“The Iowa Republican Party has certified the results of its caucuses earlier this month. Rick Santorum is 34 votes ahead, but the party will not declare a winner because there are missing results in eight precincts. Before the certification process, Mitt Romney had been declared the winner.”

Sorry ’bout the missing precincts. See, what happened was I thought Chester grabbed ‘em, and Chester thought I grabbed ‘em and Rose was cleaning up so she grabbed the box with the coffee urn she brung and there was another box that she brought cups and coffee and napkins and whatnot in and that’s the one we had those precinct votes in…

So she put all this in the back of the truck, and it’s got a topper on it so they was safe…don’t think they wasn’t safe…and she was just plain tuckered out, so when she got home she just left all that in the truck and went to bed.

So the next day Rose had to take her mom Ethel to the doctor, ’cause she just got that hip replaced and it’s hurtin’ her something awful so she had to get it checked out, and she had to take her dog Rufus with her ’cause there wasn’t nobody at home to watch him and when he’s home alone he starts chewing things. So she puts Rufus in the back with all the boxes, ’cause Ethel is just as allergic to him as she could be, and he don’t mind riding back there. ’cause like I said there’s a topper on there, and usually when he rides back there that means he’s going hunting, and he loves that. See when he rides back there that usually means that the front seat has Rose’s husband, one of his buddies and the cooler, so there’s just no room up there for Rufus.

And so Rose and Ethel are there in the from seat, and Rufus is in the back with the coffee urn, the ballots, and a bunch of boxes that Rose wanted to drop off at the Goodwill. So she takes Ethel to the doctor, drops her off and starts off to the Goodwill, but what doesn’t cross her mind is that the street that she has to take from the doctor to the Goodwill is the same street they take when Rufus goes to the vet. Now he’s a smart dog…real class A coon hound…so he figures he’s going to the vet and gets nervous and when Rufus gets nervous he chews things.

Rose should have figured something was up, ’cause she heard some strange noises from the back, but she was almost at the Goodwill and she just figured she’d find out about it when she got there. So she pulls into the parking lot, and turns off the engine and right then she heard “The cow says Moo.” but it didn’t sound quite right and that’s because Rufus had gotten into the boxes for the Goodwill and was just chewin’ the bejeezus out of that old See an’ Say that Bobby used to carry around with him, ’til the school told Rose he should probably leave it home, and she agreed, since they were tryin’ to teach him more advanced things and the See an’ Say was just a distraction, which is why she was takin’ it to the Goodwill. But unfortunately the only reason Rufus had started on that box was that the box that used to have the coffee and napkins and whatnot, the one that had the votes from those missing precincts…well that didn’t interest him any more.

So she opens up the back of the truck and Rufus runs out and it takes her a few minutes to round him up…but there’s just votes and bits of plastic from the See an’ Say and a few other toys and pieces of sweater, some of which were really nice ’cause Rose barely wore them since they were gifts, but just weren’t the type of thing she’d wear. I mean they probably would have made someone real happy, but not after what Rufus done to ‘em.

Anyhoo, we’re tryin’ to piece everything back together, but there’s a lot to go through. Rufus was pretty thorough, and we have to make a guess about what’s a vote and what’s a tooth mark, and since he’s a coon hound he’s a drooler, so that doesn’t make things any easier. Rose feels horrible about the whole thing and she’s been following Rufus around with a stick and fishing out any bits of paper that come out and we told her not to bother, but she insists.

We don’t think Rufus meant anything by it, even though we got him from Des Moines, and you know how those people can be, but far as we can tell Rufus doesn’t really care about politics, he was just afraid he was going to the vet and really who can blame him for being nervous after that one time.

Anyway, we’re pretty sure Santorum won. We’ll let you know.

You’ve got to get over the idea that you own this time of year. Remember, there was a winter solstice before Christianity decided to throw its party.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have many Christian friends who find the idea of a war on Christmas as ludicrous as I do.

Giggles set in at about 10%, the realization that there is “nothing funny about this” hits at 43%, and the nauseating image of The Pogues and Dropkick Murphys as interpreted by labotomized castrati Osmonds hits at the halfway mark.

The horrible feeling that the whole mess sounds as though it had been arranged by Andrew Lloyd Webber on Nyquil comes at 59%, and the remaining 8% is spent wondering what the audience would think about this if the water hadn’t been just LOADED with thorazine. I feel my soul start to slip away at 65% and use the last remaining ounces of free will to feebly grasp the remote and switch to any other channel.

Tonight I switched to a knitting show that seemed positively edgy and dangerous. I tremble to think what would occur if I ever failed to change the channel…and listened to 70% of one song.

