was war. We would go to a local park, pick teams and load up on ammo which was firecrackers and bottle rockets. The firecrackers were grenades and the rockets were, well, rockets. Somehow no one ever got hurt which was amazing. Someone could have put an eye out!
Finally, the 'Hey Ya'll, watch this!' portion of the story. A few friends and I were driving around in my friend Anthony's van drinking beer. This was 1984 so I think that it was legal back then. Anthony was driving and Robbie had shotgun. I was in the back sitting on a paint can. At some point, Robbie pulls out one of those firework thingies that spins on the ground, shoots flames and turns colors. He whispers to me, "Hey, watch this!" (this was NJ so we didn't say y'all). Somehow he manages to slip it into Anthony's front pants pocket and lights it. Well, it starts to ignite and then spin and change colors all in Anthony's pants. It burns through his pocket and is now on his leg. Anthony starts screaming and stops paying attention to his driving and who could blame him. So I, who thought this was hilarious, gained some composure and started pouring beer all over Anthony's crotch which only added to the hilarity. He managed to regain control of the van before we hit the tree but we still ended up on the sidewalk.
Death was averted and a grand time was had by all. Except Anthony who had second degree burns on his leg and almost lost his genitals.
The end.