It's a Nick Drake Sort of Day

It's a Nick Drake sort of day, kiddies. Nick is all I have been listening to all day long. If you haven't yet had the pleasure, check him out. Viddy below. Sadly, a lot of you folks will already know Nick's music from a Volkswagen commercial. Farfenugan, mofos. If I spelled that shit wrong, you German motherfuckers let me know, okay?

Nick was a fellow depressive who offed himself accidentally. It happens, peeps. If it happens to me, don't weep. SB doesn't give a shit. Living or dead--doesn't matter. It's all cool. No matter what goes down, I'm just along for the ride.

Multi-Taskers Needed

There are jobs out there, motherfuckers. Don't tell SB there aren't! Your asses just might have to be able to multi-task a little. Be creative, people! Creative motherfuckers are employed motherfuckers. If SB doesn't teach your dumb asses anything else, let it be that.

Teens, Go at It in the Name of God!

Uhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm, okay. I'm assuming this sign was meant to be about abstinence. This is the mentality of certain morons in this country. Is it any wonder Bush was elected twice? I think not.






















Or maybe this is some sort of Christian cult pushing teens to have sex in order to honor God. Go at it kids! Just be sure and honor God while you're banging away. Enjoy.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase holy fuck, doesn't it?

Boring Donut Shop Guy

SB has set down next to boring Donut Shop Guy before. Who hasn't? My Uncle Ed was sort of the Donut Shop Guy in our town, only he hung out in the Brookville Air Park lobby. There's one of these lonely old fuckers with semi-challenged personal cleanliness habits, who reeks of Old Spice, in every midwestern town and evidently in every Canadian town, too--maybe any town with donuts (or an air park with free coffee).



Man, this old fucker's ass is boring. I made these same faces when he was talking to me. You just know he's a damn truck driver. You can tell by the dirty ball cap. It's lonely on the damn road, people! It makes you want to reach out to others and tell YOUR....ENTIRE....LIFE STORY....OF EXCRUCIATING FUCKING BOREDOM.

Say, maybe truckers ought to buy a Real Doll to travel around with them, and then they can bore her receptive plasticene ass, and she will actually look at least awake while you tell her the story about the naked woman in Arkansas flashing her titties at you from two lanes over during the early morning rush hour for the TENTH DAMN TIME. The added bonus is that the Real Doll will likely even blow you for free at the next truck stop! You won't even have to fork out for a damn hot dog and coke.

Spare a hooker, spare a stranger, spare your damn wife, truckers, and buy a Real Doll!

It just dawned on me how proud mom and dad are going to be when they read this particular post! Thanks for spending ALL THAT MONEY on my English degree, mom and dad!

Is Marie Osmond Right in the Head?

SB used to be a big fan of the Osmonds. In fact, the first concert I ever attended was a Donny & Marie Osmond concert with a friend and my daddums. There were glittery costumes and flashing lights, people, and my ass found that shit enchanting! This was pre-disco, and that made it REVOLUTIONARY! And also, I wanted to marry Donny Osmond when I grew up. I prayed to God every night that that shit would happen! Unfortunately for Donny, it didn't work out. Mr. SB's lucky ass got me instead!

But now, I don't know about Marie anymore. Is she right in the damn head? She still seems nice, so I won't be too harsh, but does the world really need a damn Baby Elvis Military doll? You be the judge (picture below). Personally, I think not so much.

And if I were Elvis's fucking Estate, I would be suing Marie Osmond. You just know Priscilla and Lisa Marie need to send some more money to the Church of Scientology. Zenu needs more money! Quick, go after Marie while she's got all that money from Nutra System. That bitch is flush right now.

I have to admit that Elvis would probably like the Baby Elvis dolls because, let's face it, Elvis liked cheesy shit. He liked orange shag carpet and faux leopard skin. He'd a thunk Baby Elvis was a cutin'. Also, Marie Osmond has lots of dark hair and big teeth and that was Elvis's look, so he probably wouldn't sue Marie. He'd just try and date her, but I'm just saying.

BONUS: Fugly Jesus

While SB was perusing the Scary Jesus selection, she ran across this bonus Fugly Jesus. I don't know about you all, but my ass isn't worshipping something this damn fug. I don't give a shit if it's the Christ or not. Me no el worshippo.

















I want the Jesus I bow down to to look a little sharper, know what I mean? Something like this, say:

















Robert Powell will always be Jesus to me. When my ass pictures Jesus to this day, it's Robert Powell. Where does an actor go from playing God? I guess that explains why I never saw Robert Powell in anything else. It's sort of all downhill from playing God, man.

Modern Scary Jesus for Beth's Jonesing Ass

I'm better, back at work, and here's a damn Modern Scary Jesus for Beth's Scary Jesus withdrawal. This one's expressly for you Beth, since you actually comment now and again, unlike a lot of my other lazy motherfucking readers, who shall be nameless, SINCE I WOULDN'T KNOW THEIR DAMN NAMES BECAUSE THEY DON'T COMMENT.

I must admit I'm sort of more attracted to the older Catholic gory-model Jesuses. I like the bleeding stigmata and especially the crucifixes where the crowns of thorns are dripping blood and shit. I dig realism and am not a big fan of modernism in general. And no, I never liked Picasso with his damn cubism shit. Picasso can kiss my ass! I know art when I see it, people! And that cubism shit is not art! Just because rich dumb asses pay big money for it, does not make it art. Picasso's shit belongs in the Starving Artists at the Holiday Inn sale bin, as far as SB is concerned. I wouldn't wipe my ass on Picasso's work. My asshole deserves better.

Okay, ta da--here's Modern Scary Jesus--as promised.


Is it me, or does Modern Scary Jesus sort of need the Thighmaster or some shit? From the waist up, he's pretty skinny, but Jesus is a bit of a chunker from the waist down. Somebody's been eating too many damn loaves and fishes! It's not always good to be able to produce food at will, people! The big J's been hiding his shameful binge-eating from the disciples (his robes covered a multitude of sins), and it ain't been easy to hide that shit because those nosy-assed disciples want to follow the Jeez everywhere, especially that pain-in-the-ass Judas! The big J can't even take a shit in private. Some dumb motherfucker wants to follow His Ass to the shit pit and ask what happens when we die, EVEN IN THE DAMN CAN, people! Holy shit. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the sacrifice it took to be the Lord our God? I'd get so tired of dumb asses bugging me with their idiotic damn questions, I'd be striking motherfuckers down with lightening left and right! I'd be striking and smiting dumb fucks all over the damn kingdom!

SB Has the Flu Bug

SB is home from work for the second day, slowly improving from the flu bug. I slept until noon today, and for the first time, feel a little better. At least my poor old bones aren't aching.

I'll be back to posting again regularly soon.

Sean Penn's Academy Award Acceptance Speech

Of course, I was rooting for Mickey Rourke for Best Actor, but Sean Penn is one of my favorite actors, and if he could have given any better acceptance speech last night, I'm not sure how.

