Excuse Me, Is That Your Blog?

Rarely can an event as historic as yesterday’s inauguration of Barack Obama be summed up with one word. But this one is easy: clusterfuck. Never have I been a part of such a piss-poorly managed event in my entire life.

My friends and I waited in a mile and a quarter long line on abandoned I-395. It was like a fucking George A. Romero flick. Occasionally, we were passed by ambulances, EMTs and buses full of TSA agents who apparently went nowhere and did nothing. And we were the lucky ones, because at least we got in. Thousands of legit ticket holders got screwed out of getting in, thanks to the brilliant foresight of the event planners. Seriously, would it have been hard to figure out how many people the event could hold and only print that many tickets? Or to get like, ten fucking cops posted along the streets with signs or megaphone directing the huddled masses to their cattle pens? Nobody had any clue what the christ they were doing. And incompetent leadership coupled with brain dead tourists = FAIL.

All this bullshit of course went down under the guise of “security” and, as usual, it ended up being more of a hassle than it was worth. When we finally crammed in to the gates, just in time to miss the oath of office, we walked through metal detectors and were briefly patted on the hips. Really fucking thorough. It was like one final “fuck you” from Bush as he guffawed his way out of office.

Though I have to say, it could have been worse. No one died, no one was arrested. In fact, the crowds were all very jovial from what I could tell. And the Metro may have run more efficiently yesterday than I’ve seen it run in my entire DC existence. Tourists were tourists, but most were decent. Most were courteous and respectful; they were here to witness history. Others were self-righteous yuppie douchebags glued to their iPhones, Twittering their thoughts so their douche friends back in New York or Chicago or Boston or Seattle could read them and be jealous (unlike me – I continually updated my Facebook status from my BlackBerry!). Still others were mindless morons that thought it would be a good idea to toss their babies in a backpack or a messenger bag and make them bear the cold for hours on end to see something they won’t remember. Many were devastated to find out they couldn’t drink Starbucks/eat McDonald’s/smoke/chew tobacco/be total assholes on the Metro. But again, these folks were the minority for once, and it was a lot of fun seeing America come together in DC for this thing

There are two things we can be really thankful for today. One, Barackstar is here to bring us Hope, Change, Unicorns, Cotton Candy and Ice Cream Sundays. Two, we don’t have to hear about the goddamn Whistle-stop Tour or what dress Michelle Obama is going to wear or how Obama loves basketball or what kind of dog the Obamas are getting.

Wait, who am I kidding? That shit’s never gonna let up. But at least the tourists will go home. And we can look forward to George W. Bush’s post-election antics. Do I smell “Celebrity Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”

Y'all are crazy: A rebuttal by a crotchety old cynic, aka Sober Pundit

While Turk and El Braixan foolishly ventured into the Arctic weather and smothering throng of tourons to catch a glimpse of Obama on a jumbotron, I watched the proceedings unfold from the comfort of my friends' couch in Sherman Oaks. That's right folks, I escaped to Los Angeles to avoid the aforementioned hot mess. Or shall I say, "cold mess?" As my colleagues waited in unbearably long lines to be ceremoniously examined by security guards, or to take a piss, I relaxed in my pajamas, sipping freshly brewed coffee and making goofy faces at my friends' adorable 14-month-old son. Sure they got to experience history in the making, which is the same reason the damn fools took a cab from Arlington to the White House on Election Night to drunkenly belt the National Anthem with some fratboys from GW. But there are few things an old fart (I'm 29) like me despises more than crowds, cold weather, and lack of immediate access to a clean bathroom. Nosiree, I'd rather stay home and watch the President-elect and Chief Justice fumble the oath of office close up on a Television screen, with Wolf Blitzer and that prematurely grey homosexual man explaining everything in detail so I don't have to constantly ask, "What did he say? Who's that tramp dressed like a woman for hire?"* If'n I were unfortunate enough to be stuck in the District for this tomfoolery, I would brandish my cane at the audience assembled on the National Mall and scream, "GET OFF MY LAWN!"**

*Turns out it was Dr. Jill Biden

**GET OFF MY LAWN will premiere soon as part of an ongoing series on Excuse Me, is that your Blog? Our senior correspondent, Sober Pundit, will lament all that is wrong with "kids these days" and how their parents raised them improperly.

