La Hacienda de Don Paco

Neocon Central

2008-08-02T13:49:00.007-04:00

Above: This is no way to start your day.

I am terrified to walk the streets around the building where I work.

At any minute, I may be invaded in the name of DEMOCRACY.

I knew that working in downtown Washington D.C. would probably mean I'd see political figures walking around, but I wasn't prepared for this: in the last two days, I have been innocently walking down the street, only to look up and find myself being stared down by the dark heart of neoconservatism.

It started on Thursday. Swamped at work, I'd taken the Metro in early so that I could be at the office by 8. Understandably, I was dead tired, as 8 a.m. is a time when no decent person should be awake. Or, for that matter, running into any of the architects of the Iraq War.

As soon as I stepped out of my Metro station (Farragut North, on the Red Line) and turned right to head for my office, I see a fit older guy who looks very familiar walking right towards me. He's by himself, and his jacket is off (it's fucking hot here these days). As he walks right past me, we make eye contact, and that's when I finally recognize him: former two-time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (remember, he held the post under President Ford, too).

Left: Rumsfeld brings sexy back.

I was flabbergasted. I thought about saying something, but he was gone before I could yell "Yeah dude, really great call on trying to run a war with an undermanned, undersupplied fighting force, and then not planning at all for the aftermath of said war, and also for not paying the attention that you needed to to the conflict in Afghanistan. You're a shitty administrator, and your former Presidential aspirations were pathetic and laughable!" So that kind of sucked. Also, it wound up being a shitty day at work, because honestly, how could a day that starts with Rumsfeld end well? I'm just glad I got through it without being put at the bottom of a naked pyramid.

I'm not sure what he was doing around there, but he must have been attending some event at the Mayflower Hotel, which is directly behind my building. The Mayflower Hotel is a popular hotspot for political events; a while back, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a hotly-publicized powwow there after she conceded the nomination to him. There were lots of women with pink signs outside. Also, the Mayflower Hotel is where Elliot Spitzer used to have sex with his really, really expensive prostitute. The place was crawling with Secret Service all week.

But my adventures in neoconservatism weren't over for the week. (You know you're having a bad week when Rumsfeld isn't even the worst thing that happens to you.) Yesterday, after another shitty day at work (funny how when you do election-related work, your bosses just sort of go apeshit when the election gets to be 90 days away; all of a sudden they want all us attorneys filling in all sorts of absurd spreadsheets so they can track what we do), I took off around 6. I had the choice to go home, or to head to my bank so that I could deposit a reimbursement check for $14.12. Since I now live in abject poverty, I opted to go deposit my check. As I headed for the bank, I stopped at the curb, waiting for the light to change so that I could cross Connecticut Avenue. And who suddenly pulls up next to me but the Man with the Moustache, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, wearing his characteristic look of shaggy-haired rage?

Left: John Bolton demonstrates what he would do to the United Nations if the United Nations had a neck.

We stood next to each other for a good thirty seconds, and, again, I wanted to say something, but the man was obviously seething (he's probably still fuming at the fact that we are currently in diplomatic negotiations with Iran instead of blowing up the U.N.), and I feared that if I said anything, he'd go into a berserker rage and cut me to shreds with his adamantium claws. I said nothing, and eventually we crossed Connecticut Avenue together, him probably thinking "This godless liberal probably can't wait to say something about my filthy, unhygienic moustache," and me praying really hard that this wasn't the moment that God decided to smite Bolton with some holy lightning; I don't want to be collateral damage to the surgical strike on Bolton, no matter how reprehensible the man is.

We eventually parted ways, and I deposited my laughable little check, and then I headed to the Metro, and managed not to run into Paul Wolfowitz the entire way.

Congress is Awesome

2008-07-14T14:05:00.001-04:00

That's what it boils down to.

The Dark Side of Florida

2008-07-07T15:31:00.001-04:00

Above: Something is rotten in the state of Florida.

So sometimes being a civil rights attorney is not all that fun. Sometimes you have to do some grunt work. Me, I've spent the week plugging numbers into a huge spreadsheet. Actually, that's not true. I spent the week making sure an intern plugged those numbers into the spreadsheet. We don't pay her.

Still, the work is not always sexy. (By the way, as an attorney that has seen many a sexual harassment case, it is my advice that you do not refer to your work--or to anything or anyone in your office environment--as "sexy." You should draw the line at saying that your work "looks very nice today.") But even the drudgery can sometimes turn up something interesting. And yesterday it did.

In the law, rarely does anyone come to you with a smoking gun. You'll rarely find some memo from a Secretary of State saying "And for the month of July, I'd really like a progress report on how we're going to get all the black people off the voter rolls by November. Remember, people, we're only 124 days out! Let's get McCain elected here!" The way you find out the dirty stuff that's happening is by poring over thousands of documents in the hope that someone somewhere put something down on paper that leads us to something juicy. And as we were going through three boxes of call logs from the Broward County Board of Elections in Florida, we certainly found something juicy:

Elections in Broward County are being supervised by evil Jedis.

Yes, that's right. If you go vote in Broward County in the fall, your precinct table may well be manned by a Sith Lord, a disciple of the power of the Dark Side of the Force. I have unearthed a call log that reveals that during the 2008 primaries, a certain "Darth Peterson" called County headquarters to run an address check on a Broward County voter.

This has huge legal ramifications. Supreme Court followers will surely recall that that august body has previously ruled that the mere presence of Sith lords at polling places constitutes prima facie evidence of voter suppression efforts. See Organa vs. Palpatine, 456 U.S. 1657 (1999) ("Nothing has quite so efficacious a detrimental effect on the exercise of the franchise than the ominously pregnant hum of a lightsaber."). Now, with the Supreme Court's new right-leaning composition, legal experts are predicting that the Court is itching to overturn that rule.

"Scalia was in the minority in Organa, as you'll recall," said Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, "and I'm certain that he wants a second bite at that apple. And you know that Alito is very much to the right of former Justice O'Connor on this one. Back in 1993, when he was still on the Third Circuit, he ruled that Imperial Stormtroopers had Eleventh Amendment immunity from civil damages awards in Bivens actions for excessive force. He even went so far as to add dicta to the effect that that outcome would remain the same 'no matter how many Bothans died in bringing the Court that information.'"

Left: A 2004 photo of Broward County poll workers. We assume that that's Darth Peterson on the far right.

Preliminary investigation into reports of this Darth Peterson have yielded troubling results. The Establishment Clause ramifications of Peterson's repeated "I find your lack of faith disturbing" comments alone make this Constitutionally problematic, and reports that Peterson was Force-choking voters pulling the lever for Hillary Clinton require immediate attention.

Florida: if it's not one thing, it's something else.

Supreme Court Roundup

2008-06-26T21:45:00.000-04:00

The Supreme Court is taking no prisoners these days, handing down rulings left and right that are sure to piss someone off.

A month ago, the upheld the constitutionality of Indiana's requirement that voters show government-issued ID when they go vote, pretty much relying entirely on the fact that, back in "Gangs of New York"-era New York, machine politicians paid people to vote multiple times. Never mind that this type of voter fraud seems to be non-existent today, or that the law results in travesties like busloads of nuns being turned away (by other nuns!) at the polls because most nuns don't get driver's licenses. I think that it is safe to say that if you just issued a ruling and it is turning nun against nun, you fucked that ruling up.

A few weeks ago, they ruled that the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay could appeal their detention in federal courts through the right of habeas corpus, which Congress and the President had done away with via the Military Commissions Act, basically reminding those two branches that, hey, guess what, you can't just, you know, suspend the law and shit. This pissed off people who think this is going to mean that a bunch of terrorists are going to be set free to blow us all up (Justice Antonin Scalia falls squarely into this camp. The believing they'll blow us up camp, not the actual blowing us up camp. To my knowledge. He is an angry jurist.) It also "pissed off" John McCain, who probably secretly agreed with the decision (one would have to think that a former prisoner would have a soft spot in his heart for judicial review, which was not available to him, as the U.S. has yet to open up a District Court in Hanoi), but figured it would be politically expedient to decry it.

They've kept the ball rolling this week. In a stunning double blow to all Marine Wildlife-Americans, the Court knocked back the punitive damages that Exxon got smacked with for the Valdez debacle from $5 billion to $500 million, and also decided to take up a case from the Ninth Circuit in California (read: it accepted the case so that it can overturn the decision some time next year) which will result in the Navy being able ignore the Coastal Zone Management Act so that it can conduct all sorts of sonar exercises that will cause "behavioral disruptions" and hearing loss to whales and dolphins. So basically, dousing all sorts of wildlife in raw petroleum is now cheaper than ever, and we'll be driving whales and dolphins deaf and crazy so we can be ready for when those terrorists attack us with their terrorist submarines! Who cares, you can't hear anything underwater anyway, right? So who cares if whales and dolphins are deaf? You know who was deaf? Fucking Beethoven, man.

Michael Chertoff also got a free pass to ignore environmental regulations when the Supreme Court declined to take a case where the lower courts let Homeland Security waive environmental regulations so that it could build its awesome border fence (built to keep Lou Dobbs's night terrors at bay) without worrying about whether it cuts rivers in half, or how many folks' properties it runs through. But it's all good, because as the Cold War taught us, big-ass walls work!

Also disappointed by recent rulings were vengeful, raped babies, who were very upset that the Supreme Court's liberals said it was unconstitutional to execute someone for raping a baby. Both presidential candidates came out against the decision, because, I mean, how can you be running for president and be for baby raping? Baby raping polls very, very badly.

Also, it is very likely that today or tomorrow, Justice Scalia will take a minute to inform us, while striking down D.C.'s gun control statute, that we need all the guns we can get in order to be safe from the Redcoats. I'm calling it right now.

Update: About 10 minutes after I posted this, Scalia did actually come down from the mountain armed with an opinion opining that we do indeed have substantial Constitutionally-protected rights to bear arms.

My New Job is Strange

2008-06-18T18:17:00.003-04:00

Not only because it's staffed by people who are really, really, really, REALLY into racial justice (I've been forced to put up a very ugly racial justice-themed calendar in my office--nothing like a new picture of some random march or rally every month to really help the time fly by), but mostly because of that thing you see in the picture, which is right outside my office, which, by the way, is so far from a window that I have to pass by about 6 other offices just to be able to see the door of an office from which you can see a window. They call my enchanted corner "the South Side," which in most cities seems to be code for "the ghetto."

In any case, thing in the picture above turns out to be a very sophisticated mousetrap. Since we are a racial justice organization and therefore love everyone and everything, it was at some point decided that mice should not die horrible deaths at our hands. Therefore, the traditional spring traps you see in cartoons were out of the question, and the decidedly horrible glue traps that force you to affirmatively kill the mouse yourself were also ruled out.

So they went out somewhere and bought that thing, which apparently works as follows: the little box is somehow suffused with mouse pheromones, which lures mice into the box, after which they can't escape. So basically, this thing lures mice in there by reeking of mousesex, and then the mouse gets in there and can't get out, all the while trapped by itself, with no opposable thumbs or appropriate reading materials, in a chamber full of sex hormones that will drive it crazy until somebody sees him and releases him into, presumably, the wilderness that is downtown D.C.

We haven't caught any mice since I've been here, but I can assure you that when we do, I'm not getting anywhere near the releasing of the sex-crazed rodent.

Emigrante!

2008-05-20T03:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you need to make a change.

While life here at the Hacienda is placid and idyllic, and interrupted only by my monthly fights with various telecommunications companies, it became clear that it was time for Don Paco to give up the life of luxury and plunge back into the thick of things. That being the case, I hereby announce the bittersweet news that I will be leaving these fair shores to go over the ocean to Washington, D.C., where I have accepted a job doing voter rights work. That’s right, Don Paco may soon be suing an election official in a state near you!

The job doesn’t pay tremendously well, but do you remember Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State in 2000? Didn’t you ever wish you could have sued her? I may well get the pleasure of suing whoever the new Katherine Harris is, which is compensation in and of itself.

But Don Paco, you may ask, what does this mean for your sporadically-updated and mildly amusing website? Never fear, for it shall live on. I make the move this week, and many things—including my computer—will require shipping, and it may take a while to get settled in. So during the next few weeks, there will be little to no action here. Then I will hopefully do a slight site redesign and get back to cranking out new updates for the three of you that read this.

I am leaving my faithful dogservant Santiago in charge of the Hacienda, which he is not too thrilled about, an opinion he has taken to expressing by defecating on hard-to-reach carpeted areas. I would threaten him with a sacking, but he has the most seniority of all the staff, and I would not want to antagonize the union. And really, he shits because he cares, so it’s really the thought that counts. Plus the last few times I haven't had to be the one to clean it up.

And so for the moment I leave you with this picture of the campaign headquarters of San Juan Mayor Jorge "El Gran Gansini" Santini, who for some reason seems to be trying to get re-elected by... looking like he's ready to come over and give you a good fucking? Is the man fixing his tie or fixing to give it to you Santini-style? You be the judge, but I just want to say that when I look at that poster, I immediately experience an irrational fear of being impregnated. Also, thank the Lord that Rudy Giuliani didn't think of this first.

There Goes the Neighborhood

2008-05-18T12:05:00.007-04:00

Urban decay is a terrible thing. Hard economic times have hit Puerto Rico, and you can see the signs of it everywhere. The street where the Hacienda is located is no exception. A few blocks from the Hacienda’s palatial grounds, there is a house that has been abandoned for some time. The likely scenario is that the owner is asking too much for it given the repairs it needs (the houses on this street being of a “classic” vintage). Perhaps it is tied up in an inheritance dispute, which would bode ill, given that the complexity of the estate provisions of Puerto Rico Civil Code and the lumbering inadequacy of our local courts would give rise to the inference that the property dispute would most likely be resolved at around the same time that we settle our political status questions. In either case, the fact remains that there is an abandoned house on our street, and now the wrong element has moved in.

You see them out in the yard in the afternoon, just lazing about, not working, flaunting their grass for all to see, their eyes all red and bloodshot. They reproduce like rabbits, so you can’t even know how many offspring are running around; who knows how many of them are squatting on that property. And no one has ever seen any of them leave the property and go to work.

You know who I’m talking about.

That’s right, you guessed it—wait, what? Seriously? Wow, I had no idea that you were such a racist. I’m very disappointed in you.

I’m talking about rabbits!

Yes, the house down the street has been colonized by a clutch of rabbits. As I was walking down the street a few days ago on my way to go jogging at the nearby track that I sneak in to through a hole in the fence (which they’ve simply just stopped repairing because someone—not me—always opens it up again), I looked in the yard of this abandoned house and realized that it was teeming with rabbits, all just sitting there munching on all the overgrown grass.

Now, you may not be familiar with Puerto Rican fauna, but we don’t just have feral rabbits running around. I mean, I was walking around and I saw all these white rabbits just chilling in that yard, my first thought was to look around for Alice and to wonder whether I’d done things I couldn’t recall when I’d been in San Francisco. But other than seeing those rabbits, everything else remained normal. I could not taste colors, I could not hear smells, my feet did not turn into angry marshmallow rhinoceroses, and my mother, who was with me at the time, could also see the rabbits (but then again, she’s probably an unreliable witness, because God only knows what she was getting up to during the late 60’s-early 70’s.).

My mother was thrilled to see those rabbits (perhaps because of a previous dalliance with a WHITE RABBIT? We may never know), but I respectfully disagree. These rabbits, I have concluded, are Bad for Puerto Rico, and possibly even Bad for America, like the show “24.” Here is just a brief list of why these rabbits need to go:

- They shit all over the place.
- They don’t pay taxes.
- They eat all our precious grass.
- Their eyes are creepy and red.
- They’re cute, and look really cuddly, but they fucking hate you.
- They’re bringing down property values.
- They’re for staying in Iraq indefinitely. (Seriously. Fucking neocon rabbits.)
- They taste delicious, yet they’re not on my dinner plate.
- Bugs Bunny was a terrorist whose reputation was rehabilitated by the powerful carrot lobby.
- My faithful dogservant Santiago wants to catch them but they are much too fast for him.

Moreover, I have photographic evidence that they are ruining the neighborhood. This is an actual picture what our neighborhood looked when we moved in here in the early 90’s:

Here's what it looks like now:

And what do you think was in that little baggie? I’ll give you a hint: who likes grass? Rabbits, that’s who.

Oh, if only Rudy Giuliani could come and save our fair city by fixing all the broken windows.

War on Phones Update

2008-05-15T00:41:00.004-04:00

It’s not a day of paying the bills here at the Hacienda without a little telephonic fraud. Back in March, an internet services account arose from the dead and started sending us bills again. This account was for my stepfather’s office, and was started about a decade ago with Isla Net, a company that has not existed for years. The account we had with them has also not existed for years, since we cancelled it. Apparently, Centennial bought out Isla Net, and I guess as a housewarming present, decided to reactivate all sorts of old accounts. Like ours.

So in March, we get a bill from Centennial for $25. Not one to take this type of thing lying down, I immediately called up Centennial and cancelled the account. They assured me that they cancelled it, and that I would not be hearing from them again. But of course, this month they sent another bill.

Oh, I thought, it’s on now.

What Centennial didn't know is that I’ve fought this war before, in my Vietnam-like battle with Claro, the automated telecom servant of all that is evil and unholy. And Centennial, my friends, is no Claro, and it was simply not ready to counter the lengths to which I was willing to go to send this account back to the billing hell from whence it crawled back into our lives.

Centennial doesn't have the wall of impregnable computer menus that Claro has been able to set up to thwart anyone from actually speaking to any living being employed by them. Their computer lets you talk to an actual human being very quickly. These humans, however, are trained in the ninja arts of not solving your problems, and katana blade of their arsenal is demanding to talk only to the person whose name is on the account. And so, when I called this afternoon, I was posing as my stepfather, the doctor.

I explained to them that I’d called in March to cancel, and that I’d been given assurances that said cancellation had indeed taken effect. Immediately the customer service rep countered with “Yes, but did you write a letter?”

Just the opening I was looking for. I went for the nuclear option. Here’s how the rest of the conversation played out:

[And here et me make clear that my stepfather in no way resembles the portrayal of him here. But my version of my stepfather is out to get shit done. He knows that you have to can't make the trains run on time without breaking a few eggs. Or something.]

Doctor (actually me, in all my Method glory): “Did I write a letter? No, young lady, I did not write a letter, because I was not told that I had to write a letter. And honestly, had I been told I needed to write a letter, I would not have done so, as I consider that requirement to be burdensome and wholly unreasonable.”

Customer Service (thinking, I've got you now, sucka!): “Yes, but we need you to write a letter—“

Doctor: “You listen to me, I’m not writing any letter. Do you know how many times I’ve cancelled this account over the years? I’m a DOCTOR, right now I need to be seeing PATIENTS, not writing letters to CENTENNIAL! There’s people out in my waiting room right now that need TREATMENT and you’re sitting here asking me to write you a LETTER—“

CS: “Yes but we need you to—“

Doctor: “You know what, I’ll write you a letter, I’ll write you a letter all right, but you know what I’m going to do with that letter? I’m going to send a copy of it to the Department of Consumer Affairs, along with a note to my son-in-law, the DIRECTOR of that agency, detailing the ABUSES that you people have subjected me to—“

CS [meekly]: “Doctor, please, don’t worry, I’ll cancel the account right now, don’t worry about that letter, I’ll have our accounts staffer cancel it as soon as he gets back from lunch—“

Doctor: “Lunch? Young lady, it’s 3:30 right now. I’m not waiting for some person whom is clearly not going to return from his 3-hour lunch to take care of this. Kindly go in there and cancel it yourself right now, while I’m on the phone.”

CS: “Yes, Doctor, of course.” [Types furiously.] “OK, you’re all set.”

Doctor: “Well, thank you for all your help. You’ve been very helpful. Sorry if I seemed rude back there.”

CS: “Oh, it’s no problem. I’m just glad I was able to help, Doctor.”

Doctor (triumphantly): “Well you have a nice day now. Bye bye.”

Hells yeah. Soon I shall be ready for my Day of Reckoning with Sprint!

Armageddon It

2008-05-09T21:17:00.006-04:00

Here's a guest blog for your Hacienda fix, while Don Paco reorganizes his estate. Say hello to Don Paco's little brother, currently hiding from the law in Scotland.

* * * * * *

It's finally happening - we're gonna blow up the moon.

Ok, no, we’re not there yet, unfortunately. But in the meantime, there’s no shortage of hare-brained space crusades for America to get excited about. You may remember a while back when the news began reporting that Earth might get hit by an asteroid in 2030. Thankfully, that's no longer the case, at least not until 2071.

Not one to let a good cash cow slip past them, NASA are totally riding this asteroid till it squeals – a metaphor that is actually more literal than you might think. The snappily-named Object 2000 SG344 is still going to fly pretty close to Earth, and damned if we aren’t gonna try and poke at it, as long as it’s there. We have the technology.

Except that we don’t. The plan is not simply to poke at it, but actually land a few dudes on it, and have them crash out there for a week. If only that were just another metaphor.

This sexy new plan to land people on a hurtling space-rock has jumped to the front of the space mission queue, ahead of the slightly less sexy, Bush-approved "moon landing by 2020" and "Mars landing sometime" plans that have been kicking about until now.

Jerry Bruckheimer: seems to be funding NASA

And I, for one, am all for it, mostly because I am an unabashed fan of frivolous space crusades, as well as the 1998 movie Armageddon, which has apparently replaced all the top scientists at NASA now that the US government is bankrupt. If you ask me, send Steve Buscemi up there as quick as possible. (Not so fast, Affleck.)

Billy Bob Thornton demonstrates the latest NASA technology

But I am not without misgivings. If Michael Bay’s 1998 opus taught me anything, it is that landing on a space-rock is bloody difficult. We will need not one but two manned rockets because half the crew are certainly going to die awful, spacey deaths. We will need to inexplicably explode a space station en route, and given that Mir is no longer there for us to pick on, it’ll have to be the International Space Station, which was almost starting to be useful. And it almost goes without saying that the mission will require awesome, hardcore space-tanks to drive around in once we’ve successfully landed on the space rock. Unfortunately, the only gear NASA have the money for seems to be a Tonka truck for helping the astronauts build space-sand castles:

Actual Constellation Program graphic from the NASA website

Another thing we all know from spaceship movies is that once you send people into space, one of them (usually the one whose name is Steve Buscemi) will instantly flip out, with murderous results. This is why, as in last year’s spaceship movie Sunshine, one of the astronauts will have to be a psychiatrist with his own holographic chill-out room. Unfortunately, as you may have gleaned by now, NASA are pretty skint these days, and so instead of replacing our ancient lunar module with a sharp new spaceship sheathed in chrome and operated by floating touchscreens, we’re keeping the crusty old pre-digital-watch era design. So, in short, we’re sending three astronauts up for the grueling 6-month journey in a 5 meter-wide tin-foil Hershey’s Kiss:

Actual Constellation Program quote: “A clean-sheet-of-paper design is too expensive and risky”

The funniest part of all this is that, as far as I can tell, no one is quite sure whether Object 2000 SG344 is even an asteroid at all. Given its smallish size, about the length of a “small yacht,” and its tidy orbit, which is suspiciously similar to Earth’s own, NASA has said there’s a good possibility that the object is actually a loose Apollo Program booster rocket from the 60s.

At this juncture, a few predictions are in order.

Outcome 1: we fly a few dudes up to the asteroid, and they actually manage to land on it. Once they step out of their Hershey’s Kiss module, they immediately float off into deep space because the asteroid has essentially no gravity.

Outcome 2: we fly a few dudes up to the asteroid and it turns out to be a booster rocket, causing them to turn on each other, suddenly murderous when faced with the prospect of having to pee into tubes and smell each others’ farts for another three months with nothing to show for it except maybe medals of honour from President “El Comandante” Cheney upon their return.

Outcome 3: we fly a few dudes up to the asteroid, infinitesimally altering the object’s gravitational field and orbit, causing it to fly straight into Russia, with an American flag stuck in it, in 2030.

Outcome 4: we fly a few dudes up to the asteroid and find it is made of crude oil, diamonds, and super-advanced alien technology, but can’t bring any of it back home because our Tonka trucks aren’t big enough.

Outcome 5: Jerry Bruckheimer kills the project and turns all of NASA’s budget towards building robots that transform.

The future is lame.

Some Law Clerk in Hawaii is Pissed

2008-04-04T00:31:00.005-04:00

Above: The Large Hadron Collider

Imagine that you are a recent law school graduate working as a law clerk in Hawaii. (Law clerks, in case you didn't know, are the twenty year-olds that write all the opinions that federal courts put out. That's right, after all the fussing and huffing and puffing about judicial confirmations in the Senate, all those judges that go on to the bench following confirmation then go out and hire, without so much as a background check, kids in their mid-twenties who've never even had another job to write all their opinions for them.) So you're a law clerk, you've got a cushy gig in Hawaii, it pays well, the hours are good, and you get to live in Hawaii for the year. Half the cases you're in charge of deal with postal workers being pissed off at the shift supervisor at the Honolulu Post Office, and the others all deal with environmental issues.

And then one day, you walk into your office, find that your judge has been assigned a new case. Anxious to see which postal worker is suing the Postmaster General this week, you open it up... and you realize that you just got stuck with a case where some scientists in Hawaii are asking the court to step in to stop some other scientists in Switzerland from... creating a black hole that will eat our entire planet. That's a clerkship-ruiner right there.