For some reason I seem to have gathered a rather significant amount of subscribers. I mean, I don’t even know this many people. Which naturally leads to one conclusion…

At least one third of you are The Swordfish. The little 23 year old Russian fuck nut responsible for one third of all the spam email in the world.

So to that third, I have this to say: No, I don’t want a fake Rolex, I am not falling for your “make a billion dollars while on the toilet” schemes, I don’t have a terrible problem with my impending hair loss, and contrary to what anyone may have said there is absolutely nothing wrong with the size or functionality of my wiener. Now, kindly fuck off out of this world, because you have contributed nothing of value or interest to it. You would greatly increase your worth to the species by becoming fertilizer. Please do.

But first, tell me who was talking about my wiener. I’m not kidding. I need to set that record straight.

To the rest of you…what is wrong with you? Don’t you recognize a disturbed mind when you see one? I’ll give a hint…it’s about 6’1″ tall, dark hair, fabulous physique and has a website devoted to the promotion of the stuff he rarely does. Just by subscribing to this site you are putting enough pressure on him to prompt an even longer nap than the one he had planned!

He does, however, truly appreciate your interest and hopes to someday earn it. Provided you have your expectations set sufficiently low.

Oh, and one last thing for The Swordfish…I know times are rough for you, and if you need help with legal fees, I know a Nigerian prince who would be pleased to help you out. I’ll give him your e-mail address. Ya fucktard.

If you don’t eat because you don’t like what’s in the refrigerator, you WILL go hungry.

Should you choose not to vote, remember that every time you open your mouth to complain about the government, you gave up that right.

Shut up!

A flood of corporate contributions have manifested in attack ads against Democrats. Who is paying for them? Dunno. They don’t have to tell us. And they are pretty happy ’bout that.

Let’s get this straight. A corporation is NOT a person. A corporation is an entity, comprised of people. The decisions over what a corporation does with it’s money are made by only a few of those people; those well paid few at the very top.

Allowing a corporation to spend as much as they wish gives those few even more power than they already have. Not only do they have personal assets that allow them to contribute, but now they have the power generated by the work of hundreds, maybe thousands of people in their hands. The power of all of those people subject to their personal political whim.

It is unreasonable to assume that every employee of a corporation shares the same political view.  People who strongly support a political candidate are finding themselves in the position of working forty or more hours each week contributing to the defeat of that candidate.

This is not right. This is not fair. And it sure as hell is not democracy.

1) There is NOT a mosque being built on Ground Zero. The crowd is up in arms about a community center blocks away, next to a mosque that has been there for over 30 years.

2) What IS being planned for Ground Zero is a 55,000 square foot underground retail mall, because the real way to honor the heroes and dead of 9/11 would be licking Cinnabon frosting off our fat, bloated fingers before trying on a $150 pair of Abercrombie jeans.

My mother is Jewish. My father was a Christian Scientist. Already there is comedic potential, but wait, it gets better. Why the marriage didn’t last I can only guess…

When I was five years old I had rheumatic fever. My grandparents on my father’s side were visiting at the time, and remaining true to their firmly held Christian Science beliefs they attempted to heal me through prayer. I remember my grandmother calling the mother church in Boston, and putting me on the phone with someone who tried to correct the error in my thinking that was allowing the illness to take hold.

At a certain point, my mother had enough, and demanded that I be taken to a hospital. Once there, I died.

Not for long, and I was successfully resuscitated, evidently. But for a period of time I was legally dead. I don’t recall any white light, no tunnel. I think I may have smelled bacon….

The point is that a belief, a religious doctrine, held as an absolute, literally killed me.

I know that the obvious response from some standpoints is that it was the wrong belief, however it was no less firmly held. Perhaps more. They were willing to let a five year old child die because of it. The funny thing is they viewed it as their failing, that if their faith had only been stronger they would have successfully healed me.

I will not argue the legitimacy of the the Bible and Christianity, but I will also not argue the legitimacy of the Qu’ran and Islam, the Torah and Judaism, or the Tao Te Ching and Taoism. I believe each, and a host of others, has validity, and that each has been touched by the Divine.

It is only when these ancient texts are subjected to the strangle hold that is fundamentalism that they become somewhat dangerous. A belief that holds itself as an absolute and sole truth is just one very small step away from the decision to see the others as invalid, inferior or threats. From there the perceived need to eliminate them is a product of human, not Divine, nature. Because for whatever these volumes contain, it is subject to human interpretation, and when a human mind is convinced it has Divine justification there in no end to the horrors it can bring about.

The Bible has been through a lot. Translation after translation, each claiming superiority over the other. Translations of texts that come from a time when the human mind was much more metaphorical in nature than it is now. Any attempt to interpret metaphorical thought with a literal mind is doomed to failure on some level.