I agree with Sean one hundred percent: Prop 8 is ugly and it's demeaning. If you supported it, you are at best an unkind human being and should be ashamed of yourself, and at worst, you are ignorant and need to read the New Testament and the Constitution again. ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. That's the America I believe in.

I don't remember Jesus setting an example by going around making people feel bad about themselves. Love is acceptance. Love is surely not cruel, exclusive, or mean.

Penn is right--history is not going to look kindly upon the Prop 8 ignorance. All of you supporters should be ashamed of yourselves. Pinheads the whole lot of you.

France's Tom Green, Remi Gaillard

Remi Gaillard Shark Attack - Watch more Funny Videos

It's Like Not Bad Enough That You're Fucking Homeless

Then some dumb-ass kid's got to run over your head with his bike and then not even have the human decency to stop or apologize. These teenagers we've got coming up are real gems. I'm so damn thrilled that these little assholes will be in charge of things when I'm old. Fuckers.


Biker Drops On Homeless Man's Head - Watch more Funny Videos

Dear Paul Newman

SB will be up late watching the Academy Awards tonight, not least because they will be honoring this fine, sweet gentleman. He was one of my first boyfriends, along with Robert Redford, of course. I had pretty good taste as a kid.

And also I like to point out that this piece of hotness and beacon of charity was born right here in Ohio. That makes me very proud.

Kelly Ripa Farts

The first time I watched this, I laughed until I cried.

Hugh Grant Calls Regis a Bitch

I couldn't embed this viddy. Terribly sorry. Well worth the click.

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0JcuD6lB6E

The Man for Sarcastic Bastard

Hugh Grant is absolutely my favorite living film actor (there's that other Grant, Cary, you know), and if you have ever heard Hugh interviewed, he has one of the quickest wits I've ever heard.

I have nearly all of Hugh's movies, and I love that fact that he admits he is entirely shallow, much like the characters he portrays in films. He also says that he has no desire to stretch himself as an actor. He just does it to pay the bills, and he keeps threatening to quit acting entirely. I hope he doesn't.

Hugh's also quite the dancer. Have a look.

If You're Jewish, Ann Coulter Thinks You Need To Be Perfected

Smart is as smart does. Ann's ass may be "educated," but it was a TOTAL waste of time and money. It is amazing to me that someone who is pretty on the outside gets haggy ugly within five minutes of listening to her flap her jaws. I guess pretty is as pretty does, too.

Did You Know Canada Sent Troups to Vietnam?

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? Ann Coulter says so, therefore, it must be true! She's so smart and educated. All that dumb ho does is run her mouth. I love it when she's caught out. Stupid bitch.



Because of this fuckery, I'm going to add a vote for her as biggest dumb ass in the poll.

That Pretty Much Sums It Up

Dumb ass mit baby.

It Is Too Dairy

And dairy is one of the basic food groups, therefore, it must be good for you. Yes, the Moms fed this shit to her growing chicklet on a blanket outside (in the sun with no sunscreen!) on Chicken in a Biskit (what's up with that spelling anyway--can't those fuckers at Nabisco spell?) crackers. Moms hadn't yet entered her Jane Fonda health food craze phase, where she shoved carrot sticks, grapes, and little tiny boxes of raisins at us, while the other lucky little motherfuckers in the neighborhood got Rice Krispy Treats.

Anyhoo, SB digresses momentarily in her bitterness. Back to the fucking ninth Wonder of the World. It's Kraft Easy Cheese! Fuck that, it's cheese in a goddamn can. Can you smart college kids out there improve on that? And SB recommends this shit with a dry red wine. Of course, what don't I recommend with red wine? EVERYTHING goes better with red, red, wine.

Mercer recommends it, too (not wine--EASY CHEESE--stay with me here, people--it's not that hard). She eats it right out of the spray nozzle! The Disdainful One knows quality food product when she tastes it.

If there is anybody out there who denies that man has evolved as a species, I think the concurrent evolution of cheese-food product is strong evidence that we damn well have.

Aerosol cheese is also a distinctly American invention. That means, we take something perfectly good the way it is and bastardize it by trying to improve upon it. And trust me, the fine folks in Europe aren't going for processed cheese food product at all, let alone junk-filled crap that you can squirt out of a can. Uh huh. No fucking way.

I can hear the conversation between the two American food scientists and inventors of Easy Cheese, wearing lab coats, in the early part of the 1960's.

Food Scientist 1: Stan, is there a way we can improve on cheese? We need to make cheese more exciting and appealing to the modern American consumer.

Food Scientist 2: How about spray cheese in a can, Bob? Now, that would be a gimmick that would sell like hotcakes! It's convenient, modern, and one of the basic food groups. I think American mother's will really go for it, as long as they're not too health food crazed.

Food Scientist 1: By gum, I think you're on to something there, Stan! We'll call it Easy Cheese, or do you think it should be Easy Cheez, with a z? Those guys over at Nabisco come up with some pretty snappy names, and by God, stuff like that moves product!

Food Scientist 2: Who gives a fuck, Bob? What kind of fucking drug are you on?
[Okay, Stan didn't say that. I've just gotten carried away. Kennedy was president. There was no cussing.]

The Mean Mercer (I Mean Kitty) Song

This is genius, people! Sheer greatness! One of you dumb music agent fucks needs to stoop hoovering the coke and give this guy a recording contract!

Cory/Mr. Safety is kind of like a better-looking, more talented Vanilla Ice! Kidding Cory. We kid because we love! SB is a huge fan!

Who Shot Billey Joe Johnson?

Mississippi is my family's home state, and most of the time, I'm really proud of that fact.

This is a really sad story. I feel so sorry for Billey Joe's family, and I feel ashamed. I guess a young black man's life still goes pretty cheap in Mississippi. What a damn waste, what an incalculable loss.

Who shot Billey Joe Johnson?

By Charles Robinson and Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Feb 5, 3:02 am EST

Billey Joe Johnson Sr. has a difficult time accepting the police department’s explanation of his son’s death. “They must have tortured my baby,” he says.

BENNDALE, Miss. – Billey Joe Johnson Sr. opens the driver’s-side door of his dead son’s Silverado and begins to examine some of the leftover splatter. It clings to the dashboard, leeches out of air conditioning vents. Some of it even found a resting place on the truck’s exterior.

“There goes a hunk of meat right there,” the father said, pointing to a nickel-sized fragment of his son’s brain. “How’d it get over here?”

In the back seat, a geometry book rests next to camouflage clothing and empty boxes of buckshot. Billey Joe Johnson Jr. often woke up at 4 a.m. to hunt before heading to George County High School, where everyone knew him as the football star who would escape crushing rural poverty by running from it.

