I'm Back and I've Brought a Political Agenda with Me!!!

OK. Been a minute. This is a far more taxing of an activity than I had anticipated. Waking up every single morning and trying to find something in the world that is worthy of being mocked is, in and of itself, not a difficult thing to do. We live in vacuous times, after all. The act of dredging up skepticism and scorn, no matter how happy you are, on a daily basis is liable to put a bit of a crimp in your outlook on life, though. Consequently, I hit a bit of a wall. I realized that there were many things going on in my life that I was neglecting while I busied myself with fairly unimportant things like Carl Paladino, Juggalos and "breige" and so I took an unannounced leave of absence to further muddy the waters of my the runoff ditch I call my lifel. While I never want to make this blog a soapbox for me to whinge endlessly about my petty first-world problems, I must say my life isn't the easiest thing to deal with. I'm living in NYC, rounding the curve into my 30's, single, without a traditional career, tending a bar whose business level could best be described as "mehnifficent" and fighting a pitched battle against nicotine addiction. For example, this past Wednesday morning greeted me with the realization that I had broken up with the woman I was dating, cracked the screen on my cell phone and was now living in a country where the Tea Party had a substantial voice in the Federal Government.Needless to say, I was less than chuffed.
Only one of those items is really important, really pressing, really worth addressing in depth, so let's get right down to it:

NOOOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooo.......!

It's OK! Mine's not cracked nearly as badly as the one in the picture (my High School English teacher just contracted dropsy because of that sentence). In all actuality, if I hold my phone just so, most of the cracks aren't even visible. It's a very minor problem and yet, it's one that has been pressing on my mind even more than the fact that one of Ron Paul's barghest whelps is now elected to the US Senate.

Pictured: Rand Paul as a D&D reference

It would seem that I, and what feels to be the vast majority of America, am so turned off by the puerile dog and pony show that we have standing in for a political system that I have ranked it beneath "slightly damaged consumer electronics" on the scale of shit to be worried about. And why not? What was there that I could have possibly done about Rand Paul getting elected except make a very ill-advised trip to Kentucky to have my head stood on my some hick? Call me selfish, but I somehow feel that would not be my best contribution to the democratic process. To be perfectly honest, I would much rather have my impending, night terror-inducing visit the Genius Bar be at the top of my list of "What is Fuckered About My Life Today" but sadly it is not. So, like many other Americans, I bury my head in in the sand on the Beach of Mundane Horseshit and try to forget the fact that this world is going to hell in a handbasket just as quickly as some douchehammers with gaudy lapel pins can (edibly) arrange it.

Problem with that line of non-thinking is, while we all are worrying over our digital personality accouterments, we lose sight of the fact that rationality is being poorly represented in the halls of power. We have let a ludicrously small, yet obnoxiously vocal segment of our society seize a modicum of control over our daily lives because the Democrat we elected to the White House wasn't made of magic and couldn't whisk us back to whatever glory days we think used to exist in this country. These people represent a dangerous blend of aggressively blind patriotism, toxic xenophobia and willful ignorance that would feel right at home in North Korea. When that mentality is corralled into some rogue state such as North Korea it presents a fairly limited threat to the rest of the planet, albeit one that should still be dealt with gingerly. Yes, North Korea has nukes and Kim Jong Il appears to be a crazy person but I suspect he knows that heading too far down that road would be the end of him and his family and the country they have effectively turned into their own private cult. So they act like the ADHD kid having an fistfight with his imaginary friend on the playground of the world: leave them alone and they'll keep playing by themselves. When it manifests in the 6' 4' 285 lb. football player with a chip on his shoulder because he got beat up by his dad (British Empire) when he was a kid and who goes around picking on anyone he deems to be even the slightest threat, well, then we, as the whole of humanity, have a real problem on our hands.
So I'm going to go out on a limb here. This is probably not a new idea but it's definitely one that is not being implemented and one that I feel needs to be implemented with all due haste. After the 2008 elections, the freshly disenfranchised crazies of the Republican Party formed the Tea Party, yes? In the following two years they managed to steer that party's ruling establishment on a path of their own choosing in exchange for not breaking completely away and voting for their own on an independent ticket. Why, pray tell, is this not happening within the Democratic Party? Now, I'm not saying, "Let's round up all the far left whackjobs and throw a national screaming match". What I'm thinking is a liberal mirror to the Teabaggers, and I do mean mirror in the sense of "an exact opposite reflection". Where they are irrational, let cooler heads prevail. Where they are reactionary, we should be progressive. Where they are ignorant, we will be informed.
The one and only thing that should be copied from the the Tea Party should be it's aggressive stance on what it believes. I watched two years of a Democrat-controlled congress repeatedly bow down to the whims of their minority opponents and allow themselves to be brow-beaten with political epithets like "unpatriotic" and "elitist". The Democrats have been by turns apologetic, uninspired and self-divided for the better part of the last two decades, no matter how much control they exert in the government. If anything at all is going to get better, that behavior has to stop and it has to stop DAMN skippy, too. The Obama campaign of 2008 proved that grassroots political movements are highly effective in the Information Age and the Tea Party reiterated that point last week. What we need are progressive political candidates that are from the people they intend to represent. If they focus on core progressive issues that effect everyone while remaining apart from the "moral" issues that the right wing gets so riled up about, I think there's a better than even chance of turning this thing around. After all, what farmer in Oklahoma is going to be against regulating commercial agricultural conglomerates that force him to buy GMO crop seeds that won't reproduce, thereby hiking his yearly overhead to a point where he can barely make ends meet? What factory worker in Ohio is going to to complain about higher EPA standards at his plant that effectively add years to his life expectancy? Who in the entire country could not get behind a system of tax incentives to corporations that keep jobs out of third world sweatshops and in the hands of a country that used to be known for what it could build instead of what it could buy? Who in any of the deeply Republican states on the Gulf Coast would vote against politicians who would jointly tell BP that they could not do any business in their states whatsoever until they had fully repaired the damage they have caused? Who, on either side of the political divide could call putting the country back together "unpatriotic" or looking out for the best interests of the Working Class "elitist"?
Look at it this way, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert got the ball rolling with their rally. They proved that, if nothing else, there are more people out there willing to attend a rally for sanity than there are to listen to Glen Beck's fear-mongering. You want that change that Obama promised? Then we have got to stop playing the game. We have to look at our surroundings and form real strategies for fixing our very real problems and we can't do it without the people that have been co-opted by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Fuck "hope", let's shoot for "results". Hope is a real hard sell in a country that is this bankrupt and broken. Fear is a much more powerful emotion, after all and right now the Reeps are wielding that sucker like a battle axe.
Let's fight them where they can never win: fundamentally changing the lives of average citizens for the better. Yeah tax cuts put more money in people's pockets for the short term but it also leaves our children uneducated, our environment undefended and our infrastructure unattended. Do you really think if we made a society where it was economically attractive not only to keep jobs in the country but to make them environmentally stable and to pay living wage, that all the corporations would flood out of the country to open up sweatshops? Some of them, maybe, but certainly not all and, knowing this country, the void left by the defectors would be filled rather quickly. The Golden Age of the 50's and it's resurgent Middle Class that people like Bill O'Reilly wax so eloquently over would never have been possible without an economy anchored in jobs exactly like this. Whether Republicans like it or not, well-regulated, Unionized corporations are what put this country on the peak it used to claim and deregulation and the gutting of the Labor Unions in the 80's triggered the nadir in which we now find ourselves. Tell me, what is patriotic about making it convenient to ship jobs overseas and disenfranchise a generation?
It's time to call the greedy bastards out on their lies. If they want to point to liberal eggheads hiding in their Ivory Towers then we can point their landed gentry and moneyed industrialists hiding in their gated communities, as well as what appear to be our tax dollars in their bank accounts and the deed to what's left of the country in their back pockets. In the rural areas, we focus on the economics of everyday life. In the cities we do the same but we push for the social issues such as gay rights and reproductive rights that don't play in the sticks. After all, just because someone doesn't approve of abortion doesn't mean their only voting option is for a party that repeatedly bends them over a counter while reading from The Bible. Reasonable compromises can be made while still achieving the goals that will better not just Democrats or Republicans but Americans as a whole and it's high time someone found their voice (not to mention their cojones) and went to work instead of backing up every time Ann Coulter gets shrill. Guess what? EVERYBODY is angry at the state of the country! That's probably why so much of middle- and lower-class America jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon in the first place. I mean, when I'm pissed off, the last thing I wand to see is Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation. Let's drop the whole hippie-shrinking-violet act and go about the work of fixing a country that is so deeply broken that it's future, and quite possibly the world's future, is rapidly becoming our worst nightmares. No one else is going to do it for us. Please remember that: NO ONE.


