SPREADING THE NEWS

If you know Bambi, and you have checked out her friend, Dillinger at all (see How It All Began) then you won't want to miss this video -- Under LinkyPoos on my sidebar. Also check out his new website... David Smith - Author . His books have an incredible, unique voice, as does the man himself, so go to his site and buy his books. While you're at it, head over to Writers AMuse Me click on the link to go and buy my fucking books as well, so I can afford to write more of em.

Dave... singing... The Star-Spangled Banner

LORD STANLEY WOULD BE SO FECKING PROUD

DATELINE: SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST – The final whistle hadn’t even been blown to end the Stanley Cup game, and already the crap was happening on the streets of Vancouver. Way to go, you classless gits. I have held my tongue through the series, but there is a limit.

It’s a GAME. It is nothing more than that. None of those players puts their lives on the line to save anyone else, none of them run into burning buildings to rescue babies, they don't spend days without sleep beating bushes to put out a wildfire, or stand for fourteen hours while performing delicate surgery. Hockey is a game, played for the most part by thugs on skates, and certainly not by the Gods our media would make these thugs out to be. It is driven by the obscene amounts of money pumped into it for contracts, advertising and to line the owners' pockets. No three-hour event is worthy of $6000 tickets; no person, regardless of how well they can handle a puck, is worth the multi-million dollars these idiots are paid. Don’t think that I am against hockey as a sport, because I’m not. I just can’t stand the bastardization that has been done to it.

In a time when household debt is at a record high, where many people don’t know how they are going to make their next mortgage payment, for them to be paying huge amounts of money for the privilege of watching A GAME, running the tickets through on credit cards because, well, gee… it’s the Stanley Cup or gee, it’s a new team for Winnipeg, is asinine. I understand wanting your team to win, I applaud the fans cheering them on, but come on, there is a limit. Now, even hockey has become elitist, because the normal middle class peons just cannot afford it, and that’s the crime.

But now, because the Canucks lost a game, people feel the need to carry on like wild fucking baboons. Vehicles started on fire, flipped over, fights breaking out, people defying the police. What the hell did the people who have businesses downtown do to deserve this crap? They are trying to make a living, working to create an atmosphere that welcomes people to the city, and certainly can’t afford to have their shop windows smashed, their stores looted, especially over what? Because of A GAME. Lord Stanley would be so very, very impressed with this shit.

I can’t imagine how terrible it feels to be a player, knowing this is what the fans want to do. It has to be terribly embarrassing for them, one hell of a way to end the day after losing the game of the year. How terrible for the fans that are there for the right reasons, who wanted to go out and cheer on their team, but now they are in the middle of exploding tear gas canisters and assholes lighting vehicles on fire. This is why I hate seeing sporting events around here -- they are nothing more than an excuse for an excess of money blowing, booze flowing and criminal behavior. The irony is that Vancouver wanted to get rid of the Indy race, an annual event that did a lot of good for the city, because it was an inconvenience to some tight-asses downtown. Are they going to get rid of the Canucks for the same reason? There were never riots in the street after a fecking car race.

What sort of a screwed up society are we? This shit is never acceptable, but when did we let it get so skewed? We are more concerned about our child being able to skate than we are about them being able to read. We are more concerned about driving them all through the night to a game, but we never sit down and help them with their homework. Are we so blinded by the god-like glow these athletes give off while perched up on their pedestals? Is the smell of a multi-million dollar 5-year contract to play more important than absolutely anything else in our lives? Are we really that driven by greed? And what the hell is this shit about fighting in the streets en mass over the results of a game. It’s A GAME! None of us will suffer tomorrow from the loss of the Stanley Cup game, the world won’t stop turning, and there will be another chance next year and the next year and the year after that for them to do it. It is NEVER an excuse for criminal behavior.

So, while the Canucks did their best, played their hearts out, and were disappointed, they probably had an even more devastating disappointment in the fans who are bound and determined to make it impossible for the public to enjoy games together in the future. Stores had shut down to accommodate the fans, had given up several hours of sales, all to allow the fans to enjoy A GAME. Instead, it became a clusterfuck of tear gas, Molotov cocktails, injured people, burning vehicles and riot squads. The whole damned works of you should be ashamed, because THIS is why so many of us would like to see professional sports stopped and the focus returned to amateur events that celebrate a sport and the players.