...without a dope post to step to.

So Turk and I have been unbelievably busy at the think tank that shall not be named. But we're back and we're revving up a couple bad-ass pieces to launch this holiday season.

First, you thought Festivus was cool, wait until you experience OBAMADAN!!!

Then, forget Time Magazine's "Person of the Year", we're going to unveil ITYB's "Asshat of the Year" for 2008. We'd love your input! Vote for your favorite moron in our new poll.

One of the most groundbreaking discoveries in public health research was John Snow’s 1854 study on the cholera epidemic in London, in which he traced the disease to a contaminated water supply. Snow’s findings prompted the construction of new sewage systems and advancements in hygienic practices throughout the developed world. Unfortunately, 1.1 billion people still lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion live in areas without proper sanitation.[1] Cholera and other preventable infectious diseases continue to plague (and yes, THE plague is still around believe it or not) third world countries in Africa and Southwest Asia. The World Health Organization, which has a hilarious way of spelling “diarrhea” (diarrhoea), reported over 130,000 cases of cholera in 2005[2].

In the past few months, a severe cholera outbreak has emerged in Zimbabwe. The country has been experiencing major political turmoil since a hotly contested campaign between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai in March. While the later won more votes, he did not secure the 50% needed for a conclusive victory, prompting a runoff election this summer. However reports of corruption, intimidation, and suppression on the part of Mugabe loyalists caused Tsvangirai to pull out of the election. Despite calls for resignation from fellow African leaders, and sanctions from Western nations, Mugabe refuses to concede. As he clutches to power, infrastructure and services in the country have been deteriorating, hence the current sanitation problems causing the cholera epidemic.

It is reprehensible that in 2008, with all the advances in modern medicine, there should be even one case of diseases like cholera, let alone thousands. While Americans are dying from “Western” diseases of overconsumption, such as diabetes, people in third world nations are dying from viruses that have been completely eradicated in developed nations. It makes me furious. In fact I’m burning mad, almost as if I had cholera myself.

The US has basically been mum while Mugabe has presided over a dictatorship of hyperinflation and epidemic, leaving the people of Zimbabwe economically and physically decimated. If our rational behind the war in Iraq was to free the Iraqi people from the atrocities of Saddam Hussein, why aren’t we equally if not more concerned about Mugabe’s misdeeds? Well, as Kanye West once opined, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” We haven’t intervened in the abhorrent violence and abuse taking place right now in the Sudan or Democratic Republic of Congo, so why should Zimbabwe deserve special attention? It reminds me of the George Washington video that was a YouTube sensation a couple years ago, in which our first president is depicted reading a newspaper while a lion devours a British kid. We’ll save children, but not the African children.

I hope that our first African-American president will get in touch with his Kenyan roots and have sympathy for a continent that suffers more than the average American can even comprehend. Instead of sending our troops to pillage for oil in countries that pose no threat to our security, we should deploy them strategically to help the truly defenseless people in third-world nations like Zimbabwe. Dictatorships like Mugabe’s are the real weapons of mass destruction, as they wreck infrastructure and economies and perpetuate abject poverty. We can’t call ourselves the champions of freedom when we pick our battles so discriminately.

[1] World Health Organization. The world health report 2007: a safer future: global public health security in the 21st century. http://www.who.int/whr/2007/whr07_en.pdf.
[2] World Health Organization. Weekly epidemiological record. 4 AUGUST 2006, No. 31, 2006, 81, 297–308.