Whew. I do apologize. That was a lot of words without a funny picture with a pithy caption included for levity's sake. Here you go:

At least California came out of the elections OK.

Well there you have it. I don't know how in the first place to begin implementing my angry political screed but I am definitely open to suggestion so feel free to bring anything you can think of to my notice. Unless it involves canvassing for NYPIRG or GreenPeace. That way lies madness.

-NMFP


(but actually it all really is...)

An Uncanny Penchant for Citrus

It's no secret that New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority sucks on a level that is usually reserved for Fow News personalities and band that feature the "musical stylings" of Mike Patton. The last two years, the entire NYC subway system has been held in a death grip of schedule changes, service suspensions, fare hikes and outright line cancellations under the dubious guise of a rebuilding project. Basically what this has boiled down to is NYC citizens shelling out more money for less train while the MTA helps itself to a pay raise, spirals wildly into debt and awards contracts to companies with mob ties. Fun for everyone. New Yorkers are a tough breed though and when life hands us lemons we throw them shits back and say, "I ordered GRAPEFRUIT, motherfucker!" Thus we have a whole galaxy of transit based blogs and websites to help us vent away our frustrations with a system that may actually drive us all completely insane one day. When perusing straphanger sites, it's important to remember that there are several different styles to choose from.
The largest category is that of the Traditional Subway Grouser. These are fairly straightforward in their mission to deliver provide a soapbox for people who have "just had it up to here" with the fares/delays/changes/yadda yadda yadda. Sites like these usually range in tone from information provision to active bitching. I rarely check these sites if for no other reason than the only thing I find more depressing than riding the subway are people whose lives revolve around how depressing it is to ride the subway.

Time to get a little more sunlight, hey grumpy?

In the same vein but much more light hearted, are the blogs of the Transit Sociologist. Subwaydouchery.com used to be a prime example of this, but has recently succumbed to putting LOLcats style captions on all their photos. These are usually dedicated to chronicling the many ridiculous ways humans will act when crammed together in a rickety metal tube and hurled blindly towards their destination. I myself have witnessed behavior in the subway both quizzical and obscene but after the hundredth time, you kind of get to this point where King Aurthur could ride a horse through the car demanding tribute from the peasants and I would only be mildly nonplussed and then turn up the volume on my iPod.

You really think I'd make something like that up?

Not all subway blogs focus on the negative aspects. My current favorite is the Subway Art Blog which is doing an outstanding job of archiving the guerrilla art that is curated daily beneath our feet. Amidst the photos of tags and the burgeoning field of poster modification, you will notice evidence of New Yorkers actively hurling their lemons:

The newest entries to the online transit world come from Twitter. While I bear an aversion to Twitter that verges on religious conviction, Fake MTA has been a consistently funny way to waste ten second intervals of my time.
And that's it for the week. I would like to thank everyone for making this the lowest traffic week my blog has ever had. The lack of support is so thick I can taste it. And yet? I live to write another day. Gimme back my lemons.