It’s A GAME, idiots. Why is that so fucking hard for you to remember? For Vancouver's sake, I have to say that, despite all odds, this morning I was thankful to turn on the American and overseas news broadcasts to find Anthony Weiner's penis again in the headlines. Thank God for 'small' mercies.

FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT, June 11, 2011 -- SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

DATELINE: WATCHING THE CHILDREN DIE AND ASKING WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US – It’s been one of those weeks, where every time you turn on the news, buried beneath the stories of the newest ‘member’ of the US House of Representatives, and how it’s owner has the moral compunction of a snot ball, or the incredible number of penalties issued in a frigging hockey game, is a headline about a child abused, a child murdered, a child tortured. Why these are not the FIRST stories to be discussed is rather beyond me. We have become blasé to the torture we put children through, not even bothering to report on the ones who are starving, the ones who are still living in tents, caves and rubble in Haiti, the ones who daily demonstrate a grace and strength second to none when faced with adversity; we ignore them, because the image of a skeletal child to weak to scoot the flies from its eyes is really much less glamorous than Paris Hilton’s pantyless exit from her car, much less spectacular than Charlie Sheen’s Adonis/tiger bullshit crap and corruption ‘how much I can bilk you stooped people this time’ real winners tour and flame-out.

Buried in the headlines in May of this year was a UNICEF report that people from the province of Daraa in Syria were being detained in appalling conditions, many of them children. That was in May. Now in June, we have the second report of a teen who was snatched up by Bashar Assad’s government, tortured, killed, and returned to his family. This would be the second that had made it to North American media. God only knows how many others there are who haven’t found their way to YouTube or Facebook. This child, 15 years old, was taken on the same day and from the same area as Hamza el-Khatib. Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei was shot in the knee. His face was bruised black, his teeth were all pulled out. Who the hell gets off doing this to children? Who gets off doing this to anyone? There can be no question that international involvement is required here. We are talking about Syria, where it was just revealed by the Atomic Energy Agency, these people have also created a plutonium reactor; undoubtedly the makings of another nuclear disaster with radiation leaks to wipe out more people because they just don’t give enough of a damned to make sure its done properly. When the hell are these asshole leaders of asshole regimes going to get their heads out of their asses? Oh yeah, never, not unless the rest of us stand up for those who are so completely oppressed and say enough. Until then, all we can do is make sure the names of these children are not forgotten, because as we stand back and do nothing, say nothing, we become as guilty as the dickhead Syrian thugs are, and Bashar himself is, in their deaths.

Of course despots and dictators do not have the market sewn up when it comes to the absolutely reprehensible hell we tend to believe we can put children through. Enter Doctor Earl Bradley, a 58-year-old Delaware paediatrician who is currently on trial for sexually abusing 86 of his little patients. The average age of his victims was three. How can this happen, you ask? Well, he used hidden cameras, including one in a pen that he used to take pictures of his little patients genitals. If his patient was good, he would take her to get a ‘treat’ in another room, or he would say that he had popsicles that would help with pain control after shots, then take the child for that, creating excuses to get the child away from the parent. It was for a popsicle; what parent is going to get alarm bells about that? Once out of eyesight, in his other rooms where he had the ‘treats’, he also had cameras set up to film him forcibly holding the child’s head for oral satisfaction, and that wasn’t the worst of it. For ten years, this sick fuck had access to children, creating a long list of victims who will spend the rest of their lives trying to understand and deal with what happened, and their parents who will forever be consumed in a hell of guilt and rage, all because Earl Bradley is a majorly sick bastard who should never have been allowed near a child, and who should never be allowed to see the light of day again.

Along the same vein, we have the entire Casey Anthony clusterfuck. There is a little girl dead, for no reason, killed at the hands of someone in her own family, someone who should have offered nothing but unconditional love to the child. Why is this so hard? When did it become acceptable for us to consider children as dispensable? Casey Anthony pretends to cry, feigns sickness, anything to not have to deal with what is going on; anything to avoid accountability, and let’s face it... she is accountable. There is no doubt that she is fully aware of who murdered her child, and if she is sincere that she is, in fact, ‘not guilty’, then why the hell has she not provided evidence as to who is? She has blamed her father for sexually assaulting her, as well as her brother when she was a child, but we know she is a pathological liar, so those have no credibility, plus they are not offered as evidence of her innocence but rather an excuse for her actions, so she doesn’t have to own them. She lied about the drowning, she lied about the babysitter, she has lied about everything. If she did not do it, she damned well knows who did, and if she is not prepared to help convict the murderer of her child, it’s as if she did it herself anyways. The bottom line is that this woman, this family, should not be allowed to have access to children at all. The parents know what is happening, and while I can understand that they love their daughter and don’t want to see her facing the death penalty, there were things they could have said or done to help put this issue to rest... for everyone’s sake. Hell, Casey was more than prepared to toss everyone else in her family under the bus, everyone but her boyfriend; that says a mouthful.

FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT -- June 10th, 2011

DATELINE: LOOKING AT MY WATCH AND THINKING THAT DIDN’T TAKE VERY LONG: They have had a majority government for one month, and already the evidence again of the assholed arrogance of the Harper Government is smashed into our faces. These paragons of virtue who campaigned again on transparency, openness, honesty, integrity have very quickly shown their true colors again. Of course, that anyone believed that bullshit the last time around is astounding. We shook our heads when our neighbours to the south elected George Dubya for a second term. ‘Can they not see that he is so totally focused on one thing that he is letting everything else go to hell in a handbag?’ we asked. ‘The man has the brains of a cumquat and the diplomacy of a fungus gnat’ we raged. ‘What about foreign policy? Do they not see the trouble they are walking into with no foreign policy even on the table? He led them into a war that even the people paying the bills don’t understand.’ Yes, we knew it all... about the United States and how they should vote. Aren’t we the erudite assholes of the world.

I tried compiling a list of the ‘issues’ regarding the Harper government while it had a minority government for five years... at two pages I stopped because it was depressing as hell. These were not little slip ups, human errors that can happen. No, they may have started at that, but then were compounded exponentially by the lies, the deceit, the in-your-face bullying when asked to account for them. Maxine Bernier committed a HUGE fucking breach of security, leaving secret government documents at his boinkette’s house when they broke up... the boinkette who had a history of being involved with criminal members of biker gangs. Ooops. In any other world, his ass would have been canned for such a breach of protocol but where is he today? Why, he is a cabinet member.

Bev Ota changed the words on a signed government document, totally reversing the meaning and intent of the piece of paper. It was not an issue of her right to refuse funding... no one argued that she had that right in her cabinet position, but it was the fact that the paper, a paper signed and attested to by other people, was changed without their knowledge of consent. That could have been a slip-up, but no, then she lied about it, saying she had no idea about it or who did it, then she admitted she did do it, but only when she was finally confronted with being accused of contempt.

Harper himself has the issue of proroguing parliament twice to save his fat sorry ass from being booted out of office – anything to maintain power. He promised to not stack the senate, but he did it anyways. He wanted set election dates, then called an election. He promised open honest government, then put gags on all his party members, forbidding them to talk because he couldn’t take the chance of them not adhering one hundred percent to the party line. He sent troops to war, then demanded that when one of them comes home in a coffin, that their repatriation ceremony must not be shown and flags must not be lowered.

He said senate reform could not take place because there was no agreement among the parties of how to do that. So, what the fuck did he actually propose? He didn’t bother because why do that? It’s just so much more his style to steamroll whatever the hell he wants through, masked in whatever guise, as long as it serves one purpose and one purpose only... to keep him where he is.

So am I surprised at the results of the Auditor General’s report today? Hell no. None of us should be. Was I sickened at their arrogant offhanded reaction to it as a government? Hell yes. We all should be. That they do not in any way feel the need to be held accountable for what they did and how they did it is reprehensible, but predictable. After five fucking years in office they cannot argue that they did not know how to create a paper-trail regarding the selection and financing of the many projects undertaken for the G8 and G20 summits... They knew, but it was not convenient to do it properly, accountably, honestly, because they don’t have to; they are the Harper Government. There was no protocol followed for this, and their response to one of the most scathing reports issued by the Auditor General? It was the public service’s fault and besides, we didn’t use all the money we had set aside for it. Well, whoop-de-fucking-do, pin a medal on you, John Baird. For starters, in issues of spending money, it is NOT ever the public service’s fault. You are the ones elected to deal with it; that’s why you get the big bucks, and to blame it on anyone else is just fucking childish. That you didn’t spend all the money budgeted is nice; that you can’t account for how you selected the projects you did spend money on borders on criminal, but again, rather than answering for your actions, you redirect, throw out a totally irrelevant reply and carry on because, well, you can because you are the Harper Government. You are the government that wants to deport a boy back to Korea after his family has been here for years, making a very valuable contribution to their community and our country, but because the boy is autistic, you want to kick him out. The Maeng family has more than enough to deal with; they did not need federal goverment thugs telling them they had to leave because their son's medical expenses cost the government too much money (here's the fun part; the boy's medical expenses for the last four years have cost the government $1000, far below the $5935/year benchmark the government set before the person's situation is reviewed for possible deportation, and he is home schooled so there is no financial burden placed on the education system either), so let's send him back to Korea and to hell being being humaine in any way, shape or form. There are fucking Canadian values for you... quintessential Harper; if it ain’t big corporation, either fuck it or remove it (that’s also his plan for the middle class here too, just so you know).

