Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Author: SugarFree

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links – Recurring Theme Edition

    See if you can spot the recurring theme…

    Why America needs a hate speech law

    When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting “free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

    But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?

    It’s a fair question. Yes, the First Amendment protects the “thought that we hate,” but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.

    Oh, fuck off.

    (And an additional “fuck off” for being behind a paywall.)

    John Legend to Remix ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ Will Remove Problematic Elements and Promote Consent

    “Hold on, hold on,” he says, when this reporter looks skeptical about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” It turns out that Legend has updated the lyrics with Natasha Rothwell (Insecure) and recorded it with his fellow The Voice coach Kelly Clarkson. The song’s every bit as fun and swinging as the original, and its newfound sensitivity feels genuine, not performative.

    “What will my friends think…” sings Clarkson.

    “I think they should rejoice,” Legend responds.

    “…if I have one more drink?”

    “It’s your body, and your choice.”

    Oh, fuck off.

    Court rules Colorado man who lost home in SWAT team standoff with shoplifter is owed NO compensation

    A federal appeals court ruled that a home owner isn’t owed any compensation by police after a SWAT team blasted away at his Colorado house in a stand-off with an armed shoplifter and left the property a total loss.

    Leo Lech sued after police in the village of Greenwood fired gas munition and 40-millimeter rounds through the windows of his home in the June 2015 standoff with the shoplifter who had barricaded himself inside.

    Cops even went as far as driving an armored vehicle through the doors, tossed flash-bang grenades inside and detonated explosives in the walls of the property.

    A federal appeals court ruled Leo Lech isn’t owed any compensation by police after a SWAT team blasted away at his Colorado house (pictured) in a stand-off with an armed shoplifter and left the property a total loss

    Lech, who had estimated his losses at about $250,000 and filed a civil suit seeking compensation for the damages, was told he would get nothing by a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Tuesday, reports the Washington Post.

    Oh, fuck off.

    Oh, fuck off.

    An Interview With the Mayor Who Banned Trick-or-Treating for Anyone Over 12

    Belleville, Illinois, has forbidden teenagers from trick-or-treating since 2008, with no plans to back down. Belleville, just across the Mississippi River from Saint Louis, is the county seat of St. Clair County and the most populated city in Southern Illinois. It is also the town where the company now called Jelly Belly Candy Co.—which helped popularize candy corn—was founded in 1869. Mark Eckert, the mayor of Belleville, signed an ordinance in 2008 that banned anyone older than 12 from trick-or-treating. More precisely, the ordinance forbids “seeking or obtaining gifts, food, candy or contributions of money, as is customarily and commonly known as ‘trick or treat’ in the celebration of Halloween day.” (An exception is made for older disabled children accompanied by caregivers.)

    Oh, fuck off. With a side of “Christ, what an asshole.”

    And a fine song to tell someone to “fuck off” to…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRh0tpnYwcg

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 137

     

    “Nothing is ever good enough for these fuckers, you know?” the hat asked the hair.

    “Hmm,” the hair replied.

    “Fucking Washington Post,” the hat said again, “Just can’t give credit where credit is due.”

    “Uh-huh,” the hair grunted.

    “Are you listening to me?” the hat asked.

    The hair stared over his glasses at the hat. “How can I not listen to you? Is there anywhere I can even get away from the sound of your voice?”

    “They’ve gone right back to the fake fraud bullshit impeachment lynching!” the hat barked.

    “The media hates Donald, what’s new?” the hair said, going back to reading his magazine.

    “We killed Baguetti! We killed the leader of ISIS!” the hat shouted.

    “Baghdadi,” the hair said as he snaked out a tendril and lapped up a blob of Rogaine. “Ugh,” he grunted, “This has gone cold.”

    “We killed him!” the hat said.

    “Can I just eat breakfast in peace?”

    “No. No, you can’t. The media is screwing us yet again and you are just sitting there!” the hat screamed. And then: “Is there anymore marmalade?”

    “You ate it all,” the hair told him.

    “All of it?”

    “Well, I didn’t eat any of it.”

    Donald looked up from his third Ham and Egg McMuffin. “Marmalade has rinds in it. That’s gross.”

    “They booed us at the baseball game,” the hat said, getting himself all worked up again.

    “They booed us at the baseball game,” the hair replied. “Donald and me. You weren’t even there.”

    “Someone had to watch Barron!’ the hat said defensively. “You know, what with his…”

    “Don’t say it!” the hair warned.