An Inspiring Interuption

A rather unsettling thought descended upon my silly head today: what the hell am I going to write about when the elections are over? Sure, I'll be able to get in a good post-action mop-up and if I'm really lucky (which prior forays into the worlds of skateboarding and snowboarding have proved I am anything but) there'll be a nice, fat voting irregularity scandal to feast upon for a couple of weeks. And then? Make no mistake, New York is not in any way a boring place to write about. Seeing as how this blog was birthed in the madness that is the 2010 election cycle, though, I feel it owes it's very existence to the Paladinos and O'Donnells and Iotts and, yes, the McMillans that have energized me to write so... well I guess the best word choice here would be "loudly". Sadly, none of my political muses seem to have a chance in hell of winning anything but footnotes in the history books for being some of the most "tetched" candidates this side of Ross Perot.
I would really like to keep writing about my love for junk politics but I find myself disctracted. You see, the freegan/hippie/artist/psychonaut barista at the coffee shop I am currently writing from has begun to blare the emotionally stunted screechings of some hellish new Mike Patton "music" project which is about as distracting as having a four hundred pound autistic toddler poke you in the ear with a Crazy-Straw full of yogurt every ten seconds. Can I just say, it's none of my business if you wish to drop eight-plus hits of acid every day of your life and then drink some opium tea with your pot brownies. I would normally have no problem with anyone turning their heads into tapioca through excessive drug use EXCEPT when said tapioca head grabs a guitar and an effects peddle and makes a beeline for the recording studio. If you want to take a magical mystery tour through canyons of raping babies and oceans of three headed kittens with no eyes on a boat made out of rat skeletons that is being piloted by and anthropomorphic syringe full of AIDS who is wearing clown makeup and vampire teeth, that is entirely your business. Would you be a peach though and keep it to your fucking self? It's generally considered bad form to drag as many people as you can with you when you slip off the raft of sanity.
This is not some Nancy Regan, stick in the mud anti-drug rant. I've done my share, as well as a few other people's share, which is also considered bad form. I just hit a certain point with the whole "third eye" scene where I paused a moment, took a long hard look at reality, and decided that I was good to go. Sure, I still dabble from time to time and alcohol is still my constant traveling buddy, but there really is a line you cross with the drug use, booze included, that you aren't coming back from.
I'm as excited as anyone else to hear news of pot decriminalization and California's Prop. 19 and any other general ceasefire in the war on drugs. The part I'm not so stoked on is that these moves give rise to people who think things like this are funny:

When I read that, I put my back out from cringing so hard. There's always someone with either poor impulse control or overzealous fervor who will actively wreck anything worth doing. Vegans take the fun out of eating, Tea Baggers take the hope out of politics and druggies actively kill any buzz I might have been working on. There seems to be some kind of unspoken race to the bottom within the druggie community. For example, you think that flag is bad? Check this one out:

I believe the term you're searching for is "doucheflag".

When confronted with that image, my first reaction was to hit. There was nothing in particular I wanted to hit, just punch the air like a teenager with Tourettes. It's rather hard to keep in mind that the author of that lovely bit of verse probably had more drugs in them than an urn full of Mitch Hedberg's ashes and, therefore, should not be hunted and killed for sport in retaliation for their crimes against the English language.
Legalizing pot is going to be such a double edged sword. Should this country ever have the collective common sense to actually legalize marijuana (good), smoking weed will probably become necessary, if for no other reason than to blot outhete towering tidal wave of stoner/druggie-themed marketing (unspeakably evil) that is headed for shore even as we speak. Here are some things to look out for:

1) Anything having to do with Alice in Wonderland.
We get it. Lewis Carrol was a wacky motherfucker and and you're all "down the rabbit-hole" and "through the looking glass" and totally amazed that the guy was writing drug references into a children's book. That's really great. Now stop. And leave Willy Wonka alone while you're at it.

2) Things that are unnecessarily "freaky".

"Yeah, man, my company is totally weeeeeeiiiiirrrrddd! We don't think like you do! We're totally so out there that we have to go to these really great lengths to let you know that, this ain't your dad's shitty beer, man! This is only for people who are totally, like, into stuff that's totally...weeeeeeeeiiiiiirrrrrdddd!"

3) Aliens
OK, so this one is from Roswell and therefore makes some sense as far a marketing gimmicks go. As for the rest of it, aliens have gone from terrifying invaders to little, green (like weed, dude!) intergalactic stoners that want to put on one of those insufferable Dr. Seuss hats, lie under a giant mushroom and light up a doob.  I'm with the rednecks on this one. Shoot them sumbitches! And last but not least:

4) The completely obvious.
Wow,Ralph Steadman designed your label? Tommy Chong endorsed your product? Cherry fucking Garcia?! No thanks. I'll just muddle through with my usual choice and it's "boring" packaging.

You know what all these things have in common? They are, to a one, fucking terrible. Really. None of the products that pictured here are in any way good to consume, but I'm sure they all do a great job of separating stoners from their money. I mean, hell, if I wandered into a 7-11 while tripping balls and saw a six-pack that had a body pierced caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland chilling with an alien as imagined by Bob Masse, I'd probably gravitate (slowly) in it's general direction, stare at it for a bit, forget how money works and wander away, secure in my knowledge that, when I finally come down, there is a beer out there made just for me.
So brace yourself for the nonstop train to Wacky Land we're about to unleash on ourselves. If we're lucky (and I think I've already established how bad mine is) it's not going to get any worse than this:

But those are some long odds my friends.

Beard With Authority

Yesterday I briefly touched on the gubernatorial campaign of Jimmy McMillan of the fantastically named Rent is 2 Damn High Party. Well, at least everyone else's rent is too damn high. Jimmy himself is only paying $800 a month for his one-bedroom in Flatbush. But that's OK. I'd much rather it come out that a politician who's rallying against high rent actually has low rent, rather than a politician who's rallying against gay marriage getting caught in a gay tryst. But who is this mustachioed candidate of mystery?
Turns out, the 64 year-old ran a much less electrifying campaign for the guv-spot back in '05, albeit under the much more electrifying name "Prince Jimmy McMillan (aka Papa Smurf). He served in Vietnam, where he was apparently exposed to Agent Orange which, like Bruce Banner's gamma ray exposure, imbued him with powers that are often out of his control.