So begins the next five years of watching our country being brought to its knees, our values being eroded, democracy snubbed until it is snuffed out. Did Harper really want senate reform? Hell no, he wants them gone because they are one more thing that might interfere with his plans for absolute power. If he wanted to maintain the Senate, something that could and should happen, he would have done it by now. Killing our ‘chamber of sober second thought’ and the bicameral process that makes the Canadian Parliamentary system accountable is not even on the table. It’s diseased, yes, but rather than cure it, we shall kill it.

(The cure, by the way, is very simple. To balance out the fact that the commons is population-based, as it should be, the senate should be regionally based, with ten senators from each province and territory. They are elected, with absolutely NO party connections or funding. The province votes on their senators every five years from a roster of up to twenty names of people who want to apply for the job, and the ten with the most votes throughout the province go to the red chamber, do their job, account for themselves and stand for re-election and approval in four years time. It’s pretty fucking easy to make a senate that is elected, accountable, responsible and effective... but of no value to the current government. God forbid they have another entity in Ottawa that is not totally under their control.)

FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT - JUNE 7th, 2011

DATELINE: FINDING THE PONY IN A PILE OF POO – Pile of poo? More like a fucking boatload of bullshit, at least on the political front. We wonder why people are frustrated with politics, why people have tuned it out, why they don’t bother to vote, while there are some hugely important issues that need to be discussed and acted on. You want to know why? It’s because politicians lie, and the ones that are not lying are either covering up or making excuses for the ones that lie... which makes them no fucking better than the political Pinocchio’s that seem to have taken over the entire system.

First we have John Edwards, the man who would be President... thank God that didn’t happen. He denied being involved with another woman...for a while. When that was no longer deniable, he swore on a stack of Bibles that he did not father a child. (Bambi’s rule #69 – when they volunteer what they DIDN’T do or who they DIDN’T do, it’s usually a key indicator that hell yes, they are guilty as all holy hell). He did this while his wife was standing beside him, holding his hand and stroking his fucking ego while she was dealing with her own challenges in the form of cancer, a cancer that took her life. She was concerned about their children, the ones down the hall from Dickhead Edwards as he was boinking his tart in the bed he would have been sharing with his wife... if she hadn’t been in the hospital dealing with, remember... cancer. Now the man says he did not break any laws, that he did not misappropriate funds in order to hide his affair. Sorry Johnny hon, your three denials are used up, stupidly, and it is to be hoped that you spend a long time in prison with a cellmate with a dick that was as uncontrollable as your own has been.

Enter penis pics, the really, really sad choice of Anthony Weiner, the quintessential Peter Tweeter. With a name like that, did he really want to take crotch shots and send them off to people he claims he doesn’t know anything about... he just randomly offers pictures of the family jewels, I guess. When this all started, he claimed his computer account had been hacked, then he said that it might be pictures of him that were doctored and someone else sent, then he claimed that it might have been a picture of him, but he really couldn’t be expected to remember exactly what pictures of his dick were floating around. He claimed to not know any of the people he has been having intimate conversations with over the internet then admits that yeah, he knew where they were, he has talked to some of them for months, some before his recent marriage, some after. He says he has had no physical contact with them, but you know he was at the very least yanking on the celeb wanker while he was talking about their tits, sharing naked pics, and bragging about his prick. The man is a newly wed... if he were mine, he would be newly dead. He has now volunteered that he had no sex with them, that he has never met them, that he never used any government equipment or time to do his digital dalliances, and that none of them would be under age... **See Bambi Rule #69 above. Nuff said... this prick needs a few minutes with my friend Lorena and her rusty trusty Ginsu de-boning knife.