Well, if you happen to clerk for Judge Helen Gillmore in Hawaii, your clerkship just got ruined, because Hawaiian scientists Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho just filed that very lawsuit last week, and it landed on her docket. Wagner and Sancho claim that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an enormous particle accelerator which is scheduled to undertake an experiment that would replicate the conditions that existed in the seconds immediately following the Big Bang. I have no idea how it would go about doing this, nor do I think that I would be able to understand any of the results of any of the experiments this thing was built to carry out. However, this intuitively seems to be a don't-try-this-at-home type of area to be mucking around in, and Sancho and Wagner's lawsuit purports to give us a couple of reasons why the LHC's experiment shouldn't be allowed to go forward, namely these:

1. The LHC could create tiny black holes that could gain strength and eventually consume everything around them, like the LHC, France, and the Mediterranean Sea.

2. The LHC could create weird particles called strangelets out of smashed quarks, and these strangelets would then turn every other particle they touched into strangelets. Again, France would be in danger, and we couldn't save it, because when we landed our troops at Omaha Beach, our troops would be turned into strangelets. And you are not supporting the troops if you are letting them get turned into theoretical subatomic particles by power-mad Swiss scientists.

3. The LHC could create other weird particles with only one magnetic pole. These would also somehow turn other matter into something horrible.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku thinks we don't need to worry about this stuff, and generally I am inclined to believe him, mostly because a) I read one of his books 10 years ago, which I don't remember but I recall thinking was pretty cool, and b) his face is all over ads for CUNY in the New York subway system. If Kaku thinks we aren't going to be eaten by our own black holes, then I suppose I should believe that we will be okay.

Also, I think Sancho and Wagner are forgetting the most dangerous possibility of all: what if the LHC somehow opens up a portal into hell, like what happened to the Event Horizon*? If Lawrence Fishburne isn't available to save us, what will we do then? Michio Kaku can't explain that one away.

The bottom line is that this Large Hadron Collider is trouble. I wish Sancho and Wagner well in their efforts to stave off the end of all existence via a timely intervention in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, and I am also glad that I am not the clerk assigned to that case. Who wants to write up an opinion dismissing a case that then leads to the world getting swallowed up by a tiny French black hole? Not me.

*The Event Horizon is a haunted ship in space.

BUSTED!

2008-03-27T09:10:00.003-04:00

Aníbal Acevedo hasn't said this yet, but I bet he will in just a few minutes: "This is all some vast conspiracy against me."

So I wake up this morning, readying for a trip, and what's on the news but the fact that our illustrious governor, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, has been slapped with some twenty-odd criminal counts of violating federal campaign finance laws, and he is currently negotiating how to turn himself in to the Justice Department! Many of the charges appear to stem from shady fund-raising dealings in Philadelphia during the early years of this decade, but apparently there's also a ton of charges pertaining to the illegal use of these and other funds up until very recently. All of this would appear to represent the culmination of the PDP's goal of achieving a level of corruption equal to or greater than that of the PNP. Congratulations, you did it! Way to keep those eyes on the prize!

And me about to hop a plane. Bastards! Expect to hear more about this from me soon, and sorry for the absence. The last few weeks have been tempestuous here at the Hacienda.

Crap Presidents: Tippecanoe and Tyler Also

2008-03-14T14:58:00.007-04:00

Above: Political campaigns sure were cooler in 1840, when your campaign could essentially be "I likes to gets DRUNK!"

As you might have noticed in the past seven years, sometimes somebody becomes President and the whole thing just doesn’t really work out. In order to commemorate this rather painful historical truism, I hereby inaugurate the a new running series, The George W. Bush Crap Presidents Series. Our first installment is a double shot: the ninth and tenth Presidents, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

Tyler’s rise to the Presidency marked the first time an afterthought held that lofty office. If you’re at all familiar with Tyler, you’ll know that he is the “Tyler” in the famous 19th century political slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” “Tippecanoe,” of course, refers to William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate who won the Presidency in 1840 based on a campaign which celebrated his military accomplishments, his (fabricated) desire to lead a simple, rustic life in the countryside, and love of alcohol, which, with a few tweaks, has essentially become the way that the Republican party always sells its candidates, who all mysteriously buy ranches in the western U.S. the year before they run for President, ranches full of deadly, deadly brush that just demands to be cleared.

Left: Tyler wore the same outfit to clear brush that he wore to give his eternally long speeches in freezing weather.

Harrison, a Crap President if ever there was one, is remembered—when he is remembered at all—for delivering the longest inauguration speech ever, clocking in at nearly two hours. Here is an excerpt:

“It was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that ‘in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had none.’ Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia…”

It is safe to assume that Liberty was probably not the only one thinking of fleeing on that cold and wet early March day. Deadly stuff, this speech (literally, it would turn out). As broad as the 68 year old Harrison demonstrated his command of the classics to be, he also demonstrated a rather shocking lapse in judgment in deciding to deliver his endless speech without wearing an overcoat. Sparing the young nation any further pontification on the evils of partisanship in the classical-era Mediterranean, Harrison contracted pneumonia and died within the month.

His successor John Tyler had an undistinguished, crap Presidency, a time that was marked primarily by the creation of a variety of other political parties, almost all of which had “Hating President Tyler” as some part of their platform. He spent most of his presidency fighting Henry Clay over banking policy and almost botching the annexation of Texas. Though he had run with Harrison on the Whig ticket, Tyler had been a Democratic Republican (first a Jacksonian, and later an anti-Jacksonian), and after becoming President he pissed off his party by pretty much vetoing everything they wanted to do. They responded by kicking him out of the party, and his entire Cabinet (except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster) quit. Webster would also quit later, a shrewd move considering what would happen to his successor.

Left: John Tyler, looking like the winner he was.

Tyler also seems to have been a terrible guy to know, as it seems that if you had any sort of association with him, you were apt to drop dead at any moment. On Harrison’s death, Tyler became the first Vice President to become President due to the death of a President, and spent his term losing the battle to keep those around him alive. His wife, Letitia Tyler, became the first First Lady to die mid-term when she passed away in 1842. Then, in 1844, Tyler, members of his Cabinet, his new fiancée Julia Gardiner, and others participated in a ceremony aboard the USS Princeton, where a cannon backfired and killed his new Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, his Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, and his fiancée’s father, David Gardiner. Julia married him anyway, and years later he would die and leave her a penniless widow. Though everyone around him died, Tyler managed to have many children who lived to adulthood, and he had a horse named “The General” that lived for 20 years.

Tyler was the first President to have a veto overridden by Congress (which they did as a “fuck you” on his last full day in office). Congress also tried to impeach Tyler, but I guess his aptitude for failure was contagious, and they were not able to. Belonging to no party, and apparently liked by no one except the woman who married him in spite of his indirect role in the death of her father, Tyler did not run for another term. After his presidency, Tyler went on to serve in Congress—the Confederate Congress.

William Henry Harrison and John Tyler demonstrate that you can be a crap President without shoddily planning disastrous wars or by having evil Vice Presidents (Tyler didn’t even have a Vice President). The best thing that you can say about the Harrison presidency is that his grandson (another Crap President candidate) would later become President, and the best thing that you can say about Tyler’s time in office is that he didn’t cause the Irish Potato Famine. Unless he did, which would not be at all surprising.

So the next time you send a text message you shouldn’t have sent, or leave your DNA all over a crime scene, or pay thousands of dollars to a prostitute to cross state lines, don’t beat yourself up about it—just remember that you are, in your own special way, honoring the legacy our most Crap Presidents.

Pedro Rosselló, We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-03-12T02:31:00.009-04:00

Above: Pedro Rosselló

This past Sunday, Puerto Rico had its gubernatorial primary for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (NPP), which was won by popular young candidate Luis Fortuño, who has the distinction of possibly being the first Puerto Rican to be both a) a Republican and b) a dead ringer for Milhouse from The Simpsons. Other parties had primaries as well, but the other leading party, the pro-Commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PDP), did not hold a gubernatorial primary, apparently being satisfied to run Governor Aníbal Acevedo out there to get slaughtered in the fall. I imagine they must simply want to be rid of him one way or the other, be it through his inevitable loss in November or his possible incarceration for campaign finance violations.

Luis Fortuño: Res ispa loquitur.

The big story, however, is not so much that Fortuño won, but rather that former Governor Pedro Rosselló lost. Rosselló, a former tennis prodigy and noted pediatric surgeon, became governor in 1992, a post he held for two terms that were marked by noticeable public works initiatives and almost mind-boggling corruption within his inner circle. He opted against running for a third term in 2000, and retired to Virginia. His exile would be short-lived, however, since in 2003, inspired by the Warren G. Harding-esque ineptitude of the Sila Calderón administration and the prospect of running against Aníbal “Please God Let It Be Over” Acevedo, Rosselló returned to Puerto Rico.

Left: Aníbal Acevedo (believe it or not, this is what he looks like after plastic surgery paid for with suspicious funds).

In his absence, the leadership of the NPP had been taken over by Carlos Pesquera, a seemingly even-keeled guy who had headed up the Urban Train project. However, at some point in the summer of 2002, Pesquera lost his marbles. Here’s how it happened: news got out that the Office of Women’s Affairs, a state government agency, had chosen to display a Puerto Rican flag in its lobby, but not a U.S. flag. Somehow, Pesquera got it into his head that the best way to solve this problem was to gather up a mob, march them down from the Capitol building to the Office of Women’s Affairs while blasting country music (the strangest detail in this entire sordid fiasco), start a riot outside the office, and then break through the office’s glass doors carrying an American flag in order to plant it.

Left: Carlos Pesquera thought he could claim the Office of Women's Affairs for the USA by planting the flag in the lobby.

On a personal note, I was working in San Juan that day, and let me tell you, it made it hard to get lunch. After that clusterfuck, it wasn’t too hard for Rosselló to dispatch Pesquera (who, by the way, was caught on several video cameras in his incitement to riot and breaking and entering, and yet beat the charges without even going to trial by having even more of his followers cause tremendous traffic jams outside the courthouse, which is only blocks away from the Hacienda). Having thrown Pesquera under the bus, Rosselló immediately launched a new campaign to retake the governorship. His efforts came up short, and he lost a hotly contested election that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court wound up deciding.

And then he went crazy.

Having lost the governorship, he decided that he needed to be in the Puerto Rico Senate. Mind you, he did not run for Senate. However, Victor Loubriel, the guy in his party who won the Senate seat for the region where Rosselló lived, was made an offer which he opted not to refuse, quit two days after being inaugurated, and, voilá, Rosselló was in the Senate.

But just being the newest dude in the Senate was not enough for Rosselló. Although a Senate president had already been chosen—Kenneth McClintock, whom everybody here calls ‘MaClinton’—Rosselló and his followers decided that, since he was the president of his party, then he should naturally also be president of the Senate. McClintock was having none of it, however, and he refused to budge. Rosselló then did the democratic thing and had McClintock and his allies all thrown out of the party, which was still not enough to dislodge McClintock, whose hold on that seat was a strong as the moustache he used to sport was creepy.

Left: Kenneth McClintock: Not even Tom Selleck would tell you that that shit looks cool.

While this was all going on, more instances of impropriety on Rosselló’s part came to light. As if it weren’t enough that over thirty members of his administration—including several of his cabinet secretaries and his personal assistant—wound up serving time in prison for a veritable potpourri of corruption charges, the news surfaced that the government pension that Rosselló was receiving was about 40% higher than it should have been, because records of some of his early government work had been falsified: apparently, during one summer where he was supposedly working for the government as a student, he was actually in the U.S. playing in a bunch of tennis tournaments, and enrolled in classes at Notre Dame. Some other guy got sent to jail over this kerfuffle, and though Rosselló was ordered to pay back $80,000 of wrongfully-awarded pension funds, his supporters raised the money and paid it themselves. Rosselló was prosecuted in the matter, but beat the charges. Soon thereafter, he wrote a book called “The Triumvirate of Terror,” where he charges the PDP, the Federal government, and the Ferré family (owners of El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper), all of whom he compares to Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, with conspiring to bring him and the statehood movement down.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico’s economy went straight into the toilet, leading to a government shutdown for two weeks, which our illustrious governor Acevedo decided to solve by eliminating the excise tax, replacing it with a 7% sales tax, which after a year he decided hadn’t worked, and now wants to scale back down to 2.5% while bringing back the excise tax. Acevedo is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for campaign finance violations, and is pretty much hated by just about everyone who’s ever had anything to do with him.

2007 rolled around and it was time for Rosselló to gear up for another gubernatorial run, but this upstart Fortuño had the gall to run against him. A protracted primary campaign took place, which Rosselló “did not participate in.” Let me explain. Initially, he promised that he would not be running for governor. Then he decided to do so. But then he said he wouldn’t campaign for it. Except he did: he hit just about every town and municipality in Puerto Rico, holding rallies and marches and all sorts of events, except that he claimed that he was not campaigning, but instead was just appearing at the events as the president of the party. He refused to debate Fortuño, claiming that he didn’t debate members of his own party, and as far as I can tell, his only campaign promise was to set up “reconciliation commissions” wherein political officials who had committed acts of corruption would be given amnesty for them so long as they confessed to their actions and expressed contrition, claiming that this idea was inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that South Africa set up to deal with the legacy of apartheid. Because as anyone will tell you, when greedy assholes steal taxpayer dollars, that is exactly the same as apartheid.

Rosselló's campaign slogan was “Esto lo arregla Rosselló”, which translates roughly to “This mess? Rosselló can fix that shit.”

Fortuño whipped his ass 60-40, and now theoretically Rosselló will retire from politics, sparing the island from an Acevedo-Rosselló election, which would probably have resulted in mass suicides. Rosselló will be missed by fans of colossal trainwrecks and authoritarian tendencies the world over, and when Fortuño annihilates Acevedo in the fall, Acevedo will be missed by, uh, no one.

Also, as a bonus, it now looks like this guy, whose name is Tomás Rivera Schatz and who frequently sports what is essentially a Hitler moustache, will be elected to the legislature in the fall, and will probably hold a leadership position.

And here you are thinking that the Obama/Clinton race was interesting. Ha!

Poorly Thought-Out

2008-03-06T00:43:00.002-04:00

Above: Miguel Tejada

I know this isn't dispositive evidence or anything, but don't you think that if you were trying to convince everyone (including the Department of Justice) that you didn't use steroids, maybe you wouldn't go around advertising how you're such a super awesome runner that you need them to strap a parachute to you to make it challenging?

This reminded me of some article about Barry Bonds' workout regime back before all the stuff about the BALCO indictment broke, and it said that part of his training involved swinging a particularly heavy bat (even heavier than normal heavy bats, which are apparently standard in baseball training), which the author warned readers not to try at home, as doing so would break the average person's wrists.

Seriously.

Benedict Kills Again

2008-02-28T00:03:00.000-04:00

Pope Benedict: How long before he has the entire Jedi order killed by his clone army and yells "Power!!! Unlimited POWER!!!"?

His Unholy Majesty and his Exorcism Squad lackeys have struck again, this time quietly bringing to an end the life of one of the high priests of the secular American religion of Conservatism, William F. Buckley, the author of (among numerous other works) God and Man at Yale, and the founder of the National Review, a conservative periodical.

Left: William F. Buckley. Obviously he would've preferred "Right: William F. Buckley", but now he's dead so tough titty.

How did Buckley die? Did he die of despair at the prospect of a President named Barack? Was the spending profligacy of the Bush Administration too heavy a blow to his conservatism? Did Chris and Snoop lure him into a vacant? No, none of the above. The modus operandi of Benedict's ecclesiastical enforcers was once again in evidence: the victim, in his early 80's, was found dead at his home, of "natural causes."

When will our leaders stand up and take notice of the sacramental scourge that is Benedict? In the past year he has had his dastardly Exorcism Squads send Jerry Falwell, Buckley, the top Senegalese Muslim guy, the Greek archbishop guy, the King of the Mormons, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to that big Unitarian Sunday Brunch in the sky.

Meanwhile, Satan, the putative target of the Exorcism Squads, still roams free, as evidenced by this footage captured by Hollywood:

As of today, we are spending billions of dollars a month fighting the supposed threat of Islamofascism. But what about the very real threat of Pope Benedict's Papambenedictumofascism? How will those who aim to lead our nation propose to deal with this most existential of threats? All the health care mandates in the world aren't going to fix this one, Hillary! What good was being right on Iraq going to do if you're wrong on Benedict, Obama? How exactly is making the Bush tax cuts permanent going to address the evil that emanates from the Vatican like the stench of campaign finance improprieties, John McCain? Is Mike Huckabee, a purported expert in miracles, our only hope of escaping the thousand-year rule of Beelzedict XVI? The candidates need to stop running from this important issue. The American people demand a change to our policy of papal appeasement!

Those New York Kids Are Blunt

2008-02-26T13:52:00.000-04:00

The Hacienda has received the following exclusive communiqué from Brother Astoria:

"So our Nursing Home had this event on Valentine's Day where children made cards for the [mostly older] veterans who live there.

I wonder how these 2 cards made it through. Maybe someone figured that the vets would enjoy the brutal honesty."

Gotta wonder about the center 'flower's' resemblance to a shovel.

From the Straight Talk Express school of Valentine card-writing

I Am Ravaging Argentina

2008-02-25T08:01:00.001-04:00

Left: I don't know this lady, and I don't know her junkie sons.

You can imagine how surprised I was to open up the New York Times website the other day only to find out that I am currently in the process of horrendously devastating the lives of poor Argentinians and Brazilians. Paco , says the Grey Lady, has "destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before in [Argentina]."

Much like John McCain , I was shocked and appalled that a liberal rag such as the Times would, in contravention of all journalistic ethical standards and practices, launch such a vicious torrent of yellow journalism my way, relying exclusively on hearsay, innuendo, and unreliable, drug-addicted, foreign sources. Not only that, but the Times seems to have made absolutely no effort to contact me for my side of the story. Now, therefore, I must defend myself against these vicious libels directed at me by that most Communist of rags. This assassination of my sterling, unimpeachable character shall not stand, I tell you.

As you well know, dear reader, Don Paco is a Puerto Rican gentleman of leisure. That much is easily verifiable from the "About Me" section of this very blog, which the Times "reporters" who put together this story obviously neglected to properly inspect. According to the Times, paco is "a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue" that is "even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine." The "paco problem" in Argentina and Brazil stems from the fact that the market has been flooded with this cheap substance, which apparently provides a short, intense high, and is extremely addictive. If the Times is to be believed, paco has an iron grip on the drug trade in Argentine shantytowns such as Ciudad Oculta.

Now, anyone who has ever met me knows that I am not made of cocaine and solvents. Neither do I contain any kerosene. I am not, so far as I can tell, smokable. Though I am cheap, I am certainly not addictive. You need only check the hit counter on this website to see just how not addictive I am. So far as I can tell, no one has ever sold all their possessions and stolen from their relatives in order to continuously smoke me. I may not be a scientist, but I know that I am not constantly being smoked. And Argentine slums? I never go there. Ask Doña Paquita, who knows a thing or two about Argentine slums--Doña Paquita having a slightly different formulation of what constitutes an enjoyable tourism experience--how big my presence is in those parts of the world.

I have to say, I am tired of being targeted by the Times for its libelous jeremiads against me. New York Times, you have impugned my honor for the last time. I am now forced to take drastic measures. Since the Times has made its fraudulent persecution of my spotless reputation a matter of shameful public record, I have but one choice:

I hereby challenge New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to a duel.

Left: Hey Clark Hoyt, you've got bigger problems than Judy Miller and Jayson Blair now, you reprobate.

Sir, I shall be at the Heights of Weehawken , New Jersey, at dawn on July 11, along with my second. It shall be pistols at ten paces, and if you do not show, I shall know you for the coward that you are, and your "newspaper" for the fish-wrapper of ignominy that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk hold it to be.

Also, know that if you do not show, I will DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I'LL DRINK IT UP!

You have been warned.

Keith Van Horn: Today's Hero of the Unemployed

2008-02-22T00:35:00.005-04:00

Above: This guy has the same job as Keith Van Horn.

Generally, you have to work hard every day to be a valuable member of our society. Some, however, are able to advance the causes of liberty and justice from their lowly perches among the ranks of the unemployed. Those are our Heroes of the Unemployed, and today, their king is white hoopster Keith Van Horn.

Keith Van Horn is a professional basketball player. After a lengthy and undistinguished career of not playing all that greatly and many a “one of these things is not like the other” moments, Keith called it quits in the spring of 2006. Few in the basketball world mourned his basketball passing.

But it appears that fortune favors the Van Horny. This week, because of the arcane salary rules covering NBA trades, Keith Van Horn was paid $4.3 for having once had a basketball career.

Here’s what happened. The Dallas Mavericks wanted to acquire point guard Jason Kidd from the New Jersey Nets. The problem is that in the NBA, when you make a trade, the salaries have to even out on both sides, and Jason Kidd makes a lot of money playing basketball because he is very good at basketball. So the Mavericks offered the Nets a bunch of guys in exchange for Kidd, but the salaries still didn’t even out. So what did the Mavericks do? They called up unemployed Keith Van Horn, who was not making any money playing basketball because he is not that good at basketball, signed him to a $4.3 million contract, and threw him into the trade. Now the Keithotron will spend the remaining 2 months of the season “getting into game shape,” will probably not play a single game, and will be paid approximately $75,439 a day for doing it. The man essentially just became $4.3 million dollars richer simply for existing. Which is awesome.

Left: Keith Van Horn's career in one picture.

The Keitholizer took a few days to agree to this sweetheart deal, according to his agent, because of all his “other responsibilities,” which I believe is absolutely impossible. So in honor of Keith Van Horn clearly being the luckiest white basketball player ever to grace the hardcourt, here is my dramatization of how the phone call where his agent called him to tell him about this sweet deal really played out, and how Keith Van Horn became today’s Hero of the Unemployed:

Sometime last week:
The phone rings at Der Keithhaus, the Van Horn McMansion.

Keith Van Horn: Yeeeello ello ello.

Keith Van Horn’s Agent David Falk: Keith?

Keith: Keith?

Falk: Keith?

Keith: Keith, yo.

Falk: Keith, are you high again?

Keith: KEITH! KEITH VAN HORN! HORN VAN KEITH!

Falk: Keith you really need to cut back—

Keith: A THRIVEN HONK! It’s a mammogram for my name!

Falk: You mean an anagram?

Keith: No dude that’s in Iraq.

Falk: What?

Keith: HA, NTH INVOKER!

Falk: Listen buddy, I know it’s been a while—

Keith: Davey did you ever play that NBA Jam arcade game? It was awesome, you always had to play the Mavericks first, and they were really bad that year, and you could only use two guys, and one of them was Mike Iouzzolino, and every time he scored Marv Albert would yell “IOUZZOLINO!” That game was the shit, Davey. Wanna toke?

Falk: I’m on a plane, Keith. We’re talking on the phone.

Keith: Oh yeah that’s right! Man the future is awesome. KEITH!

Falk: Be quiet for a sec, Keith. I’ve got great news for you.

Keith: They've resegregated the league?

Falk: No, even better. You remember how when you retired a couple of years back, but we didn’t actually file the retirement papers with the NBA?

Keith: Uh, no.

Falk: Well, we didn’t. That was kind of my bad.

Keith: Naw man it’s all good.

Falk: Well it turns out it was a good thing that we didn’t sign those papers. The Mavs are trying to get Jason Kidd from the Nets, but the money wasn’t working out, but then they realized that they still own your basketball rights, so they want to sign you and then trade you to New Jersey—

Keith: No Davey No! Not New Jersey again!

Falk: But Keith, here’s the thing: they want to pay you $4.3 million, and you don't even have to play.

Keith: What?

Falk: Dude, you don’t have to play. All you have to do is work out for a few months, go to practice.

Keith: And I get four million dollars?

Falk: $4.3.

Keith: And I don’t have to play?

Falk: That’s right.

Keith: And I get four million dollars?

Falk: $4.3.

Keith: Dave is this legal? They won’t make me testify in the Congress or nothing right?

Falk: Totally aboveboard, my great white hope.

Keith: Do I have to blow someone?

Falk: You don’t have to. Might be a nice gesture though.

Keith: Dude, accept the offer. Right now.

Falk: I think we should make them wait, so it’s not too ugly-seeming.

Keith: Dude are you crazy? Say yes right now, man.

Falk: I think we should say you have other responsibilities, and that your personal integrity—

Keith: SAY YES RIGHT NOW!

Falk: Okay. But you know I get 5% of that money, right? Because I’m your agent.

Keith: You know David, insofar as it’s pretty fucked up that I’m going to make millions of dollars for, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing at all, I’m loath to begrudge you a share of my dubious windfall. I know we haven't talked in a while, what with me no longer being a player and thus strictly speaking no longer in need of your services as an agent, but this was nice. You keep finding me teams that want to pay me millions to not play and I will substantially increase your commission.

Falk: Man, you sober up quick.

Keith: I’m Keith Van Horn, bro.

Lightning Strikes Jesus Statue

2008-02-14T00:05:00.002-04:00

Man, that can't be good.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil--On Sunday, God made it pretty clear what he thinks of what his subordinate Pope Benedict XVI has been up to with his Exorcism Squads when he rained down His mighty bolts of lightning on the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Mt. Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro.

God, a regular reader of this and all other words ever written or to be written, from now until the end of time, has found out via this blog and His own omniscience that Benedict has been using his Exorcism Squads to off the canonical competition and not for beasting Lucifer , he whose name is Legion.

This morning, God's spokesman, the Metatron, rang forth a mighty host of silver trumpets and announced that "Hearken ye mortals, that the hour is nigh upon thee to slough off the deceptions of the false prophet of the Almighty Lord's holy Word, and embrace rather that which has been set down for you in the Book He had all those apostles ghostwrite for thy benefit. Do not make us send Gabriel and Michael down to smite thee.

"God also said to tell you that you guys are this close to losing your free will privileges," added the Metatron.

The prospect of a regime of straight predestination is a grim prospect, says one Vatican insider. "Do you realize how obnoxious those Calvinists are going to be if that goes down? We'll never hear the end of it."

