Kal 4 Prez: Issue One: Torte reform

Greetings, fellow countrymen. Well, the political world's all a-buzz over that actor about to announce a presidential bid. I'll tell you what, I ain't afraid of him.

Here at Kal For President, we welcome all comers: from Romney and his freshly shellaced hair, to obvious brainwashed-sleeper agent John McCain, to also obviously brainwashed sleeper agent Barrack Hussein Obama, I welcome them all.

So, as a part of my exciting and paradigm-shifting campaign, let's start talking some issues!

First, a reading from the Book of Al:

I sued Coca-Cola, yo
'Cause I put my finger down in a bottle
And it got stuck!

I sued Delta Airlines
'Cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey
I went there, and it sucked!

Yeah!!!

If you stand me up on a date
If you deliver my pizza 30 seconds late

I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah that's what I'm gonna do
I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah I might even sue you!

Ugh!!

From "I'll Sue Ya", off the Album "Straight Outta Lynnwood."

So, my "handlers" tell me Al is talking about the need for torte reform by sarcastically suggesting he will sue people for all these minor offenses. Sure, whatever.

Let me tell you, it's hard to get good help these days. These 22 year old kids fresh out of some fancy-pants college trying to tell me how to run my campaign. And then they come up with something stupid like this.

What the heck do they mean by torte reform? Look, I've had a lot about these little torte things, and let me tell you, I think they're wicked awesome. I love those alternating layers of cake and icing and chocolate mousse and all that. I think they're quite yummy. And I frankly don't think they need reforming at all!


Yessirree, I do love those tortes just the way they are.

Seems like it's my campaign staff that needs some reforming!

Rube Goldberg for pyromaniacs

Found this on Live Leak. It's a neat Rube Goldberg machine using fire...



(Just seemed appropriate, tonight's Criminal Minds is all about a serial killer arsonist.)

Memorial Day, 2007

The first Memorial Day since a 25 year old from Pleasantville was killed in action carried extra feeling for many in town. A fresh grave in our cemetery, which hasn't accepted war dead in at least a generation.

The war hit home for me this spring as well, as a young man I had worked with fairly closely was killed in action. He had joined the military in 2004, in the midst of the fighting, knowing full well what he was getting into. His father, a West Point graduate and decorated soldier in Vietnam, had turned against Bush's war, but Andrew had joined and proud to had done so.

This was after an evening of talking to the kids about the war, spurred by 60 Minutes' story of the Iowa National Guard troop they've been following since deployment. The Girl just doesn't understand it -- why do we need to waste American lives half a world away? Why can't these people just take care of themselves?

I don't have any answers for her. Some things I used to be very sure of I'm not so much anymore. I can't put a value on Andrew's life. Is all this worth it? Of course not. Not if you're asking me about this one kid I knew who went off to war knowing full well all the dangers and possibilities.

But what if it works? We won't know for years, of course. But are we planting anything that will blossom in the arid desert seas and lush river valleys of Iraq? Is there a child is Basra growing up amongst the chaos of hatred of a sectarian war (for this isn't Iraq against the US, this is Sunni and Shite and Kurd against each other, with bonus points for knocking off an infidel invader or two...), is there a young man or woman growing up thinking to himself or herself; this is crazy, this isn't what Allah wants?

Is there a teenager somewhere dedicating themselves to a future of bringing his or her country together around a shared vision and rejecting the destructive and nihilistic hatreds of the present?

How will this end? For too many American young, it will end in death. But will their sacrifice mean more than some writing on a marble slab in a cemetery; festooned with flags a flowers once a year? I hope so.

But I don't know.

Movie Night: The Most Depressing Movie Ever...

The picture to the right is from a scene of "The Pursuit of Happyness" where homeless Will Smith is spending the night in a locked BART subway station with his five-year old son.



And this isn't the most depressing scene in this movie.

What a freaking nightmare of downer movie. I'm one of those people who identify just a little too much with characters in movies and books and by half way through this one I was ready to cut my wrists.