Of course, not ALL their lies about their peckers. It was revealed yesterday that at Fukushima Diiachi nuclear plant, three of the nuclear reactors experienced a complete meltdown within hours of the earthquake and tsunami that hit two months ago. Yes, the owners of the plant denied, still do, that there was any danger, that there was any meltdown, that there was any problem at all other than perhaps a bit of a leak. They told the people around there that there was no danger, so not to worry. The fucking things were in meltdown, spewing radiation into the air all around there. It takes some effort to take a life threatening disaster and turn it into a clusterfuck of BP proportions, but hell, the Tokyo Election Power Co has managed, hands down. Rather than looking like a bunch of incompetent assholes, they chose to lie about the situation, endangering hundreds of thousands of lives at least, turning down assistance, shunning other agencies, and firmly entrenching their place in the Lying Asshole’s Hall of Fame.

Take heart though... I believe in equality. Not all politicians and executives lie about their dicks or their impotence, in whatever form it might present. We still have Sarah Palin. She is out there doing her damnedest to convince the world that she is NOT campaigning, that she is wanting people to know about history, about Americana, about being proud to say you are American. She is teaching her children and the children of the world a valuable lesson about the importance of history, the value of knowing where you are from. I believe I know where she is from... she is the fucking ding-a-ling in the bell that she claims Paul Revere rang on his famous ride to warn the British that they would never take the arms (or legs) of the Americans. Yes, while secretly delivering the message he fired shots of warning and rang his bells to alert the people... the stupid bastard probably warned the British too. On the good side, at least she didn’t get totally fucked up and claim that he was screaming The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, although that would be a totally understandable mistake since she can see them from her fucking window. She then defended her version, while her mental midgets worked hard to send ‘the corrected Sarah Palin historical perspective’ out on the interwebs by posting changes to Wikipedia entries. Now that, Sarah, is a fucking Gotcha moment, and you didn’t even need the press to help you make an ass of yourself. All that was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by all this is that the educational, historical, altruistic aspects of the Sarah Palin Rouge Road Trip are nothing more than a fucking busload of bullshit, and the real agenda is to get Sarah in front of the press at every possible opportunity... because we hadn’t already figured that out.

At what point will someone figure out that the time for this crap is over. There are people desperate for work, people scrambling to keep their homes, children starving, while Howard Stern is making a porn movie that is supposedly a recreation of reality in his world of excess, abuse and asskissing. There is a European coalition preparing to ask the UN to intervene on behalf of tortured Syrians, but that doesn’t make the news. There are floods killing hundreds of thousands in China... but our priority is hockey, for ten minutes at the opening of the news. Ask me again why we are losing interest? Sadly, I have no fucking idea what it will take for us to care enough before it’s too late.

FROM THE DRIVERS SEAT - June 6th, 2011

DATELINE: DOING THE JOCK-SHOW CURCUIT: Howard Stern is at one of those points in his life we all come to… a crossroads, if you will… and he has a decision to make. Should the master shock-jock, that self-proclaimed King of the Media bow down to the likes of Bill Simmons, aka sportsguy33, who is challenging the title with his fucking twitter-foo? We all hang with anchovy-baited breath for the results of this one.

Bill Simmons, ESPN’s The Sports Guy, formerly The Boston Sports Guy, though, has a book, a column, a podcast, and his own website (insert overawed fucking squeal here) AND he’s just a bit of a tweetie. Now in the thick of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Simmons’ light could shine like a beacon to the world. He’s got a modicum of cute, he’s clean-cut, dresses sorta classy… the total antithesis to Howard, and man, he could totally rawk the fucking world, if only it wasn’t about stupid fucking useless perspective-skewing absolutely irrelevant professional sports.

Yes, Howard has written a book, has done the late night show shit, pay-per-view crap and ran for public office (wouldn’t that have been a fucking laugh fest). Now Howard’s return volley… the release of a movie… The Howard Stern Parody… trailered as Howard Stern with Penetration. Wow! If he says so, it MUST be true. Of course, it’s nothing more than a vehicle to promote more of his obnoxious degrading crap with some on-screen sex to help pump up the holy fuck factor BUT to his credit, he does obnoxious degrading crap about life behind the Howard Stern show, so no harm done.