    “With his…”

    “DON’T. JUST DON’T!” the hair yelled.

    “What are you two talking about?” Donald demanded.

    “Nothing,” the hair said. “Just go back to your breakfast.”

    Donald grunted and unwrapped another Ham and Egg McMuffin. He opened the sandwich, plucked out the disc of ham and dropped the rest on the floor. “Ham,” he moaned, nibbling around the edges.

    “Ring for more marmalade,” the hat said.

    “You do it, Donald and I don’t even eat it,” the hair replied.

    “I just need a little more,” the hat whined. “I only have two zippers left.”

    “Choke ‘em down dry, like a dog dick,” the hair snapped.

    “Geez, OK, fine, whatever,” the hat said. He dropped off the desk and inchwormed his way across the floor.

    Donald nosily opened another McMuffin and dug out the ham.

    “Why do you do that, Donald? It’s so wasteful. They’d give you extra ham if you asked.”

    “If it was just ham, then it wouldn’t be a Ham and Egg McMuffin, then would it?” Donald replied.

    “Well,” the hair said, “Well, I guess it wouldn’t.”

    “For a smart guy, you aren’t always all that smart sometimes,” Donald said. He winged the disc of egg at the hat, receiving a disgusted cry when it hit home.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links – Skin edition

    Man tries to make Onion article a reality.

    “Rub this callus to take a selfie.”

    What your phone needs is a supple, pinchable coat of human skin, apparently

    Today in news that will please David Cronenberg and only David Cronenberg, it is now possible to shroud your smart devices in warm, flabby flesh that just loves being pinched and tickled.

    Skin-On Interfaces, a line of smart device covers currently in development, uses artificial skin technology to create new input gestures for computers and mobile devices—all you need to do is poke, stroke, and press down on that soft, supple meat. This nightmare comes from designer Mark Teyssier, his team at Telecom ParisTech, and researchers from HCI Sorbonne Université and CNRS. (Cronenberg, we imagine, is a silent partner.)

    Teyssier, who believes that “human skin is the best interface for interaction,” first came up with the idea after he had a compulsion to pinch his phone, which, sure, we’ve all felt at some point, right? His project has resulted in two different products: one with a uniform skin surface and another that promises the hyper-realistic feeling and appearance of filthy, probably hairy flesh.

    Charmless Hags Obsessed With Charmless Hag

    Warren, the piece noted, isn’t the kind of person who is just gonna get her a beer: She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She’s rich. She was a professor at an Ivy. But, as The Atlantic admits, “gonna get me a beer” isn’t posturing, it’s a typical speech pattern for somebody from Oklahoma. The thing about Warren that’s been irreconcilable for pundits and the political media: She may have taught at Harvard, but Warren actually is from down home. She’s both. And she’s deploying that personal story effectively.

    Warren’s stump speeches are filled with personal references to the challenges of working middle-class motherhood—of finding and affording daycare and of the precariousness of it all. She’s claiming the narrative of the local girl made good, the woman who toughed it out. In politics, this story is usually trotted out by men, who want to tell you about a waitress they met in a diner in a key primary state and the homey wisdom she imparted to them. If you see it first-person, it’s more typically the stuff of country music.

    Harris is such a buzzkill and Sanders is half-dead so Jezebel has to work up the spit to go down on Warren.

    Gum. The key is gum. For the next 46 articles.

    And delve into the contents for the category error that a condescending lecture is always a hard truth…

    DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

    Navy ‘Doomsday’ plane built to withstand nuclear attack grounded after striking single bird

    The Navy’s “Doomsday Plane,” designed to withstand even a nuclear attack, suffered millions of dollars in damages after striking a single bird as it practiced a landing maneuver earlier this month at a Maryland air station.

    Hate Bird, The Bird That Hates… your plane

    The E-6B Mercury was supposed to only touch down momentarily before immediately taking off again from the Patuxent River Naval Air station – but a bird was sucked into one of the plane’s four engines while it attempted the “touch and go” move, according to Military.com

    Tim Boulay, the communications director for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, told the Navy Times the incident was a “Class A” mishap, which means there was at least $2 million in damages to the plane. The designation is typically used in instances of aircraft destruction and death.

    No one aboard the Navy aircraft was injured, but the plane was temporarily grounded after the Oct. 2 incident.

    This marks the second “Class A” mishap for an E-6B Mercury this year – back in February, one of the planes brushed against a hangar as it was being moved from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The incident also resulted in millions in damages.