The Metatron then addressed Benedict directly, warning him that if He had to send down another antipope to set up shop in Avignon and clean this mess up, He was going to be "one vengeful Alpha and Omega."

The Metatron added that God specifically also wanted it relayed to people that His son Jesus did have sex with Mary Magdalene, as well as many other women, because He "wasn't no damn punk."

"God out," concluded Metatron.

The statue of Christ was unharmed by the lightning, because, just like most Brazilian public works, it is made of recycled thongs, butt implants, and happiness.

Author's Note: The composition of this article began last night, but was interrupted by a mysterious power outage on the Hacienda's street. Crumbling Puerto Rican infrastructure or Vatican shenanigans? You be the judge.

Det. Jimmy McNulty Loves the New FISA Law

2008-02-13T01:01:00.004-04:00

Who likes the unfettered ability to listen in on phone conversations? Jimmy McNulty does, that's who.

Baltimore, MD -- Detective Jimmy McNulty of the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide unit was glad to hear today that the US Senate caved in to the White House on warrantless wiretapping powers, pointing out that the probable cause requirements of the warrant-securing process had hindered many of his investigations.

"When we had to come down off the wire on Marlo Stansfield, that essentially killed our investigation," said Det. McNulty. "Now we're going to be able to catch that mope, and we won't even have to deal with recalcitrant phone companies being reluctant to help us go up on wires because now they have immunity from prosecution for helping us."

"Now I can stop making up serial killers in order to get attention," added McNulty. "I still can't believe I did that. That seems neither gritty nor realistic. I really sort of jumped the shark there."

When asked whether he was afraid that his superiors might discipline him for coming out so publicly on a contentions civil liberties issue, McNulty was dismissive.

"Fuck the bosses, Bunk. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to work for a real police department," said the Detective.

He then rambled on for several hours about how individuals are invariably crushed by heartless institutions, and bemoaned the decline of the American city.

Fellow Baltimore Detective Lester Freamon declined to comment for this article, but he did look up from his work on a miniature Louis Catorze armoire replica and give the writer a knowing look over the frames of his bifocals.

Baltimore politicians also supported the Senate's FISA bill.

"Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit, partner, you know that if it's about national security, then Clay's right there with you on it," said Maryland state Senator Clay Davis. "I carry the water for that machine, you hear?"

This story was originally meant to delve into the more Dickensian aspects of this issue, but those plans were scrapped due to buyouts and a rejection of the "do more with less" ethos of the day.

I Like Not Getting Stabbed

2008-02-12T01:30:00.000-04:00

As I was eating my bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats this morning, I was flipping through today's copy of the San Juan Star and came across a short item about an incident which took place in Cayey over the weekend. Apparently a man entered a business establishment there, and for reasons never specified, became belligerent. He started an argument with another customer, and then stabbed the other customer five times, which presumably garnered him the win in the argument, even if it placed him at a severe disadvantage in his upcoming "don't send me to jail" argument with the local authorities.

This item inspired me to be thankful for the small blessing that my life is generally free of stabbing-engendering arguments. I am a peaceful person, and insofar as I take part in any arguments at all, they tend to be civilized. Bladed weapons rarely if ever make an appearance.

Here is a normal Don Paco argument:

Don Paco: Ooh, Bill Maher is on Larry King. Sweet. Shit, commercial.

Doña Paquita: Ok, quick, turn it to TLC. Channel 98.

Don Paco: Ok.

Doña Paquita: Ooh, it's the show about the sextuplets! Ohmigod, look at that woman's belly. That is disgusting. After she gave birth her belly looked like an 80 year old man's ass.

Don Paco: That sure is a lot of Filipino babies right there.

Doña Paquita: Ooh, and the show about midgets is up next. NO! I shouldn't say midgets, it's offensive. Little people, that is the preferred nomenclature.

Don Paco: But Bill Maher...

Doña Paquita: YOU SEE BILL MAHER EVERYDAY! We're watching the Filipino babies! Ooh, that little one has glasses!

Don Paco: Fucking TLC...

Doña Paquita: What was that?

Don Paco: No, nothing, "TLC, wee-hee!", that's what I was saying. Love that TLC.

But what if I was somehow prone to getting into arguments that ended in stabbing? I imagine it would look something like this:

Don Paco: Ooh, Bill Maher is on Larry King. Sweet. Shit, commercial.

Doña Paquita: Ok, quick, turn it to TLC. Channel 98.

Don Paco: Ok.

Doña Paquita: Ooh, it's the show about the sextuplets! Ohmigod, look at that woman's belly. She looks like she's about to give birth to the US Olympic team. Sigourney Weaver should put on her robot suit and yell "Get away from her, you bitch!" at her.

Don Paco: Man is that preternaturally distended belly gross.

Doña Paquita: Don't be so insensitive! That poor woman. And don't you dare change that back to Larry King.

Don Paco: But Bill Maher...

Doña Paquita: Bitch I cut you!

Don Paco: What? What are you doing with that knife?

Doña Paquita: We're watching this, and then we're watching "What Not To Wear", you hear me, asshole?

Don Paco: But what about-- OWW! You stabbed me! Ohmigod stop stabbing me! AAAAH!

Doña Paquita: Yeah, you gonna watch what now? That's what I thought. Look at you, lying there on that floor, bleeding, ACTIN' A BITCH!

Don Paco: I can't see any light. So cold, I'm so cold...

What Not To Wear, or multiple stab wounds? The former, most definitely. Here's to several more decades of stab-free living.

Beasting of the Week: Don Paco

2008-02-08T00:02:00.000-04:00

Le Tigre, the Mark of the Beasting

The Hacienda--For months I have been waging a war of attrition with a mobile phone provider named Claro, and Claro is defeating me. I am straight up getting beasted.

Left: The Claro logo. Like a swastika, but wordier.

For a few months now, I have been in charge of the finances here at the Hacienda, which are complex and time-consuming. A particular point of needless complexity was our telephone situation: at some point, there were something in the neighborhood of 10 phones or phone lines billed to the Hacienda, with roughly 5 different companies doing the billing. Ever a fan of streamlining, I took it upon myself to hack through that thicket and pare away all needless or superfluous phones. The phone line we used to get DSL through, no longer in use after we got a cable modem months ago: gone. The phone line dedicated to the fax machine we've never had: gone. Mysterious cel phone not belonging to anyone: gone. And then there were the Claro phones.

Claro, previously Verizon, is currently the the mobile phone arm of Puerto Rico Telephone (PRT), previously a government-run monopoly that was acrimoniously privatized in the 1990's. PRT is now owned by América Móvil, the biggest telecom company in Latin America. Verizon became Claro when América Móvil bought PRT. Apparently, Claro has spent the last few months making changes to its customer service apparatus so that it will soon be poised to challenge the customer service execrability of Sprint, the Worldwide Leader of Suck.

Two cel phones needed canceling. One of them was my younger brother's old cel phone. The purpose and ownership of the second cel phone remains a mystery to me. They are billed on the same invoice. Neither has been in use since September, which is when my war with Claro began.

That month, I sent in a check for what I thought would be our last bill to the folks at Claro. I called their customer service line, and, after wending my way through their thicket of an automated menu system for close to an hour, got a hold of what passes for a human at Claro, and cancelled the phones. No problem, they said. Just pay that bill and we won't send you any more. Your phones are disconnected, they said.

October rolled around, and with it a new Claro bill. I spent another afternoon fighting their automated menu assassin, and finally, by calling Claro headquarters (really just the PRT "switchboard" or "circle of hell"), spoke to another "person" that proved of little use. I spoke to that person's "manager" (manager being in quotes as I have a strong suspicion that the manager was just the same guy faking a deeper voice, and perhaps wearing a false mustache), and was informed that the previous cancellation had not gone through, as Claro doesn't allow for over-the-phone cancellations. Actually, you do, I answered--you just let me do it last month. After insinuating that had made up the whole cancellation episode, "manager" explained that to cancel the phones, I would have to write a letter to Claro informing them of why I was canceling the phones, and mail it to them, after which a prorated final bill would arrive, which, after payment thereof, would mark the end of our loveless sham of a relationship.

I wrote the [fucking] letter and sent it in. I was very polite in my wording, in the end opting not to include my line about what a shame it is that corporations have no mothers for one to go shit on the grave of. No final bill ever came. I should have known.

Yesterday we got a letter from a collection agency in Carolina claiming that we owe Claro $242. After I scraped all of my brain and cranial matter from the walls and reassembled it into something that may one day again look like my old head, I began preparing myself to once again do battle with the Claro monster. Last night, I watched the Wayans Brothers masterpiece White Chicks in order to build up my resistance to idiocy and things that are offensive. I also insisted that everyone at the Hacienda call me Sisyphus and spent the evening pushing a large rock up the stairs, only to let it roll down again.

Today, around four, I picked up the phone and dialed Claro's customer service number. My old nemesis the Polite Bilingual Machine picked up. It asked me which language I would like to not be able to speak to a person in. I chose Spanish. It read me, en español, a menu of things I did not want to speak about, and at no point did it mention the option of talking to a Polite Bilingual Humanoid. Eventually, it cornered me into pressing 3 to "ask a question" about my account. Once there, it asked me for the last 4 digits of the accountholder's Social Security number for verification purposes. I entered it.

"That number does not match the number in our records. Please try again."

I entered it again.

"That number does not match the number in our records. Please try again."

I checked my notes. I entered the number again.

"That number does not match the number in our records. Please try again."

It didn't offer me to go back to the main menu. It didn't offer to let me speak to a representative. I hit zero.

"That is not a valid option. Please try again."

I hit all the other numbers.

"That is not a valid option. Please try again."

"Damn you, Polite Bilingual Machine, damn you straight to hell," I yelled, my face as red as Bill Clinton's when he contemplates the fact that young people like Barack Obama more than him now.

I hung up, and dialed the number again. I figured I'd try my luck in English, but the PBM backed me into the same corner again, only with a Nuyorican accent this time. Checkmated! Foiled!

Chastened by the thrashing dealt me by the machine, I hung up and called information, looking for a number, any other number, to somehow reach Claro, which I figure there should be one or two of, given that it's about the largest mobile phone provider on the island. The best the operator could give me was the switchboard at PRT.

I called. A new machine informed me that the PRT's switchboard hours were 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. I looked at my watch: 5:15 p.m. I had spent almost an hour wrestling with Claro's machine, which cleverly ran out the clock on me. Claro had defeated me once again.

The score so far:
Claro: 3
Don Paco: BEASTED

Benedict's Exorcism Squads Strike Again

2008-02-07T01:02:00.000-04:00

One by one, Benedict smites down his holy rivals.

The Hague, Netherlands--Pope Benedict XVI's lethal Exorcism Squads have struck again, this time felling Hindu mystic and former guru to the Beatles Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Left: If this guy looked this rough all the way back in 1967 and still lived for 40 more years, who's to say he wasn't going to outlast Benedict's reign of theological terror?

The Exorcism Squad responsible kept to its somewhat predictable MO: the Maharishi's death has been attributed to "natural causes, his age." The Maharishi was a hale and hearty 91 years of age (approximately; he had one of those El Duque-type ages) until he was cut down in the prime of his transcendental life by Benedict's sacerdotal slayers?

The Maharishi's death ties this case in with a host of other unsolved deaths. Look at the picture below:

THREE OF THE FIVE MEN PICTURED ARE NOW DEAD.

Consider: The Maharishi, a spiritual guru.
Consider: George Harrison: once wrote a song the chorus of which was "Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna"
Consider: John Lennon proclaimed the Beatles to be "bigger than Jesus."

What's next? Will Paul McCartney be eliminated for proclaiming his allegiance to vegetarianism? Will Ringo Starr be punished for touring with his All-Starr Band? Will Sir George Martin be found dead of "natural causes" because of his haughty knightship? Are we going to find out that Benedict thought that Biggie was getting too B.I.G. for his britches? That Tupac's name was too pagan to tolerate? That Elvis was taken out because he dared call himself The King when the only King is Jesus? How long has Benedict been pulling the strings, and what will it take for the media to take notice of his canonical killing spree?

I worry that even such strongholds as the Hacienda, which is like the Puerto Rican Rivendell, can not long resist the dark might of Benedict's evil. Pray for me, fellow sinners.

The BBC Can't Get Enough Boricua Ass

2008-02-05T17:49:00.000-04:00

In the UK, they know that the best booty comes from the tropics.

Everybody loves a beautiful butt, and the BBC, the state-run British media service, is no exception. And, in the best British tradition of understated good taste and what the French would call joie de derriere, the BBC has chosen to showcase the prodigious talents of the ass of my own dear brother.

A little background: a few years back, one of my younger brothers, fed up with the ceaseless pretensions and affectations of college life at a certain well-known northeastern institution of higher education, decided to do a semester abroad in Scotland, where the men wore skirts and would cleave you in half with a broadsword if you mentioned it. After college, having grown fond of fog and the near-total absence of sunlight and skin pigmentation, he decided to move back, and he is currently studying medieval archeology at one of that semi-autonomous nation's fine institutions of higher learning, where he and his colleagues piece together information about Vikings and early British Christianity by sifting through ancient garbage piles and toilets, and, because of a vibrant pub culture, severe vitamin D deficiencies, and thermal underwear, have a grand old time doing it.

My brother loves Scotland, and Scotland loves him. Or at least his narrow, Boricua ass, as evidenced by the fact that they feature it in their premier news service as often as they can without tipping their bootophilic hand.

Above: Dry British humor, picturing an ass as a way to showcase the beauty of Colonsay.

The picture above was featured on the BBC website early last year, and apparently the British people just did not get their fill of my brother's pert Puerto Rican posterior, because just today, they found some weak pretext to run another picture prominently featuring the convexities of my kin's culo:

Why weak pretext, you ask? Obviously this is an ass worth showcasing. But here is the explanation in my brother's own words:

The funny part is that the article is about an early medieval palace,
or as they put it, "wooden castle", while the picture is of me and
another PhD student digging at a Neolithic site last summer. To be
fair, there is supposedly a lost medieval palace nearby, but we sure
have no clue where it is and thus aren't digging it up. So it was
extra hilarious when the Daily Record published a version of this
article with the headline PALACE FOUND!

Clearly the following, or some variant thereof, is what is happening at the BBC's highest-level editorial meetings:

BBC Executive Director Lord Alfred of Highmoreshire, Third Earl of Broughamcastershire: I say, it has been months since we ran a picture of that Latin boy's bottom. The Queen herself called to complain! Where are we on this?

BBC Assistant Editor "Cockney" Billy Stottle: Don't you worry your pretty little 'ead there, Lord 'ihmoreshire, sir, they've bloody dug up the 'ome of the first King 'o Scotland! 'istoric, it is!

Lord Alfred: I say, there, Stottle, do we have art on this?

Cockney Billy: By the bells of St. Mary's, we 'aven't any, sir. But we do 'ave some older pics of 'is arse from a dig last summer, innit?

Lord Alfred: Bloody good show, Stottle, bloody good show! Run it post haste!

I want to extend a congratulations to my younger brother's ass, now a full-blown British celebrity. May the sun of your ass never set on the British Empire!

No Religious Leader is Safe

2008-01-29T01:30:00.000-04:00

“I know it was you, Archbishop Christodoulos. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!”

Right: The Hacienda's state of the art communications center.

Recently, as I sat here in the high-tech communications center at the Hacienda, searching the internet for clues as to which young Hollywood actor would be next to die (judging by these pictures , I’m pretty sure I’m going to go ahead and go with Jared Leto), I realized that though many young Hollywood actors have died of late, greater numbers of an arguably more important group have been dropping like flies: religious leaders. Going by the calculations of the Hacienda's many very expensive supercomputers, at least four prominent religious leaders have met suspicious ends since last summer. To wit:

- Jerry Falwell . Died May 15, 2007, at age 73, of “natural causes.” An evangelical Christian, Falwell founded the Moral Majority, which helped lots of horrible Republicans get elected to all sorts of offices.

- Serigne Saliou Mbacké . Died December 28, 2007, at age 92, of “natural causes.” Mbacké was the leader of Senegal’s Mouride Islamic sect, the most powerful in mighty Senegal. He was played by Get Shorty's Delroy Lindo.

- Archbishop Christodoulos . Died January 27, 2008, at age 69, of “cancer.” Christodoulos was the head of the Greek Orthodox church. Christodoulos was not afraid to savagely thrash sinners with his "Celestial Pimp Stick," pictured here.

- Gordon B. Hinckley . Died January 27, 2008, at age 97, of “old age.” Hinckley was the President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka the Mormons. Even he didn't buy Mitt Romney's bullshit.

Four important religious leaders, all dead from supposedly natural causes in the space of less than one year. Shouldn’t this raise some eyebrows? Why is the media afraid to ask the hard questions? Is it because they don’t want to know the answer, because they can’t handle the truth? Well, Don Paco can handle the truth, and I’m going to tell you what’s behind these deaths:

Pope Benedict’s Exorcism Squads, that's what.

Yes, that’s right, I said it. Far from fighting “the Devil,” the true purpose of the “exorcism squads” set up by the Pope Formerly Known as Ratzinger is to wipe out the leaders of other religious denominations. These squads are stealth assassination teams sent by Benedict to wipe out his competition. All that talk about fighting the Devil was just code, you see. The Devil is apparently any church that is not the Roman church, and when the Catholic hierarchy complained of the lack of “properly trained exorcist[s],” what they were really bemoaning was a dearth of vicious, stealthy ecclesiastical assassins, a shortage that by all appearances they have remedied.

You have to wonder why Benedict chose these leaders to kick off his Crusade of terror. Did his love of Hustler make him target Jerry Falwell, long the thorn in Larry Flynt's side? Was Mbacké targeted due to a latent hatred of black people stemming from his days in the Hitler Youth? Did he covet Christodoulos's stylish black headgear and understated bling? Did he envy Hinckley's power to reinstitute polygamy at any time, or his ability to get pairs of blond dudes to put on white short-sleeved shirts and black ties and go all over the damn place looking for new recruits? Were the selections made systematically, or were balls with these clerics' names on them simply picked out of some sort of unholy lottery? We may never pierce the veil of evil that shrouds Benedict's Vatican, but we can be sure that there is more Catholic carnage to come.

The question is, who’s next? Farrakhan? Billy Graham? Tom Cruise? Has anyone heard from the Dalai Lama? And is it just established churches that are in trouble? Should, for example, the CEO of Church’s Chicken be afraid? Should Snoop Dogg, the man who coined the word “chuuuuuuch,” be more afraid of Benedict that he is of Suge Knight? Should New York Mets outfielder Ryan Church worry more about about Communion wine-swilling killers than about potentially helping the Mets even less than vaunted five-tool prospect Alex Escobar? Will Benedict smite America for worshipping American Idol? Does Charlotte Church need to go to the mattresses?

Let’s face it, no one is safe from Benedict and his Exorcist Squads of Death. Pat Robertson, famous rabbis, Ayatollah Khameini, you have all been warned.

Oz: The Craziest TV Show Ever

2008-01-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

Above: If the reason that you don't watch tv is that white guys don't get raped often enough for your tastes, then boy does Don Paco have a show for you.

Last night I was flipping through all the movie channels we have here at the Hacienda, and I came across an old episode of Oz on HBO. I watched it for a few minutes and found myself thinking about how profoundly fucked up a show Oz was.

Oz ran on HBO from the late 90’s to the early part of this decade we have yet to get around to naming. It was set in an experimental cell block in a maximum security prison in some never-named state. It wasn’t really about anything other than a bunch of dudes raping each other. I used to watch it and think that it was pretty good, but it is now clear in retrospect that the show was simply batshit insane and that it wasn’t so much “good” as it was just so completely out there that there was nothing else like it on tv. Mostly because some dude got raped in every single episode. I’m pretty sure that even a nun got raped at some point. There was a lot of rape on this show. I am fairly sure that in Latin America the show is called “La Penitenciaria de la Violación.”

If you look at any episode of it now, you’ll be surprised at how many familiar faces you’ll see on the show. The warden was played by Ernie Hudson (or, as Bill Clinton would call him, the black Ghostbuster), the leader of the neo-Nazis was by the guy who plays the Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson in the Spiderman movies, Mr. Eko from Lost played African immigrant and rapist junkie Adebisi, Dylan from 90210 played a preacher that gets Amontillado’d into a wall, Tony Soprano’s wife played a prison guard, and half the cast of The Wire was on the show at one point or another (Daniels played an undercover cop that got pushed down an elevator shaft, Bodie played a kid that got raped a lot, Carver played an angry prison guard, and I think Carcetti’s advisor Dirty D was warden for a while). Rita Moreno was a regular, the Lakers’ Rick Fox had a stint on the show, and even that guy who fathered Madonna’s first baby was on there for a while. I’m fairly certain that it was Rita Moreno who played the nun that got raped, whose name was inexplicably Sister Peter. And yes, that will fuck up your future viewings of West Side Story.

Aside from the excellent cast, the show has not aged well. It is so completely over the top that it is impossible to take seriously. That being the case, Don Paco hopes that you do not spend an undue amount of time watching this series. But just in case you want to know what happened, I have composed for you this helpful guide to Oz, so here it is, All of Oz in One Blog Post.

All of Oz in One Blog Post

Season 1:
Beecher: Hey I’m new here in Oz. I’m white. I killed a little girl through negligence. I feel guilt.
Guy from a Law and Order Spinoff: Oh really? Nice to meet you. Wanna be cellmates?
Beecher:Sure! Hey, what the…?! NOOO, stop raping me! Aaaah!

Later that day:

Beecher: Man, the food here is bad. Hey older white guy, want to be my friend?
Schillinger: Sure. Hey, wanna see my cell?
Beecher: Sure. You’re not gonna rape me, are you?
Schillinger: No, of course not. I’m a neo-Nazi. I would never do that.
Beecher: Oh cool. Though I don’t support your political affiliation. I was a lawyer.
Schillinger: Oh really? Guess what, it’s rape time.
Beecher: NOOO, not again! Rape! Rape!

Schillinger tattoos a swastika on Beecher’s ass.

Guy in a wheelchair does Shakespearean monologue.

Season 2:
Bodie: Yo, I’m a young black guy. I’m a gangsta.
Adebisi: I am from Africa. I wear a funny hat. Now it is time for me to rape you.
Bodie: NOOOO!
Several people get killed in gruesome ways.

Beecher: You stay away from me, guy from Law and Order Spinoff! You raped me!
Guy from a Law and Order Spinoff: But I love you Beecher!
Beecher: Oh I love you too! Smooch smooch!

Guy in a wheelchair does Shakespearean monologue.

A riot breaks out.

Season 3:
Beecher: I’m going to be a Muslim.
Muslim Imam: You are no Muslim.
Beecher: Shit, you’re right. I’m going to go get revenge on Schillinger instead. God I hope I don’t get raped again.
Guy from a Law and Order Spinoff: Don’t worry, I will protect you. Only I get to pound your sweet, sweet ass.
Muslim Imam: Yeah, you’re kicked out of Islam.
Beecher: Fine!

A retarded boxer gets raped.

Season 4:
Guy in a wheelchair does Shakespearean monologue.
Everyone gets raped.

Season 5:
Neo-Nazi Extra: Hey I’m a neo-Nazi.
Schillinger: Hey dude, go rape that other dude. For the cause.
Neo-Nazi Extra: Can do! [rapes young white guy dressed as a woman].

Later:
Neo-Nazi Extra: Man, I sure am glad I got that gum transplant. My gums were in rough shape.
Schillinger: Those gums were from a black man. You can’t be a neo-Nazi anymore. Hey, other neo-Nazi extra: rape this guy!
Neo-Nazi Extra 2: Can do! [rapes newly mixed-race former neo-Nazi].

Later:
Original Neo-Nazi: I will cut out my own gums so as to be racially pure! AAAAAAHH!

More people die.

Season 6
Beecher: Oh my God, I’ve been released! I don’t have to be raped anymore! Oh no, it was just a dream. NOOOOO!!

Everyone dies.

The End.

Beasting of the Week: Satan

2008-01-23T02:33:00.000-04:00

Above: Le Tigre, the Face of Beasting .

Left: "Lord, why hast thou Beasted me?"

Now, strictly speaking, this beasting did not begin this week (I guess strictly speaking it began at some point during the Old Testament), but as it appears to be an ongoing effort, and because there is no actual requirement that the Beasting of the Week actually take place during the week in question, we’re running with it.

A few weeks ago, I came across a fantastic article in the UK newspaper The Daily Mail, titled “Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan.” Now, who wouldn’t want to read that? I meant to write about it earlier, but I didn't. Which I am blaming on the Devil. Fucking Satan!

The article is all about how Pope Benedict XXX (as I believe he refers to himself in his own infallible head) is very worried about the very real problem of, well, the Devil. Specifically, the Devil getting all up in people’s shit, forcing Benedict (or, as his closest friends call him, “Eggs”) to send out priests to do exorcisms. Here's a taste:

“The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism. Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult. Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession…
"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," said Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s ‘exorcist-in-chief’. Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.”

I wish my job were more like the Pope’s, where you come up with all sorts of crazy solutions to problems that don’t exist. I mean, all this must really be about the fact that Benedict didn’t really do anything of note for a few months because he was off playing Guitar Hero or something, and then one of his underlings at one point works up the nerve to ask His Holiness if there’s something he needs help with, some grand initiative he’s been working on for all these months to help the world, and Benedict is all thinking ‘Holy shit, I better come up with something quick’ so he tells the guy, “Yes, I have been pondering the growing problem of, uh, the deepening specter of, uh, oh yes, SATAN! We must stop Satan, he is possessing people left and right! I want a report on my thousand year old desk made from wood from the Garden of Eden in the morning!” That way, whenever my boss would come into my office and ask me what I’d been working on, I could say shit like, “Witches, boss. Witches have been coming into kids’ rooms at night in the form of cats and stealing their souls to use them to make their brooms fly faster. So I've been sitting here at my desk doing Sudokus, because every time you solve a Sudoku, a witch contracts antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating bacteria and dies. What do you mean you're not buying it? Fuck you, I'm infallible. That's it, I've had it: you're excommunicated, Jackson. Burn for all eternity, asshole.”