Seriously, how the fuck could someone like Bill Simmons compete with such things as Fartman, Virgin Mary Kong, Bestiality Dial-a-Date, Butt Bongo Fiesta and his first PPV Event Howard Stern’s Negligee & Underpants Party. This is all classic crap. Then again, Stern is not going to be able to write erudite clichés about hockey, about giving 110% percent to the team, about rallying and bringing the mug back home, which begs the question ‘Who the fuck would want to?’

I quite honestly couldn’t give a crap about which one of them is the King of the Media because, well, they are both totally fucking irrelevant. One’s life is about shocking people about crap that doesn’t matter. Hello, Howard… most guys have penises, most women have vaginas and we, for the most part, know how they work, so you really aren’t telling us anything new, neat or wonderful. Spending a life taking pot-shots at people and making millions doing it is… well… a lame fucking waste of breath. Then again, spending all your waking hours dissecting the passing of a puck is a likewise waste.

Don’t get me wrong… I like watching a game of hockey or baseball. I can take in a tennis match, football or even watch a bit of golf (I have also been known to watch flies fuck, but that’s a different blog.) . What pisses me off is that professional sports have become elitist, promoting multi-million dollar contracts for arrogant bad-boys who are then put on a pedestal, admired and emulated by children all over the place, while really never doing a fucking thing to earn it. So they can pass a puck. Whoop-de-fucking do. It’s a special talent worthy of that money? Well, hell, I can run across the yard with walnuts tucked under my tits and never drop a one, but you don’t see people paying me for that. They have taken the value out of sports… the lessons of sportsmanship, good winning, good losing, fair play, honor, and the desire to be the best you can be. Now it’s about the money, winning, the money, crushing the opponent, and getting that line of press, even if that means taking all those millions and snorting it up your nose for a quick high, then jumpin in your million dollar car and killing someone with it because they dared to think they could share the road with a star athlete.

Of course, knowing what pubic hair art Brittney or Paris is sporting today really doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference in most people’s lives either. I know my day isn’t any fucking better for the knowledge. I don’t expect that we should be inundated with doom and gloom… sports, entertainment and sex all apparently have their place, BUT when these are the things that consume our lives, when these are the holy grail our children are taught to lust after, we have a fucking problem.

Men and women in uniform die to preserve these two assholes’ rights to be out there doing what they do, however fluff-crappish it might be. Children are being beaten, tortured, murdered for the simple act they came from the wrong town or walked out their door while the leader of the country was feeling a bit pissy. People in Haiti STILL live in tents and refugee camps as nothing is being accomplished to help them. People in Joplin had their lives shattered, as did the people on this continent that have fallen victim to floods, and fires, and let’s not forget those who succumbed to the uncontained hatred of another. There are scores of children who are sick, people who are handicapped, seniors who are alone and incredibly lonely, military vets who need help because their government has turned a blind eye... they don't need just money, they need help and support and for people to be aware of their issues. They don't care a rat's ass about Brittney or J-Lo and they will never see a fucking hockey game or have the chance to play one. So what the hell do these two ‘kings of the media’ give us. Sweet fuck all… but it doesn’t have to be that way. They are smart, talented men who could make a fucking difference in a lot of lives. They could use their celebrity, their skills, their audiences not just to entertain, but to help. Jon Stewart found a way to do it, as did Stephen Colbert, George Carlin, Robin Williams, Angelina Jolie. Stern did it before… in 1979 when he called for a boycott of Shell Oil Company. People listened; people were effected, and Stern made a difference that didn’t have something to do with inflating his fucking prick. Where the hell is that Howard Stern now, when we need him? Then again, what in the name of all that is fucking holy are we doing listening to this shit and lining all their pockets? King of the media? Neither one of these two dweebs. The king will be crowned when someone with the media savvy of either one of these guys decides to use that skill to affect some change for the better for those who really need it, and NOT obsess on finger-biting hockey players and beaver-flashing faux celebs.

FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT - June 3rd, 2011

DATELINE: LOST IN THE HEADLINES, FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS – It lacks glamor and glitz -- in fact, it’s horrifying. It has no celebrity endorsement because it could be viewed as a political hot potato. In some countries, sadly, it’s the norm, so they look the other way, buy the propaganda and spin, because they have no choice. Well, I have a choice, and my choice is to say it’s time to pay fucking attention to this.