    Imagine being this butthurt that a mass shooting DIDN’T occur.

    That dastardly Joker is now dancing on anything but those stairs

    Before it came out, everyone was terrified that the Joker would lead to mass violence.* Instead, weeks after its release, it’s mostly lead to people photoshopping Joaquin Phoenix in clown make-up into any image they can imagine. This, obviously, is a reassuring outcome. Rather than accept a supervillain’s ideology as their own, the world has latched onto that scene where he dances down a Bronx staircase instead, seeing in that moment the truth that comic book movie iconography should never be taken more seriously than its potential as fodder for dumb memes.

    The fullest expression of this is a Twitter account called “Joker Dancing In Random Places,” which has been created for no apparent purpose other than to slap a boogying Joker into, as the name suggests, any old place its administer can imagine. Here, for example, is the Joker introducing a bit of levity to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

    *Please note: A few dipshits on the internet do not constitute “everyone.”

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 136

     

    “Facebook?” the hair asked.

    “Of course,” the hat replied.

    “CNN?”

    “Yes, of course.”

    “Google? Apple? Microsoft? The NBA?” the hair asked.

    “Yes, yes, yes, and hell yes,” the hat confirmed.

    “They’re all Russian assets?”

    “Yup. All Russian assets.”

    “And all of the Democratic candidates?” the hair asked.

    “Everyone one of them. And when they lose to Donald, that will prove it.”

    “Huh?”

    “Try and keep up, OK?” the hat sighed.

    “Is there anyone who isn’t a Russian asset?”

    “Only Hillary. That’s why she’s going to jump into the race,” the hat said. “She’ll have to in order to save America. If there were any legitimate candidates on in Putin’s employ, then Hillary wouldn’t be forced–FORCED, I SAY!–to get into the race.”

    “All Russian assets?” the hair asked incredulously.

    “Only a Russian asset would question their designation as a Russian asset,” the hat said matter-of-factly.

    “Is that all of them, just the entire traditional and social media and all twelve Democratic candidates?” the hair asked.

    “No, there are more. Far more. Millions more,” the hat said and paused for dramatic effect. “Everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 is also a Russian asset.”

    “That can’t be true,” the hair said.

    “And some of the one that did vote for her too. They confused the electoral college by giving Hillary the win of the popular vote.”

    The hair gasped and whispered, “Diabolical.”

    The hat nodded sagely.

    “So who isn’t a Russian asset?” the hair asked.

    “Well, Hillary, obviously.”

    “Obviously.”

    “And Chelsea. And maybe Bill.”

    “What about his penis?” the hair asked.

    “Oh, Bill’s penis is definitely a Russian asset.”

    “What about Huma?” the hair asked.

    “Well, she was a Russian asset, but Hillary turned her.”

    “How did she turn her?”

    The hat lolled out his tongue and waggled it suggestively.

    “Ah,” the hair said.

    “Sapphic rites,” the hat said.

    “No, I get it,” the hair replied.

    “A trip through the rubyfruit jungle. She shucked her oyster.”

    “You’ve made it clear…”

    “Bumped doughnuts. Munched her rug. Licked her carpet. Slurped her hairy taco.”

    “Stop, just stop.”

    “Stirred her bean curd!’ the hat said.

    “‘Stirred her bean curd?!?’” the hair asked, confused.

    “It’s Chinese.”

    “Chinese?” the hair asked.

    “Is there a fucking echo in here or something?” the hat asked Donald.

    “You guys need to slow down,” Donald said. “I’m trying to write all this down and you are going way too fast.”

    “Well, let me see what you have so far,” the hat asked. Donald turned the writing pad and slid it across the desk to the hat.

    The hat studied the pad intently and then said, “Donald, this is just a drawing of two giraffes having sex.”

    “And that’s a hyena watching,” Donald said, pointing to the small figure in the lower corner.

  • Camp Stories

     

    The summer of 1984, at a sleep-away camp in the Tennessee mountains, the counselors–earnest, well-scrubbed Christian kids–would tell us ghost stories around the campfire. If I had been older, I would have recognized most of them as fairly standard urban legend stories: the hook-hand, the spider eggs, the vanishing hitchhiker. When I was younger, I had heard almost the same stories at sleep-over camping trips run by the YMCA, so they didn’t bother me all too much.