Left: The Pope. You would think that the cardinals would, as part of their Pope-selection criteria, have something along the lines of "Candidates for Pope should not look really, really evil."

I suppose you have to deal with bullshit anywhere you work, and I guess these are the types of management problems you come across when you work in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church (or, as we call refer to it here at the Hacienda, “La Iglesia, que es una, santa, catolica y apostólica”. It's a mouthful.). Imagine that you are working in human resources and you have to call someone into your office and bitch at them about them not delegating enough responsibility in the fight against the Father of Evil? You'd have to go home your wife would ask you about your day, and you'd be all wanting a drink because everyone hates you for always yelling at them about Satan. Nobody needs that type of aggravation, man.

Imagine you are a bishop. Assume that you are a rational person and are in the church to help people with real problems, and that you therefore don’t concern yourself with problems like demon infestations, because they aren’t real. All of a sudden some Vatican suck-up asshole calls you in to his Holy See or whatever and starts chewing you out about your lackluster Satan preparedness plans. What could you tell that guy? You can’t tell him that Benedict is being a nutjob about this, because, guess what, Benedict can’t be wrong. So now you have to go back to your luxurious bishop’s residence, call in a bunch of your priests, and you have to sit there with them and brainstorm about how you’re going to FIGHT THE DEVIL. You have all these guys, all of whom are already pretty tightly-wound because they don’t make any money, can’t have sex with women, and go to bed every night praying to the Lord to rid them of the burning desire to kill that they feel every time a cel phone goes off during Mass, and now you have to be like, “Well, Father Juan Carlos, I want you to make me a spreadsheet about our anti-Satan initiative. And you, Father Mbeki, do you think you could come up with a nice PowerPoint presentation for the Cardinal? Get some pictures of Linda Blair and Max von Sydow in there, those’ll really sell it.” And then you have to pick which of your dudes are going to get to go to Rome for that big Exorcism training, and you know it’s going to be the biggest suck-ups who’ll be volunteering for that. Ugh.

But apparently this is all moving forward, so if you get possessed, you won’t have to worry about missing work because you’re tied to your bed with your head facing backwards, masturbating with a crucifix and yelling about peoples’ moms sucking cocks in hell. You just call up your local Exorcist Squad—you know what would be badass? If those guys had capes—and they’ll come take care of you. Don’t you worry about Satan, baby, because Benedict’s got your back. Satan, you got BEASTED.

America's Next Top What?

2008-01-22T02:15:00.000-04:00

Editor's Note: Tonight, a very special comment from our very first guest columnist, Don Paco's special lady friend, Doña Paquita!

I, unlike Don Paco, am not much of a writer. (I didn't even add that, I swear! -DP) I’m just too damn lazy to elaborate on paper; I think and I say and that’s as good as it gets. Besides laziness of varying forms and a knack for falling prey to conniving, international travel agents, Don Paco and I share a few other things in common, one of which is the belief that the stake of the world depends greatly on the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. In fact, if you are an avid fan of Don Paco’s blog, then you likely do too (you may also inexplicably—and to the shock and dismay of the mother who bore you—find yourself recognizing baseball players by name…Que Barbaridad!). So, tonight I watched the democratic debate with great anticipation, given that we are finally down to the top three candidates.

Ok, I lied.

I was actually in a vegged-out state, well over halfway through an America’s Next Top Model marathon and kind of annoyed when I found out that these democratic candidates would have the nerve to insist on having their debate compete against the reruns of this incredibly addictive show. Not to mention, when Top Model had its commercial breaks, I already had tremendous options to continue to prolong the future onset of Alzheimer’s through the following intellectual stimulation exercise: just 2 channels up on VH1 I flipped to the story of the Jackson Five, just 10 channels down on Bravo I could catch Project Runway reruns and TLC was showing their new gem of a show, Miss America: Reality Check (this was on channel 98, so it was a little harder to go back and forth). However, because I am equally intrigued to find out about who will run in this next Presidential Race as I am to learn who already became America’s Next Top Model this past season, I decided to limit my commercial-break-channel-surfing to these two broadcasts—a wise decision, to tell you the truth. I thought that I couldn’t have picked two programs that were any more different than these.

Boy, was I wrong!

At one point in Top Model, the contestants known as “Bre” (pronounced “bree”) and “Nicole” were in the middle of some major drama, whereby Bre found Nicole annoying and when she found her granola bars missing she assumed Nicole was guilty, so without a second thought she marched into her room and threw out Nicole’s prized Red Bull drinks—Yikes! Now, that’s quality drama, folks! Well, right after the following commercial break, I jump over to CNN and find myself experiencing some serious deja vu. Hillary was in the middle of accusing Obama of working for a slumlord, among other possible fabrications, and Obama was hissing and scratching right back in a similar fashion. Meow-za is right!

I found that the more I switched between these two programs, the more alike they seemed. I don’t know if any others made this same observation (it’s OK if it means confessing to watching a crappy reality show; it’s addictive, believe me, people will understand). I think I became especially disturbed when John Edwards reminded me of Kim, the poor model stuck in the middle, trying to have a say and be a mediator. Luckily for the nation, John Edwards seems to care just a little bit more about ending poverty than about his future in the high-end fashion industry (unless we’re talking about couture hair designs, in which case he and his $400 hair cut may think twice). Regardless of John Edwards’ possible secret passion for the world of style, I think he shone more than ever tonight. I first want to clarify that I am a fan of all three candidates and am very easily charmed by Obama’s charisma and idealistic appeal. The problem is that Hillary and Obama are two celebrities, and therefore may succumb more easily to cheap paparazzi stunts. Edwards seemed to be more grounded and focused tonight on turning the attention on poverty and healthcare. I’m not making any decisions just yet, but I am tired of so much drama everywhere I turn. Tonight Edwards got my attention by talking about the real issues that I and most of us care about. Let’s hope the catfights are left to the models for now; it’s only a matter of time before the pre-election debates between the democratic and republican candidates come up, then I’ll be ready for some claws!

A Thousand Words

2008-01-21T23:34:00.000-04:00

Why bother writing anything today? Nothing I could come up with would beat this picture of a little girl's face as George W. Bush hovers over her on Martin Luther King Day.

DOJ to Investigate Shortstop Miguel Tejada

2008-01-17T00:05:00.000-04:00

Washington, D.C. -- Rep. Henry Waxman of California spoke for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in calling for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to initiate a Department of Justice investigation into whether Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada lied to Congressional investigators in 2005 about steroid use.

"Lying to federal agents in the course of a federal investigation is a crime, one which carries up to a five-year prison sentence," said Waxman. "You can't be lying to the Congress and just get away with it. You're out, Tejada! As they would say in your home country, the Dominican Republic, PONCHAO!"

Tejada maintains his innocence, and has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing substances.

"I don't lie to nobody," declared Tejada. "I don't use those esteroids, I use the vitamina B-12. I just have to inject it because it work better if you inject it into your culo, which my trainer he tells me is the body's B-12 processing organ. Is no steroid. Is me, Miggy! I play every day!"

The DOJ probe will not be limited to Tejada's alleged steroid use. Ranking Committee Republican Tom Davis of Virginia also wants to investigate whether Tejada has been involved in other recent scandals.

"We still don't know who ordered the firing of all those U.S. Attorneys last year," said Davis. "And while those attorneys serve at the President's pleasure, and thus there was no crime whatsoever in removing them, we still want to know what role Tejada played in those events, just in case there was a crime. Because it was probably his fault."

Tejada denies any involvement in the U.S. Attorney scandal.

"I don't know no U.S. Attorneys!" exclaimed Tejada. "I got an American lawyer. I no fire no one! I just show up and play hard every day! Miggy just wants to be out there on that field giving 100%!"

"Yeah right," said an unconvinced Waxman. "Then what about that meeting you had with Alberto González and Monica Goodling where you discussed the list of which U.S.A.'s weren't loyal enough Bushies? Who compiled that list if it wasn't you?"

"But I don't recall being present at that meeting, I don't recall who composed that list! I was aware of the list, but only because I saw it in the news!" responded a visibly anxious Tejada.

"That's what González said, too," said Waxman. "The bottom line is that we are not going to allow the further subversion of our Constitution and our government by this Administration anymore. Congress is going to exercise its oversight powers and rein all this corruption, and we're starting with someone who is clearly at the center of all this wrongdoing, Houston Astros shortstop and former Oakland Athletics and Baltimore Orioles All-Star Miguel Tejada."

Further piling on, David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, wrote a letter to the Committee reminding them to also ask Tejada about his "integral, decision-making, buck-stops-with-Miggy-and-no-one-else" role in the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes of detainee interrogations at secret prisons.

"Yeah, that whole thing, that was all Tejada," wrote Addington. "I didn't have shit to do with that."

Hearings have been scheduled for February. Tejada's attorney has stated that Tejada would be willing to testify if he is given immunity from being shifted to third base.

Books I Read in 2007, Pt. 2

2008-01-16T08:50:00.000-04:00

What was the biggest lie to come out of the White House in the last ten years? Was it WMD's in Iraq? The Iranian nukes that will supposedly rain down on us any minute now? The whole not having sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski thing? Compassionate conservatism?

No.

The biggest lie to come out of the White House in the past ten years was this gem, reported in US News and World Report on August 20, 2006:

But President Bush now wants it known that he is a man of letters. In fact, Bush has entered a book-reading competition with Karl Rove, his political adviser. White House aides say the president has read 60 books so far this year (while the brainy Rove, to Bush's competitive delight, has racked up only 50). The commander in chief delved into three volumes in August alone-two on Abraham Lincoln and, more surprising for a man of unambiguous convictions, The Stranger, Albert Camus's existential tale of murder and alienation.

Yes, that's right. The White House at one point had the cojones to claim that George W. Bush, between morning workouts, 10 p.m. bedtimes, and whole days full of running the government into the ground while using the Constitution to wipe the ass of America, somehow also read 60 weighty tomes, many of them lengthy biographies or historical volumes, others high literature (or, as Bush himself put it, "three Shakespeare's") . And that's not for the whole year--that's through mid-August. This lie is so pointless and transparently false that I can't even verbalize how irrationally mad it makes me. I mean, after this, the lie gloves were off. I wouldn't have been surprised if after this they'd started claiming that Bush was a surgeon, and that he was the one that fixed Giuliani's ass cancer with his special laser butt surgery techniques and chemotherapy-secreting nipples, and that we've always been at war with Eastasia. Let's move on.

I left my book list off on Sam Walker's Fantasyland, which is not dirty like the title makes it sound. After that came:

19. Time's Witness, by Michael Malone. Malone is an author from North Carolina who is very, very talented. This book is kind of like To Kill a Mockingbird, but much bigger and funnier. The book is the second part of a trilogy that is well worth checking out, as is just about anything written by Malone. I don't know why he isn't more famous than he is.

20. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. One of only four female authors on my reading list this year. 2006 was even worse: one book by Atwood, and one "book" by Maureen Dowd. Hideous. Apparently I am a literary sexist. I don't know why this is. I also don't really have too many albums by female artists. My bad karma on this front will probably somehow lead to a Hillary Clinton presidency. America, I apologize.

21. The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins. This book was fucking excellent. It looks at human evolution backwards by looking at humans, and then goes back and looks at, for example, the last common ancestor that we humans shared with, say, the Neanderthals, and before that, the last common ancestor that all the major primates descended from, and before that, the last common ancestor of all primates and lemurs, and before that, the last common ancestor of, I don't know, all non-ungulate mammals, eventually going back all the way to the theoretical single-celled organism that all life on Earth is descended from. Along the way, Dawkins takes all sorts of potshots at Christianity (he also wrote a book called The God Delusion, so you can sort of guess where he's coming from on that front). The book is awesome because it is essentially about all sorts of awesome animals that are now extinct, which is what all books should be about or at least have a chapter on.

Right, below: Megatherium Americanus, the giant ground sloth. Now extinct, this was probably the most badass mammal that ever lived. If I could breed an army of these and control them with my brainwaves, I would rule the world. In theory, climate change and hunting by early humans killed them off, but I'm pretty sure that what really killed them was an army of nuclear Frankensteins. It's the only rational explanation.

22 and 23. The Sportswriter and Independence Day, by Richard Ford. Beautiful writing. The plots of these books (the first two installments of a trilogy about a man, Frank Bascombe, who lives in New Jersey and doesn't do much) are nothing to write home about--if you're looking for action, look elsewhere--but the writing is amazing. I don't generally write in my books or underline stuff (I used to in college, but that was so I'd have something to say in section), but these two books are all sorts of marked up. This stuff is kind of like John Updike in that it's about well-off, introverted white guys and their enviably oh-boo-hoo problems, except that with Ford, you don't want to punch the author or his protagonist in the face every minute that you're reading it. These books are not for everyone, but I think if you come across them at the right moment in your life, they will mean something to you. God I am lame.

24. Freddy and Fredericka, by Mark Helprin. I don't know how or where I picked up this book. It is about a kind of Prince Charles-like Prince of England who is forced to undertake a mystical quest to conquer America before he can become the king of England. It is absolutely ridiculous and well worth checking out. It does kind of drag a little in the middle. Kind of like how this is dragging. You can bail out now, you don't need to be here.

25. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, by Kary Mullis. I hated this book. It is a memoir written by a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who likes to surf and drop acid. My cousin recommended it to me--she loves it, being a chemist herself--but it was easily the most insufferable thing I read all year. Blaaaaaah. Hated hated hated it.

26. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling. Hey, did you hear Dumbledore's gay? No shit.

27, 28, and 29. White Jazz, The Big Nowhere, and The Black Dahlia (in that order) by James Ellroy. Ellroy is the guy who wrote L.A. Confidential, and that book, along with these three, forms a quartet. I read L.A. Confidential and a few of his other books a few years back, and really liked them, so this year I went back and read the other three in the series, except all out of order. The chronological order is Dahlia, Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz, so I was really all over the place in reading them in the order that I did, but they're fairly loosely connected--basically what ties them all together is that they're all set in L.A., and all four of them have a character named Dudley Smith (the James Cromwell character in L.A. Confidential) causing trouble. Ellroy is obsessed with the story of the Black Dahlia's unsolved murder because his own mother was unsolvedly murdered in L.A. as well. He seems like a pretty fucked-up dude. However, his books are pretty damn awesome, great noir stuff. Black Dahlia is my least favorite--it's kind of unnecessarily flowery (pun!) and it's no surprise that the movie version is damn near unwatchable. I know that the ladies all seem to love Josh Hartnett, and I'm sure he's a very nice guy, but man is that guy 20 different kinds of awful.

30. Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace. Wallace is considered the shit for his crazy fiction experiments--got a MacArthur Genius Grant and everything--but I think he's at his best when doing non-fiction. This is a collection of magazine articles he's done over the last few years, and it is excellent. More on Wallace in a bit.

31. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, by George Saunders. There is no real way of explaining this book, but how can you not love that title?

32. Collapse, by Jared Diamond. Diamond's follow-up to Guns, Germs, and Steel focuses on examining large, prosperous civilizations that collapsed in a relatively short period of time. He identifies several factors that can lead to these sudden collapses. Problem is, the book gets pretty repetitive after a while, and it becomes a bit of a slog. Also, I found out that this is what Diamond looks like, and after seeing that, it was much harder to take him seriously. He looks like Harry Shearer in A Mighty Wind.

33. Air Guitar, by Dave Hickey. Another MacArthur Genius Grant guy. This is a book of essays. I didn't really dig it as much as I was told I would. He writes a lot about the 60's and 70's, which apparently for him consisted of reading lots of art criticism and watching short films where all that happens is that a dude gets a haircut and smokes a cigarette. (Sign me up!) I guess you had to be there.

34. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. Here's how I described this book to a friend of mine over email when I started reading it:

i am reading a book called "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace.
He's the guy uses lots of footnotes (in fiction). IJ is his big magnum opus. It's not really distillable into a short description, but basically it is set in a near future where some environmental catastrophe (never quite explained, but it is implied that it is essentially the result of greedy corporations just dirtying shit up and no one really giving a damn about it) has led to the US annexation of Canada and it focuses on a teenage genius/tennis prodigy and a recovering drug addict/burglar who get involved in a whole bunch of crazy shit having to do with a government conspiracy, paraplegic Quebequois terrorist assassins, and a movie that causes the brain's
pleasure circuits to overload, turning viewers into vegetables that just want to watch the movie over and over. It is over a thousand pages long, including a hundred pages of endnotes, some of which go on for dozens of pages. It is crazy.

"That sounds awful," emailed back my friend.

But I like it. I've read it twice now. There's no explaining it.

35. Icon, by Frederick Forsyth. Very cool spy thriller from 1996 which somehow pretty much managed to predict the rise of Vlad Putin.

36. The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy. I read this because it was really small and fit in my pocket one day that I had to go out and run errands. It is about an asshole dying and kind of realizing he's led an asshole life and that all his friends and family are assholes. I bet Tolstoy was the fucking life of the party.

37. Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile. Like the movie, except mujaheddinnier.

38. Arctic Dreams, by George Lopez. Some book about the Arctic by a guy that really, really likes the Arctic. Pretty cool, but I lost interest after a while. There was a lot of the guy talking about how quiet shit was. I mostly read this because apparently pretty soon there's not going to be an Arctic. I'm not sure if that will affect all the quiet or not. Also, Eskimos seem like they'd be pretty fun to hang out with. Also, you know what animal just doesn't make sense? The narwhal. There is now way that thing should exist.

Narwhals: small whales with unicorn horns filled with magical navigational powers. Created on the 8th day, the day that God created really awesome weed.

And that was it for 2007. I'm sure George W. Bush read 127 books, including Infinite Jest 4 times (once translated into Czech), but I can't feel bad about myself, because the man is a huge genius. Are you still reading this? I apologize.

Bush Arrives In Jerusalem; Angry He's Still President

2008-01-10T01:28:00.000-04:00

"Hey! Hey airplane driver guy! This ain't Crawford!"

Jerusalem, Israel – President George W. Bush was surprised and angered to emerge from Air Force One and find himself in the capital of Israel for a meeting with Israeli leaders.

“I thought I was done Presidenting already,” whined a visibly irritated Bush. “Condi told me that this flight was gonna take me to Crawford. This ain’t Crawford. This is that country with the Jew Al Qaedas! What the fuck!”

Apparently, the President had been under the impression that he had finished his second term, a misconception that had gone uncorrected by Vice President Cheney.

“Dick told me it was all over and done with,” said Bush. “He made me sign all these papers with no dates that said PARDON on ‘em. Said they was so I could roll over my IRA and keep my health plan for a few months. But I told him I'd let the free market take care of my health needs. I don't need no Socialist medicines.”

Confusion about recent domestic political developments seems to have fed into the misunderstanding.

“What the hell is going on? Hasn’t the campaign been going on for a year already?,” pleaded Bush, his close-set eyes narrowing and his brow knit in concentration. “How can there still be campaigning left to do? Chris Rock won that one primary, but then Poppy’s friend’s wife beat him and then, you know, like, beat McCain. I mean, I saw that asshole Clinton’s wife give that speech last night after she won and everything.”

“I thought that was it, they held the election, so now it was just a matter of having Greg Kinnear wear his cap and gown—how come he never wears the hat?—and put her hand on the big praying book and repeat that poem with your name in it, out there on the steps of the big white building when it’s freezing cold out,” said Bush. “That poem’s hard. It doesn’t rhyme. But at least the guy in the cape reads you the lines so you remember ‘em. The only tricky part is the name thing. I was gonna fly back for that, skip all the parties. Past my bedtime. They should do ‘em earlier. I can always TiVo Two and a Half Men.

Bush seemed to blame Senator McCain for not dispatching Hillary quickly.

Left: In his mind, McCain goes to his happy place and begins writing the "Regrets, I've Had a Few" chapter of his memoirs.

“I knew that creepy little angry cripple wasn’t going nowhere, I never liked ‘im, you guys saw I made the stiff little bastard hug me for the cameras, but backstage I made ‘im kneel before Zod. Like in that Niagara Falls Superman flick,” said Bush.

“KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!,” he added.

Upon being informed that the general election is not scheduled to take place until this November, the crestfallen President pulled out a picture of himself with Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes, clicked his heels, and repeatedly uttered the phrase “There’s no place like home” with his eyes closed.

It is unclear whether Bush will remain in Jerusalem to take part in the scheduled talks. Several aides who wished to remain anonymous said that Bush has been disengaged from Israel policy since finding out that the “Roadmap to Peace” was not an actual map.

“How we gonna get some peace if we don’t got no map?,” demanded Bush. “Did you look in the Resolute Desk? Check the Book of Secrets, Goddammit! Didn’t nobody else see that Nic Cage documentary? What do you people do all day?”

Bush spent the remainder of the day petulantly biking with his Secret Service contingent.

Books I Read in 2007, Pt. 1

2008-01-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

In 2001, I got a Palm Pilot. I thought, "Wow, now I'll really be organized! I will put all my law school assignments on there, and I will always be on top of my shit!"

It didn't really work out that way.

I wound up never really using the Palm Pilot, and as for law school, well, the less said the better. But the Palm Pilot did lead to one cool thing: in looking for uses for the damn thing, I decided to start keeping a list of the books I read during the year. That list was originally on the Palm Pilot, but as I abandoned the ill-starred organizer (seriously, that thing expected me to re-learn to write in order to get stuff on there, clearly I should have seen that that was never happening. Every once in a while I need to write something in cursive and I damn near have a heart attack; my cursive is like that of a palsied illiterate), I just started keeping the list on a piece of paper.

Mostly I keep the list in order to remember what I've read, and when I read it. It's also handy just to see how different it shapes up year to year, both in terms of content and raw numbers. For example, 2004, the year I started working full-time: very low total. 2007, a year when full-time work didn't really figure into the picture: a banner year.

Curious as to what I read this year? Here it is, in chronological order.

1. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This won all sorts of prizes. It's about a guy and his kid wandering around in a post-apocalyptic America. It is bleak. McCarthy also wrote No Country For Old Men (which I read in 2006). The Road would be a very, very different movie.

2. 3 Nights in August, by Buzz Bissinger. Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights, writes about the 2003 St. Louis Cardinals and manager Tony LaRussa, framing the book around a blow-by-blow account of a 3-game series against the Chicago Cubs. The book is mostly about how LaRussa is kind of a baseball genius, but what also comes through is that LaRussa is also kind of a giant asshole.

How many night in August was that, Tony?

3. Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?, by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur. Don Paco's younger brother lives in Scotland, and for Christmas he tends to get me funny British books. This one was read entirely in my bathroom during the month of January. It was basically just two British guys listing things that are shitty, and what makes them so shitty. The book was basically a blog you could keep next to your toilet.

Man-eating plants are always a plus.

4. The Ruins, by Scott Smith. This was a good thriller that I don't want to say too much about, as doing so would spoil it. It's about a bunch of young American tourists that go visit some old ruins in the Central American jungle, and bad shit starts happening. I passed it on to my stepdad and as far as I can tell, he has not been sleeping well ever since. You know what though, fuck it, I'll spoil it: the tourists then get killed by telepathic, carnivorous plants. The plants fuck with the tourists' heads all night, and then, one by one, eat them alive. The book is very well-written and very intense. It will undoubtedly be made into a movie which has no chance of being anywhere nearly as good as the book.

5. Cast of Shadows, by Kevin Guilfoile. Another thriller. This one is set "a few years from now," in a time that is in now way different from the present other than for the fact that certain advances in cloning have been achieved, and it has become legal for couples who can not conceive to have a baby cloned from either of the parents' DNA. The action gets going when the daughter of a cloning doctor gets murdered by an unknown assailant. The assailant left behind some DNA, and the doctor gets creative with it. This book is like John Grisham for people getting a Masters in Bioethics.

6. Oblivion, by Peter Abrahams. Cop who is slowly losing his memory has to solve a crime. This and the last two books, if I'm not mistaken, were bought after appearing in Salon.com's 2006 "Best Beach Reading" list. I read them 6 months later because a) that's when they came out in paperback (who takes a hardcover to the beach?) and b) you can go to the beach in Puerto Rico whenever the hell you want.

Martin Amis: The Christopher Hitchens of novels.

7. London Fields, by Martin Amis. The best-known novel from British bad-boy novelist (how to be a bad-boy British novelist: 1) be British; 2) use the word "cunt" a lot; 3) write novel). Written in the late 80's and set in a right-before-the-Apocalypse 1999, the novel is about a woman that engineers her own murder in order to avoid having to face aging. Or as the Brits call it, ageing. If I were smarter I would have more to say about this literary classic. Amis apparently has lots of dreams where his teeth get knocked out, and he's got all these weird daddy issues because his dad was also a famous British author.

8. A Right to be Hostile, by Aaron McGruder. This is a collection of Boondocks comic strips. I'm counting it as a book because that shit was expensive.