A boy, thirteen years old, was murdered by his government. His name was Hamza al-Khateeb. It doesn’t have the same ring to it as say Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton, but this boy has reason to be in the news, and it isn’t because he went and got a new fucking tattoo or a Brazilian body wax. This boy was taken by the Syrian military under the orders of President Bashar Assad. He was shot three times, he was tortured for a month, there were burn marks on his body, his kneecaps were shattered, his penis was cut off, and once he had died, his body was returned to his family, along with a wheelbarrow full of bullshit stories about what happened to him and how he had not been tortured or suffered at all. The family, going public with the story, then faced the wrath of the government even more, to the point where they were intimidated enough, scared shitless enough, that they went on television to sing the praises of the great gregarious Assad.

But this is just the tip of the iceburg. A four-year old in Syria was shot in her village… I can’t for the life of me imagine what the hell threat a four-year-old is to soldiers with machine guns, but apparently they believed her to be, and murdered her. A busload of children was also fired upon. In the town of Rastan, people cannot even walk out their doors to go to prayers because the minute they step outside, they are shot. This is not life. This is not right. But North American media’s probe into the situation: ‘What does Bashar Assad have on his iPod?’ I am not making this up… it was a burning question that begged an answer. What the fuck is that about? We have now taken fluff from pointless and tasteless and tossed it way across the line to insulting and obnoxious.

The news today? A hockey player bit another one in a fight on the ice… whoop-de-fucking do. John Edwards is facing indictment? Well, good. The bastard brought it on himself with his greed and his uncontrollable dick. That peach of a general from Bosnia, Ratko Mladic, is pleading for compassion because he is sick with cancer; well, yes, I guess I am a cold heartless bitch because I hope he suffers and lingers and that he still stands trial because that man was a fucking monster who showed no compassion to anyone in his life, but rather found intense joy in dishing out torture to people for no reason. Karma’s a bitch too, Ratko, honey; pull on your big-boy panties and take what’s coming to you. And of course, what the fuck is a day in the media without Sarah Palin and her pretend but not really US tour/campaign to see how many idiots actually will believe she is on a family fucking holiday so she can campaign AND still collect her nice fat paycheck from those apparent morons at FOX. Sarah… please just piss or get off the fucking pot. You are not news, you are not special, and you are not particularly clever so fuck off and let some real people with some real skills and brains and ideas try to help the world instead of milking it for all it’s worth.

Pay fucking attention! People… children… are being tortured by their own governments. Now Iran, and that rocket fucking scientist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is coming to the rescue, sending troops in to help his buddy Bashar, and we will sit back and watch, and turn the channel so we don’t have to see.

But let me ask you this… IF that happened here, IF one day we woke up and found that a despot in disguise had managed to get into power, what would you do? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. For starters, we have Steven Harper with his very blatant disrespect for all things democratic and his attempts to circumvent process at every possibility all for the single purpose of maintaining political power. Look back a few years… a man named Adolf Hitler was democratically elected as well. It can happen, and who will help when it does?

We sit back and say that Bashar will change. Well, hello?? What the fuck planet are you on? He will not change because he does not have to because no one holds him to account. There are a shitload of fucking asshole leaders in the Middle East all sitting back praying that their people will stop demanding to be treated with even a modicum of respect and that they might have just one or two human rights… how dare they… so these leaders have absolutely no desire to get involved, because ‘there but for the grace of Allah, go I’. The rest of the world… there might be oil there, so we can’t piss them off.

The people in Europe needed help to regain their lives back from the Nazi regime. The people in South Vietnam were being brutally tortured and systematically wiped out by North Vietnam. Korea? The Chinese and North Koreans had chosen those in the south for their targets. Bosnia, the Sudan… the list is long of people who are brutally wiped out because they want to have a life, because they practice the wrong religion, come from the wrong town, because they dare to say ‘enough’. It’s time for the rest of us to say ‘enough’ on their behalf, and I will give kudos to Hillary Clinton for at least having the balls to state clearly and publicly that this is unacceptable, apparently a lone voice among the politicos of the world.

For one minute, imagine your life waking up in the morning, not able to step out your door because you will be shot. Imagine spending every day in abject terror because you have no idea who will want to murder and mutilate your baby. Imagine the panic in your heart as you search for your child who was there with you one minute, gone the next, then receiving his body back full of holes, covered with burns, tortured almost beyond recognition, and receiving blatant lies about what happened to him. Then imagine what you would do if you knew others with a better life were looking in, watching, then shrugging and saying ‘sorry, but it’s a civil matter’. A civil matter? A civil war? There is absolutely nothing civil about any of this. It’s barbaric by any terms, and it’s time we made that known.