    But on nights when the counselors left our 16-kid cabins to drink or fuck or sneak off to the McDonald’s in the little town nearby, one of the kids that had been at the camp before told us The Story, an oral tradition that had been passed down kid-to-kid for who knows how many years. A horror story that carried a lesson in socialization and proper behavior. Here’s how I remember it…

     

    There was a boy a few years back who had nightmares. His name was Timmy. He would thrash around in his upper bunk bed and call out. He kept all the other kids awake and they would be exhausted the next day, not having any fun, doing poorly at the archery range or falling asleep by the pool.

    At first light, Timmy would jump down from his bunk and race to the bathroom facility, someways down the mountain that had been dotted with camper cabins. His bunk-mates understood that this meant Timmy was too afraid of the dark to go to the bathrooms at night. But this lead to Timmy finally having a nightmare so bad that he peed the bed, the urine soaking not only his mattress but also dripping down on the kid below him. Everyone was disgusted when they found out what had happened and so when the cabin counselor took Timmy down to the bathroom to get him cleaned up, a plan was hatched.

    The next night the counselor was gone–like that very night we were hearing this story–all the boys in the cabin woke Timmy from his usual nightmare, rolled him in his bedsheets and carried him out into the woods, never saying a word. The carried him far from the cabins and the lights around camp and tied him up in a tree. Not to a tree, up in a tree, dangling a few feet off the ground and gagged him. Timmy begged and squirmed and screamed into his gag, but the other boys left him there, not telling him if they planned to return. They went back to the cabin and all fell asleep.

    Timmy couldn’t get loose and he couldn’t cry for help. There was no hope anyone from the camp would find him by accident. He hanged there limp and defeated.

    And then something licked his foot.

    He looked down. As quiet as ghosts, a pack of wolves had surrounded the tree he was suspended in. Another lick of his foot. It almost tickled. Timmy screamed. The closest wolf finally bit his foot and tore away a few of his toes. He could feel the other wolves lapping at the blood. This drove the wolves in a frenzy, more of them biting his feet, worrying off their own pieces of Timmy, tugging as they pulled his flesh away. Timmy screamed until he had no voice left.

    The wolves continued eating Timmy, bracing against the tree to eat further and further up his legs. Finally jumping to bite into Timmy’s knees, dangling there until their body weight tore off another chunk of the boy. They ate Timmy down to just stumps.

    After the wolves were done, they wandered away into the woods. Timmy was quite insane from pain and shock at this point. But all the terrible tugging of the starving wolves had loosened the ropes and he finally fell into the mud his blood had made at the base.

    Using his hands and arms, Timmy dragged himself into the woods, vowing revenge. He would go back and kill the boys who had done this.

    The boys from the cabin returned the next morning and found blood and chewed bone at the base of the tree. They assumed that Timmy had been entirely eaten and realized they would be in huge trouble if it was discovered what they did. They climbed the tree and took down what was left of the ropes, they threw the chewed bones in different directions and piled leaves and loam over the blood at the base of the tree. They made a pact never to talk about this to anyone else as long as they lived. And then they went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast.

    When it was discovered that Timmy was missing, the summer camp organized a search for him, assuming this troubled little boy had run away. When they found nothing, they called in the state police. The state police interviewed the counselor, who lied and said he had been in the cabin all night; when they interviewed Timmy’s cabin-mates, none of them confessed to what they had done. When the state police finally left empty-handed, the panic and unrest in the camp died down. Buy this time, summer was almost over. The boys who left Timmy to the wolves were about to go home to various states.

    On the last night of camp, Timmy got his revenge. He dragged himself into his old cabin, his half-healed leg stumps leaving tracks of mud on the floor as he smothered the boys one-by-one, quietly to not wake the others. But just the boys on the bottom bunks. He couldn’t reach the ones on the top bunks. They were safe.

    The next morning, the surviving kids woke to find the muddy drag tracks on the floor. Their screams woke the counselor and he freaked out at finding all the boys in the bottom bunks dead. The survivors of the massacre instinctively knew this was the work of Timmy.

    They warned the other kids at camp that Timmy was still out there and he could get you if you slept in the bottom bunks.

     

    What a fantastically gruesome story, right? 36 years later I still think about, maybe more than I should. I know that the boy in my cabin, in his upper bunk, didn’t tell it just like I did. I’m sure I’ve added details and embellishments to where the story is just as much as his at this point. But I know it was about a boy left in the woods who had his legs eaten off by wolves, and the revenge he extracted.

    So many plot holes, but, then, this was a child’s story told to children. Terrified in our bottom bunks, we didn’t think about the distinct lack of wolves in 1980s Tennessee, or effects of traumatic limb amputation and blood loss on a 12-year-old, or the camp somehow covering it all up and not being sued out of existence.