Mustache Powers.

His website seems to be similarly irradiated, or perhaps his web designer was a little "too damn high" during it's creation, which, judging from the caliber of the graphics, would be sometime back in the mid-Nineties. There is evidence of rampant abuse of quotation marks throughout this migraine inducing minefield of shrinking letters, violently clashing colors and to cap it all off, my newfound desktop background:

This is why the Internet was invented in the first place.

The man is also a non-stop quote machine. I had a recent interview with the man himself but I was so captivated by the facial hair that I forgot to record the bulk of it. Here's what little snippets I did manage to get on tape:

NMFP: "But how can tomatoes be a vegetable when the seeds...OK, know what? We're getting a little sidetracked here. Where were we?

McMillan: "Rent is too...damn high"

NMFP: "Yes! I think we've been over that...several times now. Just...let me look at my notes for a second. OK, what is your opinion on the current conflict in Afghanistan?"

McMillan:  "I’m a war vet. Don’t forget I was in Vietnam for two and half years and I have three Bronze Stars, but the chemicals of Agent Orange -- dioxin and a lot of other chemicals mixed up -- I would get sick. When I get home tonight, I know I’m not going to be able to breathe if I take them off. It could be psychological, I don’t know, but I just put em on and wear them anyway."

NMFP: "Take...take what off exactly...I'm not sure...what, your shoes?"

McMillan: "If you want to marry a shoe, I’ll marry you."

NMFP:  "..."
 
McMillan: "Rent is too..."

NMFP: "GOT IT! Got it. Yes. Fine. Moving on. In the past, what has been your stance on global warming?"

McMillan: "To be honest with you I was cool as hell. Even with my gloves on I was freezing, it was like I was in the North Pole!" 

NMFP: "Uh-huh. I'm gonna mark that as 'against global warming' OK, I think that's all I need. Any final remarks, Mr. McMillan?"

McMillan:  "I'm a karate expert and a musician: I have 15 seconds. Now its time for the humorous Jimmy McMillan to come out."

NMFP:  "I assure you, sir, you've been quite entertaining. OK, that's it for today I think...

McMillan: "Rent is too..."

NMFP: "DON'T YOU FUCKING SAY IT, MAN! I'M WARNING YOU!"

McMillan: "...damn high."

OK, all joking aside, I am actually going to vote for Jimmy McMillan, and it's not because of his beard/mustache combo or because of his antics or because it's ironic (and he is going to get a huge amount of irony votes) or even because the rent is too damn high. I'm voting for him because people like Jimmy McMillan are the only hope this city, and to some extent the country, has of getting through our newly christened age of fading empire. They are the concerned, everyday citizens who live in your neighborhoods and shop in your stores and rub elbows with you on the subway (until you ask them to stop being creepy). They have found one or two particular axes to grind and they don't particularly give a shit about anything besides their stated goals. So what if Jimmy McMillan can't balance NY's budget because he lacks an economics degree? Make the Lieutenant Governor take care of that. I mean, what the hell else it the Lt. Guv doing?
Point is, politicians are, for the most part, nothing more than politicians. No matter what they say during their candidacy, they will go about business as usual as soon as they are elected to office. Sure, Jimmy McMillan is crazier than a shit-house rat but, unlike Cuomo or Paladino, this is a man who has seen the real problems facing his city and state from the only place where you can get a decent perspective of it: on the ground. We can poke fun at this man and others of his ilk all we like, but one day we are going to pray that we have an outspoken, passionate, grass-roots candidate who won't merely feed us some "Change we can believe in" pander but never actually make good on that promise. We need valid third party candidates in the country worse than the Pope needs to get fucked.
We live in a country that views third party candidates like Nader as nothing more than a sideshow at best and a spoiler at worst. This perception will never change unless people start taking risks and breaking away from both of the established parties in favor of someone who might actually do something different. Join me in voting for Jimmy and fire a shot across the bow of the political establishment, if for nothing more than to return the country to the facial hair golden age that peaked with Chester A. Arthur

and let the mustache hairs of freedom flow again!

I Have Reached the Peak of Mt. Paladino. And I Can See Taiwan.

I've been having what the "youthfully challenged" crowd refer to as "senior moments". Now, I'm not quite at the Oops I Crapped My Pants level yet, unless I drink tequila, whiskey and red wine in a single sitting and then the odds are dead even. My "senior moments" are more along the lines of forgetting what I went to the store to buy or not remembering what day it currently is or how to spell rutabaga. And yes, I did have to spell check that just now. It also includes not finding out about rather large events that could possibly have an impact on my life until they are done and over with. While a lot of them are things I can quickly forget about, like bands that I love playing free concerts or a few pounds of C4 being found in the cemetery behind a place I occasionally work at, there are others that wound me to the core. For example, this last Friday, immediately after I finished posting, I was rather perturbed to discover, via Gothamist, that this little tidbit had escaped my drunken-hawk-like scrutiny:




Ho. Lee. Fuck.