Piles of recruiting letters litter the back seat, the remnants of life as one of the most sought-after running backs in the Class of 2010. Alabama wanted Billey Joe. So did Notre Dame. And dozens of other schools. He was ready to commit to Auburn. By many accounts Billey Joe was a popular, big-dreaming, clean-living kid. So it’s no wonder his father stands in the yard next to a single-wide trailer, trying to play forensic expert. Searching – like many in this rural community – for answers about who shot his son.

Local authorities stopped Billey Joe for a traffic violation on the morning of Dec. 8, and they say the truck is simply the site of a terrible tragedy. But to the elder Johnson, it’s a crime scene.
Nearly two months later, only one fact is certain: Instead of running out of George County as a football hero, Billey Joe was buried beneath it at the age of 17.

The George County Sheriff’s Department claims that on that fateful morning, Billey Joe attempted to break into the home of an on-again, off-again girlfriend in the nearby city of Lucedale. According to the sheriff’s department, he left the scene and ran a red light at 5:34 a.m. After a 1½-mile pursuit, Billey Joe got out of his truck, met sheriff’s deputy Joe Sullivan and handed over his license. Then Billey Joe returned to his truck, put a 12-gauge shotgun he used to target deer to his head and committed suicide. It was 5:40 a.m.

Sullivan’s patrol car was not equipped with a camera, and his is the only account of the event. Billey Joe’s friends and family don’t believe the story.

Billey Joe was black. Sullivan is white. The case, as such, is shrouded by race in this small community in the Deep South. Everyone wants answers. No one is getting them. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the local district attorney – the two bodies in charge of the case – have issued neither a ruling nor many pertinent details.

Tony Lawrence, the district attorney running the state’s investigation, met with the family Dec. 19 and urged patience.

“I have said from the beginning that this investigation will be exhaustive and not based on any timeline other than that which leads to the truth,” Lawrence said at the time. His office declined further comment this week.

An avid outdoorsman, it wasn’t unusual for Billey Joe to wake up predawn and hunt before school.

With no answers and a state investigation that is dragging on, the region has descended into a cauldron of speculation, suspicion and conspiracy. Theories are easy to find, the truth all but impossible.

Johnson fixates on the truck that is stained with what is left of his son. The day after the incident, police returned it to the family as is. Rather than wash it, junk it or sell it, Johnson keeps it in a garage, driving it out to re-examine. He stares at it. He imagines his son.

He’s convinced someone forced Billey Joe on his knees, shoved the shotgun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

“They must’ve tortured my baby,” Johnson says.

Here is what the police say about Billey Joe’s death: During a routine traffic stop, Billey Joe Johnson Jr. shot himself in the head.

He woke at 4:30 a.m. that day, a school day, at his parents’ trailer and took a shower. His dad thought he was going hunting. Instead, he drove 15 miles to Lucedale, the 2,700-person county seat and location of both his high school and a girlfriend.

Billey Joe’s truck had notes from multiple female admirers, and his friends said he enjoyed the attention offered to a star athlete. He’d already run for 4,000 yards in his high school career and helped make George County a state powerhouse. Everyone knew him. Many wanted to be with him.

One girl, whom Yahoo! Sports will not name since she is a minor, had been around the longest. It was a typical high school relationship – “they’d break up every day and then get back together,” said one of his friends, Drew Bradley. The fact that she was white bothered some people.

“It’s George County, it’s a little Southern town,” said Bradley, who is white. “You’ve got a bunch of racist people down here. You have people who hated on them because it was black and white.”

It was about the only unsettled part of his life. His friends swear he never drank or did drugs, a claim backed by a toxicology report that also found no trace of steroids. If anything, his biggest vices were hunting, playing video games and occasionally driving a little too fast.

“The photos on his cellphone contained one picture of a girl and after that it was deer, deer, deer,” said Jerome Carter, the Johnson family’s attorney and a managing partner in the Mobile, Ala., branch of the Johnnie Cochran Law Firm.

When gas prices soared last fall, Billey Joe moved into the Lucedale home of assistant football coach Darwin Nelson, whose son was a friend. It shortened his commute and provided comforts such as a swimming pool and a computer his parents’ unpainted, country trailer lacked. He stayed two months and was polite, prompt and respectful.

“He was a model citizen when he lived here,” Nelson said.

Even as new girlfriends came on the scene, the old one would return. There were rumors of a restraining order but no paperwork indicating such a filing was present in county court.

The girl lived with her father in a small trailer park near downtown Lucedale. Billey Joe had been there many times before when he pulled up in the predawn hours. She was home alone. Billey Joe’s cellphone records show there had been no contact between the two that morning.

According to an incident report filed by the Lucedale city police, the girl claimed Billey Joe tried to break in through the front door and later tapped her bedroom window before leaving.

As Billey Joe drove away, the girl called her mother, who in turn called police and said they wanted to “sign charges.”

It’s unknown whether Billey Joe knew about the call to the cops or what his state of mind was at that point. The girl’s family has declined comment and has refused to speak to Johnson family investigators, according to Carter. It’s a key mystery in the case and the center of much of the gossip.

After leaving the trailer, Billey Joe ran a red light as he headed in the direction of home. Deputy Sullivan observed it and turned on his blue lights in pursuit. A little more than a half-mile down the road, Johnson ran a four-way stop sign. Slightly less than a mile after that, he finally pulled into a driveway that serviced a few shops, including Benndale Carpet.

When Billey Joe stopped, he got out of his truck and approached the officer, according to Sullivan’s incident report. Sullivan told Billey Joe to hand over his license and return to his truck. Sullivan turned and walked to his squad car.

“When I went back to my vehicle I picked up the radio to call it in and heard a gun shot and glass breaking,” Sullivan wrote in his incident report. “I looked up and the black male fell to the ground and the gun he had in his hand fell on top of him.

“I called dispatch and advised them that the subject had just shot himself.”

Police have not publicly identified the gun, but Billey Joe’s brother Eddie Johnson said he bought a Ted Williams, 12-gauge, full-choke, pump shotgun at a local pawn shop about a year ago. The barrel of that model is either 27 or 28 inches in length. Carter had Billey Joe’s arms measured before burial and will determine whether they were long enough to pull the trigger when the weapon is produced.

Johnson’s parents, Billey Sr. and Annette, hold a small sampling of the recruiting letters that used to arrive for their son on a daily basis. Billey hoped to sign with Auburn in February 2010.

There is only one other official eyewitness account of the crime scene, an incident report written by Lucedale police Sgt. James O’Neal, who initially responded to the girl’s home and then went to the site of the shooting.

“I approached the scene and observed a black male, identified as the suspect Billey Joe Johnson, lying on the ground outside the driver’s side door with a shotgun lying on top of him and blood on the ground around his head,” O’Neal wrote.

“He was lying on his back, his head away from the truck. The shotgun was lying on his body with the barrel pointing in the direction of his head.”

Although Billey Joe’s parents were on the scene soon, authorities asked Darwin Nelson, the football coach, to identify the body next to the truck.

Nelson said that when he arrived, the driver’s-side window had a bullet hole in it which appeared to come from the inside of the open door.