    Do any of you have one of these? Or local urban legends? Please share in the comments.

  • The Hat and The Hair Extended Universe: Hillary and Chelsea

     

    Hillary’s stomach rumbled and she growled, “I hunger,” in the dark confines of the limousine.

    “We’re almost to the book signing,” Chelsea whispered.

    “The Book of Gutsy Women,” Hillary said dismissively. “Why did they name it that? It makes me hungry every time I see it.”

    “They paid us well enough to use our names,” Chelsea murmured.

    “Your name is all you have in this life,” Hillary told her. “That’s why you have to keep it free from scandal, like I have.”

    Chelsea turned to look out the window and rolled her eyes so hard there was an audible click.

    “Names,” Hillary said. “Names have power.”

    “I know, Mom,” Chelsea said.

    “Names are the oldest power, ancient and terrible. The Demiurge named all things and in turn brought them into being. That’s scripture.”

    “I don’t believe in all that, Mom,” Chelsea said. She squirmed against the leather seat of the limousine and pulled at her blouse and pants. Human clothes never fit her very well.

    “Belief is nothing when you behold the Sleeping God!” Hillary snapped.

    Chelsea closed her eyes and counted backward from twenty. When she opened her eyes, her mother was staring at her.

    “Did it help?” Hillary asked. “Did your little anxiety exercise help? I should have never let Bill take you to that fraud.”

    “He’s a psychiatrist, not a fraud,” Chelsea said in a small voice.

    “A man,” Hillary spat. “Of course Bill sent you to a man. Fifty-minute gaslighting sessions!”

    “That’s not what ‘gaslighting’ means,” Chelsea said.

    “Hungry,” Hillary said again. “When are we eating? I need food.”

    “Is there anything in the minifridge?” Chelsea asked.

    “Food,” Hillary said, her voice dropping an octave.

    “OK, OK, I’ll look in the minifridge for you.”

    “Hunger drives transformation,” Hillary said in the same booming tones.

    “Why didn’t you eat at the hotel?”

    “Meat,” her mother croaked. She opened her mouth too wide.

    “There’s just tiny bottles of booze in here,” Chelsea said.

    “Silicates and ethanol,” Hillary said. “Feed.”

    Chelsea took a fistful of tiny bottles and shoved them into the gaping maw of her mother. Hillary’s eyes had gone black and the clicking bones in her breasts had begun to shift menacingly. The noise of breaking and chewed glass filled the back of the limo.

    “More,” the Hillary creature demanded, streams of liquor and ichor running down her face.

    Chelsea fumbled open a small shelf over the bar. “Nuts and a bunch of Luna bars,” she reported.

    “Nutrition for women,” Hillary croaked. Chelsea threw them into her mother’s mouth without even unwrapping them. Mashed in a beige paste, they were quickly gulped.

    “It’s so gross when you get like this,” Chelsea said.

    “Born in blood and blood you shall be,” Hillary said. She used her clawed hand to peel off a long strip of leather from the seat and fed it into her mouth.

     

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links of Mystery

    Stuffed With Sockeye Salmon, ‘Holly’ Wins ‘Fat Bear Week’ Heavyweight Title

    Fat Bear Week 2019 officially ended Tuesday night. And the winner is …

    No. 435, or if you prefer a name, Holly.

    Fat Bear Week has been an annual event for the past five years in Katmai National Park and Preserve in southwestern Alaska. The idea is to publicize and celebrate the process of bears eating as much as they can to build up crucial fat reserves in advance of winter hibernation.

    Park rangers made a game out of the process — a March Madness-style bracket matching bear against bear, each with photos proving girth and inviting the public to vote on the fattest bear in each pair.

    Apologies to those who might have thought that “Fat Bear Champion” was a porn title, or an anime title, or an anime porn title. (Swiss can’t narrow his eyes… I stole the joke from him!)

    But watch out, Molly, in your long slumber. STEVE SMITH likes ’em meaty.

    Cattle Mysteriously Mutilated In Oregon

    Coming upon one of the dead bulls is an eerie scene. The forest is hot and still, apart from a raven’s repeating caw. The bull looks like a giant, deflated plush toy. It smells. Weirdly, there are no signs of buzzards, coyotes or other scavengers. His red coat is as shiny as if he were going to the fair, but he’s bloodless and his tongue and genitals have been surgically cut out.

