Let’s drink til we can’t feel feelings anymore!

feh

today was weird and boring, but i did dominate the puzzle. at the nearby starbucks (which was once a rally burger, big buford no onions, put the fries ON THE BURGER, thank me for that later), i took the NYT out in the yard and put a real hurting on it, 15 minutes for a friday Times is a good one for me. i do have to adjust my streak though, since last week i missed one. i’m on 9 in a row. i don’t anticpate that changing, though i may have to do saturday’s at a different time, since i have crap to do. why are my weekends busier than my weekdays?
last night i sat around sully’s with k & j, we had pints and talked shit. good times. i hope keri figures out her cable problems.

The pricks on the con side of the aisle (funny huh) came up with a “funny” graphic mocking dems on security. it’s really clever, like a white flag that says “democratic national security plan” or some shit. retards. oliver willis had this up in response and i think it says it all.

Don’t ever fucking forget who was on the job, and who fucked it all up. Bush helped those people die. he directly helped kill the thousands that died in New Orleans that everyone basically is saying “eh?” about, mainly because they’re poor and black. and he has directly killed thousands, tens of thousands, fuck, who knows hundreds of thousands in the middle east.

So fuck that guy, fuck you lying cons for your lies and bullshit, and fuck the numbnuts half of the voters that put these shits in office. when do i start loading up the molotovs again? fucking retards.

in case anyone cares, I did do monday, tuesday and wednesday NYT, they capitulated with relatively little fight. i was moderately challenged by today’s puzzle, but finished it off in less than 20 minutes. God, think of the guys who’ll do a puzzle like that in less than a minute. I don’t even think I can write that fast….
Monday I did in about 8 minutes. I’m getting closer to being able to do a really easy puzzle in 8 times the amount of time it takes good puzzledoers to fill in a really hard puzzle. that kind of made me a little sad. sniff

i hope life is kind to yall

When asked if there was anyone who can get him to stop his independent run for Senate:

LIEBERMAN: Respectfully, no. I am committed to this campaign, to a different kind of politics, to bringing the Democratic Party back from Ned Lamont, Maxine Waters to the mainstream, and for doing something for the people of Connecticut. That’s what this is all about: which one of us, Lamont or me, can do more for the future of our people here in Connecticut. And on that basis, I’m going forward with confidence, purpose and some real optimism.

Taking the party back from the guy who just beat you in a primary? Joe, you’re the fucking establishment. The party is taking itself back from YOU, you dick! Shut your fuckin’ piehole, got to the big-money DNC/DSCC donors, kiss them square on the anus and tell them thanks for keeping you in office for 18 years, and RETIRE, DICK.

Uh, and Maxine? If she’s the one Joe wants to take the party from, well, I’m gonna say it again: FUCK YOU JOE. What happened to the freedom-bus rider? The guy who stuck his neck out for principle? Your principle can be summed up in a couple words now: Cash fucking money. You dick.
Maxine is a hell of a congressperson, and if she helped oust your ass, then I’m sending her a donation today.

Atrios posts this from the DSCC:

“The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken and chosen Ned Lamont as their nominee. Both we and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fully support Mr. Lamont’s candidacy. Congratulations to Ned on his victory and on a race well run.
“Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic Senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the President more than anything else. The results bode well for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country in a new direction.”

MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE? My ASS “more than anything else”. How about this?

“In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital,”

That was explaining his opposition to the “morning after” pill, specifically affirming his belief that hospitals can choose NOT to fill prescriptions or provide emergency contraceptives (on a side note, notice the word “contraceptive”. that means no babies are harmed. But the religious right is not interested in saving babies, but in controlling lives. That kind of proves it, their dislike of contraceptives).
Joe also helped destroy the fillibuster (we saved it so we can never use it, we’re so great!), push through bankruptcy “reform” (screw you poor people!) and get Alito and Roberts nominated (loves him some wingnuts). Joe sucked. He practically fellated Cheney in the 2000 debate, while savaging Ned in debates. Joe only has a spine when criticizing fellow Democrats.
And of course his support of Bush and his disastrous military adventurism is hard to deny. Lieberman coming out and saying “Things are peachy in Iraq!” is insane. Imagine if thousands (relative numbers) of people were being killed in the US every day because of terrorist attacks and religious warfare. You think a fucking school getting painted is going to make the news you dick? I don’t. I think the headlines might read something like “Thousands Killed, Holy Fucking Shit!”
I know Joe’s a corpse. He can still fuck up the election in his stinky corpse-ness by running as an independent. He has no chance of winning, but it would likely put a Republican in the Senate from Connecticut. So if Joe wants to take out the last bit of his legacy, pour gas over it, and burn it on top of the ashes of his credibility, then an independent run is the way to go. (Note: Confirmed, Joe is running as an independent. Fuck you Joe)
Joe’s independent run basically proves all he cares about is staying in power. This is the Zidane of politics….long distinguished career, goin’ down in flames at the end. Him and DeLay. I think I’ll call him Joe “Zizsou” Lieberman from now on. Fucking dickhead.