This just might be the best Taiwanese export since the Nankang Rubber Tire. As you may or may not be aware, I have a morbid, death pact-caliber fascination with Carl Paladino, and I say to you, it is, quite simply, nothing short of INEXCUSABLE that I failed to notice this treasure, this nugget, this absolute gem of a video until now! This is tantamount to being the biggest Black Sabbath fan, only to discover after a few odd decades of fandom, that someone named Ozzy Osbourne had in fact founded the band and recorded eight albums with them before Ronnie James Dio ever came along. Or something to that hysterically hyperbolic effect.
Anyways, while the video is a well-honed piece of modern journalism, the English subtitles seem to have lost a bit in the translation. Some scenes play themselves out in a straightforward manner, while others delve a little too deeply into the well of symbolism for their meanings to be easily divined. As such, I have taken it upon myself to give you a scene-by-scene commentary that will, with any luck, enhance your understanding of the this most bizarre of nature's aberrations, The Greater Buffaloed Tea Bagger.
Right off the bat, the whimsical kazoo soundtrack really captures the awe inspiring lack of regard for reality at large that has been such a calling card of the Paladino campaign. My only gripe with it is that they went with a generic jingle that sounds like a knock-off of some incidental music from Animaniacs instead of using something much more appropriate when portraying a politician of his standing. We open scene with Paladino, inexplicably wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar (perhaps a reference to the historically corrupt Tammany Hall?), sending "racy e-mails" to a woman who appears to be an attache to Chairman Mao. Clearly stumped over how to render bestiality into CGI without actually making porn, the animators decided to go with the two dogs fucking right through the computer screen.

I can't quite make it out, but I believe the picture in the background is a waist-up photo of Cthulhu.

Next we have Carl hucking apples at a scarlet letter sporting David Patterson before being interrupted by his illegitimate daughter, played to disturbing effect by an inflatable sex doll.

Enraged by his daughter's crass appearance, he turns his anger on a nearby Candid Camera, while a presumably offscreen Peter Funt stares across the eighth dimension for comedic effect.

I can smell your soul.

In the next scene, the kazoo music is ditched for some tuba-heavy "Ompha" to appropriately capture the gravitas of the Paladino-Dicker brouhaha. Carl is all kinds of up in Dicker's grill when a man with a bigger top hat than him runs in between them. Paladino, in fit of millinery pique, breaks off the argument with Dicker to lumber after the hat of his dreams. Halfway down the hall he remembers he missed his cue to start his stirring "I'll Take You Out" speech and opts instead to shoot Dicker with his heretofore invisible tommy gun.

Dicker shows his disdain for Carl's bullets by doing his best Baby Cha-Cha impression before tripping over the corpse of Paladino's credibility and collapsing in a heap of bald.

We suddenly cut to the ghost of Paul Newman, dressed in the finest smoking jacket Hell had to offer, awarding Andrew Cuomo a medal for the ferociousness of his underbite. Cuomo is all like, "Sweet action!" and celebrates with the universal hand gesture for "Facemasking".

"15 yard penalty. First down."

Meanwhile, Carl gets a friendly visit from some neighbors who want to sign people up for their annual block party/rummage sale to support the troops or firefighters or retired police dogs or what have you. While their list of participants is indeed prestigious,

Paladino is forced to politely decline as he was already scheduled to appear at a Spanking Safety benefit in Rio that day.

After this scene, I must admit, I get a little out of my depth as the images take on a decidedly fever dream-like quality. In rapid fire secession we are presented with an aquarium inside of a fireplace:

A gassy Bill O'Reilly:

children's literature:

and an M60 machine gun for the TV shootin'.

My best guess would be that the aquarium/fireplace is representative of how time slips through our fingers like water no matter how brightly we burn, while O'Reilly's cramped face is symbolic of the increasingly desperate fossil fuel industry. Old MacDonald's Farm is, of course, a reference to the Pope and the machine gun is a cipher for the arch-nemesis of Catholicism, The 24 Hour Church of Elvis. When I tie together all these seemingly disparate images, the only meaning I can discern is that China just might be letting Taiwan play "Sovereign Country" for a reason
The poignant closing shot shows Paladino on the receiving end of an unjust baseball bat raping issued upon his person by Leonardo DiCaprio, Aaron Ekhart and a, as of yet unidentified, hood-rat.

Moral of the story: Be sprightly to the incorrect rutabaga farmer.

While this incoherent jumble of CGI is a fantastic testament to how unrelentingly insane Carl Paladino is, I am compelled to inform you that he no longer holds the"Craziest Person Currently Running for Governor of New York" crown. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the founder and CEO of the Rent Is 2 Damn High Party, Mr. Jimmy McMillan:



Now THAT, my friends, is how you get asses in the voting booth.

Joops

Couldn't get today's post out before I had to go into work. So sorry. I'll get the hang of this one day, I swear. Tomorrow's post will be plus-sized to make up for my shocking lack of discipline. See you then.

-NMFP

Gone to Smoke. Don't Fuck With My City.

Writing this blog is a bit of an evolutionary process. I didn't start out with any clear topic in mind other than to grouse endlessly about my petty First-World Irritations. While this is no doubt charming to people who think on the same lines that I do (roughly .00000001% of America), I believe I'm really homing in on the politics, culture and daily life of New York City. Sorry rest of the world. Please feel free to move on to all the wonderful blogs about Des Moines or Shreveport or Leeds or whatever shit-hole you decided was a better place to live than NYC.
Now that that dickish little anti-everywhere-else screed is out of the way, I'd like to point out, I'm not nearly this much of an asshole in real life. I'm kind of Asshole Light which is a lot like Amstel Light which is hardly offensive and actually sounds appealing provided the name  is being spoken by Metallia frontman James Hetfield.

Barkeep! On bottle of AM-stel LY-TAH for my beard(s) if you would be so kind.

I find it difficult to keep my assholishness in check when I write largely due to the fact that, no matter how highly I sing it's praises the City and it's inhabitants are relentless in their search to find fresh new ways to piss me off. For example, ever since Fiorello LaGuardia left the mayor's office in 1945, it would appear that there has been a secret clause to ensure that nearly every mayor after him would be a gigantic prick. Mike Bloomberg is a perfect example of this. Actually, Rudy Giuliani is a perfect example, but speaking his name causes him to manifest and increase in power much like Beetlejuice or The Candyman. By this logic I can only assume that typing his name does no less than give him a "woody" so I try to refrain whenever I can and drink to unconsciousness when I cannot. But I digress.