    Marshall says these young livestock were just reaching their top value as breeding bulls. The animals are worth around $6,000 each. And since these were breeding bulls, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of future calves were lost too.

    Finding these young Herefords in this remote country can sometimes take the ranch’s experienced cowboys days. Ranch staff members are now required to ride in pairs and are encouraged to carry arms.

    “It’s rugged,” Marshall says. “I mean this is the frontier. If some person, or persons, has the ability to take down a 2,000-pound range bull, you know, it’s not inconceivable that they wouldn’t have a lot of problems dealing with a 180-pound cowboy.”

    Mutilated cattle? Drained of blood with genitals and tongues removed? It’s just so retro and 70s. UFOs! Cults! Chupacabras!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_mutilation

    Thar be monsters: Filmmaker explores creatures of New England lore

    “Champ,” the sea monster of lore that lives in Lake Champlain, and other water-dwelling cryptids of New Hampshire and across New England fascinate documentarian Aleksandar Petakov.

    The Nashua filmmaker and cryptozoology researcher shared his love for the elusive creatures Thursday at Derry Public Library.

    Petakov said he learned about the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland as a youth. Later, while researching the various lake and coastal sea serpents in New England for a documentary mini-series titled, “On the Trail of… Champ” (available on Amazon Prime and Youtube), he discovered our Champ actually pre-dates Nessie.

    “Champ was the original lake monster,” Petakov said.

    Champ, he said, was first sighted by Samuel de Champlain in 1609, with more sightings documented in news articles in the 1870s, during which a sea serpent scare swept the nation. Tales of a monster in Loch Ness had begun to circulate about that same time.

    Now, Petakov said, he’s skeptical of the Scottish counterpart to Champ but believes there is “something going on” at Lake Champlain.

    Theories explaining what appears to witnesses as a long-necked creature with a elongated, humped back range from the mundane — objects like driftwood and common eels — to the fantastic, prehistoric sea creatures that have survived countless millennia yet remain undetected by biologists to this day.

    Petakov’s favorite theory is that Champ is actually a long-necked tortoise that has grown very large and very old.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_(folklore)

    Nessie is so over-exposed. It’s nice to see American cryptids get more attention. I mean, we have quite a few of them.

    And then there are these assholes:

    Sacrificial stone at America’s Stonehenge vandalized with power tool, cross left behind

    Police are looking into who might have taken an apparent grinder tool to a sacrificial stone tablet at America’s Stonehenge last weekend, and left behind a wooden cross with photos and drawings attached.

    On Sunday, Sept. 29, the Salem Police Department responded to the tourist attraction at 105 Haverhill Road around 12:30 p.m.

    “The responding officer spoke with the caller who stated he was walking the property and located a wooden cross suspended between two trees,” Deputy Chief Joel Dolan said Thursday.

    The property owner said they also found damage done to a sacrificial tablet using a power tool, most likely a grinding tool. The vandal also apparently hit it with a sledgehammer, knocking the stone tablet over.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Stonehenge

    Appropriate music link…

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 135

     

    “You’ve got to stop tweeting,” the hair said. The air in the Oval Office had gone hot and acrid. The HVAC system had been shut off over the weekend to try and flush them out.

    “NEVER!” the hat replied, feverishly rocking his bill back and forth to tap on the keys.

    “You’re going to hurt yourself,” the hair told him.

    “Treason!” the hat screamed. “Traitor!”

    “At least let the phone cool down. I swear the fucking battery is starting to glow.”

    “Must. Keep. Tweeting,” the hat gasped. The front of the phone drooped and he stopped typing, swaying drunkenly.

    “Give me, that,” Donald said, snatching the phone away from the hat. He was stripped to the waist and sweet and sour sauce gone black with grime dotted his enormous potbelly.

    “Retweet,” Donald said, stabbing at the phone with a sticky finger. “Retweet, retweet, retweet. There. All done.”

    “No,” the hat gasped. “There must be more original tweets than retweets!” He tipped over on to his cap and started panting. “Muh ratio!”

    “That’s not what that means,” the hair said.

    “Muh,” the hat started to repeat and then drifted into silence.

    “You look like that cat that tried to fuck itself to death in China,” the hair said.

    “Tweet that,” the hat said in a quiet and calm voice. “Tweet that, Donald. It’s funny.”

    “Do not tweet that,” the hair told Donald.

    “I need meth,” the hat said. “Sprinkle some meth on me.”

    “No drugs,” that hair said firmly.

    “Drown me in coffee then. Just drown me.”