So the Sober Pundit and I were talking today about how the christ we're going to get home for Thanksgiving. We were lamenting the lack of reasonably priced transit options for car-free individuals. It sucks for me, because I basically have to rely on friends with cars to get back to Cleveland unless I wanna shell out $300 bucks for a plane ticket or spend nearly as much on the goddamn Amtrak only to arrive six hours late and drunk off booze bought by some crazy AWOL Army man (true story). SP's got it a bit easier, being from Philly, but her options aren't much better. Not wanting to deal with the trials an tribulations of the Chinatown bus, she's decided to take the Greyhound. Here's to hoping her fear of being stabbed, decapitated and eaten doesn't come to fruition.

I really do enjoy living without a car here in DC, but there are certain times like these when it would be really nice to have one and not have to get raped paying for inefficient, shitty transit options. A rational person would tell me to suck it up and acknowledge that this is the price I pay for embracing and relying on mass transit without owning a car. But fuck that, I'm gonna bitch anyway.

The US really needs to get its shit together when it comes to transit. As much as I hate to admit it, those snobby European pricks got it right a lot sooner than we did on this front. Of course it was probably easy for them to focus on since the entire continent has produced nothing of significant cultural or economic value since before WWII (and don't try to present a rational argument to me about the Euro or any of that other pansy bullshit -- Europe basically exists to get bratty, self-entitled white kids out of their parents' hair during their college or post-college years).

So who can we look to to solve our transit woes? Well fear not, good citizens. Once The Obama comes to power and takes everyone’s cars and gives the highways back to nature, there will be a Metro straight from DC to anywhere we could possibly wanna go. Then we will still get pissed when we have to wait 19 goddamn minutes for the next Alabaster Line train to Seattle or when the trains to Mecca are packed on Obamadaan and they're only running four-cars.

Getting home for the holidays will be that much sweeter.

In classic EMITYB style, I come to you three days late with my reactions to Tuesday night’s election. I mean fuck it, it doesn’t have to be timely if it’s snarky, right?

Anyway, so it’s official. The terrorists have won. As one distraught American (my aunt) put it, “it’s a shame our children will have to be raised socialists and all our babies will be killed.” Yes, folks, Barack Obama is or 44th president. Enjoy these last few months of freedom, because the Red Dawn is upon us.


As I sat and watched CNN interview Will.I.Am on their fancy Star Trek hologram machine I realized for certain that this was going to be a new America (Personally, I feel like if CNN was going to interview someone so fucking insignificant and irrelevant to the election, and it had to be a Black Eyed Pea, it would have been much funnier to have Fergie there, stung out on crystal meth and wetting her pants while attempting to enumerate the virtues of an Obama presidency). After watching president-for-life-elect Obama deliver the first of his many victory speeches to the new American proletariat in Chicago, I dashed downstairs an took the first cab I could find to Coruscant/The White House to participate in the felling of the statue of Palpatine and then headed out to the drunken Ewok afterparty watched over by the floating apparitions Lincoln, FDR and JFK.




In clebration of such an historic event, word has it that within the next couple of weeks, every American will receive an Obama care package in the mail, in lieu of an economic stimulus check. It will be his first attempt to spread the “wealth,” while safely guarding all the nation’s food, money, rubies and gold to finance the construction of gay communist madrassahs across the country for early indoctrination of our children. The care package will contain:

• 1 bottle chardonnay
• 1 voucher for fresh, organic arugula at the closest local farmer’s market
• 1 iPod nano, special FEIST edition
• 1 MacBook Pro
• 1 literary starter two-pack containing Mao’s “Little Red Book” and the Koran
• Lifetime subscription to Pravda, The New York Times
  
• 1 Che Guevara Fathead

While America took a giant step forward this week by electing its first African-American president, three states took a giant step back. Voters in Arizona, Florida, and even the liberal bastion of California approved ballot measures amending their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. How one can resolve the cognitive dissonance of voting for Obama but against equality for LGBT people, as many in California and Florida clearly did, is beyond me. Conservatives forced these repressive initiatives to the polls using euphemisms such as “protecting marriage” and “saving the children”. But let’s face it, what it really amounts to is fear.