9-12. Books 1-4 of George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows). These four books were each a thousand pages of AWESOME. Now, I'm not entirely certain that approve of Martin (seriously, "George R.R."? Just commit and go with G.R.R., buddy), but the guy has written some badass books. I'm not a big fantasy fan: aside from the Lord of the Rings books, which I've read quite a few times, I don't ever read it. But these books are awesome. They are not your typical fantasy books, in that there are no elves or hobbits or dwarves (actually, there is one dwarf, but he's of the achondroplastic variety that TLC is so fond of, not some magical bearded midget living in a palace under a mountain). All the characters are human, and none have magical powers. The setting is essentially an inverted version of medieval England, and the plot, which unravels through the points of view of a multitude of characters, is about the struggle between a variety of contenders for the throne of the kingdom where the action takes place. What makes the books such a good read, though, is Martin's eschewing of easy good guys vs. bad guys dichotomies; as the series goes on, Martin throws you for a loop by starting to show you things through the points of view of characters which had been painted as plainly evil in the first installment, and he starts revealing loads of backstory that begins to muddy the moral assumptions created at the outset of the narrative. The constant changes in viewpoint keep you plowing through the books very quickly (I believe all read all 4,000 pages of these books in a one-month period), and since just about all the characters are intriguing and have interesting things happening to them, you don't have that "Heroes" problem of completely losing interest whenever the blonde lady whose power is to see her evil self in the mirror shows up onscreen with her bald husband, whose powers seem to be walking through walls and being a really bad actor. Also, on the periphery of the story are some dragons. Don't pick up these books if you have plans for the upcoming months, or if you are very impatient: the series is expected to run to seven books, and book five is over a year overdue, and as of yet has no set release date (aaargh!).

George R.R. Martin: Not really shocking that his books are rife with underage girls getting married off to gross old dudes.

13. City of Truth, by James Morrow. After those four monsters, it was time to shift gears and go for something short and light. City of Truth is a 90-page book I found at my other brother's place in NYC. It's set in a city where the populace has all been conditioned, Pavlov- or Clockwork Orange-style, into being physically unable to tell a lie. The protagonist is a guy who works for the city and whose job it is to take old works of art or literature (from before the no lies era) and purge them of falsehoods (for example, erasing horns from drawings of unicorns). The book starts off very funny--Morrow's depiction of what it's like to pick someone at a bar without access to hyperbole or euphemism is very, very funny. Not so funny: when the guy's son contracts an almost certainly fatal disease. The book then becomes about how the guy tries to overcome his truthfulness conditioning in order to try the only treatment anyone can think of: reassuring the kid that everything is going to be all right. The book is a quick read, and well worth checking out.

14. The Neon Bible, by John Kennedy O'Toole. This was another very short book, the debut novel of the author of A Confederacy of Dunces, which may well be the funniest book ever. Seriously, go pick that one up. Neon Bible, however, is not at all funny. It's about some kid that not much happens to. O'Toole eventually killed himself, and, assuming that the protagonist in this book is based on him, it's not really very shocking. Also, as far as I can tell, the Arcade Fire's second album, Neon Bible, has nothing to do with this book. Though it is also pretty humorless. Or rather humourless. Damn Canadians with their funny spelling and existential Quebecois angst.

Neon Bibles? Leave your funny at the door.

15. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl. This was one of those books that I thought was amazing at first, but after a while I lost patience with it (London Fields is kind of that way, too)--the writing is really unique and vibrant, but it sort of begins to grate on you after a while. But it's still a really cool book. This is the author's first novel, though, and you can tell that she's going to be very famous someday, and her fame will be well-deserved.

16. On Beauty, by Zadie Smith. I really liked this book, about the dynamics of a family headed by a frustrated British academic whose career has stalled and his African American wife. I've always liked Smith--who became very well known after her first book, White Teeth, became a big hit a few years ago--because when her second book came out, she actually told people that it wasn't very good and not to buy it, which I think is pretty cool, because personally I think it blows every time that some band is recording a new album and in all their interviews they say that it's going to be their best album ever, and then it's, like, Sam's Town or some shit. Mind you, Zadie Smith is not a band, but I'm glad that she is honest.

17. JPod, by Douglas Coupland. This book was crazy. I also found this in my brother's NYC apartment (an unexpected literary treasure trove). It's not really about anything other than a bunch of computer guys doing ridiculous shit at their job at a video game design company, but it was really funny. This is the first Coupland book I've read, but I look forward to reading more.

Jacque Jones is a nice guy, but he's not going to save your fantasy squad.

18. Fantasyland, by Sam Walker. This is a book about a sportswriter who joins the most competitive fantasy baseball league in the country and winds up completely giving his life over to his shitty fantasy baseball team (he even hires two paid staffers to help him run the team). You know the guy is in trouble when the book starts out and he's got a huge boner for guys like Jacque Jones and Doug Mientkiewicz (had to look that one up). I may have to make my special lady friend read that one so that she can see that relative to Walker, my own crippling addiction to fantasy baseball is no big deal.

We'll get to the second half of the list tomorrow or the next day. Remember, I am lazy.

I Have Been On Strike (But Not Really)

2008-01-07T07:59:00.000-04:00

Happy 2008.

I hope that you have managed to get by without your sporadic dose of Don Paco lately. Hopefully there have been no drownings among those of you crying yourselves to sleep in my absence.

I would like to tell you that I have not posted since before Christmas due to the fact that I have, in a touching and principled display of solidarity with my brothers and sisters in the Writers Guild of America, been on strike. It would be great if my silence of late had been due to my protest of the exploitative conditions under which I toil, uncompensated by my corporate overlords for the profitable fruits of my labors. However, I have no corporate overlords, and I generally perform few labors and thereby reap very little fruits therefrom. Mostly I have not updated this page because I am lazy and have recently had very few funny ideas. The former remains true, and apparently the latter does as well.

But now I am back, and ready to take my place alongside The Wire, the Beatles, and penicillin on every single critic's list of greatest things that have ever happened ever, which I figure will require that I post something at least every once in a while. So keep an eye on this space (or, better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed), because tomorrow we kick off the new year by looking back at all the ridiculous books I read last year. How ridiculous? Four of them prominently feature dragons, and one of them deals with evil telepathic man-eating plants (Feed me, Seymour!). Don't miss it.

Fuck Hugh

2007-12-21T19:11:00.000-04:00

Someone has angered Don Paco.

As you may recall, I supplement my vast financial holdings with occasional translation work. It keeps the mind limber and the spirit of industry alive. Lately, I have been using a website where people post translation projects, people bid on them, and translations are then exchanged for money.

A guy named Hugh seems to have conveniently forgotten the last part of that equation. I translated a portion of an interview for him. It didn’t take long because the language was conversational, and I finished the project in just under two hours. Applying the rate we had agreed upon, the total came to $278.

Hugh has been ducking me ever since. He has not paid, and will not return my emails, nor those that I am having Paypal send him. At some point, after various attempts at contacting him, I realized that this guy was simply going to screw me out of this money. It made me realize that when dealing with an individual through this website, greater precautions—payment demanded at least partially up-front, translations sent encoded with passwords to be disclosed only upon payment—will need to be employed. I realize that this Hugh may not even really be called Hugh, and I have no other vitals for him.

But I have his email address, time, and vast reserves of pettiness and vengefulness.

On Wednesday, Hugh signed up to receive daily newsletters from several e-marketing firms. He also expressed interest in getting weekly, daily, and monthly emails from Borders.com on just about every genre of literature that they sell, as well as updates on the latest from the kid who wrote Eragon, and anything Harry Potter related.

Yesterday, Hugh developed a curiosity about important social issues, and signed himself up to receive emails from MoveOn.org, specifying that he would like to plan Meet-ups in his area, and take action by calling his Congressional representatives about important issues. Hugh also signed up to receive emails from Bono’s One Campaign, Amnesty International, and UNICEF. He also signed up to get the 15 emails a day that you get from even having heard about the Puerto Rico chapter of the Sierra Club.

And today, Hugh made a ton of friends. Friends named Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney, the types of friends who pepper you with updates about what they’re up to, what they care about, and what YOU can do to help THEM help YOU to help AMERICA. These are also the types of people that are not shy to email you asking for money. Hugh will also soon be getting up close and personal with Ron Paul, Alan Keyes (apparently he is running?), Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Mike Gravel, Mike Huckabee, the Republican National Committee, and several groups that are very, very concerned about the relative lack of security of America’s southern borders. Hugh, wherever possible, elected to get updates from these people on every issue from gun control, activist judges, tax and tort reform, abortion, and the gold standard. And, perhaps confused by all the partisan rancor he saw at all of these people’s websites, he seems to have made a stop at a little website named www.spamyourenemy.com.

Now, is it possible that even the email he gave me was fake, and set to be abandoned soon thereafter? Sure. Probably, even. But you know what? Fuck Hugh, and fuck his fake email address.

Now I am off to buy a lotto ticket, because with nine million dollars, Hugh could get dealt with in the way he so richly deserves.

The Internet Just Had An Orgasm

2007-12-19T00:45:00.000-04:00

There were many ideas for what to post today, ladies and gentlemen. Those things may still get posted, because many of them are important. Big things are happening, and Don Paco thinks that you would want to know about them. The Bush administration is trying to set up a Puerto Rican to take the fall for destroying those tapes of other people torturing the shit out of terrorists. Astronomers have come up with some amazing composite pictures of one galaxy beating the hell out of another one. Roger Clemens expects us to believe that he is not a steroid user, convincingly waiting almost a week to issue a vehement denial through his lawyer. Because that is the way that you deny things that are patently untrue and are circulated about you by the entire spectrum of media for days and days: by waiting a week to issue a denial through your lawyer. These things may get written about soon, news of vastly greater import require our attention at this moment in our troubled times.

None of these things ultimately matter because New Line has stopped trying to screw Peter Jackson out of a well-deserved $40 million and now things are moving forward with the production of a movie version of The Hobbit.

(Please wait three minutes while the Internet smokes a post-coital cigarette. Like in the movies.)

Now, this news is not as great as it could have been for a few reasons. First, keep in mind that it seems like Jackson will not be directing the movie.

(The Internet has just jumped out of bed at the news of this unexpected revelation. The Internet is gathering up its belongings and looks to be planning to make as quick an exit as possible.)

Indeed, because New Line has spent the last few years trying to screw Jackson out of a ton of money connected with the profits of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (at the mention of The Lord of the Rings, the Internet hesitates and reconsiders what it is doing), Jackson (a man the people of New Zealand need to be reprimanded for not already having declared President-for-life of their austral island nation. Seriously what are you people waiting for.) is now apparently committed to making movie versions of The Lovely Bones (about a dead, raped ghost; sounds like a blast) and Tintin (about a cartoon dog. What? Seriously? When people talk about this they always mention that Steven Spielberg is involved. Uh, who cares? Does this dog even talk. Peter Jackson can't possibly need the money this badly.). Because of these commitments, Jackson will neither direct nor write the new movie (his wife and their other writing partner will also not be working on the screenplay). However, they apparently have final approval over all elements of the film.

(The Internet is still on its way out the door, and wondering where the closest free clinic is, and when they open.)

But there is a consolation prize that makes up for absence of The Jackson: this Hobbit project will be not one, but TWO movies.

(The Internet has dropped all of its belongings back onto the floor and has not so much climbed as leaped back into the bed.)

The first film will apparently be an adaptation of The Hobbit, while the second film will tackle the 60-year period between the end of the events in that book and the stuff in The Lord of the Rings. Immediate concerns come to mind. Do we want Peter Jackson-sanctioned flunkies just outright making up stuff left and right about this time period? Hell no! But as anybody who has ever read the Appendices (and who among us hasn't?) at the end of The Return of the King knows, there's a ton of material ready for use in there.

(By the way, it's about to get real geeky up in here, let me warn you.)

You have a young Aragorn (remember, he is in his 80's at the time of The Lord of the Rings--you have to keep in mind that he is the scion of the longer-lived Men of Nümenor) kicking ass and taking names as a Ranger of Eriador, or, as Thorongil, earning the envy of a young Denethor by catching the eye of Ecthelion II, leading in a sense to Denethor's own later tragically skewed view of his own sons Boromir and Faramir; you have Gandalf riding all hither and yonder as he tries to keep the Necromancer (and you know who that is) in check and figure out what's going on with that ring that Bilbo "found" somewhere in the roots of the Misty Mountains (keep in mind that some of this material will probably be incorporated into the first film, as The Hobbit is full of spots where Gandalf just up and abandons Thorin's company and goes off on his own independent frolics, which could include things like the meeting of the White Council--who's going to play Radagast the Brown?--the assault by said body on Dol Goldur, the corruption of Saruman, etc); the reawakening of the Nazgûl, assault on Minas Ithil and the emptying of Ithilien; and Gandalf and Aragorn's hunt for Gollum. (And if they're going to make anything up out of whole cloth, I demand to know why the hell Aragorn was ever in Rhûn, and what the fuck happened to the two Blue Wizards, the latter having bugged me since I was 12.)

(And if you think I even had to glance at any source materials to come up with any of that stuff, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. The only thing I had to look up was how to do umlauts and how the hell to get that thing over the u in Rhûn, which I don't even know the name of, and just wound up copy-pasting.)

(The Internet is now sleeping very deeply, and will wake up many hours later, very hungry, a little sore, but very happy.)

Apparently, I Have Aged Tremendously Overnight

2007-12-17T09:23:00.000-04:00

(Dear Readers: Sorry for not posting anything all of last week. It was not a very funny week, and also I scored some new translations from the people that sent me the Argentine tax document translations, for which I initially thanked them, but now I am cursing their name. They now have me translating treaties on avoidance of double taxation. It is as fun as it sounds. In any case, I promise several postings this week. I hope I haven't inconvenienced either of you in any way.)

It is now mid-December, and that means Year's Best lists.

I have yet to see many of these, aside from a few book lists I have taken a look at. And then the other day I was looking at Slate.com and saw that they have a little roundtable going on the year's best music. I checked it out.

It was horrifying. I hadn't even heard of 80% of the artists listed. Here's the list of the author's top singles:

1. M.I.A., "Bird Flu"
2. Lil Wayne, "I Feel Like Dying"
3. Sophie-Ellis Bextor, "Catch You"
4. Usher featuring Ludacris, "Dat Girl Right There"
5. Eve, "Tambourine"
6. Ciara, "Like a Boy"
7. Jennifer Lopez, "Qué Hiciste"
8. Rihanna featuring Jay-Z, "Umbrella"
9. Aventura, "Mi Corazoncito"
10. Miranda Lambert, "Famous in a Small Town"
11. Hector El Father, "Pa' La Tumba"
12. Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black"
13. Robin Thicke, "Lost Without U"
14. Eric Church, "Guys Like Me"
15. The Pierces, "Boring"
16. Sugababes, "About You Now"
17. Gwen Stefani featuring Akon, "The Sweet Escape"
18. Kanye West, "Can't Tell Me Nothing"
19. Mika, "Grace Kelly"
20. The Fratellis, "Flathead"
21. Natasha Bedingfield, "I Wanna Have Your Babies"
22. The-Dream, "Falsetto"
23. Mickey Avalon, "Jane Fonda"
24. The Cribs, "Our Bovine Public"
25. Katherine McPhee, "Over It"

Out of those 25 songs, the only ones I have heard are "Umbrella" and "Flathead" (that Fratellis album is worth checking out). Those aren't even the two songs by the Puerto Ricans! I don't even want to get into how many of these artists I've never heard of.

I was less horrified by the list of the top 10 albums:

1. M.I.A., Kala
2. Miranda Lambert, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
3. Brad Paisley, 5th Gear
4. Lil Wayne, The Carter 3 Mixtape
5. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
6. Kanye West, Graduation
7. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
8. Feist, The Reminder
9. R. Kelly, Double Up
10. The Pierces, Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge

Left: Amy Winehouse: You can expand the picture by clicking on it (if you want your Christmas ruined).

Here I have at least heard of half the artists. M.I.A. is some sort of Indonesian hip-hop Manu Chao, LCD Soundsystem is a band my brother likes because they have robot singers, Kanye West is an indie artist who I think may make it big someday, Amy Winehouse is some sort of drunken British witch, and R. Kelly likes to micturate on the underaged. As for Melissa Lambert? I guess it would be cool if she turned out to be Christopher Lambert's daughter. Maybe the whole album is songs like "MacLeod's Lament" and "There Can Be Only One." But somehow I doubt it. Lil Wayne I presume is some sort of child rapper. Or an obese rapper. I will probably never hear that album, whatever the case may be. Feist means "a small mongrel dog," mainly in the American South. Perhaps the Pierces have something to do with Niles Crane. And I have to say that Brad Paisley's "5th Gear" sounds like some sort of Sammy Hagar album. No thanks.

The reason why all this is so horrifying is that at one point in the not too distant past I recall at least being aware of what was going on in popular music. At some point in the early 90's, Prepubescent Paco suddenly decided that he was going to know all about every band that showed up on MTV. A video would come on and I could immediately name the artist, song, and album title (these were the days before they started showing the name of the video director, which, by the way, was almost immediately followed by the current "we don't actually play videos anymore" era of Beach Houses and TRL; perhaps showing the directors' names somehow killed videos--somebody should investigate this. Maybe Michael Mukasey, as it is now clear that he won't be investigating anything relevant for the next 13 months), all before these were displayed on the screen.

All of a sudden it's 2007 and I'm finding out from fucking Slate of all things that Alan Thicke, the dad from "Growing Pains," had a kid (the are-you-kiddingly-named Robin Thicke) who is now a famous recording artist who gets to grope hot ladies all day even though his last name is synonymous with stupidity, and he shares his first name with a) a pretty little bird and b) Batman's boyfriend, while I have somehow turned into Andy Rooney.

Left: Robin Thicke: Wrong for America.

I may have to kill myself soon.

The Aftermath

2007-12-04T02:41:00.000-04:00

It was a grim weekend.

After the indicent with my car window, I understandably withdrew into a cocoon of shock and grief, drowning my sorrows in glass after glass of Lactaid with Ovaltine—it dissolves so much better than Nesquik, and instead of being the color of chocolate it’s more like the purple of A-Rod’s lips, and who wouldn’t want a little $300+ million in their mouth? (I don’t know what my price is, but let’s be honest, it would fit cozily into that budget)—all while my special ladyfriend traipsed around New York city, torrential downpours swamped the island, and my fantasy basketball team continued to have an atrocious free throw percentage; the days were long, and the resultant sentences apparently even longer.

(That last sentence brought to you by Commas, Dashes, Parentheses, and Semi-Colons: making long sentences interminable since English was called ‘Engliscgereorde’! Oh snap, did I just bust out the Old English on your ass? You bet your assa, modorforliger! )

But the car’s broken window was eventually fixed—by my ruthlessly efficient grandfather, Don Cheo, who can somehow arrange for a car window to be fixed, pick up the car to go take it to be fixed, have it fixed, and then call you seventeen times to tell you that it’s fixed… all before the sun comes up… on a Saturday—and with it, my will to live, or at least to look elsewhere for a copy of John Carpenter’s The Thing, that holiest of grails in my lamest of quests. So I drove the newly-repaired car over to my local Blockbuster video, where I hadn’t been in years, and which, after falling on such hard times that I forsook it completely (what finally made me so mad as hell that I refused to take it anymore was, ironically, the fact that they did not have a copy of Network in stock, which, believe it or not, is completely true), has made a truly miraculous recovery. Indeed, the Hato Rey Blockbuster was so well-stocked and rejuvenated that I will tentatively put forward the opinion that this particular Blockbuster is at its own personal (as it were) apogee, offering an even greater selection than it did in the halcyon days of its grand opening in the early 90’s, when it replaced the previous occupant of its locale, the inadvertently hilariously-named S & M supermarket (seriously).

After parking my car in the brightest parking spot on the lot—parking inside the store itself being unreasonably frowned upon, in my opinion—I took a lap around the interior of the store, finding not one but TWO copies of The Thing, a very good selection of older films overall, and a Transformers edition of Monopoly on sale (just sitting there, basking in the celestial glow of God’s love and favor).

Feeling the hot, tearing bite of a good thing on my ass, I secured a membership immediately, rented The Thing, and immediately hauled ass to my now ex-video place, where I essentially flung my last rental (the first disc of Season 1 of Prison Break, which I got for my grandfather, whose enthusiasm for window replacement vastly outstripped his interest in Prison Break) out of my car window so that I could continue to have a car window at the end of the transaction. And so, to follow is a brief list of things that I will not miss about my old video store, the Video Avenue on Muñoz Rivera Ave.:

1. Persons unknown breaking my car window.

2. The big “Video Drop” box outside the store, which for years has been locked and not open for eponymous video drops therein, which I shudder to think what prompted that inexplicable decision, and I’m thinking bodily fluids of some sort.

3. Speaking of bodily fluids, the fact that the parking lot, in addition to being a place where people break your car windows and yet don’t have the decency to rid you of Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli, always smelled like a sewer line somewhere had been busted, most likely because of the sewer line that was busted in said parking lot, which as far as I can tell has been busted for a good two years.

4. The taunting presence of four separate cash registers, no more than one of which was ever in use at any given moment, even though the line was often so long that people were simply lined up right through the middle of the Action section and thus had to pass by the entire Jean Claude Van Damme ouvre, from Bloodsport to Universal Soldier: The Return (the original Universal Soldier being inexplicably absent from the collection, although several copies of Legionnaire always seem to be on hand).

Although I am excited to be back to frequenting the Blockbuster, today’s visit was not without ominous portents. For example, as I left the Blockbuster, I was asked for money by a guy named Michael, who just needs a little cash because he lost his construction job the other day. Thing is, Michael has been losing this same construction job for about 15 years now, and though he seems mostly to split his time between that Blockbuster and the Pueblo down the street, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he was the one that busted my window at the other place, given that it’s only a few blocks away. Perhaps I should have asked him for my mother’s IPod, which was taken, as so many other young IPods of its generation, before its time, at the Hato Rey Video Avenue.

Crime Wave!

2007-11-30T01:30:00.000-04:00

I have been the victim of a heinous crime.

Tonight, after stopping at a 7-11 to buy the Hacienda’s supply of Lactaid and bread (because no hacienda should be without Lactaid and bread), I stopped at my local video rental outlet to see if anything piqued my interest. I was driving in the family Jeep, which I parked in the video store’s parking lot, directly in front of the store. The lot is decently lit, and was by no means empty when I arrived.

I went inside and did a circuit. The movie I was hoping to rent was John Carpenter’s The Thing. Yes, it is sort of random, but I randomly read something about it online recently and remembered liking it when I saw it some 15 years ago, and since Don Paco is a man that is all about goals, I set out to find the film.

Unfortunately this video store, in its first transgression of the night, turned out not to stock the film. However, it does have some 75 copies of the Roselyn Sánchez film Yellow, a hit so massive that I don’t know a single person that has seen it. I did not rent Yellow.

I looked around some more. I saw the box for Casshern, which I had recently rented from Netflix and was easily the most inexplicable film I’d ever seen. It’s set in some sort of future Japan, and there’s some Japanese people in it, and then one of them dies in some sort of future World War II. His father (I think) is working for the government on some project using so-called Neocells, which apparently are stem cells from some remote tribe that has pure, unsullied human DNA. Then lightning or something hits the facility and the body parts that they are growing in the lab turn into full-grown humans, which the authorities instantly order shot. Four of them, however, escape, and, in a curious sequence, appear to be on the run from the authorities for a long period of time and tremendous distances, although at the end of the sequence they still have the same goop in their hair that they climbed out of the Neocell pit with, and it seems to be only a few minutes later. These four dudes declare themselves Neo-Sapiens and somehow, by themselves, offscreen and with no explanation, take over some robot army that has been rotting in Europe for who knows how long. Then somehow the guy that died in future World War II gets resurrected (I'm pretty sure he is Casshern), and he has crazy superpowers, and then he beats the shit out of the robot army all by himself. Then he fights the leader of the Neohumans, and that’s when I turned it off and mailed it back in to Netflix. Needless to say I did not rent Casshern. Also, you shouldn’t rent Casshern, mostly because it is really, really horrible. (Its plot is so incomprehensible that its Wikipedia page doesn't even try to provide a summary, opting instead for providing priceless nuggets such as "Hisashi and Takuro from the band GLAY appear in a cameo," which, when I read it, I immediately thought, "Man, I KNEW those were the dudes from GLAY!"

Then I saw something that intrigued me. Skinwalkers. It’s about werewolves. But it turns out it’s one of those Underworld-type movies where there’s a ton of werewolves, but they spend most of the time as leather-clad bikers and shoot at each other with guns. Why would you make a werewolf movie and have all the fighting be non-werewolf gunfights? It’s like making a Holocaust movie and it turning out to be just a bunch of scenes of old British women having tea all the time: it doesn’t make sense. So I lingered over Skinwalkers for a while, did another circuit with it in my hand, and then I decided that I am stupid enough already, thank you very much, and just left without renting anything. I am not even going to link to Skinwalkers, because it would be socially reprehensible.

Although it sounds like I spent a long time in the store, I can’t have been in there much more than five minutes. I walk back out to the car, and once I get there I notice that there’s window glass on the ground. I think to myself, “Ouch, some poor jackass had his car broken into.”

Alas, I am that poor jackass.

First Maximiliano del Chubasco , and now this. Clearly a tsunami of crime is washing over our beautiful island. Nothing of value was stolen, fortunately. The bandit (or bandits? I am not ruling out a gang or major criminal conspiracy) only made off with a mostly empty purse in the backseat. The bread and Lactaid were not taken, nor was my cd binder (sweet!), nor my mother’s cd binder (meaning that I will continue to have Andrea Bocelli and Il Divo inflicted upon me until I leave the car unattended in a neighborhood full of gay Eurothieves). It occurs to me that I just got Beasted. Fuck.

I am blaming the whole sordid ordeal on Skinwalkers. Don’t watch that movie, I’m sure it blows. It can only lead to further suffering. Tell your loved ones.

Puerto Rico: What's Going On

2007-11-29T18:22:00.000-04:00

Don Paco brings you the latest (and, unfortunately, bad) news from the beautiful sunny island of Puerto Rico.

Left: Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, soon to be wearing a different set of stripes.