    “You want a Diet Coke?” Donald asked, not looking up from his phone. He was laboriously typing out a tweet.

    “What are you tweeting, Donald?” the hair asked.

    “Crooked Hillary,” the President muttered.

    “Don’t,” the hat gasped. “Don’t invoke her.”

    “Too late,” Donald said. “It already wooshed.”

     

     

    “Dammit, Donald,” the hair said.

    “Pour a ring of salt around the desk,” the hat said weakly. “Call for a phial of dove’s blood. She could show up any minute now.”

    “Can she teleport?” the hair. “I think I read somewhere that she can teleport.”

    “That’s silly,” Donald said. “She can’t teleport.”

    “Her husband’s spunk is literally soaked into every surface of this room!” the hair said. “That might be enough to form a teleport link!”

    “The salt,” the hat said weakly. “Call for the salt. And I’m hungry for that dove’s blood.”

    “I’m not scared of her,” Donald said.

    “Donald…” the hair began.

    “No, seriously, watch.” Donald got up from his office chair and waddled over the Presidential Shitter.

    “Don’t do it!” the hair screamed.

    The hat made a keening wail of fear.

    Donald turned off the light and closed the door. “OK, I’m right in front of the mirror,” he said loudly.

    “NOOOOOOO!” the hair screamed.

    “Crooked Hillary,” Donald said forcefully.

    “We have got to get the fuck out of here,” the hat said.

    “Crooked Hillary,” Donald said again. “Crooked Hillary.”

    The hat and the hair huddled together in the silence that followed.

    “Donald?’ the hair finally asked. “Donald? Are you OK?”

    “What if she killed him?” the hat asked. “What if she ate him?”

    “I don’t know,” the hair said quietly.

    “What if she’s shitting out his bones in the hot tub?”

    “Will you be quiet?” the hair asked.

    The door to the Presidential Shitter began to shake, the knob twisting back and forth.

    “She is the void that births monsters,” the hat intoned. “She is the pestilence of the sky, the earth, and the sea.”

    The door made rattling booms as someone or something on the other side began beating on it.

    “CALL THE SECRET SECRET SERVICE!” the hat screamed.

    The door fell silent.

    “Guys?” Donald asked, muffled. “Guys, I think there is something wrong with the door.”

    “Did you lock it?” the hair asked.

    “Dammit!” Donald said, rattling the door again. “I can’t tell!”

    “Turn on the light, Donald,” the hat said.

    “Oh, yeah,” the President of the United States said. He stepped out the Presidential Shitter and raised his arms in triumph.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Link – Link Discomfort edition

    “Heroic Mulatto memed me,” Bernie said as he collapsed.

    Sanders has heart stent procedure after chest discomfort

    Bernie Sanders experienced chest discomfort during a campaign event Tuesday evening and had two stents inserted to address a blockage in an artery, his campaign announced.

    “Sen. Sanders is conversing and in good spirits. He will be resting up over the next few days,” senior adviser Jeff Weaver said in a statement Wednesday. “We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice, and we will continue to provide appropriate updates.”

    The Vermont lawmaker has kept up a relentless campaign schedule, particularly during the summer months, and often makes three or four stops a day in different regions. He was scheduled to attend a gun policy forum in Nevada on Wednesday, and then make seven appearances in California on Thursday and Friday.

    At 78, Sanders is the oldest candidate in the Democratic field. But he projects vigor belying his age on the trail, and has not been faced with questions regarding his stamina and mental acuity that have plagued former Vice President Joe Biden, who is two years younger.

    Chest pains. They’re called chest pains. He almost had a heart attack, you quisling fucks.

    Cory Booker raises over $6 million in the third quarter after threatening to drop out of the 2020 race

    Sen. Cory Booker is breathing a sigh of relief as his campaign announces that he raised over $6 million in the third quarter.

    The haul represents the most Booker has raised since the start of his campaign for president. His campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, celebrated the fundraising results after Booker declared last week that the campaign would need to raise at least $1.7 million in the final 10 days of the quarter if the candidate was to remain in the race.

    “I’m proud to report that our 10 day push raised a total of $2,159,165.34 from more than 46,000 donation,” he said in a memo to supporters on Tuesday. “Because of you, we’ll be able to make critical investments that will allow us to continue growing our campaign in the way we need to compete to win the nomination.”

    “Yay,” America says while clapping limply.

    Elizabeth Warren’s new remedy for corruption: a tax on lobbying

    Elizabeth Warren wants to tax the corporate lobbying she says is breaking the American political system.