Bloomberg, while not the perfect prick, is rather a mixed bag of prick, asshole and surprising cool dude that has made him a fairly successful mayor. The biggest gripe that many New Yorkers have with the man is his adherence to Giuliani's (GAAHH! I did it again!) Disneyfication of the city. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for lower crime and better parks and making the place a better place to raise *shudder* children, but do we really need to ban cigarettes in public? I already pay 12 fucking dollars a pack, man! I already have to go outside to smoke in the dead of winter! I already have to endure being coughed at by passerby every time I have to enter the dreaded enclave of self-righteous, misplaced suburbanites that is Park Slope! And you're gonna tell me that I can't light up in a park? As the founding fathers said in the Declaration of Independence: Get the fuck outta here with that shit! We've all heard the arguments of the health risks of second hand smoke. What these people with over delicate shonzes can't seem to grasp is that A) those studies pertained to people in enclosed areas that much more closely resemble the bars and restaurants from which we are already banned, and B) do you see that diesel truck over there? What about the city bus that's behind it? And that stretch Hummer that appears to have fallen out of a giant man's crotch? Those delightful vehicles are spewing WAY WAY WAY more carcinogens out of their tailpipes than I am blowing out of my mouth. Here, let's listen to what an expert with a clear anti-smoking bias has to say about outdoor smoke:




Pretty scary stuff. Well, right up until the end anyways when the narrator let's fly with all the "could's" and "possibly's" that he had been trying so hard not to use throughout the rest of the video. He also glosses over the whole "dissipates quickly" thing in favor of "being aware of (your) exposure". Hey you know what else "could" "possibly" happen in NYC? You "could" "possibly" fall onto some subway tracks and then you "could" "possibly" get run over by a train in which case you will "dissipate quickly" from this planet  because you were not "being aware of (your) exposure" to the very deadly First-Hand Edge of Platform Body Placement that was combined with Second-Hand Bumped Into You Cause Some Self-Important Dick Was in a Rush to Get Somewhere Not At All Important. There are thousands of more likely ways you will die on any given day than catching a whiff of my cigarette and, should this ban pass, being savagely beaten to death by a nicotine-deficient smoker will probably be one of them.
You know, just because we are addicted to a dangerous chemical doesn't mean we are spawned from Satan's perineum. We are usually just average people who engage in something that is not particularly healthy. If you have a problem with the smoke, just ask if the person would mind not smoking around you. One of two things will happen. The smoker will politely oblige or they will say some permutation of the word "fuck" as directed at your person. But before you go demanding everyone snuff that Marb out whenever they come within a 50-foot radius of you, here is a handy guide to imposing your personal preferences on other people:

Scenario: You sit down at a park bench/sunny patch of grass/ outdoor cafe table where someone nearby, who was there before you, is smoking is smoking a cigarette. You ask them to stop.
Outcome: "Fuck off."

Scenario: You are walking down the sidewalk and stop at a red light. A smoker walks up and stands next to you a moment later. You ask them to stop. (Smoking, that is. They've already stopped walking, but that's very thoughtful of you.)
Outcome: "Fuck off and die."

Scenario: You are at home and your downstairs neighbor is a smoker. Every so often you can smell cigarette smoke coming from their apartment. You ask them to stop.
Outcome: "Go fuck yourself."

Scenario: Since asking people to stop smoking hasn't worked out very well for you in the past, you decide to be a sanctimonious ass and cough at every smoker you see regardless if you can smell it or not.
Outcome: You get fucked up for being a sanctimonious ass.

Scenario: You are at the park/beach/outdoor congregating area and are finally having a blissful, smoke-free moment. A smoker sits down near you and lights up. Still sore from the beating you caught the last time, you swallow your rage and politely ask the smoker to put out their cigarette or move away from your delicate nasal passage and/or small *shudder* children.
Outcome: "Oh sure. Sorry about that"

Now isn't that easy? Oh and if you were wondering, no, I did not quit smoking yet.

Two Gifts for the Price of One

Oh, dear god help me, I think I'm addicted to Carl Paladino. Those sunken eyes full of mystery... the drab grey suits to hue of a late autumn sky...the mouthful of gumless teeth that gently hint at a capacity for political leadership that is almost Giulianiesque...who wouldn't want to? As discomfited as I am to admit this newfound passion, I soldier on with the knowledge that I am not alone in my obsession with this soon to be anonymous political murder/suicide. As I'm sure anyone reading this blog for the past few weeks is aware, Gawker has been my constant companion through this increasingly obsessive descent into the abyss. They were the figurative dealer who gives you that first hit for free and waited for you to come running back for more, which, admittedly, was also free. Point is, I've always been a bit of a political junkie. My behavior leading up to and during an election cycle most closely resembles that of a soccer fan on the build up to the World Cup. Statistics are analyzed, commentary is processed and the news sites are constantly checked for that most glorious of American political events: Blood in the Water.
By most counts, Paladino has been hemorrhaging blood (as well as sweat, tears, words, decency, common sense and at least a quart of sperm every time he has to talk about "The Grinding") for so long now that logic dictates the pendulum will swing the other way any time now. When his supernova of a campaign has reached it's zenith, he will begin to implode, creating a political black hole that sucks in all the advisers and flacks in his close orbit and leaves nothing but the screaming void of an utterly failed political bid for miles around. Hopefully he is in Buffalo when that happens.
Before Hot Carl takes his final swan dive off the national stage, I think it's important to let him know how much he has meant to me, to us, to the nation. But how does one get in contact with would-be Governor Palpatine with out your heart felt missives being intercepted by an army of handlers?
Well why not just email him at his personal account?