In Politics: Governor Aníbal Acevedo, the first P.R. head of state to qualify for disability benefits stemming from a crippling lack of charisma, is going down. The U.S. Justice Department has been investigating him for over two years regarding potential campaign finance violations. Turns out there was all sorts of sketchy fundraising for his gubernatorial race, in Philadelphia of all places. There seem to have been some dentists with no connections to Puerto Rico that were very, very eager to give his campaign money. It also looks like the Popular Democratic Party (the commonwealth-supporting local party) sprang for $40,000 worth of suits for the governor, as well as possibly hair plugs and eye surgery. Sad part is, he still kind of looks like the bastard son of Jon Lovitz and a gargoyle. Acevedo has spent the year paying Washington lobbyists to kill the nomination of Rosa Emilia Rodríguez as U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico, under whose interim appointment the investigation has come to fruition. Moreover, Acevedo, not known as an overtly religious politician, has recently begun referencing the Bible at rallies, wearing a ring given to him by the Archbishop of Puerto Rico, writing angry letters to Condi Rice about colonialism, and, though he has yet to be charged with anything, delivering hours-long addresses on local tv about how he isn’t guilty of anything. Which I get, because I am always giving hours-long tv speeches about how I’m not guilty of stuff. That’s how I maintain my innocence, because that sort of thing screams innocence. Bottom line: Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá is going down, and soon. It will not be pretty.
For a good overview of what Aníbal has been up to, check this out.

In Beauty Pageants: We in Puerto Rico take our beauty pageants pretty seriously, because our ladies are the hottest, objectively. If you even look a Puerto Rican woman you will instantly get pregnant, they're so hot. I know that doesn't make sense, but it is absolutely true. Face it, your females look like drooling Neanderthals compared to ours. But that is okay. Neanderthals were a hardy folk, with stocky barrel chests and pronounced brows. In any case, we just had our local Miss Universe pageant to determine who the eventual winner of the world-wide Miss Universe will be, and it got ugly. The eventual winner, Ingrid Marie Rivera, made it through the pageant despite her outfits and makeup brushes being sprayed with pepper spray, causing her to break out in hives during the contest . The accessories in question are currently in police custody and are being examined by a forensic team. The suspects: other pageant contestants supposedly jealous of Rivera’s “extensive pageant experience,” whatever that means. The unsubstantiated rumor here is that Rivera is pals with pageant organizers and that the whole thing was fixed. Here’s a video of Ingrid being interviewed by Bill O'Reilly!

Don’t like your Miss Universe news so depressing? Well, for the other side of the coin, our last Miss Universe winner, Zuleyka Rivera, who has been surgerized into looking a lot like Janet Jackson, gave El Nuevo Día an extensive interview today, which I think is as extensive as it is primarily because it is accompanied by a bunch of naked pictures of her. Interested? (It’s going to be fun explaining to my special lady when she gets back from NYC that I’ve started linking to nudie pics in her absence. It’s important news content!)

In Brief:
- The ex-chief of P.R.’s Consumer Affairs Bureau (DACO), had his horse stolen this morning by unknown horse thieves. The horse’s name? Maximiliano del Chubasco (“Maximilian of the Violent Tropical Squall”). Easily the weirdest story of the day.

- A local federal magistrate judge set bail today for seven individuals of Chinese descent for trafficking humans into the island. Back when I was growing up, you rarely saw Asian people here in Puerto Rico (hence every person who was Asian or Asian-looking invariably being nicknamed “Chino” by their friends here). Now we’re trafficking them in, and my special lady even saw an Asian person panhandling the other day. Once you’ve cracked P.R.’s lucrative panhandling industry, you know you’ve really made it here.

- A 7.4 earthquake hit Martinique today, and was felt here in Puerto Rico. But not by me, leading me to conclude that in a fight against a 7.4 earthquake, I would undoubtedly prevail. It was also felt in Venezuela and Suriname (by the way, odds are that this is the last time you will read the word Suriname for many, many months, or at least until you sit down to start writing Battlestar Galactica fan poetry, and think to yourself, "What rhymes with Geminon? Suriname! I'm a genius!").

- CESCO, the local DMV, had its entire computer system go down for three whole weeks. The level of inconvenience remained unchanged.

- Quote of the Day: From a local newspaper article on how abstinence efforts are failing:

“I don’t believe in abstinence. I’m sexually active, and, if it works out with one of my lady friends, I’m going all-out. Of course, I always use protection. You can’t just be going willy-nilly out there.” ‘Juan’ (not real name), local ninth grader.

The Beasting Continues

2007-11-29T18:03:00.000-04:00

Joe Klein and Time keep getting bludgeoned over this FISA story. Time published an online correction , which says that

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. The bill does not explicitly say that. Republicans believe it can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

In marked contrast to Time's tack, the Chicago Tribune, which recently published an editorial making reference to Klein's story, printed its own correction on the matter:

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

A Time magazine essay by Joe Klein that was excerpted on the editorial page Wednesday incorrectly stated that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. It does not.

Also, it turns out that Klein's source for the interpretation of the bill was Congressman Peter Hoekstra, the Republican who until early this year had chaired the Intelligence Committee.

Glenn Greenwald is reporting that Time will be including a correction using the same "he said, she said" rationale in their print edition tomorrow. There is as of yet no word on why Time is so vastly perplexed as to what the bill says.

Inaugural Beasting of the Day: Time's Joe Klein

2007-11-27T01:23:00.000-04:00

This is Joe Klein.

You may remember that Mr. Klein is the guy that wrote “Primary Colors” under the name Anonymous (perhaps sensing that at some point along the way, John Travolta would become involved). He now (openly) writes for Time magazine, where he has a weekly column on politics. Recently, Mr. Klein has been writing about the progress in Congress of the efforts to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill, which controls wiretapping of terrorist suspects abroad. Here’s what Mr. Klein wrote about the proceedings in a November 21 Time magazine article titled “The Tone-Deaf Democrats:”

Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that – [Rush] Limbaugh is salivating -- would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

This did not go over well with Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer who blogs for Salon.com, mainly because it was factually incorrect. It seems like calling something stupid when you yourself are engaged in what could be termed stupidity is a bad idea when a guy like Mr. Greenwald is around; or, as he so succinctly put it, ‘ "Well beyond stupid" is a good description for what Klein wrote here. "Factually false" is even better.’ Apparently Mr. Greenwald gets cranky when he has to fact-check you. Mr. Greenwald wrote a takedown on Mr. Klein’s work on Wednesday November 21, where he enumerated how Mr. Klein’s article was factually erroneous: namely, the FISA law clearly does not require that the FISA court approve surveillance of foreign terrorists—that protection applies only to “U.S. persons,” meaning citizens and lawful permanent residents.

Mr. Klein, caught with his hand in the lazy jar, responded to the posting online, but did not address the inaccuracies pointed out by Mr. Greenwald, focusing instead on reiterating how bad he thinks all this looks for Democrats, whom he again insists are “giv[ing] foreign terrorists the same procedures as American citizens, if not the same rights.” Apparently, Mr. Klein started getting heat on this from other quarters, and on Saturday, November 24, he posted a correction to his article on Time’s website, which he kicked off thusly:

I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House, although it’s difficult to tell for sure given the technical nature of the bill’s language and fierce disagreements between even moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Committee about what the bill actually does contain.

This repetition of the core falsehood that triggered Mr. Greenwald to write on this issue seems to have made Mr. Greenwald go “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Blogging, I presume, with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries blasting in the background, Mr. Greenwald went to town, on Mr. Klein’s difficulties with the technical nature of the bill:

There is no confusion possible about whether the House bill -- as Klein originally wrote -- "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court." Anyone who told that to Klein was lying. All you have to do is read the House bill in order to know that. Here is Section 2 of the RESTORE Act -- the very first section after the "Definitions" section:

'CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF NON-UNITED STATES PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES'

Sec. 105A. (a) Foreign to Foreign Communications-

(1) IN GENERAL - Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States.

I don’t know about you, but that seems fairly clear to me. So what happened here? How could Mr. Klein have been so far off-base? Apparently, it seems that Mr. Klein is guilty of two things:

1. He did not read the bill he was writing about.

2. He relied on information from sources, and then did not verify the accuracy of said information. (see point 1).

(Consider also that no editor or fact-checker over at Time seems to have caught this.)

Mr. Greenwald goes on to excoriate Mr. Klein thoroughly, and the media in general for lazy reportage of this type, which seems to have been in vogue for the last few years. Mr. Kline gets called " an easily manipulated and dishonest "reporter," and his work is referred to as "weaselly", "inaccurate," and "slothful"; a prominent blogger picks up on the story and refers to Mr. Klein as "Joke Line" (unless this is a long-standing nickname; it's not like Mr. Klein was beloved before this episode). The whole fiasco has led to this, as reported by Mr. Greenwald:

The Center for Citizen Media -- jointly affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School -- has picked up on the Klein/Time story, labeling Klein's behavior "Shameful 'Journalism'," and contending that the "flagrantly inaccurate and misguided Time magazine column by Joe Klein" is "[o]ne of the most amazing episodes in modern American journalism." They concluded: Klein's "work in this case may become Exhibit A for what's wrong with the craft today."

So Mr. Klein did not do his homework, and consequently he probably had a very bad Thanksgiving weekend. And what happens when you let that happen? You get BEASTED. Kids, don’t let this happen to you. Don't wind up being the fact pattern for the essay question in every journalism school's Journalism 101 final exam this year. If you’re going to write about FISA, you’d better check yourself before Glenn Greenwald rickety-wrecks yo ass.

Meet the Beast

2007-11-26T23:51:00.001-04:00

Above: Meet Le Tigre, the Mark of the Beasting.

Don Paco here, introducing you to our newest feature here at the Hacienda: the Beasting of the Day.

What is a beasting? You have been beasted if someone (including you) has done something so adverse to your reputation, physical or mental well-being, or overall prospects that it is inevitable that you emerge from the episode unarguably worse off.

Here is a one-act play illustrating the use of the term:

Don Paco: Even though Mitt Romney has spent millions of his own dollars to lock down the Iowa caucuses and Mike Huckabee has run a barebones, grassroots campaign, the two are now at a dead statistical heat in the polls. That’s got to be frustrating for Romney.

You: That Mike Huckabee sure is BEASTING Mitt Romney!

Don Paco: And oil is almost at $100 a barrel!

You: Damn, Americans are getting BEASTED at the pump!

Don Paco: And finally, did you know that last year Bush and the losers in Congress suspended the 1000 year old right of habeas corpus?

You: Yo that Constitution be getting BEASTED, son!

Don Paco: It sure is, You, it sure is. By the way, you appear to have soiled yourself.

You: Shit!

Don Paco: Indeed.

Exeunt Don Paco, You.
Fin

The inaugural beasting will be unleashed upon the world tomorrow.

Pardoned Turkeys Go On Rampage

2007-11-23T20:03:00.000-04:00

Above: In a lighthearted ceremony, the President pardoned a savage killer.

Orlando, Florida – Two turkeys pardoned earlier in the week by President George W. Bush went on a savage killing spree today at Disney World, killing several other animals belonging to the park’s permanent wildlife collection.

The turkeys, raised in Indiana by Ted Seger, the Chairman of the National Turkey Federation, were pardoned in a White House ceremony on Tuesday.

"May they live the rest of their lives in blissful gobbling. And may all Americans enjoy a holiday full of love and peace. God bless you all," said Bush at the Rose Garden ceremony that will now go down as a Rose Garden ceremony which will live in infamy.

The turkeys, named May and Flower following an online poll, were flown first class to Orlando. After serving as the grand marshals of Disney’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they were taken to the menagerie they had been set to become a part of, where they pulled out semi-automatic weapons from their trench coats and opened fire. After killing several deer, they jumped into a set of ovens and cooked themselves to death.

Persons close to the turkeys noted that they had begun behaving strangely after a meeting with Dick Cheney, whom recommended that they be named ‘Lunch’ and ‘Dinner.’ Cheney also had the turkeys waterboarded in order to ascertain whether they had any information regarding upcoming terrorist events. Rather surprisingly, they didn’t, though they did make up various terrorist plots in an attempt to get the brutal, unrelenting torture to cease.

"Their watery gobble gobbles will haunt my dreams," said a government interrogator.

Analysts later determined that the plots the turkeys reported, which consisted mainly of gobbling and defecating on the ground, did not appear credible. Cheney’s office defended the Vice President’s actions.

“Turkeys don’t have Constitutional rights,” said Cheney’s spokesman.

Left: Flower overlooks the carnage she hath wrought.

According to the White House, the turkeys were raised using normal feeding and other production techniques.” They were, however, provided with extra interaction with humans so that they would be prepared for their role at the White House Ceremony. Experts question whether it was a mistake that the human interaction mostly consisted of the turkeys being strapped to chairs with their eyelids forced open and screened Fox News programming at high volumes for 12 hours a day.

Democratic operatives are currently working on ways to use the killings against the Republicans in the next election cycle.

“The President’s abuse of the pardon power has gone on long enough,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “First Scooter Libby and now this. After 19 years, finally we can open up a can of Willie Horton on their ass.”

The turkeys left no suicide notes because they are turkeys and are thus illiterate. Experts have ascribed the cause of the turkeys’ actions to their love for violent video games and the music of Marilyn Manson.

Shewee's Big Adventure

2007-11-22T21:17:00.000-04:00

Above: The Shewee.

Don Paco is not sure what he has been writing emails about that would prompt this, but today, after gorging on turkey, I opened up my gmail account and the ad displayed at the top was for something called the Shewee.

Obviously I was intrigued.

What is the Shewee? It turns out it is a “portable urination device for women.”

Left: Now you ladies can whip it out, too! (Presumably the gray areas surrounding that crotch are meant as shading and not, you know, an accident.)

It is basically a pee funnel for ladies. Tired of having to sit down to pee? Shewee takes care of that. Plus theoretically I guess you can, you know, write your name in the snow and all that good stuff.

Of course, there are still valid concerns to consider. Hygiene, for example. On the website (www.shewee.com, surprisingly enough), Shewee's creators proclaim that "Thanks to Shewee you can enjoy many more events without having to worry about unhygienic public toilets!" While I guess that part is true, there's still the matter of you carrying your toilet around in your purse. The Shewee bigwigs also remind you that urine is sterile upon leaving the body.

Left: Not where you want a Shewee lady to be. This guy's about to get an unpleasant surprise, R.Kelly style.

The website provides an easy how-to guide on how to Shewee. (Step two is my favorite: "Aim urine to a suitable place – away from feet, into a toilet or a container." Container? Like what? The Drinkwee Peepee thermos? Yikes.) I guess maybe the Shewee is a bit tricky, because the instructions also give you the following: "Tip! Practise* with Shewee in the shower to find the best position for you!" (*: Shewee is for British peeing.)

It is a brave new world.

One Reason to Support Ron Paul

2007-11-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

How cool would it be to have Gandalf be president? I wouldn't worry about anything. Take some jewelry to an evil volcano? Hell yeah! Gandalf is never wrong.

Also he wields Narya, the Ring of Fire. That's very powerful.

A Day for Giving Thanks

2007-11-21T01:21:00.000-04:00

This week marks the start of what you Americans call “the holidays.” From my studies of American film, this term refers to a roughly month-long period of time centered around meals and gift-giving, and during which people leave their normal lives to go visit the parents they hate and the siblings they can’t stand so that they can yell at each other across a large table (or, as an Argentinian man I met once asked me as we watched “National Treasure” on a bus crossing Patagonia, “Do all Americans hate their fathers?”).

So I take it that as you sit in your office in a cold Eastern seaboard metropolis today, your mind is probably preoccupied with just how to tell your 30-year Army veteran dad that you’ve found the woman of your dreams, and that nothing will keep the two of you apart, even the fact that her vagina does not end in a uterus, her clitoris is actually a refurbished penis, and her outer labia used to be a scrotum. But while that is certainly something to ponder, the Thanksgiving holiday is about giving thanks, so to take your mind off your she-male fiancée, your decision to pursue that Ph.D. in Navajo pottery, or the fact that you left your high-paying job to go join the Dennis Kucinich campaign, I, Don Paco, will relate to you a list of things to be very thankful for this year. So take out that hose leading from your car’s tailpipe and into your closed car window, turn the engine off, air out the garage, and give thanks for your many blessings, as enumerated below.

1. You are not a helpless infant, and Britney Spears is not your mother.

2. You do not hold a subprime mortgage.

3. You are not a monk in Burma.

4. You are not a subprime mortgage lender.

5. The writers’ strike has saved you from having to endure another full season of "Ghost Whisperer.”

6. What with the price of gasoline being so high, that car you designed that runs on platinum and baby souls is looking more and more like a solid idea.

7. You never paid for that Times Select bullshit.

8. Osama bin Laden? Don’t worry, Bush is on that like white on rice.

9. Theoretically, that contract you have with Sprint will end someday.

10. Somehow you passed that urine test.

11. Rudy Giuliani keeps talking about World War IV, so I guess you can hold out hope that World War III will at least be relatively quick.

12. Dick Cheney doesn’t go around undermining everything you do at work like he does to Condi.

13. Hugh Grant never cheated on you with a prostitute.

14. You do not live at Michael Vick's house and go "woof."

15. Your teeth aren’t British.

16. You don’t get paid in pesos.

17. You are not Pakistani democracy.

18. One-a-day Valtrex.

19. Chuck Norris hasn’t put you on his shit list. Yet.

20. It’s not your job to explain how perjury is not a crime when Scooter Libby does it, but it is when Barry Bonds does.

21. Sen. Chris Dodd isn’t emailing you six times a day because you foolishly sent him some money recently.

22. You made the choice months ago to resign from your position within the Bush Administration to spend more time with your family.

23. So far, you’ve given the King of Spain no reason to tell you to shut the hell up.

24. You're not fat. You're just chock full of omega 3 fatty acids.

25. A-Rod re-signed with the Yankees, so now his children will not have to go hungry.

26. You’re the jackass in the picture below (read all about him here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_page_id=1965&in_article_id=487039).

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at La Hacienda.

You Are a Part of an Unparalled Phenomenon

2007-11-20T01:26:00.000-04:00

We here at the Hacienda have just received word that this website is a bona fide internet phenomenon. Our award-winning journalism is being cited in that most venerable repository of scholarly knowledge, Wikipedia.

It appears that our award-winning, hard-hitting investigavite reporting into the superhero steroid scandal features prominently in Wikipedia's entry on Captain America. As that website writes, "Some have drawn parallels between the Super-Soldier Serum and the steroid scandals of today.[4]" That [4]? A footnote leading directly to this site (specifically, this article).

Now, if I were you, I would leave a comment right now, so as to record for posterity that you were here at beginning. That way, 15 years from now, when your 13 year-old daughter is berating you for being so damn uncool all the time, you can print out a copy of the comments page and show your spoiled ingrate spawn how, way back in 2007, you were all sorts of tight with THE Don Paco, at which point I predict that your pimply offspring will simply silently head back up to her room and change out of her "3 Input Woman" baby-tee without you even telling her to, out a pure, unadulterated, but in all likelihood short-lived respect for you, which you will thereafter immediately squander when you give her that Nickleback greatest hits album for her birthday and tell her "Now here's what I call real music."

By mere virtue of your reading this, you are now a part of this pop culture phenomenon. Years from now, when they interview you for the documentary, you can reminisce about how you remember exactly where you were that time that Santiago gave Bush that caculo, or about how the video of that Argentinian bat inspired you to follow your dreams and become a contortionist.

So thank you, my dear readers. You are both super duper awesome.

Translating Argentina

2007-11-16T07:58:00.000-04:00

Hello, my friend. How are you? Did you enjoy last night’s Democratic presidential debate? You did not watch it? No, I understand. I too am repulsed by Joe Biden’s hair plugs. No president should have a head like a Barbie doll. It makes me think that if you were to take off Biden’s pants, all you would find in his crotch region would be a smooth, flesh-colored piece of plastic. No, I agree, it is better not to think about it. Plus he is from Delaware, a state which I have seen with my own eyes and yet still do not believe actually exists. But enough about Joe Biden’s non-existent hair, genitalia, and home state.

As you know, I support my lavish lifestyle here at the Hacienda by doing translations. I recently found this website where people post translation projects, and translators can view them and bid on them. After a few weeks of bidding on projects, I finally got one. Some Indian company needed a translation of some tax documents from Spanish to English. I put in my bid, they asked me to translate a sample paragraph, I translated the holy shit out of it, they loved my work, much laudatory praise was exchanged, and I got the gig.

Too bad the gig was a nightmare. It turns out that what needed translating was a user guide to a software version of the form Argentinians need to fill out in order to calculate the value added tax they owe. A week from now, when you sit around your Thanksgiving table looking at your turkey and mashed potatoes and whatever cranberry-based side dish your family prefers and you give thanks for all the great things in your life this year—how awesomely expensive your health care is, all the Kevin Federline knowledge you’ve managed to accumulate, and the fact that Scooter Libby runs free amongst the Colorado aspens—take a moment and give thanks that you are not an Argentinian taxpayer subject to the value-added tax.

A week ago I didn’t know what a value added tax was. And, after translating 43 pages regarding how to fill out the forms required in order to declare and pay it, I still don’t know what it is. I do know this:

- both book editors and annually-salaried agricultural workers are expressly stated to be subject to it

- there is a special provision for when you have had your septic tank or cesspool cleaned by a specific type of taxpayer

- the Spanish-language instructions for using the value added tax software are completely incomprehensible, and now in English they are even worse. It is like that time on “Newsradio” where the boss wrote a book on management titled “Capitalist Lion Tamer” and the Japanese translated it as “Super Macho Donkey Wrestler.” Only much, much worse.

- the software in question has a special tab when dealing with transactions involving “ordinary natural water, common bread… and fuels not sold at service stations.” What kind of fuel is not sold at service stations? Buffalo chips? Plutonium? Who lumps alternative fuels in with “common bread”? Perhaps in Argentina common bread is leavened with Strontium-90.

- Argentinians have made up one of the best words ever: “monotributo” (and its derivative, “monotributista”). You have no idea how hard it was for me not to go with “Tribute Monkey” as the translation for this.

The lesson I want you to take away from this is this: Argentina is a wonderful country, but you do not want to live there. Yes, they may have glaciers, roaring waterfalls, and bats with dark, glistening, enormous batcocks, but their tax code is not something you want any part of.

Gingerly Clipped From the Headlines

2007-11-13T01:21:00.000-04:00

Can you tell by the cover story picture and headline who we Puerto Ricans were rooting for this weekend? Hint: the answer is ¡COTTO!

Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common here in Puerto Rico. However, it seems like some parents a few years ago thought to themselves, "You know what, if we're going to have a kid that is going to get brutally murdered at some point, we might as well give him an awesome name. Then maybe some asshole will make fun of him on the Internet. Which doesn't exist yet."

Check out the highlighted portion to find out the victim's name.

The Force, unfortunately, was not strong in young Oby Wan Rodríguez. Police are still searching for the Imperial Stormtroopers rumored to be involved in the slaying.

In Which Don Paco Introduces You To The Pleasures of Reagan-Era Board Games

2007-11-12T01:21:00.001-04:00

Above: The box illustration for "Public Assistance."

So Don Paco has a special lady friend, Doña Estrella, and she was recently overseeing some annual cleaning efforts at her own Hacienda. Sometimes at large estates such as our own, things can get misplaced for long periods of time. Artifacts can disappear, and not reappear until decades later. Doña Estrella found many things during her latest excavation, some characterized by a high degree of awesomeosity (an original Millennium Falcon replica, from the original Star Wars toy run, in good condition, and huge), and some not (a League of Nations-era vacuum cleaner).

The real prize of this haul, however, was not the ship that Han Solo won from fellow rogue Lando Calrissian during the Cloud City Sabbac Tournament, but rather a game inspired by events transpiring not so long ago, and in a galaxy not so far, far away. Verily, Doña Estrella pulled forth from her brimming armoire a box containing quite possibly the greatest board game ever, 1980’s “Public Assistance” (tagline: “Why bother working for a living when you can play this great welfare game?”)

Why is this possibly the greatest board game ever? Well, let me answer that question with another question: when was the last time that you were reading the instructions for a board game and saw something like this: “Is there a limit to the number of illegitimate children an able-bodied welfare recipient may have?” If you answered ‘never,’ then boy are you in for a treat.

(By the way, here is the answer the instructions provide: “No. It is possible, though improbable, to land on 16 “Have Illegitimate Child” blocks in two trips around the Able-Bodied Welfare Recipient Promenade. 16 illegitimate children may be uncommon, but not unheard of. A welfare recipient in Baltimore, for example, is on record as having 22 illegitimate children, all by the age of thirty-two! And in turn, some of her illegitimate children now have illegitimate children of their own.”)

I can not stress this enough: I am talking about a real game, and in this game, you can have illegitimate children. In fact, having illegitimate children, from my reading of the rules, seems to be about the absolute best way to win at this game.

The game itself is not so different from Monopoly. You don’t start at “Go;” you start instead at “The First of the Month.” Instead of a banker, however, someone is designated as the Custodian of the taxpayers’ heard-earned dollars. Plus, when you pass the First of the Month, you don’t just get $200. That’s chump change. Here, you get your “basic monthly grant of $500, plus $200 for [your] first illegitimate child, and $100 for each additional illegitimate child.” As I said, the whole illegitimate child thing really seems to pay off in this game. As opposed to Trivial Pursuit, where fathering a bastard doesn’t get you shit. Stupid liberal Trivial Pursuit.

Gameplay is simple. You start out the game as an able-bodied welfare recipient on the 1st of the month. You then roll the dice, which determine how many blocks down “Able-Bodied Welfare Recipient’s Promenade” (seriously, that is the name of the street; let’s shorten that to “Welfare Drive”) you get to travel. Welfare Dr. seems like a pretty hip place. Say you roll a 1. You’re going to land on “You are on the welfare rolls in two states—collect double all benefits.” Score! Being on welfare is the shit! Say you roll again and get a 3. You get to “Buy a case of wine. PAY $10.” Who knew being on welfare made you privy to such tremendous bargains? Wine in hand, say you roll another 1. Oops! Now you “HAVE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.” Can’t wait for that 1st of the month!