“There was kind of a jagged hole in the window, 3 or 4 inches across, almost like a lightning strike to the window,” Nelson said. “The rest of it was shattered, but still in place.”

There’s been speculation that the 3-inch magnum buck shots which Billey Joe favored for hunting would’ve blown the window out rather than left a bullet hole – thus eliminating his gun as the weapon and making suicide unlikely.

However, Andrew Scott, a former police chief in Boca Raton, Fla., who now works as an expert on forensics and crime-scene investigations, said that at such a close range it could’ve produced the hole Nelson described.

Here is what family and friends say about Billey Joe’s death: Billey Joe Johnson was shot in the head by someone else.

They start with his personality. He was calm, never violent, happy and hopeful. Last fall, he’d begun attending the First Baptist Church with friends and “gave his life to Christ,” according to his youth pastor, Rob Hilbun.

He had more friends than he could count – “that boy would be text-messaging in his sleep,” said his mother, Annette. His funeral was held in the biggest room in the county – the middle school gym – yet it struggled to contain the estimated 1,000 mourners.

Just a junior, he was fielding letters and recruiting pitches from college coaches Charlie Weis and Les Miles and taking visits to Alabama and Mississippi State. They saw him as the second coming of Walter Payton, a small-town Mississippi legend from not too far down the road.

Remnants of Billey Joe Johnson’s life remain piled in the back seat of his truck: unopened recruiting letters, textbooks, and an ACT registration packet.

He’d fallen for Auburn, where he saw himself fitting into the small-town environment with hunting woods close to campus. He’d affixed a school license plate on the front of his truck.

The future had become his focus – he’d started weight training and running. Inside his truck were registration forms for the ACT. He talked about helping his family, which had fallen on desperate financial times since his father, once a logger in the piney woods of Mississippi, went on disability with a bad back.

“We’re all over my uncle’s on the Friday before [his death] and he was just telling us he’s going to go to Auburn and go pro,” said Joseph Lee Bradley Jr., a cousin, the sophomore class president and no relation to friend Drew Bradley.

“We were throwing the football and he was telling what he was going to do for himself and his family,” the cousin continued. “His family can hardly afford anything. They have to borrow to pay for things. He didn’t like that. He wanted them to have money before buying stuff. He wanted them to have a better house.”

The family’s attorney, Jerome Carter, disputes the allegation that Billey Joe attempted to break into the former girlfriend’s trailer. He notes that there was no evidence of forced entry presented by police, and the powerful 6-foot, 205-pound Billey Joe easily could have gained forceful entry.

“An attorney right out of law school would’ve been able to completely decimate that case,” Carter said. “A simple kick of the door and he would have been in.”

As for the alleged self-inflicted gunshot, when the body was returned to the Johnsons, a state pathologist had cut out about one-third of his skull (the left, back side) and his tongue. Because the rest of him was intact, the assumption is the barrel was inside his mouth when it went off.

The kickback on a 12-gauge shotgun is considerable. Yet none of his teeth were broken and Deputy Sullivan said he saw Billey Joe still holding the barrel as he fell to the ground before it rested on his chest.

“I’ve shot that gun before and it kicked like a mule,” Johnson Sr. said.

Then there are the numerous acts that might appear to violate police procedure.

According to Deputy Sullivan’s incident report, Billey Joe traveled 1½ miles in police pursuit before stopping. Sullivan never called for backup or mentioned the fleeing in his report.

When the pursuit ended, Sullivan allowed someone who had just run to get out of the vehicle and approach him.

“It’s inconsistent with standard police practices and procedures,” said Scott, the former police chief. “It’s very unusual for an officer to continue for 1.5 miles and not to call for additional officers. [At the stop] it’s unusual for the officer to not draw his weapon and say, ‘Get back in the vehicle.’ ”

One possible explanation, although there is no mention of it in the incident report, is that Sullivan knew it was Billey Joe. His play on the football field had made him a local celebrity.

His truck was easily identifiable. It had a vanity plate, and during the season cheerleaders had stickered on the back window his name and football number “21.”

Billey Joe had told friends he’d been pulled over by police dozens of times, including at least 18 times by one officer – not Sullivan. Friends admit he liked to drive fast on the country roads, so it’s possible those incidents were reasonable and police were actually cutting him a break by letting him off. Others think police routinely targeted him.

“He said it seemed like the police were all the time hating on him,” said friend Drew Bradley.

George County Sheriff Gary Welford declined comment for this article.

“He’d have never gotten out of that truck, never, never, never,” said cousin Joseph Bradley. “I’ve been in the truck with Billey Joe when we’ve been pulled over a few different times. He knew how to act. … They would ask, ‘Where are you going? Billey Joe would just hand his license [and say] ‘Home, sir.’ Then they’d let us go.

“He’d say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ to anybody,” Bradley continued. “He’d say it to the woman at McDonald’s. You know how you can’t tell if someone working at McDonald’s is a teenager or an adult? He said ‘yes, ma’am’ one time and the woman said, ‘Ma’am? I’m not a ma’am, you’re probably older than I am.’ ”

Based on pictures of the scene, the distance between Johnson’s truck and Sullivan’s patrol car was no more than 30 feet. It would’ve taken Sullivan approximately 10 seconds to walk back from meeting Johnson, sit down in his seat and pick up the radio.

The George County Rebels developed into a state powerhouse during Johnson’s three years as a varsity starter at running back.

Billey Joe’s 1999 Silverado was an extended cab, but with an extra door only on the passenger side. Like many hunters, he stored the gun on the floor under the back seat. In those 10 seconds, he would’ve needed to return to the truck, climb in and, if the gun was in its normal spot, pull it over the seat, step back out and shoot himself.

It also would’ve been a split-second decision to end his life. If he was suicidal, why didn’t he shoot himself when he pulled to a stop? Instead he got out, approached Sullivan and said he was racing home because his mother was sick.

“He was trying to get out of a ticket,” said Carter, the lawyer. “If you’re going to kill yourself, you don’t care about a traffic ticket.”

Police have left open the possibility of an accidental shooting. However, it doesn’t explain why Billey Joe would’ve pulled the shotgun in the first place. Carter’s pathologist determined the shooting took place outside of the truck and was not a result of the gun mistakenly going off inside the cab.

Carter has asked for an opportunity to examine Deputy Sullivan’s uniform, which would show signs of being within close range of a gun being shot.

“We’ve received no response,” Carter said.

At some point, the window with the bullet hole was broken rather than preserved with a special film available to police. The pieces were swept under a row of mailboxes. Why the film wasn’t used and how much examination authorities performed on the window before it was broken is unknown. The result is the same – a key piece of evidence was lost.

“That would not be proper police procedure,” Scott, the former police chief, said. “You’d want to preserve that.”

Scott also said it was improper to return the truck to the family the next day. It still had tabs of measurement tape on it, indicating a forensic investigation, but remained a potential crime scene.

