Better Red than Never...

Here's a little preview of what you all can expect next week...

Comrades, this is your captain.

It is an honor to speak to you today, and I'm honored to be sailing with you on the maiden voyage of our motherland's most recent achievement.

And once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess, against our old adversary...the American Navy.

For years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game and played it well.

But today, the game is different.

We have the advantage.

It reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik

and Yuri Gagarin,

when the world trembled at the sound of our rockets.

Well, they will tremble again…at the sound of our silence.

The order is engage for silent drive.

Comrades, our own fleet doesn't know our full potential.

They will do everything possible to test us, but they will only test their own embarrassment. We will leave our fleet behind. We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city…

and listen to their "rock and roll"

while we conduct missile drills.

Then...when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, while we sail to Havana, where the sun is warm…

And so is the comradeship.

Dozvedanya, babies,

Raj

Hey Lady! Yeah you.

So I'm outside and I see this fuckin cow on her scoot waiting for her kid.
Kid comes up, she's like 12 or 13, about the same age as the Ranette.
Kid's just off school, wearing her uni and humping her book bag an all, and the broad don't say hi, don't even make eye contact, just holds out the kid's helmet, like real impatient like and waits for the little bugger to climb on the back.

What a fuckin bitch, like what's the fucking malfunction here?
I mean, the fuck, she's a 12 year old kid, what could she possibly do to deserve that kind of fucking stinkface?

Seriously, man, I mean, really.
You know, if you see a kid, or you talk to a kid, why in fuck would you want to be anything except nice to them?

Especially here, where their average life consists of an average of 15 mungogingillion percent more misery, drudge, and pointless discouragement than any of us will ever fucking know?

I mean you might be the only nice thing that happened to them all fuckin month, for jumping out loud.

They're fucking kids, for fuck sakes!

They're little, they got no beef with you, and they probably don't hurt anyone.

I'm fuckin shaking my head here.

Some days this whole prohibition of casual physical violence doesn't really seem like such a hot fuckin deal...

Raj

Losing a beloved elder

We try not to get too much into the whole Guess Who Died Today deal, but every now and then, you know, we do lose someone who leaves a gijantic hole that will just never be filled.

As he's known around my house, our much loved "Grandpa Earl" passed yesterday.

Aside from the fact that he was very nearly single-handedly (see what I did there?) responsible for the creation of a musical form that became known (and, at least around The Palace, adored beyond words)

the world over,

and yeah, if you've ever, even once, heard this sound

and tapped a toe or two (and if you DIDN'T, seek medical assistance ASAP), Earl's the one you can thank.

But, aside from all that, in a career that spanned more than 50 years, in which he joyfully joined in on the music that he loved with pretty much anyone who wanted to, he remained a warm, unfailingly courteous gentleman always

I guess/hope he's with old Bill now

who doubtless got grumpy on him about having to wait (NO-ONE keeps Bill Monroe waiting!)...

Here's as good a sendoff as any.

See how sharp you are at identifying the Friends in this one.

(They're just a handful compared to the millions he made.)

Sorry, I was looking for this and just found it.

On November 15, 1969, Scruggs played his Grammy-winning "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" on an open-air stage in Washington, D.C., at the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, becoming one of the very few bluegrass or country-western artists to give support to the anti-war movement. In an interview after his performance, Scruggs said:

I think the people in the South is just as concerned as the people that's walkin' the streets here today ... I'm sincere about bringing our boys back home. I'm disgusted and in sorrow about the boys we've lost over there. And if I could see a good reason to continue, I wouldn't be here today.

Class act, all the way.

See you, Earl.

Raj

Life renewed for another year

Yeah, well, it looks like it might actually be spring, or whatever passes for same here in Stinkytown.

Anyways, correspondingly, we cracked out some of the hot weather tunes this morning.

First up, Sheffield's favourite sons

Honestly babies, if you can't love the Leps, well, you might as well just pack her in and brick yourself in to a $200/mo one room basement suite and live off canned fucking tomatoes and white bread toasted with a fucking coat hanger over a propane torch.

Honest to fuck, we used to walk around with hair like that, and nobody even batted an eye.

And no, I have no fuckin idea what the deal is there with the forklifts.

You know, the story goes that when Joe

Elliot's Ma first heard Love Bites on the radio, she broke down and cried.

Now, see, that's why you join a rock and roll band...


Raj

We do try to be flexible...

OK, I think my own personal feelings regarding peelers (the Irish kind

not the back home kind)

are pretty much a matter of record.
Just in case, to quote my old High School buddy Kramer

in True Romance

I FUCKING HATE COPS!!!

Even so.

Chick cops

are kind of hot, right?

I mean, chick gets PAID to carry handcuffs, yeah?

Maybe it's just me.

Raj

Oh for crying out loud

Enough all fucking ready, jeez louise...

 

Raj

You're up, you're down

Man I still remember how utterly fuckin devastated I was when they announced that they weren't going to be making any more episodes of St. Elsewhere.

Of course, on the other hand, this was right around the time they started putting nipples on clothing store mannequins

So, you know, you win some, you lose some.