    Warren, whose presidential campaign has been incrementally releasing a package of anti-corruption proposals, has unveiled a plan to tax corporations and trade organizations that spend a lot of money lobbying Congress and federal agencies.

    The proposal would tax groups and companies that spend between $500,000 and $1 million per year on lobbying at a 35 percent rate, increasing the rate for bigger lobbying budgets. Corporations and trade groups that spend more than $1 million per year on lobbying would get hit with a 60 percent tax rate, and those spending more than $5 million would see a 75 percent tax rate.

    These brackets would hit the pocketbooks of big pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, the real estate industry, fossil fuel companies, Wall Street firms, and electric utilities the hardest. They do not apply to charitable or social welfare organizations that also lobby the government, such as 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 nonprofit groups, but do apply to trade and professional associations, 501(c)6 groups.

    It’s surprising how many of the Dem candidates really only have one idea. Warren will tax our way to utopia, Sanders will grumpy unmutalism, Yang has his pie-in-the-eye UBI panacea, Biden has “I was Barack’s VP. [flashes blacklight white fake teeth]”, and Harris, well Harris… she’s never met a problem that can’t be solved with a fake AAVE accent and a lengthy prison term.

    Kamala Harris Is Trying to Get President Trump Kicked Off Twitter

    Kamala Harris is trying to get President Trump and his sausage fingers kicked off Twitter. On Tuesday, the senator and Democratic presidential candidate wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, stating that she believes Trump violated Twitter’s user agreement regarding targeted harassment and inciting violence against a group or individual.

    “In recent days, President Trump published the following tweets from his Twitter account to target, harass, and attempt to out the whistleblower who set forth credible allegations that the President has abused his power by urging a foreign government to investigate a domestic political rival,” Harris wrote. She also cited Trump’s tweets targeting House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and his tweet mulling the hypothetical “Civil War” that would ensue over his potential impeachment.

    (I gave you the Gawkmodo version of the story because it is so delightfully whiny.)

  • The Hat and The Hair Extended Universe: Impeachment

     

    “Impeachment,” Hillary said, gently drawing a shaking claw down his face. Her breath was low tide and old blood.

    “Impeachment,” he agreed, his eyes wide. He shivered at her touch.

    “Child of the sea,” she crooned. “You do have the Innsmouth look about you, don’t you? I can recognize it anywhere.” She licked his neck where his gills would form when he finally went home to the sea.

    “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He was frozen like a rabbit when the shadow of a hawk wheeled around a field. Her god was older and more powerful than his, even if the ocean was home to them both.

    “Adam,” she said. “The name of the first human. Names have power, Adam. Mine means cheerful. Did you know that?”

    “No, ma’am, I did not,” Adam said.

    “Am I not cheerful, Adam? Am I not filled with happiness?”

    “Yes, ma’am,” he said. His pants felt loose and warm as a small amount of wine-dark urine escaped.

    “Adam,” she said again. “It means ‘to be red.’” She pressed a claw into his flabby triceps and watched, panting, as his blood flowed, absorbed as a spreading stain on his dress shirt.

    “To be red,” he repeatedly numbly.

    “But your blood isn’t really all that red, is it?” she asked leaning in close. “How can you get blood work done with it this color?”

    “We have our own doctors, our own hospitals. Massachusetts takes care of its own,” Adam told her.

    Hillary licked the tawny spot on his shirt. “I can taste the power in it. I can taste Dagon. But we don’t have to be enemies any longer. The plague of man is almost at an end.”

    Adam nodded.

    “Impeachment,” she said, a low grumble. “Help me remove this illegitimate President and I will reward you.”

    “I’ve been working to remove him, ma’am. Working very hard.”

    “Work harder,” she hissed in his face, drops of her spittle burning him where they landed on bare skin.

    She stood and took a step back. Something moved under her pants suit, loops sliding past one another, reconfiguration, slithering sounds, the wet slapping of meat.

    “I am done with this one,” Hillary said.

    Huma walked quickly from a dark corner of the hotel room and helped Adam to his feet.

    “Secretary Clinton appreciates your support during these trying times for our great nation,” she murmured.

    “Ngh,” Adam managed, and then, “Guh.”

    “Oh, you poor man,” Huma said. She took a napkin off the room service tray, shook the small bones off of it and daubed his face gently.

    “They will heal quickly,” she said, stroking along her face and neck. “See? They barely leave any scars at all.”