i oppose war. i opposed the bombing of afghanistan, based on nothing more than my feeling that it was fucked up, and that it wouldn’t accomplish shit. it was, and it didn’t. i opposed the current iraq bullshit our kids are fucked in. i opposed kosovo, i opposed fucking panama, grenada, the international terrorism supported and managed by our government in every poor resource-rich country in the world.
did you know it took years to get the across-the-board resistance to the vietnam war that ended up defining a generation? and before any hostilities were statred there were MILLIONS protesting around the world over the fucked-up Iraq invasion plan. not a shot fired. 12 years of ruinous (to the iraqi people, not the disgusting US-supported dictator) sanctions had given people an idea of what was coming, i’d imagine, but still, there was not the “grace period” of a few years of unremitting violence, including bombing civilians, initiating free-fire zones, and chemical warfare that the government had in vietnam. it was instantaneous. millions around the world marched the streets.
the news coverage? ZILCH.
that’s all kind of an aside. war is stupidity. its worse. war is anti-human. if you’re a human being, and you believe human beings are worthwhile, war is the ultimate worst thing there’s ever been. period. that’s what i think anyways. and it’s right.

we’re doing a mural of a pirate map over my fireplace.

sunday is a big pussy. i defeated it after a passage of time at the local starbucks. it took an hour, but it was just…drudgery. there was a couple of couples of old people talking about africa in the table behind me. they began talking about sushi and i tried to make a comment, but they looked at me like i was insane.
i don’t have anything good to say otherwise. the puzzle gave up its treats like an easy chick on prom night.

today i went after the saturday puzzle, the king of all NYT puzzles. I didn’t go in with monster expectations, i’ve often failed at this one. i headed over to Penny Lane in San Marcos to set up my camp and go to battle. i’d had to do some moving from our office storage unit and was a little sweaty and uncomfortable, but relaxed with the gentle caress of Stella.
Here’s the scene:

beer, smokes, puzzle. the pilot precise was champing at the bit to enter the fight, so i let loose after a swig of Stella Artois. At first I had nothing…the puzzle yielded only a could short clues, and the vast expanse of unfilled squares mocked me for about half an hour. at last, i returned fire and managed to fill in the bottom right corner.

one thing about puzzles, your first impression is often right. that makes it awful when you’re wrong, and the first impression is way off, which happened to me on this puzzle. the clue “the opposite of relaxed” seemed simple. “tense”, five letters, let’s go. but it turned out to be wrong, the correct answer was “antsy”. so blah.
The rest of the puzzle looked impossible. i probed constantly, running possibilities through my head. i kept running into small squares i’d filled in wrong, like when i put “SPRINKLES” in (it ended up being “splatters” “falls in drops”. I began to lose hope for this one. at some point, you begin to think you can’t make it. you’re two hours into a puzzle, and you just start to think “that’s it, i gave it my best”. I even capped my pen and talked with the bar back for a while, a nice guy named Pat. a huge group of people showed up for some kind of birthday party in a chartered bus. i actually sat for about an hour just ignoring the puzzle, trying to psyche it out.
at some point, you give up and fill in things you’re not sure about. i try to visualize the whole thing before filling in letters, but sometimes it’s just obfuscated, it’s behind a fog. so i just threw a couple guesses in there. i knew, inside, i’d given up.
but to my surprise the guesses were right. they started the wonderful fall of dominoes that can lead to you filling out a whole grid in minutes. there’s a competitive crossword series called the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Ken Jennings won a lower division challenge recently (the guy who won millions for weeks on Jeopardy!). These guys literally fill in the hardest puzzles in minutes, or faster. I heard an NPR interview with a winner who filled in a huge saturday-sized puzzle in less than a minute. i wish.
so after my last-gasp guesses, i ended up finishing, to a small amount of amazement on my part. so for the week, i ended up finishing all but one puzzle, going from sunday to saturday. the loss on a wednesday puzzle was odd, but the NYT is a mean beast, and can strike with vengeance at random moments.
all in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

(i wrote “is my bitch” after “New York Times”)