So let’s take stock. Three moves into the game, and you have a) defrauded two state governments, b) purchased alcohol in bulk quantities, and c) fathered a bastard. It’s just like Candyland. Except with very, very different candy.

But not everything in “Public Assistance” is fun and games. If you’re not careful, you’ll land on GET A JOB, which means you have to move from Welfare Dr. down to Working Person’s Rut, which, let me tell you, is not where you want to be. All the spots there are things like “School Tax. PAY $50” and “Gas Fill-Up. PAY $20” (ahh, 1980). You do not want to stay on Working Person’s Rut for very long, or you’ll go broke.

Because that's how food stamps work, after all.

Working Person’s Rut, barring a few squares like “Forget troubles, drink beer and watch ball game on TV,” is a real downer, especially when compared to all the great stuff you can do if you’re back on welfare, such as “Steal Hubcaps,” “Sleep all day,” “Read girlie magazines all day,” “Smuggle in Iranian hash,” and, of course, “Act belligerent at job interview.” Also, you can have an illegitimate child about every 5 spaces. And let’s not forget the special, subtle pleasures of landing on squares that say vague things like “Sales convention in town: COLLECT $2000” and “Girls got busted: PAY BAIL $500.” I wonder how someone on welfare can make money off a sales convention. And who are these girls?

Oh, never mind, I just figured that out. (Step back here a moment: this game is full of hookers, drug dealers, pimps, and petty criminals of every sort, and the object of it is for you to navigate this morass while making as much money as possible, a goal you accomplish by committing as much fraud and crime as you can squeeze in. So does this mean that we can now blame Republicans for the “Grand Theft Auto” games they’re always bitching about? I vote yes. Oh wait, I can’t vote.)

It is tempting to just list all of what is on the little squares, but to do so in this space would probably get you fired, and also undermine American productivity in general to a dangerous degree. I mean, this is a game where you can get sent on a “Jail Jaunt,” where, if you’re not careful, this is what could happen: “You are sexually assaulted. LOSE ONE TURN.”

Take a moment and think about this. You can get RAPED in this board game. It truly is an embarrassment of riches, so I will have to limit myself and only point out one more thing about this saucy conservative pastime: its blatant hatred for something it calls “ethnics.”

Now, let me make very clear the fact that the game goes out of its way to avoid blatant, outright racism. The box it comes in features a street scene peopled by various types of vagrants, loiterers, n’er do wells, and even a pimp (my personal favorite detail is a guy sitting casually on a stoop while blood pours out from under the door and down the steps), but all of these people are white. But the covert racism is there in the details (remember where the broodqueen with the 22 kids was from? BALTIMORE!), and nowhere is this more apparent than in the “Welfare Benefit” cards, which are this game’s “Community Chest” equivalents. If you land on a spot marked “Benefit,” you get whatever Benefit is on the card you pick. Some of these cards are fairly run of the mill stuff for this game, stuff like “You are on the welfare rolls in two states, and the District of Columbia. Collect triple benefits.” Par for the course. Then there are the more creative ones, like “Your great-aunt Sophie dies. You don’t report her death, and bury her in the basement. Collect her $500 welfare check every 1st of the month” and “National Endowment for the Arts accepts your proposal for experimental film-making. Your theme: ‘The Limits of Pornography.’ Receive $900 grant.”

Right: Don't worry, kid. Chief Justice John Roberts will keep those ethnic bullies off you.

See, the stuff you do on your own carries no racial tinge per se. But once someone else becomes involved, once you’re getting help doing something dodgy, it’s always a certain type of person who’s helping you do it. Let’s see if you can guess who from the following cards:

“Your ethnic congressman gets your live-in or spouse a job with the Social Security Adminsitration.”

“Ethnic politician hires you under the table to get out the welfare vote. COLLECT $2000.”

“Your cousin hits is big on daily lottery. You hire ethnic lawyer through free ‘Judicare’ program and sue him on trumped-up defamation charges. COLLECT $2000.”

“A welfare comrade agrees to strike your car from rear on way to welfare office. You hire ethnic lawyer through free ‘Judicare’ program and obtain cash settlement.”

Apparently, this Judicare program only employs ethnic lawyers. By the way, these ethnic lawyers appear to be quite effective, as they always seem to secure you a hefty judgment. So I guess the game is not really racist after all.

Left: A liberal.

Does your soul hurt yet? Because mine does, so it is probably time to wrap this party up. I end this piece with good news, however. I know what you are probably yelling right now: “Wait, Don Paco, don’t leave yet, tell me, how can I get a copy of this tremendous game? Are all Puerto Rican closets filled with such bounty? I must have this game!” Well, my friends, never fear, as the game is still available for sale online, at www.welfaregame.com, where this classic is marketed as “Guaranteed to Help Rehabilitate Lingering Liberals.” So, if you or a loved one has fallen under the seductive sway of demon liberalism, please do yourself and hire an ethnic lawyer to sue your town for some specious tort, and then use the money to buy yourself a copy of this unfairly forgotten classic from back when it was still morning in America.

After the Flood

2007-11-10T22:11:00.000-04:00

Dear readers, first and foremost, let me apologize for the long delay between postings here on the site. Things have been hectic here at the Hacienda. The Hacienda’s computer was down for a while, and may yet go down again. Every once in a while old Don Desktop just freezes up, and then when I restart him he says he has to check the D drive, and then all of a sudden Don Desktop rather cryptically declares that said drive is “dirty.” It then takes about 24 hours to scan itself for my protection. So far no word on what the dirty culprit is, nor what is taking so long. Though I can certainly think of some dirty things that lurk within my dirty hard drive. Wow, that does sound dirty.

Furthermore, because the Lord has forsaken this fair Hacienda (and, given the Satanic rituals which we regularly hold here, I do not hold this decision against Him), yesterday as I arrived at the manse following an inspection of my many lands and holdings, I found that the Hacienda had been flooded by the torrential rains let loose from the heavens. The rest of the afternoon was spent experimenting with water-removal efforts, some of which were disappointingly disappointing (wet-dry vac, you broke my heart), some of which were effective but time-consuming (collecting water in Tupperware containers and dustbins, then dumping it into garbage cans, which, when filled with tens of gallons of water, were then rendered immovable), and some which simply did not work (use of The Force).

In any case, the Hacienda is now once again dry, for now at least, and some new stuff is going online here over the next few days that you will not want to miss. I won’t tell you what it is, but let me just say this: Reagan-era board games, folks. Stay tuned.

Musharraf Also Declares Martial Law in U.S.A.

2007-11-06T01:09:00.000-04:00

Above: President Bush asked Gen. Pervez Musharraf to run things for him for a while.

Washington, DC – In an unprecedented move, the President of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, citing civic unrest and stating that he was acting as the head of the nation’s military, this weekend declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law in Pakistan. Today, President George W. Bush, impressed with Musharraf’s success in the endeavor, and, frankly, just getting tired of this whole being President thing, instructed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to telephonically persuade Musharraf to replicate his success stateside.

Bush directed Rice to deliver this message: "We too are afraid of the threat of takeover by Islamic extremists. We see that you are successfully tamping down on treasonous dissent and would like you to attempt to duplicate your positive results here in the U.S." Rice, whose sense of cognitive dissonance disemboweled itself with a figurative samurai sword sometime in 2003, made the call.

Musharraf, one of the U.S.’s staunchest allies in the War on Terror, and now an experienced veteran of many types of coups d’etat, putsches, and plain old power grabs, took swift action to secure his own hold on power. He suspended the Constitution, stifled independent media, and deployed troops to crush dissent. He called the measures “necessary to prevent a takeover by Islamic extremists.”

"Damn it, we were so close!" exclaimed several Islamic extremists. "We'll get you, Musharraf! Your mother makes love to donkeys!"

In Pakistan, the country’s lawyers are leading the opposition to Musharraf’s actions. In the U.S., no such resistance has yet been mustered.

“Yeah, like the Constitution was all vibrant and shit yesterday,” said Harvard Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. “Seriously, dude.”

Faced with a vacancy in Pakistan’s Supreme Court after ousting the country’s Chief Justice over the weekend, Musharraf appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, to head the Pakistani court.

“Roberts is a respected, common-sense, conservative jurist,” said Musharraf. “He is like an umpire, there to call balls and strikes. That’s the kind of man we want in such a delicate office. Though we prefer cricket. Interminable, indecipherable cricket.”

“But I don’t speak Pakistani,” protested a visibly upset Roberts.

“It’s Urdu,” said Musharraf.

“Yes it is absurd, that’s what I’m saying,” said Roberts, as a sack was placed over his head and his hands were shackled for the 20-hour flight to Islamabad.

Musharraf also made other small personnel moves, such as honoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s trade request by appointing her Chief Magistrate for Combatant Tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, and re-hiring ex-FEMA chief Mike Brown to lead the search for Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Left: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg relaxes at her new chambers in Guantanamo Bay.

“I’m sure he’ll do a heck of a job,” said Musharraf, who accepts billions in US aid annually to fund the hunt for Al Qaeda. “You take your time and do a good job with it, Brownie.”

President Bush reassured the country that its government is in good hands. "President Musharraf has been a strong fighter against extremists and radicals," Bush said at the end of an Oval Office meeting, "He’s a leader that can help us through these dangerous times."

President Bush said that he hopes the emergency measures will be temporary, and that elections be held next November, as scheduled. He plans to spend the intervening months at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. “Don’t want to be in Pervy’s way, you know? Let him have the run of the place.”

“By the way, Pervy, watch out for Dick,” added Bush. “He wanted to be the one to suspend the Constitution, I'd promised, so he’s pretty pissed.”

Justice Ginsburg Demands Trade

2007-11-05T01:50:00.000-04:00

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Washington, DC – Dissatisfied with the conservative direction in which the United States Supreme Court is headed, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg informed President Bush that she is demanding to be traded, preferably to a more liberal court, or, at least, a “warm-weather” city like Miami or LA.

Justice Ginsburg, who has played for the Supreme Court since 1993, the year that then-Supreme Court G.M. President Bill Clinton called her up from the Court’s Triple A affiliate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, revealed in a weekend radio interview that she is unhappy with her recent lack of playing time.

“Ever since Sandy left and Bill died, I’ve been stuck on the bench,” complained Justice Ginsburg. “What with Sandy being replaced by that troll Alito, all our rulings are conservative now, and I’m in the minority, so I never get to write opinions anymore. I’ve got three law clerks and they ain’t got shit to do. I’ve been reduced to reading dissents from the bench. It’s such a Scalia thing to do, God, I can’t stand it.”

“All I do all day is sit and listen to oral arguments, then I spend the rest of the day browsing through the Frederick’s of Hollywood website,” added Ginsburg. “So basically now I’m Clarence Thomas, but without all the barely-contained bitterness about affirmative action.”

“I even put a pube on Breyer’s Coke can the other day,” she added. “It wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be. He just started crying. It was awful.”

Chief Justice John Roberts explained that Justice Ginsburg just hasn’t become acclimated to the new offense he is running. “We’ve got a new system these days,” said Roberts, who is essentially Greg Kinnear with a law degree and sporadic, inexplicable brain seizures, “and Ruth just doesn’t feel comfortable in it yet. I can’t keep trotting her out there if she can’t produce. I mean, how hard is it to remember that the President and his subordinates can do and order whatever they want? Even that blowhard Stevens gets it.”

Roberts recognized that Ginsburg still has a valid role to play on the Court. “I mean, if some girl sues to get into the Citadel or something, Ruth’s my go-to Justice. She can write the shit out of something like that. But she’s gotta understand that this is the Roberts Court, and we got us about 75 years of jurisprudence to tear down bit by bit, and we only have about 30 years to do it in, and if the liberals want to play, they have to learn the delicate art of fake strict constructionism. Also it would be good if she would learn how to read the minds of the Founders in such a way as to justify restrictions on civil liberties that fly in the face of the Bill of Rights. That'd be a huge plus. She starts showing me some of that, shows me some of that old explosiveness, and I'll get her into the game. Until then, well, there's lots of tax law opinions to write, and there aren't exactly any Justices breaking down my door to sign up to write them.”

Roberts is diplomatic when addressing the subject of Ginsburg, but behind the veneer of collegiality, it is plain to see that he is uncomfortable with her. When pressed, Roberts admits that Ginsburg makes him deeply uneasy.

“Honestly, she scares the hell out of me,” explained Roberts. “She looks like a giant anorexic owl at a high school graduation. I feel like someday I’m going to be discussing a case with my clerks and all of a sudden, 'CAW! CAW!', she’ll swoop down from the sky and eat one of them."

"Alito won't even go near her,” he added. "Says she shows up in his dreams, dressed in a suit made of aborted fetuses, and reads Bush v. Gore to him in a different language every night. He wasn't even on the Court for that one. Last night the language was Orc. Wakes up crying every night. Calls her the Succubus. Horrible."

Bush hasn’t yet said how he plans to handle the trade demand, given that the Constitution makes no provision for such a move. But he remains optimistic that he can get something done, in part because he wants to right perceived past wrongs.

"I gotta find a way to get Harriet Miers on that there Supreme Court. Been buggin' me for years," said Bush. "Or maybe Judge Judy. She don't take no sass. No terrorist gonna fool her into settin' 'im free, that's for sure."

In Which Don Paco Explains to His Friends in Academia the Meaning of Various Pop Songs, In the Language In Which They Are Most Comfortable

2007-11-02T01:05:00.000-04:00

Using a simple form of data regression, the data conveyed in a Sir Mix A Lot composition can readily be presented in quantitative graphic form.

As you well know, I, Don Paco, move in rarefied circles. Many of my friends people the upper stories of the proverbial Ivory Tower; they are university presidents, Nobel Laureates, philosophers, and abstract mathematicians. They all enjoy my company because I can communicate on their level, unlike the bulk of the unwashed masses, who basically scare the living hell out of them, mainly because they do not understand them (since the unwashed masses do not, unlike myself, speak in anapestic tetrameter, nor do they do cutting-edge research on the application of string theory to the study of the gravitational effects of dark matter).

Fortunately for my friends, I understand all these lofty matters, and yet I am also a friend of the common man, for I understand what drives him and his female companion.

And so, in order to help these poor pop-culturally-challenged friends of mine, I have decided to help them understand popular culture by translating portions of several hit songs into language which they can understand.

Sir Mix-a-Lot, Baby Got Back

I like big butts and I can not lie/ You other brothers can't deny/
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough/'Cause you notice that butt was stuffed
Deep in the jeans she's wearing/I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I wanna get wit'cha/And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me/ But with that butt you got [me me me] so horny

Translation: I am of the opinion—which I believe to be widespread among my fellow members of the socio-ethnic agglomeration denominated as “African-Americans”—that a pronounced and pleasantly round, symmetrical posterior is a desirable attribute in a member of the opposite sex, and am drawn to the aforementioned sexual dimorphism. The manifest sum total of your physical attributes, evolved over the generations to produce an optimum female specimen such as yourself, as evidenced by the shapely contours of your hindquarters--which instinctively communicate to me that you would be suitable for childbearing--plus that our offspring would be strong and physically appealing to potential mates, has occasioned in me visible arousal. I desire to couple with you and spread my seed. I would also like to create a photographic image of you so that I can refer to it later for purposes of autoerotic genital manipulation with the goal of attaining sexual release. All of this remains true despite the unspecified warnings of my confreres, ostensibly due to the fact that your derriere inspires in me such intense concupiscence such as to override any and all rational misgivings. Also, in relating the level of my arousal I employ a subtle sonic allusion to the Kubrickian ouvre.

Guns ‘n Roses, Mr. Brownstone

We been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone
He's been knockin'
He won't leave me alone
No, no ,no, he won't leave me alone
I used ta do a little but a little wouldn't do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' ta get a little better
Said the little better than before

Translation: I have developed a crippling physical dependency on heroin, a powdered opiate derived from the sap of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum, so named because the plant was once commonly referred to as “the sleep-bringing poppy,” somnus, of course, being Latin for ‘sleep’). Currently I am ingesting the opiate in order to stave off the physiological symptoms of withdrawal, which has been occasioned by the upward trend of my dependence on the substance, which, due to incessant and regular use, has superseded and overridden my congenital neurological pleasure circuitry, replacing my glandular production of glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin, thereby making it impossible for me to experience neurological “pleasure” without the intravenous administration of the opiate. As my organism developed a tolerance to the substance, the initial dosage grew to be insufficient, and greater quantities of the substance were required in order to achieve the same baseline level of “pleasure.”

Meredith Brooks, Bitch

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover
I'm a child, I'm a mother
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I'm your health, I'm your dream
I'm nothing in between
You know you wouldn't want it any other way

Translation: As a modern, fully-empowered woman, I am tasked with filling a variety of societal niches, the epistemological implications of which include the fact that my individuality is often subjected to reductionist, synecdochic labels by other individuals, who fail to appreciate the various multifaceted aspects of the sum total of my womanhood. When I assert myself forcefully I am labeled a bitch. Society’s normative constructs ultimately hold that my overarching archetypal purpose in life is to serve a maternal, procreative role, but that ipso facto does not negate the fact that I have my own sexual and sensual identity. I am not your oversimplified version of my role; I am imperfect and flawed, but my deviations from societal expectations also allow me to experience and provide my mate with sexual gratification. I embrace these varied dichotomies, and I believe that I could quantitatively prove that my sexual/romantic partners, though perhaps not consciously so, embrace them as well.

TLC, No Scrubs

I don't want no scrub
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to holler at me

Translation: I seek a suitable mate, one whom I judge to have sufficient resources to support me and our offspring in the lavish manner to which I aspire. In selecting a mate with which to pair in order to maximize the evolutionary and reproductive potential of our future offspring, selectionist pressures dictate that I will instinctively reject outright the advances of any suitor whom I perceive does not meet my baseline desired level of evolutionary fitness. Falling immediately into the category of sub-par and thus unsuitable mates are any suitors engaging in courtship behaviors dependent on misleading displays of resources achieved by co-opting the material resources of a companion male. Such courtship advances will be flatly rejected in my search for genetic advancement for my offspring.

Hulk No Longer Want to Smash

2007-11-01T07:51:00.000-04:00

Above: The Incredible Hulk tends to his rolling fields of organically-raised soybeans.

Treasure Valley, Idaho—In a recent interview, raging monster the Incredible Hulk declared that he would no longer be partaking in a life of savage, rage-fueled, gamma radiation-induced violence.

“Hulk no longer want to smash,” said the 9-ft tall green behemoth.

Tired after decades of being chased by General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and the combined might of the US armed forces, fighting green-hued villains like the Abomination and the Leader, and on again, off again membership in superhero organizations such as the Defenders and the Avengers, the Hulk has opted to pursue a quiet retirement in rural Idaho, where he is attempting to make a living as a soybean farmer.

“Hulk like soybean. Soybean green like Hulk,” said the creature who once saved the lives of all of the Marvel superheroes by holding up a mountain range so that it would not crush them.

The Hulk, intensely private after decades in the spotlight, would only reveal a little about his new life, limiting himself to certain closely-circumscribed topics, such as how he acquired his farm (“Hulk buy farm at foreclosure sale.”), how he plows his fields (“Hulk clap his hands at dirt and dirt flies.”), and whether he plans to use industrial or organic cultivation methods (“Hulk soybeans '100% Organic' certified.”)

By all measures, the Hulk is adapting well to his new way of life. He is even getting along with other members of the community, something that he had been notoriously bad at in the past.

“Hulk like puny humans,” said the green one. “Puny human at puny extend credit line to Hulk for farm expenses. Hulk use farm as collateral.”

Like anyone else in this small rural community, the Hulk has his complaints about life as a farmer. In fact, in an entire afternoon with the notoriously mercurial juggernaut, the only flash of the old rageaholic Hulk came when the subject of taxes came up. “Hulk smash IRS form 1040 Schedule J! Hulk not know how to calculate elected farm income! Hulk smash Congress if Congress not simplify tax code!”

“Hulk support flat tax,” added the green libertarian.

Asked whether he had any predictions for next year’s elections, the Hulk stated that “Hulk like Ron Paul, but Hulk worried Ron Paul lack electability. Hulk also like Huckabee, but Hulk note flaccid support from religious community.”

Asked if he had any final words for our readers, the Hulk elected to make clear that he supports the troops, something on which his record has always been spotty. “Hulk sorry Hulk smash all those tanks,” said the man with the greenest thumb in 12 counties. “They shoot at Hulk and make Hulk mad. Hulk say God bless our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Troops smash religious extremism!”

The Bat's Out of the Bag

2007-10-31T15:24:00.000-04:00

So I shot this at a zoo in Argentina a year ago. I had been waiting for the right time to unleash this on the world.

That time has come.

Whoever comes up with the best caption for this will be featured in a future posting, with superpowers if so desired.

Have a Happy Halloween, don't forget to give candy corn the respect it deserves.

Here is a video of this little (or really not so little) guy in action.

Even More Gerald Ford Secret Revelations

2007-10-29T12:51:00.000-04:00

This week will see the release of Thomas DeFrank's new book, "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford,” which consists of information the former President related to author DeFrank under the understanding that it would not be divulged until after Ford’s passing.

Among the somewhat tame revelations that have already made the news were the fact that Ford believed President Bill Clinton to be a sex addict in need of therapy, and that he considered Hillary to be the one that “wears the pants” in the relationship.

Below are some of Ford’s more salacious observations, confided to his Puerto Rican friend Don Paco throughout the course of a 151-proof rum-drenched night in 2005.

The former President told Don Paco that he believed:

-that Dick Cheney’s pacemaker is “sadly, the most human part of him.”

-that the best thing about the Reagan Administration was “that Genesis video. You know, the one with the puppets.”

-that George Bush [Senior] should be given credit for managing to accomplish so much in life in spite of having “spawned so many retards.”

-that Jimmy Carter is “two-thirds tooth.”

-that there is “nothing in the Constitution that requires that the President wear underwear.”

-that Henry Kissinger would make “a great President. President of MY ASS.”

-that the Betty Ford clinic is "total bullshit. My Betty sure knows how to rip off junkies.”

-that global warming is caused by “the Cylons.”

-that the greatest threats facing the United States during the 1980’s were “nuclear war, terrorism, and Frankensteins.”

-that popcorn is “the gayest of the foods.”

-that Watergate was just another instance of “Manny being Manny.”

-that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “may well be a werewolf.”

-that he has been "high as fuck" every single time he's played golf. "In fact, I was pretty much trippin' balls my whole presidency. That's why I was so clumsy. Kissinger used to score for me, he'd get me primo shit, that's why he was always doing all that 'shuttle diplomacy.' Think about it, where was he going? Acapulco? Lebanon? He was just out scoring hash, man. I had to smoke that stuff pretty much 24/7. I mean, what sober person would pardon Nixon? It's fucking NIXON, man!

Ford was also quoted as saying the following:

-“The worst country in the world? Moldova. Fuck Moldova.”

-“I don’t know who Deep Throat was, but I know who I WISH it was: Nancy Reagan. Meow!”

-"Bill Rehnquist only wore button-down shirts because his head was too big to fit through the neck-holes in t-shirts. God I hope he was born by c-section."

-“You know who never got a fair shake? Right Said Fred. Those guys were AWESOME live.”

-"Chevy Chase? Who? Oh yeah. I'll never understand why people think he's so funny. Oh, that's right: they don't."

-“If Don Rumsfeld had been a hobbit, Middle Earth would’ve been fucked.”

-“There’s a lot of partisan rancor in Washington, but in all my years there, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody hate anything more than Elizabeth Dole hates Viagra.”

-“What do you mean Colin Powell’s black? Like, a Negro? Really? Fuck me.”

-“Nixon? Don’t even talk to me about Nixon. You don’t even know how many of his dried boogers I found on the underside of the desk in the Oval Office. You know who did the best Nixon? Antony Hopkins. But not in Nixon. In Legends of the Fall. 'Screw the government! Screw 'em!' Nixon used to say that all the time.”

Ford also revealed that he thought AIDS was caused by “the Japs,” that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman “has got to be kidding with that fucking moustache,” and that the most tragically underused tool in the US diplomatic arsenal is “some good ol’ fashioned Jean-Claude van Dammage.”

A-Rod Opts Out of Yankee Contract, Re-Signs With Texas

2007-10-29T01:16:00.000-04:00

The joy was palpable in Texas today as Rangers owner Tom Hicks announced that the Rangers have re-signed former shortstop Alex Rodríguez to a record-breaking deal. Again.

Arlington, TX--New York Yankees third baseman Alex “A-Rod” Rodríguez, widely regarded as the best player in baseball, opted out of his gargantuan contract yesterday in order to test the waters in the free agent pool. He was immediately re-signed by the team that had traded him to the Yankees, the Texas Rangers.

At the end of the 2000 season, A-Rod’s agent, Scott Boras, led a bidding war among interested teams which resulted in the Texas Rangers signing him to a 10-year contract valued at $252 million. It was rumored at the time that Boras bamboozled Rangers owner Tom Hicks into awarding A-Rod that exorbitant amount by exaggerating the offers extended by other teams, primarily the New York Mets. Among the contract’s many nuances was a provision that allowed Rodríguez to opt out of the contract after the 2007 season.

After the 2003 season, the Boston Red Sox attempted to acquire Rodríguez in a trade, but failed to do so because of financial concerns. The Rangers then named Rodríguez team captain, the move being announced at possibly the most awkward press conference ever. Rodríguez never played a single game as captain, however, because later in that same offseason, the Rangers traded him to the Yankees. In order to complete the trade, the Yankees required Texas to pay $67 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract at the time. Therefore, for the past three seasons, Tom Hicks has paid Rodríguez over $30 million to play for another team, but as of today still owed him over $30 million.