I'm not going to spoil the plot (here's the IMDB page for the movie), but suffice it to say, everything happens to Smith's character, short of a raging case of jock itch. Usually when a character eats one crap sandwich after another it's a case of lousy writing, in this case however, Smith's character is based on real-life homeless-man-turned-stockbroker-turned-multimillionaire Chris Gardner.


Couple of points:


* Between this movie and Crash, I'm beginning to think Carter's wife is a real bitch.


* Dan Castelanetta actually sounds like Lenny in real life, although oddly enough, Lenny is voiced by Harry Shearer. Weird.


* Jaden Christopher Smith, Will and Jada's kid, is painfully cute.


* Yeah, yeah. I cried. So sue me. I'm an easy emotional mark.


It's these damn father-son movies that get to me. I'm awash in Daddy issues -- the Father/son daddy stuff, not a fixation on old gay men -- so any movie with even a lick of Dad-stuff puts me over the edge.


This is an issue for another post and another time (I've just spent the last 1/2 hour of Cold Case trying to put into words the difficulty of raising boys, of making them men while teaching how to be so much more, all the while waiting for the inevitable point in time when they kill you in cold blood to seize control of your kingdom...), suffice it to say, I was puddle-city halfway through and felt emotionally exhausted by the end.


So, let's Sandraize this one. First, the groundrules, as always:


The Sandra Bullock Scale© was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score of five out of five represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...]


At any rate: there was no sleeping through this thing. It was a bataan death-march of a movie and it would've been unsporting chickening out mid-way through. Well, it was sort-of worth it, as... well... I'd be giving away the whole point of the movie (oops, too late).


Anywho, as dreadful as it was, it did keep me up, so, gotta be fair:

0 of 5 Sandras!

For those of you who are interested, the real story of Chris Gardner can be found here. Until next time, save the isle seats for me (so I don't drool on anyone as I fall asleep)...

Biker (coffee) Bar

You don't want to get in the way of these mean hombres before they've had their first half-caf venti double sweet two squits lattee.

A Little Advice

If you're ever in the State House, feel free to shake hands with the people who work in the coffee shop. Everyone else, not so much.

Someday, the Messiah-Shark Will Come...

The Washington Post had a delightful and terrifying story yesterday about virgin births among sharks. Apparently in September 2001 a baby hammerhead shark was born to one of three female hammerheads sharing a tank at Henry Dormley Zoo in Omaha Nebraska. No males had been in contact with the females and they had all been in captivity for a number of years.

Now, last year on my old blog I noted that the DARPA (black helicopter guys) have been working on technology to use Sharks for their nefarious schemes; putting sensors in shark brains to try and get them to be use their excellent sense of smell to root out... well, lord knows what those DARPA guys are doing with the sharks. Part of me thinks that the whole "friggin Sharks with laserbeams on their heads" thing in Austin Powers came from DARPA. So I'm a little skittish about sharks from the get-go. I mean, even more skittish than that whole "they like to eat people" thing. That I can understand. It's the teaming up with the evil government scientists in the black helicopters that puts me on edge.

Anyway, now we get news that sharks have achieved virgin birth. Scientists had originally thought that perhaps one of the females had some male "materials" (hey, this is a family blog) stored up from before captivity.

Well, when they autopsied the baby shark (apparently another animal in the tank killed it shortly after it was born) they found that it was an exact genetic match to one of the three female sharks. No poppa. Asexual reproduction.

Apparently scientists had heretofore observed this kind of asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, only in lower forms of life such as lower plants, aphids, parasitic wasps, and certain fans of the Jerry Springer Show.

Now, as a supporter of sex, I find this appalling. And even more importantly (frankly, how much more sex am I going to have anyway?), is this shark, born outside of shark sin, the long-promised Messiah-shark who will lead his Selachimorphian brothers and sisters to freedom? Will he rise again in glory to judge the living and the dead? And is he just a messiah for sharks, or are we land-based hairless monkeys invited?

I dunno. Messiah-sharks and Zombies. I don't like our odds.