Almost immediately after the incident, both the sheriff’s department and city police turned the investigation over to the state.

Nelson, the football coach who was asked to identify Billey Joe’s body, said he saw Deputy Sullivan at the scene and didn’t notice anything suspicious – only that he appeared to be in a state of shock.

“He was very visibly shaken, like he seen something he hadn’t wished to see,” Nelson said. “What that is, I don’t know.”

In truth, only Sullivan and Billey Joe knew. Conspiracy theories conjure up mysterious murders. The local chapter of the NAACP has already “ruled out suicide.” Until the state releases its investigation – which could come as soon as next week – a vacuum of information has been filled by speculation.

Billey Joe’s truck was adorned with a fan plate for Auburn, where he hoped to play football.

Billey Joe Johnson Sr. remains convinced that his son was murdered by someone, although he doesn’t know whom.

Johnson Sr. was born in George County in 1965, entering the world at home because the local hospitals were still segregated. He got his unusual name because someone misspelled “Billy” on his birth certificate. In turn, he passed it onto his son.

He met his wife, Annette, in the ninth grade and says, “I didn’t know much about her except I loved her.” With limited means and fading health, he’s raised four children, the youngest a 9-year-old girl.

Now he stares at his son’s truck in the yard and shakes his head.

“He was just a country boy,” he said. “He never got a chance.”

Inside Billey Joe’s blood-spattered truck, amidst the recruiting letters from famous coaches and female classmates, near the ammo boxes and the pictures of wildlife, sat a copy of the Emily Dickinson poem “The Chariot.”

Lying eerily amongst the remains of a violent end to a promising life, the opening lines still call out:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me …

The 17hundred90: Best Bar EVER in the World EVER

SB is WAY homesick for Savannah, Georgia, right now. Don't get me wrong--a day doesn't pass that I don't think of Savannah EVER. Right now, I wish I was on a stool around the bar at the 17hundred90. I've requested that when I die, and after my ashes are sprinkled in Savannah, the bearer should have a drink to SB in the lounge of the 1790.

If you are lucky enough to be in Savannah anytime soon, please raise a glass to Sarcastic Bastard. I'll be there, myself, in October, and it ain't soon enough.

If you plan on visiting Savannah, SB will be happy to give you the names of some great restaurants, bars, and places to visit. Feel free to contact my ass at: ugadawg1@woh.rr.com

Here is a link for the fine lodging, food, drink, and waitstaff at the 17hundred90. Be polite, it is a local hangout (except for the damn ghost tours) and not for rude Yankee tourists! Mind your damn manners and tip well if you go.

http://17hundred90.com/lounge.html

Some Ho's Weave Stopped a Bullet!

It's a beautiful miracle and an example of God's grace at work, people!

Link to story at Dlisted: http://dlisted.com/node/30807

Fatty Sez

I once overheard this conversation when I worked as a bartender in a restaurant. The guys in the kitchen were talking about bathing their kids.

Fatty: No, no, you can't just sit them babies in the bath tub. You got to scrub on them--you've got to wash they asses, else they be stinkin'.

Fatty used to come up with some wise shit. To this day, I am still thinking about starting a t-shirt line called Fatty Sez.

Binge-Eating Joke

If you eat six Lean Pockets are they still lean?

A Dog's Asshole of a Morning

This was my morning.

This is usually my morning.


I've heard English people, such as Peter O'Toole, describe depression as "black dog," and I think that's about as good a description as any I've encountered. I've also read that statistically, most people who struggle with black dog find that they are worse at night, as the day and their energies wane, than in the morning.

Strangely, I have always found mornings the worst time, primarily because my ass wants to stay in beddy. I enjoy sleeping, and I am good at it. If sleeping were an Olympic sport, I would be a fucking gold medalist. Also, I am very fortunate to have kids (Ginger and Mercer), who pretty much sleep on command. I will say, "Let's take a nap," and man, those two are ready, God bless them.

I have struggled with depression since my teens, when I should have been medicated, but was not--mostly because I was born to sunny Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart personality types, who had not a clue--although they should have--at least the Mom's should have--since her father needed to be on antidepressants desperately. Grandpa's being medicated would have helped A LOT of people besides himself.

Anyway, I made up for lost time as an adult. If you can name an antidepressant, I've probably been on it at one time or another. Zoloft made me too artificial and foggy. Prozac controlled my appetite some (my other disorders include binge-eating and OCD), but didn't help my mood a whole lot. Celexa and Lexapro helped the most of anything I've been on thus far and didn't interfere with my sleep. Wellbutrin kept me up at night, and I have a tendency to insomnia in the darkest parts of the depression so I didn't need that shit. And if you can't sleep to escape, what do you do? Maybe drink A WHOLE LOT, which counteracts the purpose of the medication. You get the picture.

I have come to a point in the last decade or so, and after some therapy, that I believe my depression is primarily about brain chemistry. Sometimes, it is about feeling "stuck" in life, but it pretty much is a constant, despite the ups and downs of daily life. I have some reason and inclination to think that it might more properly be described as manic-depression, with more depression than mania. Either way, it's just there, sometimes much worse than at others.

Fortunately, I have never felt any shame about my depression, unlike that poor dear soul, David Foster Wallace. I figure its presence in me is just the luck of the familial draw and biological. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm being medicated and that I struggle. If anything, I guess I am more afraid that maybe the depression has become too large a part of my identity. Any of you who have had a long-term depression probably understand that statement.

Sometimes, I feel that depression is one of the few things at which I excel in life. I started with a diagnosis of mild depression in my early twenties. A few years later, I graduated to moderate depression. And in the last few years, I have hit that pinnacle of depression: clinical depression. Wow. This would all be funny, of course, if it were funny.

I am in good company as a depressive, and that is sort of a strange consolation. The ranks of other depressives include, but are certainly not limited to: Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, Carson McCullers, Mickey Rourke, Kurt Cobain, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, David Bowie, Elliott Smith, Marlon Brando, Van Gogh, Ville Valo, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Rufus Wainwright, Axl Rose. This list is off the top of my head, and I could go on and on. I would almost venture to say that there are more artistic types who struggle with depression than who do not.

As I said, the mornings are a struggle. I find that on the rare mornings that I can get my ass out of bed a little early and can sit in the peace and quiet of the house and enjoy a few cups of coffee before I have to hit the shower to get ready for work, things go a little better. I enjoy sitting with Ginger and Mercer, listening to the sound of the heat kick on and off. I have also learned that this time before work is not a productive time to discuss anything of relevance or anything at all really.

This morning was anything but peaceful and quiet, however. In fact, it was a dog's asshole of a morning. Everything just went wrong. I spilled Ginger's kibble all over the kitchen floor and had to sweep that shit up. Due to grogginess, I nearly gave Ginger's diarrhetic ass my medication instead of hers. I poured half n' half into my coffee, instead of my usual soy milk. Then, I opened a new tube of Rembrandt tooth-whitening paste and went to remove the sticky protective thing, covering the opening (AS IF THERE IS A TOOTHPASTE POISONER!), and a microsquirt of the damn toothpaste shot RIGHT INTO MY EYE and caused momentary blindness, intense burning, and then at least 10 minutes of tears.