However, Hicks’s $30 million debt was discharged last night when Rodríguez exercised his opt-out clause, unilaterally terminating the contract and freeing Hicks of the $30 million obligation.

Boras and Hicks immediately called a press conference announcing that the Rangers will be re-signing Rodríguez to a 13-year, $390 million contract.

“We’re very excited to have Alex back with us,” said Hicks, who seemed confused by the entire proceedings.

“In a way, it’s like he never really left. I certainly never stopped paying him, anyway,” added Hicks, with a sad, weak chuckle.

Boras, a huge smile on his face, explained that Rodríguez is worth all that money and more. “Alex isn’t just a baseball player, he’s an icon. He’s the iconic symbol of what baseball iconicity is all about. He symbolizes and typifies the modern game, and now he is the face of the Rangers. The iconic face of the Rangers.” He continued speaking as he moved large canvas bags with the dollar symbol into a wheelbarrow.

“Icon,” he added.

Rodríguez will quite literally be the new face of the Rangers. He will be reinstated as the team’s captain, and, as part of the deal, the team will be renamed the Texas A-Rods. The name change will be accompanied by a uniform change, with the team abandoning its red, white, and blue Lone Star design for a purple and green uniform that features Rodríguez’s face on the front and the back. The purple is meant to represent Rodríguez’s lips, which are purple, and the green stands for money, which is green.

Boras explained that having A-Rod’s picture on the front and back of the uniforms symbolizes “the two faces of A-Rod.” He also pointed out that Rodríguez, when in uniform, displays three A-Rod faces (the two on the uniform, and the one on his face), which represents how “he is a triple threat: offense, defense, and, uh, I know it’s something, I’ll get back to you on that. It’s, like, an icon thing or something. How could I have forgotten this already, I just came up with it a minute ago. You’ve got to excuse me, it’s just that, God, these bags are heavy.”

Asked whether such a lucrative contract might not financially cripple the team like it did earlier in the decade, Hicks looked shocked and disoriented, saying “Well, golly, I hadn’t thought of that, maybe this isn’t such a great idea—” before being cut off by Boras, who immediately yelled “No, no, no, Tommy, it’s a valid and binding contract, you’ve got an offer, acceptance, and consideration, it’s guaranteed, I’ll take it to the union, mister!”

Boras, now dressed like the Monopoly guy, then looked around and regained his composure, saying “Wait, let’s settle down, what I meant to say was, wow, what a silly question to ask, Alex is an iconic player, he is universally beloved, his being here will mean other players will want to come play in Texas. Alex is a winner, and winners breed winning and winning breeds winning. My analysts have the numbers to back it up, plus also the contract is a done deal anyway so it’s a moot point. Anyway, he’s an icon. It’s Greek, that word. Icon. But I think they spell it with a k.”

"K for contract, bitches! I'm riiiiiiiich!," he suddenly added.

Asked if he was excited to be coming back to Arlington, Rodríguez, a blank expression on his face, replied that he was, although he’d miss some of his Yankee teammates, like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera, as well as former manager Joe Torre, an answer which seemed dubious to those in attendance, mostly because everyone is well aware that all of the above-named individuals can’t stand Rodríguez.

“I have a lot of great memories of Texas,” said Rodríguez. “Like, uh, Chan Ho Park, and, uh, when we came in fourth place all those years. It’s really good to be back. I’m excited to play with all these guys here in Texas, guys like, uh—” (at this point Rodríguez turned and whispered a question to Boras, who then whispered something back in Rodríguez’s ear) “—guys like Marlon Byrd and Jason Potts. What? Bots? What bots? Oh, Botts. Botts, Jason Botts, I mean. Yeah.”

“I’m the captain,” he added. He then pretended to speak some Spanish.

At that point the press conference came to an end, and the trio walked away from the podium, two of them with uneasy smiles on their faces. As the door shut behind them, some in the room reported hearing Rodríguez saying “Marlon Byrd? The fat guy? He starts for this team? Well at least Teixeira’s still here. What? What the hell, Scott?”

Though the new contract does not contain an opt-out clause like his old one did, it does contain several novel provisions, such as a provision that awards him $10 million extra if 2010 is followed by 2011, another that awards him $15 million in the event that the Yankees and Red Sox are still in the American League in 2012, and one that allows Rodríguez to double the value of the contract at the end of the 2015 season by electing to do so.

In other news, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night.

In Which Don Paco Interviews President Bush at the Hacienda

2007-10-26T02:23:00.000-04:00

Above: My devious dogservant and loyal friend Santiago gives George W. Bush his just desserts by rubbing his doggy asshole all over Bush’s pristine white pants, giving him the dreaded CACULO. For once, it’s W. that gets BEASTED.

HERE AT THE HACIENDA — Ah, hello my friend, I am glad that you have arrived, you have surprised me at a very busy moment, as I am making preparations to receive a very special visitor. I see from the bullet holes with which you are riddled that you have already met his security contingent, Blackwater Security. Would that I have known that when the President travels to Puerto Rico he would be protected by them and not the Secret Service! I would have made the appropriate preparations. As it is, they were here doing the preliminary security check earlier when one of my kitchen staff said something in Spanish, and then their commander immediately yelled “RAGHEADS! RAGHEADS! OPEN FIRE!” And now I have no kitchen. These are dark times.

You did not know I know the President? I actually have known him for quite some time. We went to the same school, though not at the same time, and also in 2000 I bundled $250,000 for his campaign. You did not know I was a Bush Pioneer? I am a complicated man. But mostly he is here because I told him that my humble hacienda sits on vast reserves of petroleum and unlikely Mideast democracy. Halliburton immediately checked and found neither, but the President still doesn’t have their memo about it because Dick Cheney is not done drafting the Executive Order to have me killed. Oh, that Dick, such as—oh, excuse me, here comes the President. Feel free to stay for the interview, though I must say, it looks like you have lost a lot of blood. Let me text Santiago and have him arrange for a blood transfusion for you.

Don Paco: Ahh, Mr. President, how lovely to see you! It has been a dog’s age!

The President: Don Paco! Como habla usted mi cabeza restaurante, taco Río Grande!

Don Paco: Please, sir, you need not worry about speaking in Spanish, though I appreciate what appear to have been your taxing efforts to do so. Please, have a seat.

The President: Boy, that’s a nice suit you’re wearin’ there, Don Paco. A sharp suit. All creamy-colored and delicious-lookin’. I’ma call you Creamy, Creamy McSuitguy. Creamy McSuitguy, heh heh heh! And that hat, great hat!

DP: Ah, Mr. President, I am glad you like it. How nice it is to hear you laugh in these dark times. And what a lovely laugh you have, sounding forced yet involuntary and uncontrollable, it really is unique, and, really, if nothing else, appropriate at all times at which it is deployed.

TP: Well, thanks there McCreamy. I’ll just have a seat on this here chair.

DP: So I wanted to ask you, sir, about your veto of the SCHIP program, which would have provided health insurance to millions of uninsured children. Why did you do that? It’s a program that has worked very well at the state level, it’s economical given what it manages to achieve, it’s quite popular, and it seems like you could have made it the cornerstone of your “compassionate conservative” agenda, which, as I recall, you haven’t really mentioned in years.

TP: Well, Dick explained it to me, and I Decidered that the compassionate thing to do would be to keep those children safe from socialized medicine. I’ve seen what socialized medicine is all about, just ask little Elián.

DP: Elián González?

Blackwater Commander: HAJJIS! OPEN FIRE!! KILL EVERYTHING!!!

TP: Shit, we better duck, Hatman.

DP: No! My beautiful porch! Can’t you get them to stop shooting?

TP: I find it’s best to just let ‘em run outta bullets. Takes ‘em a while to restock. Sounds like they’re windin’ down.

DP: Sir, is hiring these men really necessary? Why are they even here? Where’s the Secret Service? And why can’t the military do what they do in Iraq? Obviously they would be much better at it, you’d have more control over what happens, and it would definitely be cheaper.

TP: Yeah, but you have to trust the market economy, Ricky Martin! Government doesn’t work, trust me, I KNOW. Don’t worry about your casa here, Paco-san, I can get you a nice trailer for while you fix ‘er up.

DP: No thank you, sir, I’ll manage.

TP: You sure? Someone told me they’re full’a formaldehyde. That’s that stuff that keeps your teeth shiny.

DP: I’m pretty sure that you’re wrong about that.

TP: That’s ok. I’m insulated from any consequences stemming from my various and sundry colossal errors in judgment. Whatever that means. That’s what Dick’s always saying to me. I like that word, colossal. COLOSSAL! Like Colossus. He’s made’a metal. Big guy. Metal. Metal flat-top haircut. Always liked him. Throws Wolverine at robots.

DP: Mr. President, I’d like to ask you about the war in Iraq. Is there any way that—

TP: This is a nice place you got, you must spend lotsa time clearin’ brush like I do on m’ranch.

DP: Actually I don’t do anything of the sort. I pay people to do that for me. I do not see the appeal.

TP: I’ll tell you a secret, I only do it cuz Karl made me. He made me buy that ranch, too, right before the election, said people like to see a cowboy in action, you see but I’m scared’a horses, right, so I just clear brush all the time while I’m down there. Wish I could ride m’bike instead. I’m just gonna sell the ranch soon’s I leave office, just wear my spandex shorts and ride m’bike instead there, ol’ Sombrero my pal, you know what I’m sayin’?

DP: Sure. Now, Mr. President, if we could get back to talking about Iraq—

TP: Is that your dog?

DP: Yes, that is my dog, his name is Santiago.

TP: He’s just standing up there on his butt starin’ at me. Won’t quit. Make ‘im quit it. Quit it, dog. Throw you in Gitmo.

DP: He just wants to climb up on your lap, sir. He likes you.

TP: Well hell he shoulda just said so, c’mon up here Santi Claus!

DP: It’s Santiago.

TP: Did you order the code red?

DP: What?

TP: YOU NEED ME UP ON THAT FENCE!

DP: Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

TP: Lookit this here dog, he’s just sitting straight up here on m’lap. He’s staring at me, Don Corleone. Make ‘im stop. I feel like he’s looking right into my very soul.

DP: Perhaps he is, Mr. President. Perhaps he is.

TP: I’ma get goin’, had them Blackwater guys find me some bike trails. BMX! Get offa m’lap, crazy dog. I don’t like your dog, Don whatever. I’ma call him—hey, what the hell? There’s shit on m’pants! Your dog’s shit got on m’pants!

DP: Oh, Mr. President, Santiago seems to have given you a caculo. I’m so very sorry. I should have warned you.

TP: Gave me a caca’s what he gave me. Fuck Cuba I’m outta here.

DP: You’re in Puerto Rico, sir.

TP: Whatever, rice and beans, Mexicans, don’t make no difference. It’s all guest workers to me. Don’t try and climb that fence I’m building.

DP: I don’t have to sneak into the country, I’m a citizen, we all are. We can just fly right in.

TP: Yeah we’ll see about that.

DP: Well, adios, Mr. President, it was lovely to see you.

TP: Yeah well you just watch out for that dog’s asshole. Hasta lasagna, don’t get any on ya!

DP: Sir, did you just quote Emilio Esteves in Mission: Impossible?

TP: Emilio Esteves?

Blackwater Commander: RAGHEADS! RAGHEADS! OPEN FIRE!

Editor's Note: Don Paco would like to apologize for any random Hindi script appearing on this page; for some reason the website seems to have taken to converting select things into Hindi, and for some reason it refuses to let me correct the transliteration setting. This disclaimer, by the way, is in no way meant to offend this blog's vast Hindi-speaking readership, which has an insatiable hunger for all things Puerto Rico-related.

John Edwards Really, Really Shifts Course

2007-10-25T00:32:00.000-04:00

John Edwards plans to use his political liabilities--and steal those of others--to win the nomination.

Somewhere in Iowa – Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, still placing a distant third in most national polls after almost a year’s worth of intensive campaigning, is planning a radical new campaign strategy aimed at getting his name out there by any means necessary. The new strategy, in a nutshell: Edwards is going to run exclusively on scandal.

The new strategy is a brainchild of Edwards campaign manager Joe Trippi and Elizabeth Edwards, the candidate’s wife. At a recent campaign strategy session, Trippi, thinking back to his time as Howard Dean’s campaign manager in 2004, remarked that no matter how hard the campaign tried to get press coverage, nothing they could do ever matched the press that Dean received with his infamous scream at a political rally following his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

“Then we decided to look at how much press other scandals have generated for other campaigns, including our own.” explained Trippi. “I mean, John Edwards was the first to propose a plan for comprehensive health care for all Americans earlier this year, which is clearly what one would consider big news. But what has generated by far the most press coverage for us? His fucking haircut.”

“We found that the same thing was true for all campaigns,” continued Elizabeth Edwards. “Obama coverage spiked when rumors he’d gone to a madrasah [a type of Islamic school sometimes linked to fundamentalist strains of Islam] started circulating, all we heard about John Kerry in 2004 was the whole Swift Boat thing, and, I mean, you’ve heard that Bill Clinton got his dick sucked, right? So we figured that a) we’re in third place, b) if we don’t get the Edwards name out there we’re cooked, and c) we can’t get any reporters to write anything about any policy proposals we may come up with.”

“So, the media won’t report on anything substantive, so what can we do?” asked Trippi. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. As of tomorrow, John Edwards is going to start observing Wahabi Islam, and he’s going to announce that the Holocaust never happened. Also, he is going to start arresting people at random and torturing them. We gotta get our press coverage somehow. John has to win this thing. He’ll go crazy if he has to go back to being a Sam Neill impersonator. If anyone else asks him to sign their copy of Event Horizon, he’ll snap.”

[Event Horizon is a 1997 film about the Event Horizon, a haunted ship in space, starring Sam Neill. It was released after In the Mouth of Madness but before Jurassic Park III, which is an underrated film.]

Edwards’s conversion to radical Islam is only the opening salvo of a multi-pronged new campaign strategy. Edwards will also switch his pro-choice position on abortion to a militantly pro-life one.

“But we need more bang for our buck,” continued Trippi, “so in addition to making John pro-life, we’re going to start having him perform dangerous and unsanitary back-alley abortions on teenage girls—with no parental consent. We figure we’ll get bonus flip-flopper press.”

Edwards also plans to stop supporting the troops. “We’re working on the language for that one,” said Trippi. “Right now we’re focus-grouping slogans. Our leading options for that are ‘Of course we’re losing—our soldiers are illiterate rednecks!’ and ‘Maybe if they were better soldiers, they wouldn’t be getting killed all the time’ We’re really excited and can’t wait to roll that out.”

The Edwards campaign is fully committed to its new initiative, and won’t be limiting itself to Democratic candidate-inspired scandals. Taking a page from Republican Rudy Giuliani, Edwards plans to start cross-dressing more often, divorce his wife Elizabeth (who has cancer) three times, and to start surrounding himself with more advisers with Mafia connections.

Left: One of the Edwards campaign's new buttons.

Though the campaign initiative is still in its early stages, many more facets of it are in the works. Top advisers are debating the merits of having Edwards molest altar boys, and the campaign in talks with premier pornography studio Anabolic Video for Elizabeth to be featured in some of their films. “We’re not quite sure yet how deep we’re going to go with the whole porn thing,” said Elizabeth. “There’s a lot of choices. All we know is that we definitely want to do interracial.”

John Edwards is also considering shaving his head and flashing his shaved vagina as he steps out of cars. He may also get gay married. In Cuba. To Kim Jong Il.

Asked whether the new strategy wasn’t too ambitious—the logistics of performing numerous clandestine, coat-hanger back-alley abortions while adhering to the rigors of the primary campaign schedule seem particularly daunting—Trippi said that the beauty of the idea is that it could be streamlined and kept relatively simple if need be.

“I mean, how easy is it to scream like a crazy person during a speech,” explained Trippi. “That’s just good, solid, headline-grabbing, thrifty campaigning right there. Plus we’re going to stick with what we know. We’re trying to see if we can find anyone who gives $2,000 haircuts to join us on the campaign trail, and give John one of those babies every day. Hopefully in front of the press corps.”

“Also, we’re going to find out who OJ Simpson is dating, and we’re going to have John kill her,” added Trippi.

There has been no word yet as to how the press will react to the new Edwards strategy, but early indicators are positive: Fox News is reporting that 75% of its employees have been incapacitated due to overloads in their neurological pleasure centers, and Matt Drudge has been hospitalized following the explosion of his penis.

Schwarzenegger Puts Out SoCal Wildfires

2007-10-24T05:13:00.000-04:00

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger takes executive action on the California wildfires.

San Diego County, CA -- California residents knew in their hearts that they had made the right choice in re-electing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when the governor single-handedly put out the raging wildfires that had been consuming Southern California for the past week.

With state and local firefighters overwhelmed by the scale of the blazes, the California National Guard protecting California by trucking around Iraq for no real reason, and FEMA being ultimately answerable to “President” George W. Bush, Schwarzenegger took matters into his own hands yesterday, announcing the move at a press conference in Sacramento.

“People of the California, do not be alarmed,” said the Governor. “We will defeat these fires ourselves. I know that this was the very reason that you elected me to be the governor of this great state, and I intend to handle this for the people of this great state.”

When a reporter asked him how he expected to be able to deal with the blazes with no prospect of rain on the horizon and the Santa Ana winds blowing superheated air across the danger areas, Schwarzenegger just smiled and responded, “Don’t worry about the weather, because let me tell you something about the weather forecast for tonight: A FREEZE IS COMING.” The Governor then slapped a female aide on her ass and quickly left the press conference in a helicopter.

Mere hours later, that same helicopter dropped Schwarzenegger directly into the heart of one of the infernal wildfires, yelling “ICE to see you!”

Witnesses at the scene saw that the Governor had donned the Mr. Freeze costume he wore in 1998’s “Batman and Robin.” In the film, Schwarzenegger plays a scientist who cheats death by inventing a suit that keeps him alive by keeping his body at sub-zero temperatures.

Within minutes, a cigar-chomping blue Schwarzenegger had extinguished the fires over a 60-acre area, shooting ice-rays at the burning scrubland, countering the fires’ roars with rejoinders such as “I’m afraid my condition has left me COLD to your pleas of mercy!”

After emerging, head newly shaven and painted a glittery blue, from what he had converted from an unstoppable fire to a cold, glistening wasteland, Schwarzenegger addressed the gathered firefighters and reporters, assuring them that “The reporters on the news were saying that being close to these fires was like being in Hell. Well on this day I have told the fires that tonight, Hell FREEZES over!”

After batting away questions regarding how he had managed to obtain a suit that performed in the same way that the special-effects-driven one he’d worn in the film did, Schwarzenegger looked straight into the camera and addressed the fires directly, saying “Allow me to break the ICE. My name is Freeze. Learn it well, for it is the chilling sound of your doom!”

Schwarzenegger was then airlifted into the eye of another firestorm, yelling “Let’s kick some ICE!” as he dropped into the maelstrom.

Within hours, all of the fires had been put out, whereupon Schwarzenegger returned to Sacramento, where, still wearing the Mr. Freeze garb and blue face paint, the Governor then laid out a bold new political agenda, which centered upon the dual goals of acquiring a gigantic diamond to power his suit and getting revenge on Democratic legislators for defeating the ballot initiatives he spent 2005 promoting.

Abandoning the conciliatory rhetoric he had successfully embraced for the past two years, Schwarzenegger declared that it was a new day in California politics, and explained to his Democratic rivals that “if revenge is a dish best served cold, then put on your Sunday finest. It's time to feast!”

Schwarzenegger also had state police issue warrants for the arrest of actors George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, and Alicia Silverstone, and, though he has no official authority to do so, awarded Joel Schumacher an Oscar.

In unrelated news, First Lady Maria Shriver has fallen into a mysterious coma and has been cryogenically frozen until a cure for her condition can be found.

Captain America Is to Blame for the Steroid Era in Baseball

2007-10-22T21:56:00.000-04:00

Captain America: American hero or American cheater?

Over the last few years, many Americans have gone on record in the print and video media decrying, bemoaning, expressing dismay and general think-of-the-children!-distraughtoisity (totally a real word) over the unholy fact of steroid use in baseball. More ink than could fill the ink sacs of a thousand krakens has been spilt on the pulped, bleached, and flattened remains of millions of oxygen-exhaling trees on the subject of Barry Bonds’s colossal head, Mark McGwire’s Virginia Ham forearms, and, to a lesser extent, whatever exactly it was that steroids allowed Alex Sánchez to accomplish.

But who is to blame for all the outrage, for the shattered dreams, for every angel that died every time José Canseco put one in the stands? Was it evil Canadian sprinting criminal mastermind and Elizabethan playwright name-stealer Ben Johnson? Was it Major League Baseball Commissioner’s Office that looked the other way while each moonshot brought back more fans alienated by the fact that there was no World Series in 1994, which directly led to a Republican-dominated Congress that inflicted Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay on America? Was it the evil Communist hippie San Francisco liberal chemists at BALCO Labs that are to blame for all of this?

I say no, for I have found the original juicer, and he does not have a twin brother named Ozzie.

That is, unless CAPTAIN AMERICA has a twin brother named Ozzie! Captain America, j’accuse!

Most people look at Captain America and see a symbol of democracy and freedom, a fighter for truth, justice, and the American way, sort of like Superman, but not an illegal alien. And yet what do we know about Captain America? All we know is that one day the Nazis were kicking our asses, and the next there was the strappin’ Cap’n, boomerangin’ shield strapped to one arm, kicking the ass of the Red Skull, which, considering the condition of said villain’s face, must have been one raw, red, inflamed ass indeed.

But where did Captain America come from? What minor Nazi ass did he kick before going toe to toe with the Red Skull in the bigs? Do we even know of him kicking any Spanish or Italian fascist ass? No indeed. Who is this masked man, and where did he come from, and how is he still jumping out of planes and kicking Nazi ass while nearing the age of 90?

Steroids, true believers.

Recently declassified documents reveal that Captain America started life as scrawny Steve Rogers, a scrawny lad who couldn’t even pass an Army physical and wanted to be an artist. Yet a few short weeks later, Steve Rogers stood tall, muscular, and square-jawed, and all of a sudden there he is punching Hitler in his stupid face. It turns out that Rogers was juicing the entire time, although he denies that he knew what was going on.

Above: A scrawny Steve Rogers juices for the first time. Right: Anabolically-enhanced Captain America.

“I mean, it was the government doctors that ran the program,” said Rogers in a recent interview. “They kept on giving me these shots, and I kept asking, you know, ‘Hey, what’s in this so-called ‘Super-Soldier Serum?’ And they would always say that it was all natural, that it was mostly vitamin B-12 and flaxseed oil. Honestly, I just thought that that, combined with my new diet and exercise regimen, were what made all the difference.”

“But I’m not here to talk about the past,” added Rogers, tears streaming down his 90 year old yet firm and muscular cheeks.

Though America was only too happy to turn a blind eye to any improprieties given Rogers’s role in helping to turn around the war effort, the warning signs were there for all to see.

Captain America’s sidekick, Bucky Barnes, remembers being shocked when Roger’s would shed the uniform.

“He had all this acne on his back. And you couldn’t even see his balls,” recalls Barnes.

Also raising eyebrows was the fact that sometime at the end of World War II, Rogers’s plane was shot down over the northern Atlantic Ocean. He survived the fiery crash and was frozen in a block of ice for well over a decade, after which he was thawed out and resumed all his normal activities.

“Yeah, you’re not supposed to be able to do that,” said every scientist ever.

With cheaters like Captain America held forth as positive role models, it is no wonder baseball is in its current predicament, and when confronted with the truth, baseball’s abusers of performance-enhancing substances admit to being duped.

“I know I said that I started using HGH [human growth hormone] because my dentist told me I had a pituitary gland disorder, but deep down inside I always knew that was just an excuse,” said recently-outed HGH user Paul Byrd, a soft-tossing journeyman pitcher, late of the Cleveland Indians. “I guess that what I really wanted to do was to strike out Hitler. Strike him out right on his stupid Nazi face.”

Moreover, Captain America's vanquished enemies are now crying foul.

"It really cheapens all that we went through at the time," said the Red Skull, now a retired Bavarian florist. "I mean, me and Hitler just assumed that we were all playing on a level playing field, and now to find this out. I say Captain America's records be erased. Also we won World War II. DEUTSCHLAND!"

Update: Apparently Captain America has been killed. Major League Baseball has not indicated whether it will be following that game plan for its own substance abusers.

In Which Don Paco Cordially Welcomes You to His Porch

2007-10-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

Hola. Thank you for stopping by, please sit. Would you like some coffee? My highly trained dog Santiago will fetch it for you. No? Are you sure? It is quite delicious, and Santiago does not mind. Very well then, but I must warn you that it is brewed from the finest freshly roasted coffee beans from Puerto Rico, and that by not having any you are doing yourself a spectacular disservice. You will have some? You are wise beyond your years. Santiago! Café! It should be here shortly.

So, my friend, how have the Bush years been treating you? Wow! I must say, I am very impressed with the sheer poetic vulgarity of the outburst my innocent question seems to have occasioned in you. Never have I heard so heartfelt a call for an elected official to be raped by velociraptors! I must make certain to mention this in my next letter to Michael Crichton.

Please enjoy your delicious coffee. Feel free to stay as long as you want. I am going inside to have a little chat with Santiago. You see, he had been gaining too much weight, and I have been forced to put him on a diet, which he has taken to poorly, and he is insistent on communicating his displeasure by defecating on my floor several times a day.

Is there something wrong with your coffee? You look pale.