Don't say I never give you anything. This little nugget came from Gawker, which I believe is their way of trying to move me off of my usual weed-strength Paladino bashing, to black tar heroin-strength Paladino Bashing. As you can see from the subject line, Carl is quite used to offensive material in his inbox (I believe he finds it "awesome"), and so I would encourage you to send him some parting gifts for his many contributions to the political crazy box. Some tasteful gay porn should do the trick. Or perhaps you could forward him all (and I do mean ALL) of the mail caught in your spam filter. Personally, I'm thinking about just dropping it on the /b/ board at 4chan and seeing what happens.

Be careful with that last link. That site is where hell bubbles up into the world.

But wait! I have yet another gift for you, the last ten or so people who read my blog! After weeks (eons in blog years) of procrastinating, making excuses and generally dropping the ball, I am proud to present you with...


                        Hipsterpedia Vol. 3

Yes, dear sirs and gentlewomen, after meticulous research and hours of field work, I have compiled enough data to publish my third entry in my soon to be Kinkos-collated, multi-dozen page edition of The Great American Hipsterpedia. Today's topic is a fascinating subspecies of The Hipster that has, through decades of evolution, become utterly symbiotic with it's chosen mode of transportation. Before I begin, I must reference the man, without whom, none of my research would have been possible, the incomparable Bike Snob NYC. I am but the blogger John the Baptist to his Jesus Christ, except he's been blogging a lot longer than I have and has no idea I exist. So a crappy analogy, all in all. Without further ado, I give you: The Fixter.

Hipsterus Apparatus Fixus

While the bicycle is a widely used tool of personal transportation for many a Hipster, this sub set has taken the humble machine beyond mere utility and elevated it into a realm of blind adherence usually inhabited by religious cults, drug addicts, and Tea Baggers. In actuality, the Fixter's obsession with the bicycle parallels many facets of each of those groups of people. They hold the bicycle in fierce, maniacal reverence, like a cult. Their bikes are a ubiquitous part of their daily life they cannot fathom parting with, like the junkie. They are tremendous douchebags to all who do not share their myopic worldview, like the Tea Bagger. They are, in short, quite insufferable.

Origins: While Fixters may lay claim to consanguinity with the fabled bike messengers of yore, they are lineage is more closely tied to the legacy of Don Quixote as they dash about madly on cobbled together equipment, in a haphazard search for all that is "epic".

Habitat: Most video footage of the Fixter would give rise to the notion that they exist entirely on steep hills and the middle areas of busy intersections. This is a clever ploy used to throw off their many natural predators, such as the Yellow Flecked Cabbie, the Asian Panel Van Pilot, and the Lesser Donged Hummer Owner. They are most at commonly found salmoning their way along a bike lane, track standing in crosswalks, sitting in front of coffee shops or just standing around, bike in hand, waiting for someone to mention it.

Appearance: The Fixter's regalia is somewhat more utilitarian than the average Hipster, but the same affinity for blindingly mismatched colors is evidenced on their steeds.

Oh, it BURNS!

One standard accoutrement are keys worn on carabiners affixed to the belt loop, which appear to serve the same function as the traditional bike-mounted bell (i.e. "I am drunk and our collision is imminent"). Also frequently spotted are hats either quite small and streamlined or flat-brimmed and aerodynamically challenged. As the two are interchangeable, I must conclude they serve no practical purpose. A dizzying galaxy of messenger bag varieties have been spotted. I would go into greater detail but I tend to find myself experiencing acute narcolepsy during any conversation that revolves around the word "bag". In the colder months, the plumage consists of tight pants unnecessarily rolled to mid-calf, waterproof windbreakers over hoodies, and the occasional cold weather face masks that run the spectrum between urban ninja to Hannibal Lecter.  In the Summer months, the Fixter molts it's heavy outer layer to reveal its cutoff shirts, ankle socks and obscenely short cutoff shorts. 

Behavior: Whoops! Already covered this in the opening paragraph. They are simultaneously Crazy, Needy and Douchey which, indecently, are my three favorite of the Seven Dwarves.

Modes of Transportation: Fixed gear track bikes. There's much to be said on the topic of makes and models but I find myself experiencing acute narcolepsy AND Irritable Bowel Syndrome during any conversation that revolves around "how I'm getting to work today". Please visit Bike Snob for more in depth coverage.

Mating Call: No particular call, as their entire sexual energy is focused on an inanimate object. The act of copulation is as follows:

Musical Taste: The discordant symphony that can only be heard after repeatedly doing something incredibly stupid directly in front of any motor vehicle equipped with a horn.

Bottom Line: Quite delicate. Would immediately become endangered should the world's supply of carbon fiber and PBR ever dry up.

And there we have it. Not only did I finally deliver on a long promised post, but I did it before five in the afternoon. Oh, this blog is growing up so fast!

I'd Much Rather be Watching BSG, but Here You Go Anyways

It's rather miraculous that I'm posting today. I had to resist a  deadly combination of unexpected overtime at the bar and the recent, unexpected premiere of the entire Battlestar Galactica series on Netflix Instant, but I am posting nonetheless. But enough about me. Even though it's been a mere 48 hours since we've checked in with Superfriend-for-Mayor Carl Paladino, it feels like ages, doesn't it? One can only hope that Fox News will take pity and make a talking head out of him after he loses to Cuomo. In the meantime, let's not waste one glorious second of Buffalo-brand Batshit, hmm? Since he began his one man off-off-off-Broadway comedy of errors, he has been utterly incapable of adhering to the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" guideline that is generally followed by most political hopefuls whenever there is a video recording device present. He also hasn't been able to wrap his head around the fact that these new-fangled interweb machines will make cannon fodder of your previously-private life at the merest push of a button. As a direct result of his own stupidity, we now know that Paladino is a racist with a passing intrest in bestiality, has a deep hatred of the poor, has a mistress despite running as a proponent of family values, will "take you out" if you displease him, and last, but most certainly not least, really not that big a fan of the gays.
Sooooooooo...
Basically what I'm taking away from this is:

But hold on there, hoss, this race to the bottom ain't over by a damn sight! In a desperate attempt to regain some infinitesimally small shred of respect from the population of people who don't used their heads for toilet paper, he issued a six point apology for his prior denunciation of folks he feels don't use their respective holes properly. And then promptly lost the support of the folks he made those comments to. I suspect that somewhere in whatever passes for his inner monologue, this video, complete with music, is on a never ending loop right about now:



 To anyone outside of New York who's reading this, I am deeply sorry that your local politics are so unspeakably boring. Please feel free to relocate here, just so long as you're sure you can handle it.
Now, please excuse me but I REALLY need to watch some BSG.