I don’t know why so many people in America still hate gay people. I suspect that a great deal of these bigots have issues surrounding their own sexuality, and project that anger onto innocent homosexuals who simply want to be recognized as human beings. They are scared of themselves; therefore they are scared of gays. The others are simply ignorant. Having never been exposed to the GLBT community in their presumably rural, backwater towns, they have a visceral reaction to the idea of men kissing other men (and you know it’s really only the man on man action that disturbs them, for they probably own several lesbian porno flicks).

Naturally, the proponents of Proposition h8te and the other anti-gay initiatives will not admit that they are motivated by fear. Instead they cultivate fear in regular citizens by making them think that their livelihood is under attack – that the Donna Reed heterosexual marriages of lore are somehow invalidated because Harry met Harry instead of Sally. The right wing fiercely clings to the “sacred institution” of marriage as if it’s a divine relationship beyond reproach. Never mind the fact that over half of marriages end in divorce, and countless others are marred by physical, verbal, and substance abuse, infidelity, financial exploitation, and good old fashioned codependence. They also neglect to mention that marriage is a secular contract recognized by the state for legal purposes. It may be celebrated in a religious ceremony if the couple chooses to do so, but truthfully the only “requirement” for marriage is showing up at city hall to get a license.

So whatever excuses anti-gay people concoct in their twisted efforts to ban gay marriage, the truth of the matter is that they are scared. Instead of doing what most people do when they have a phobia – avoid it or take Xanax – the conservatives march their irrational fears all the way to the Secretary of State. They whine to voters like babies in soiled diapers, expecting to be coddled with prejudiced Constitutional amendments.

Well if we’re going to start passing public policies based on fear and discomfort, then I have an agenda of my own:

1) Ban Ferris Wheels. They are scary. I threw up on my friend once in a Ferris Wheel. She didn’t believe I was afraid of heights. I showed her! No more will these menacing machines of death be a harbinger of spring carnivals. Hoodlums on the Santa Monica Pier will have to knife fight by the Tilt-a-Whirl now.
2) Ban Ski Lifts. Again, being up high in an insecure seat wobbling to and fro is basically my idea of hell. Sorry Aspen, you’re going down.
3) While we’re at it, ban ALL heights. Let’s demolish all buildings above 1 story, and require all new buildings to be no higher. Sure things are going to get tight, and that brings me to my next item.
4) Ban all public gatherings. I am agoraphobic as well as acrophobic (best of both worlds-w00t!). The only words that come to mind when I see more than 5 or 6 people standing together are “stampede” and “infectious disease.”
5) Ban cockroaches. All houses and business must be thoroughly doused by pest control professionals to eradicate all roaches. (Fortunately the buildings will only be one story high at this point.) While the exterminators are at it, they should get the rats too - they are nasty. Cops will be directed to immediately open fire on any of these horrific creatures that happen to survive.
6) Ban Suzuki commercials. That little “zoom zoom” kid creeps me out.
7) Ban clowns. Do I even need to explain this one?

In conjunction with the fear factor is the “eeeew” factor. Some people oppose GLBT rights because they are grossed out by the mere thought of these people expressing their love for one another, despite the fact that the behavior of GLBT folks doesn’t affect them in the slightest. So in this vein, the following things must also be outlawed on account of me finding them disgusting:

1) Muffin topping – 4 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
2) Farting, nose-picking, and coughing up phlegm – 3 years of forced manual labor and an additional 1 year of community service, preferably in the psych ward of a public hospital.
3) Old people sex - $5,000,000 fine (mostly to pay my therapy bills) and mandatory participation in a 12-step program.
4) Mullets – The death penalty.

I hope that by listing these examples, I have demonstrated the logical fallacy and ridiculousness of passing public policy based on irrational fears. I suggest that the people who opposes gay marriage take a good look at themselves and figure out what is really bothering them, and work on those issues instead of taking out their fear on innocent people. For when the government starts interfering in the private lives of its citizens simply because some voters oppose certain lifestyles, there is no telling where the slippery slope will lead. And THAT my friends, is something to be afraid of.