And then, THEN, as I was bitching to myself about GOD DAMN MORNINGS and HAVING TO GO OFF TO WORK AT A FUCKING INCOME-PRODUCING FUCK FUCKING JOB, suddenly this thought pops into my mind: "Well, Christopher Reeve would have been happy to have had your problems instead of his." This is how my mind works. It randomly comes up with shit like that--there is ALWAYS some poor unfortunate fuck who would think your misfortune was fortunate.

The Moms and I discuss this a lot. She points out somebody who has it worse than me when I am depressed. And then I ask her something like, "Why is life so shitty in general that to feel better about your situation, you have to point out somebody who has it much worse?" I know those of you who have my mother's uniquely happy-assed nature are thinking--no wonder you're depressed, the way you think! Fuck you. Just kidding, kind of.

But, of course, I always insist that I'm a realist. In fact, one time I went off my medication for a period because I had this John Lennonish thought of why should my ass be medicated, when society is fucked up? Should I be on medication because I see things more clearly than average Joe ? But then, I also know that every insane motherfucker thinks THEY SEE THINGS CLEARLY. In fact, that is the very definition of insanity. If you question your sanity, you're not as fucked up.

I don't know what the actual message or intention of this post was. I'll bet you're glad you actually made it to the end of the lumbering post for that sort of payoff, but I guess I wrote this just to be honest and to share my struggle. Maybe some of you have been there or are there now. If you have anything that is helpful to share, feel free. I'M REACHING OUT TO YOU DAMN PEOPLE, DON'T DISAPPOINT ME!

I'm also curious as to what part of the day other people who are depressed find most trying. I guess misery really DOES love company.

Now the REAL STORY of Monkey Love Comes Out

Uhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmm, okay. This shit just gets weirder. I'd still like to be Sandra's monkey bitch. Damn. Lobster and filet mignon, people!

IMPORTANT REMINDER: We're not here to judge.

By God, if Mercer does a crayon drawing for Mom, that shit is going up on the damn fridge! That shit is going to be proudly displayed!

I do really like the quote below in bold. It made me laugh. Obviously, SOMEONE thinks they are here to judge! We'll leave it to the "friend."

IT'S ANIMAL ATTRACTION
By PERRY CHIARAMONTE in Stamford, Conn., and JEREMY OLSHAN in New York, AP

February 19, 2009

She fed him filet mignon and lobster tails. They shared cozy glasses of wine. They bathed and slept together. He tenderly brushed her hair. She gave him gifts and sweet kisses. He drew her pictures.

But this was no ordinary affair of the heart. Sandra Herold was engaging in these loving acts with a 200-pound pet ape.

Herold's human friends said they were always leery of the interspecies intimacy.

If you love a simian, set them free, some tried to tell her - long before Travis went bananas Monday and mauled and mangled Herold's 55-year-old friend Charla Nash.

"It's just weird," one friend said. "It's an animal, not a person. What she had with that monkey was not normal."

It is not uncommon for people to replace the affection of a departed loved one with that of an animal, experts say.

Travis became both a surrogate child and spouse, following the deaths of her daughter in a car accident several years ago and her husband five years ago, friends and psychologists said.

Even if there was no monkey-panky, pals say they were intimate.

"In popular culture, chimpanzees are used as a kind of parody of human behavior - and it seems that this animal became almost a parody of her relationship with her husband," said Howard Welsh, a professor of clinical psychiatry at NYU.

"At the same time, this woman was depriving this animal of a whole world. She made this world for the chimp simply her. He was a chimp in a gilded cage."

Travis lived his entire life in Herold's habitat. In his younger days, he appeared in commercials, including spots for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, but mostly he was hers and hers alone.

He worshipped her, friends said. Travis would make crayon drawings and proudly hand them to Herold.

"I put them on the refrigerator for him," the shaken woman said on NBC yesterday.

Herold said she has nothing left now that her daughter, her husband and the animal she raised from the age of 3 weeks are gone.

"I'm, like, hollow now," she told CBS. "He slept with me every night. He combed my hair. Everything in the house is for him."

Herold would frequently tell those who questioned her devotion to Travis that they simply did not understand.

"Until you've . . . eaten with a chimp and bathed with a chimp, you don't know a chimp," she said.

The events leading up to the vicious attack are still unclear.

According to police, Herold said Travis had been agitated during the day and she slipped some unprescribed Xanax to calm him down - a claim on which she has wavered. Tuesday, she said he refused the drug, but yesterday morning she said she provided the drug only five minutes prior to the attack, and stressed that it "wouldn't have had time to kick in."

Herold insisted that Travis was never violent.

She contends Travis was being protective of her when he attacked Nash, who she said was driving a different car, wearing a new hairstyle and playfully shook an Elmo stuffed toy in front of her face as a present to the chimp.

"She had the toy in front of her. This was just a freak thing," Herold said.

"It was the most horrible thing that could ever happen," she said. "For me to do something like that - put a knife in him - was like putting one in myself. Then he turned around and was like, 'Mom, what did you do?' "

Police have said they are looking into the possibility of criminal charges. A pet owner can be held criminally responsible if he or she knew or should have known that an animal was a danger to others.

Nash was in critical condition in Stamford Hospital yesterday. Doctors said she has made slight progress after undergoing more than seven hours of surgery Monday to stabilize her.

Poor Mickey Rourke, Bless Him

I truly am not being ONE IOTA sarcastic when I say I really understand and sympathize with Mickey's loss, and I am rooting for his ass to win an Academy Award on Sunday. It might cheer him up a little, plus I want to hear his tearful speech thanking Loki. You know it's coming.


From the NY Post today:

MICKEY'S 'TAIL' OF TRAGEDY
LOVED CHIHUAHUA DEAD AT 17
by David K. Li

Mickey Rourke's favorite pooch - which the actor called the love of his life - died this week after seeing her master go from Hollywood has-been to Oscar front- runner.

Loki the Chihuahua passed away at age 17 on Monday, a week before Rourke's scheduled appearance at the Academy Awards in Los An geles, where he might pick up the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in "The Wrestler."

A downcast Rourke had lunch yesterday at Nello on Madison Avenue, where he ran into fellow actor James Woods and they commiserated about Rourke's loss, according to The Hampton Sheet magazine.

"She was my life," Rourke was overheard telling Woods about the pet.

Rourke - the toast of Tinsel town for his off-the-mats perform ance as a washed-up grappler - showed Woods a chain worn around his waist. On it is a pen dant with Loki's picture.

"Mickey is heartbroken," Woods told the magazine.