Raj

Holy crap that's a lot of cuss words

Jeez Louise, I just read that last one.
Even I was a little taken aback at the amount of bad language.


I rock.


Raj

Oh yeah, this is a GREAT fucking idea

You know, this is EXACTLY what we needed.

Something to make the hoopleheads pay even LESS attention to their surroundings.

Ask me how many fucking times

a fucking day

I get fucking assholed

by one of these numb fucks who's too wrapped up in what the fuck EVER is going on on their fucking BOX

to notice what's actually HAPPENING in the actual WORLD around them.

Go on, ASK me.


Don't ask.


Fuckin mittbanging buttwipes.

Raj

A little fuckin culture never hurt no one

I was informed this morning that it's Poetry Day.

Well shit, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity for us all here to experience the loftier forms of artistic expression and all, like fuck.

So here's one I learned many years ago and that I've always loved.
I hope you all feel the same.

Here we go.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
How about some fucking Floyd, man?

You got it.

Raj

Pet peeves

Look, you got to be at least half fucking insane to keep cats anyways.

Anyways, our beloved Ranee, she got a really serious, like pathological, fear of furry animals, so there's never been any question of us having that kind of pets.
And this is a totally shit environment for dogs anyways, not that that stops people from having them.
We got fish

I like having the paradigm between PET and FOOD in constant flux...

and these three fucking radioactive turtles. Actually they started out as them little NT$50-sized ones you get, but whatever the Ranee just fucking looks at grows like a bastard (she grows potatoes and chilies and shit on our back balcony and the front balcony Tarzan would fucking get lost in)

Uhhh, OK, so who exactly is supposed to be snapping the photo again??? Fucking Tantor??

and after 3 years of her attentions they're bigger than my fucking hand.

I keep waiting for them to start running around doing the fuckin Ninja shit

at least then I could hire them out and they could pay for their own damn dead flies.

Raj

There goes the neighborhood

I swear to fuck, this dude, Brando's sidekick from the blindingly execrable The Island of Dr. Moreau

works on the 7th floor.
Except he dresses like a chick.

Still, better than having

and

in the fucking house, I guess.
There'd never be any ice cream at the fuckin Family Mart.

Actually I was chatting with Baron Schinklefucker von Sacksmeller there the other day, and we were recollecting when I used to work for Stalinco out there in Tucheng.
Now that was fuckin scary, I swear to heck, imagine an entire county where your average bus ride looks like

Yeah, and they're all fuckin staring at me, for fuck's sakes...

Hmmm, actually now that I think on it, I'm having lunch next Thursday with a group that ain't far off from that...


Raj

Breathing in, breathing out

Fuck me.
On the one hand, the firm just implemented a major procedural policy change entirely dictated by me.

On the nother hand, there’s a fluorescent tube directly above me that's been blinking on and off all fucking day

and Stinky the Office Puke says they won't have a spare 'til Monday.

On the NOTHER hand, I got a rich and satisfying cup of the finest workingman's tea to be found on either side of the North Channel

(courtesy of guess fucking who) for the 1530 hours tea break

.

But on the NOTHER hand I got fuck all to go with it except a fucking orange.

Jeez, you wouldn't think a fuckin biccie

or two

would be too much to ask, would you??

Guess a fella will just have to go here and fantasize...


Raj

Enter Carson

So apparently, my Bestest Oldest Friend in the world has been tuning in here.

Carson, everyone.
Everyone, Carson.

I was thinking of a good Carson story to tell, this is one of my favourites.

You all mostly haven't met him, he never goes anywhere that you can't get to by Greyhound.

Jeez they didn't have that slick paintjob when I used to take them...

Except Jamaica

and Cincinnati, I guess

Since I already did the Loni Anderson deal last week there

which isn't too shabby, really.

Any fuckin ways, pivotal to this story is the fact that he's a big strapping good looking fella, sort of a Christopher Reeve

except with talent, or a (young) Bobby Duvall

except with hair.

Anyways, in addition to being extraordinarily handsome, clever, charismatic, well-read, erudite and a lovely fella, he's also kind of a famous guy, being a published, award-winning playwright and well-known actor of the theatrical persuasion

Except he's in colour

and accomplished musician and singer/songwriter. As a result of all these factors, he's sort of got a track record of being associated with generally killer hot women. Smart, funny, engaging. interesting, women of significant achievement and character, to be sure.

But sick fucking hot, just the same.

Anyways, I was talking to him one day, shortly before I left Kanookistania, because I'd been thinking about my own personal history vis a vis the ladeez, and I was considering how I, as well, had a significant history of involvement with really really fucking fine looking women, on a variety of levels, like, really attractive.

Any fucking ways, I was talking with Cars, dead sincere, I was really serious, and I was saying something like, you know:

Don't you ever feel guilty? I mean, you know, all these years, we've been strictly confining ourselves to activity with only the best looking, the hottest, most beautiful women, you know? I mean, I just feel kind of...you know, bad, I mean...who's taking care of all the ugly girls?

Carson doesn't even bat an eye, just looks over at me and shrugs and says, as casual as can be

The ugly guys??


Good to have you on board, brother, Jah Love.


Raj