Interrupted By Real Life

Got called into work unexpectedly today so the post won't be up until round 8pm East Coast Time. Sorry, y'all. I am but an amateur.

-NMFP

What's In a Name? More Than I Wanted to Know.

While pondering the greater mysteries of life, such as why am I here wasting my time writing a blog no one reads, I stumbled upon the fact that the acronym NMFP is being used for a vast array of other projects and purposes unrelated to my own. Tossing NMFP wantonly into a search engine will bring uup things like the rather obtusely named Nebraska's Money Follows the Person project, which really is a bit of unfair shoehorning on their part. Just go with NMFTPP or, better yet, how about rethinking that name all together? Sounds like code words for secret agents in some cheesy Cold War spy thriller:

"How is the lobster in Vienna?"
"Nebraska's money follows the person"
"It's a fine day for pontooning."

And then cyanide capsules and microfilm all around.

Then there's the ubiquitous Facebook page for something called Team NMFP, which as far as I can tell is some kind of group for office drones to empty their impotent anger at a life gone sour into, much in the same way one would empty a mouthful of chewing tobacco into a spittoon. Some clever wag will no doubt draw a comparison between my blog and their spittoon of beige rage (raige) but I say to you, we are nothing alike. They have an extravagant 142 member while I am sporting a modest 2.
I also found this lovingly uncurated website which gives you a whole 30 definitions of the NMFP acronym, 10 of which are grammatical variations of themselves. What really stands out for me would be the curious inclusion of New Mexico Film Please and Neutrino Mean Free Path and yet nary a mention of Nipples Made From Plastic. While I'm sure begging the state of New Mexico for film is a very valid and noble calling, we should never be so blind as to forget the plight of those who, but by the grace of modern science and the the petro-chemical conglomerates, would face each new day cruelly devoid of chest mounted fleshy bits.

We will never forget.

This blog finally makes an appearance 41 hits into the search, with a Hipsterpedia entry, reminding me that I have, yet again broken a promise I made, like that deadbeat father in Angels in the Outfield. Maybe Christopher Lloyd will ghostwrite one for me.

After he gets done watching Danny Glover and Tony Danza eat small children.

But what is in a name? In the first issue of his seminal underground comic, American Splendor, Harvey Pekar relates how he once looked up his own name in the phone book (the 60's version of googling yourself) and was surprised to find that he shared that name with several other people. While my name is unique enough that I don't have to share, this last time I googled myself (as I am wont to do most mornings, nights and shower times) I discovered a rather sad list of things attached to my name. Since no one is reading this blog currently, I feel quite comfortable outing my pathetic internet legacy for my own amusement and perhaps the amusement of anyone who accidentally stumbles across this blog while looking for the Person Nebraska's Money was Following.
All of five hits come up on an exact search of my name, two of which are people locating services with outdated information on my whereabouts, phone number and even age. I would think that these kinds of sites would keep their info up to date, seeing as how they're selling it to anyone who wants to know. Then again, I find it rather comforting that the only thing some stranger who is trying to find me will get for their one-time purchase of $8.99 is a snootful of inaccuracies. I'm not paranoid or anything, but if you don't know where I am or how to contact me, odds are that there is a very good reason for that. That's right, Faith Bible Christian School Class of 2001 10-Year Reunion Committee. I'm talking to you.
Another unsolicited appearance of my name pops up on hot-people.info. At first I was pleased that my natural state of hotness was being given the proper spotlight it has so richly deserved all these years. I was quickly disabused of this opinion upon scrolling down to the bottom of the page where I was informed (in a font that says, "I never knew I could change fonts until this morning!") that it is in fact a list of people who live in close proximity to "hot" toxic waste dumps. I lived in Texas for three years and all I got was my name on this list of people who can probably expect to undergo chemotherapy in the future.
The next search result was something that had lain dormant in my memory for many, many years, the sight of which caused me to violently blush and void my bowels even though no one else was in the room. Once upon a time, when I was but a geekling, I submitted my name to an organization called the Nitpickers Guild. The guild, which is run by this goober, is dedicated to, I shit you not, finding and publishing plot holes and continuity errors in Star Trek and X-Files episodes.
And I found one.
Is a joke even necessary here? I think the whole premise of the Nitpickers Guild and my involvement with it is such big circular train of uninterrupted virginity and stolen lunch money that we can just let it sit there, sweaty and pasty in the light of day, without actually having to poke at it with any further remarks.

Not me, but you'd be justified in thinking it was.

Ah, and then the Pièce de résistance (means "death of dignity" in Aramaic or something). The Friendster account that was never closed. Do you have one of these things? Dear god, it is the most excruciatingly painful reminder of how cool you thought you were at a time before hanging out in bars was a legal option. The stupid jokes. The bad pictures. The "friends" you'll never see again. It's actually shocking to me that someone is actually still paying for the server space necessary to keep the ghost town of spammers and porn-bots up and running. Even more shocking? People are still using the damn thing! At least two of the "friends" on my account have been active in the last year. That's almost more traffic than this goddamn waste of time blog is getting. Once upon a time, Friendster (or MySpace's MySpace) was the hottest thing on the internet. It was the progenitor of all the social networking sites that currently rule the cyberscape. Now it's the internet equivalent of running into your best friend from 8th grade who's now selling PCP-laced weed under and overpass in Spokane, Washington.
Let that be a lesson to us all. Today we are hot shit. Tomorrow we are toxic sewage.