In a prepared statement, the dog- loving actor said he's thankful for Loki's 17 years: "Loki is deeply missed but with me in spirit. I am very blessed she fell asleep peace fully in my arms."

Rourke, 56, is one of Hollywood's best-known dog lovers, and worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals this year in a campaign urging spaying and neutering.

The small brown Chihuahua was a frequent Rourke travel partner, and in recent months, the Hollywood hell-raiser said he wanted her by his side as much as possible, knowing the aging pooch's days were numbered.

"You could see he had genuine love for Loki, a kind of love you don't always see between two people," said PETA special-projects manager Michelle Cho, who teamed with Rourke in a 2007 campaign against puppy mills in Florida.

Restaurant operator and Rourke pal Nello Balan said Loki came into the actor's life on the downside of his career, but loved her master unconditionally.

"She followed his ups and down, like a member of the family," Balan said.

"She loved my carpaccio," Balan added. "The only time she'd bark is when she'd be defensive of Mickey, especially when girls came around. She'd bark then."

Rourke is considered a favorite to go home with an Oscar Sunday, having won the British Academy and Golden Globe awards - where he thanked his dogs "present and the ones that aren't here anymore."

Rourke has explained that his fondness for small dogs is tied directly to their longer life spans. He admitted falling into deep depression in 2002 when Loki's dad, Beau Jack, died.

david.li@nypost.com

The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace

Below is a link to a Rolling Stone article on David Foster Wallace and his brave and terrible struggle with depression. It is the best and most thorough article I have yet read on the subject.

I also have to say that I believe David was very lucky to have the family that he had.

Link to story: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace

SB's Going to Norway and Praying for a Prison Sentence

Check out this extra from Michael Moore's movie, Sicko.

Call me Helga or Olga. My ass is going to Norway! Maybe I'll commit a crime and get incarcerated--that's if I am lucky.

David Foster Wallace: This Is Water

David Foster Wallace, who died last week, was the most brilliant American writer of his generation. In a speech, published here for the first time, he reflects on the difficulties of daily life and making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.

The Guardian, Saturday 20 September 2008

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

If you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let's get concrete ...

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real - you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues". This is not a matter of virtue - it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

By way of example, let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home - you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job - and so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: you have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.

Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your cheque or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn't fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etc, etc.

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid goddamn people.

Or if I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUVs and Hummers and V12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks ...

If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible car accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am - it is actually I who am in his way.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

· Adapted from the commencement speech the author gave to a graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio

David Foster Wallace and a New Direction

There are four primary writers who have become touchstones for me. I don't just read them, I learn something about myself and life by coming in contact with their words and intelligences. These four writers are: Samuel Clemens, Kurt Vonnegut, Wendell Berry, and David Foster Wallace.

I must admit that I have only recently discovered David Foster Wallace (DFW), due to the news of his suicide and the upset that his death caused the literary community. Like many, I find DFW's suicide particularly troubling. He was considered perhaps the most important, intelligent, promising writer of my generation and for good reason. The more I read David's work, the more I understand the huge hit we all took with his passing. I am in awe of his fine intelligence, his humanity, his wit, and his plain humility and decency as a writer and as a person. I can do no justice to him by trying to describe him further, so I'll stop trying and instead post a commencement speech that he once gave in a separate post today. The speech encapsulates and illustrates the qualities that I just pointed to.

I think it says something highly troubling that one of the finest and celebrated minds of my generation chose suicide as an out. I know that he struggled valiantly and long against making that choice.

When I read DFW, many times his writing perfectly reflects feelings and struggles that I have had personally. I think most of us can agree that's what good writers do. He nails it on the head, so to speak. I recognize myself and my own struggles in his words. Lately, I have been having a sort of depressing struggle with the direction of this blog.

At one point, I seriously considered abandoning Sarcastic Bastard and letting it become a ghost blog. I even considered starting a second more serious blog, but I frankly don't have the energy or the inclination to maintain two separate blogs.

When I started the blog, I only wanted to make people laugh in these bleak, kind of horrible times, but I have been feeling sort of shallow and like a sham because sarcasm is, by its nature, shallow and mean and unsubstantive. Let me point out that I'm not talking about removing humor as a major element of this blog. I would just like to bring something more to it.

I ran across this DFW quote yesterday that perfectly explains what I am writing multiple paragraphs here trying to get at, especially if you swap the word sarcasm for the word irony.

"Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks…. It is unmeaty . . . I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures…one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed."

As a result of this insight and the struggle I have been having over the content of this blog, I am changing the direction of Sarcastic Bastard. I'm still going to do humorous posts, because I don't think I could survive day-to-day without laughing, but I am also going to post on more meaningful, substantive things.

If I lose some readers, that's okay. I'm willing to pay that price because the blog is something that is representative of me, and I would like to continue to be proud of the work and to feel like it's not just entertainment, but sometimes meaningful, and that maybe it might help someone to feel less alone as a human being.

David Foster Wallace was a professor who expected his students to work hard and to grow in their potential as writers. I refuse to expect less of myself.

Now I Really Want To Be Sandra's Monkey Bitch

Again, from the NY Post Chimp Attack story:

"The violence began shortly after Travis [the chimp] consumed a meal of fish and chips and then Carvel ice cream, Herold said. He then went outside and couldn't be coaxed back in. She tried to give Travis tea with Xanax to calm him, but he wouldn't drink it, she said. "

Damn, Carvel ice cream and Xanax! That damn chimp lived better than SB! QUICK, call up Sandra! Tell her I'll wear a chimp costume and cuddle with her!

Why I Read the NY Post on a Daily Basis

If SB misses a day of the Post, I might miss out on a paragraph like the one below. [Also the Post uses the word tragic in almost every story in some capacity. If a story is tragic, I am compelled to read it.]

This paragraph is from today's exciting Chimp Attack story! If you want to read the story in full, the link is below.

"Each night, Sandra Herold and her beloved chimp, Travis, would share a glass of wine before snuggling in bed together."

Uhhhhhhmmmmm, okay. What the hell? On the other hand, if I come back as a chimp (due to my bad Karma--it could happen, people!), I'd like to be Sandra's chimp. At least, I could still have my wine. I'd be Sandra's monkey bitch for a glass of the vino each night.

Here's how I'll look. This is my ass as a reincarnated chimp.





















I know you are compelled to read the ENTIRE Chimp Attack story now, after this scintillating morsel.

Here is the damn link: http://www.nypost.com/seven/02182009/news/nationalnews/why_chimp_went_bananas_on_gal_155740.htm

Uhhhhhhhhhhmmm, OK--BARF

My ass is so afraid of snakes, I jump sometimes when I see a stick on a walking path. Can you say BARF?

From the NY Post this morning.

B'DAY BOY'S HISS-STERIA
By KAVITA MOKHA and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN

February 18, 2009

A Brooklyn birthday boy playing on a sofa with his pal got the terrifying surprise of a lifetime yesterday when a 4-foot snake that had sneaked into the house slithered out of a cushion.

Jay Jhomar, who had just turned 7, said he and Danny Yunstella, also 7, were quietly coloring in their books when the party crasher - a 4-foot boa constrictor - peeped its head out.

"It was staring and waiting for someone to eat," Jay said. "I was a little scared, and we were screaming. I called my mom, who was in the kitchen.

"I like snakes, but not crazy snakes."

The boa, which is not poisonous, was taken away by Animal Care and Control. It's believed to be a pet that got loose, but its owner hadn't come forward as of last night.

Jay's mother, Danielle, said she thinks the stray snake slithered into the Bensonhurst home around 11 a.m. through a partially opened living-room window to escape the cold.

Jay and Danny were alone in the living room when, out of the half-zipped cushion, the serpent emerged.

"I felt something on my back," said Jay, who put on a brave face after the run-in. "I was excited. I thought I found a toy in the couch. It felt like a ball."

"The snake's head popped out," Jay said. "He was wrapped up and looked like a ball.

Fearless friend Danny then stepped in. "I put my hand on the cushion, and I felt it wiggling," he said, clearly delighted by the memory.

"I'm not afraid of snakes, so I grabbed a broomstick and pulled it out."

Danny said he would've liked to keep the slithery stranger.

"I love snakes. I would have taken good care of it," he said.

Danielle Jhomar, 28, had other plans.

"I tried to pick it up and throw it out [in the back yard]," she said. When that didn't work, she went to call cops but couldn't find her cellphone.

She bundled up the kids and went looking for a payphone but ran into a patrol car first.

The two officers went back to the apartment and trapped the reptile, which was still perched on the couch.

They secured it in a pillowcase and then drove it to the Animal Care and Control Center in Brooklyn.

A spokesman said the snake will likely not be claimed because boas are illegal to own.

It will be evaluated and then most likely sent to a sanctuary, he said.

Additional reporting by Josh Williams

Bubble Boy

Awesome Iguana Picture

My friend just got back from a cruise (fucker), and he sent some pictures around work this morning to torture all of us fucks trapped in the cold rain here in buttfuck Ohio.

You know how SB loves iguanas [EE-juan-ahs]! Pronounce it right! You don't need to prove your damn ignorance!

So here is an awesome iguana photo from B. Also, notice yet another overfed fat fuck American tourist in the photo with the iguana. And, no, it's not my friend in the photo. Hopefully, it's not a relative of his either. Damn! After the shit I just said.


The photos from B's cruise made SB realize I would NEVER go on a cruise. 90% of the damn "cruisers" are about 90 years old! I don't want some old fucker to keel over in front of me at the scrumptious seafood buffet. That shit might ruin my appetite!

More importantly, the lines at the poolside bars are too damn long! And you just know the geriatrics will hold the damn lines up, trying to count out exact change to pay for their mai tais and shit.

Vote Motherfuckers!

A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE DIED SO THAT YOUR DUMB ASS COULD VOTE. I know the contest winner(?) of the poll on the right side of this blog seems pretty obvious, despite the bad company, but DON'T FORGET TO CHOOSE A DUMB ASS and vote in the Who's a bigger dumb ass? poll.

After you have selected a moron, click the damn Vote button at the bottom of the poll in order for your vote to be recorded. [I am only pointing this out, in case you, yourself, are a dumb ass.]

Hurry, there are only 10 precious days left to vote!

Woman Barely Survives Bear Attack

Woman Survives Vicious Bear Attack - Watch more Funny Videos

You can't blame the poor bear for this, he just wanted more of those tasty treats. That ho wasn't giving them up fast enough! She got what she deserved! Remember, bears are NOT pets, people, unless you're Grizzly Adams.

SB always roots for the animal in a struggle. ALWAYS.

It's Un-American But I'm Still Going To Say It

I can't stand Fug Phelps. I am sick to death of hearing about him, and I am SURE AS HELL sick of looking at his ugly dumb ass.

I accidentally bought a box of Wheeties with the ugly fucker on the front the other day. You can imagine my horror when I pulled the box out of the cupboard before I'd even had my first cup of coffee! INSTANT RECOIL! I dropped the damn box on the floor.

Scary Jesus that Will Make All You Damn Catholics Feel Right at Home

This month's Scary Jesus is dedicated to all you damn Catholics out there, because you guys like your crucifixes extra gory and bloody as hell. And you know you Catholics only think it's a good icon if THE SUFFERING OF THE CHRIST IS PROMINENT. THE SUFFERING HAS GOT TO BE THE MAIN FOCUS, OR BY GOD, YOUR ASSES ARE NOT GOING TO WORSHIP IT! [And also there has to be a shitload of candles, too.]

It's my damn blog, so I can say what I want. If you don't like it, go over to A Nun's Life and read a damn nun's blog.

Here is the damn link: http://anunslife.org/blogs-by-catholic-nuns/

[Wouldn't it be interesting if the nuns decide to check out who posted a link to their site? I hope they read this shit. Nun feedback is WELCOMED in the Comments section.]

That Dumb Ass Billy Mays vs. ShamWow Vince

NEWSFLASH: I guess there is sort of a war going on between that dumb ass Billy Mays and the ShamWow guy, Vince. Billy can spray KABOOM at Vince, and Vince can soak it all up with his miraculous ShamWow!

I hear that Billy is making hateful comments about Vince because his insecure, pepaw, dumb ass feels threatened by Vince's STUNNING salesmanship. Of course, SB is taking ShamWow Vince's side, because my ass hates Billy Mays.

SB needs a damn ShamWow to soak up dog diarrhea or to wipe coffee from the front of my shirt on the three-minute drive in to work in the mornings. Yes, I know Moms--I should use THE EXPENSIVE CABELA'S STAINLESS STEEL TRAVEL MUG you spent all that money on! I know what you're thinking. I can read your mind all the way from the Trailer Park of Nirvana retirement villa (and it's pronounced VEE-ya, you bunch of dumb fucking gringos--it's not my fault your ass learned Spanish from damn Taco Bell commercials).

Also, a ShamWow might come in handy after I get drunk and spill half a bottle of Merlot on the beige carpet. It happens, people, and yes, sometimes I grab a pair of pants and try to wear them as a jacket to walk the dog in. Smart-ass motherfuckers.

Here is a clip of ShamWow Vince in action. GO VINCE! Maybe I should get TEAM SHAMWOW t-shirts screened. Your thoughts? And fuck off if you like Billy Mays.

Real Doll of the Month: Linda Evangelista

This ho sort of looks like a blond Linda Evangelista. Her "daddy" has obviously gone to great trouble with her hairstyle. Bitches hair looks better than mine! GOTDAMN!

Drunk Guy Confuses Pants for Shirt

Don't make too much fun of this old drunk speedo-wearing fuck. We've all been there, and you know it, people. Some of us have even been there more than once.


Drunk Guy Confuses Pants With His Shirt - Watch more Funny Videos