I've got to get these scat photos organized or I'll go crazy

Ever turned off the "moderate filtering" setting on Google images? It's a time-passer, I'll say. While arguing with my boss about the economy and taxes yesterday, I was looking for a chart showing the national debt since Reagan. I Googled some pretty innocent phrases like "trickle down" and found that pretty much anything you enter returns at least some porn.

In particular, the FX sector of the porn industry (Feces and eXcrement) seems to be exploding. Talk about supply side economics! Talk about your derivatives! Talk about a bubble that's certain to burst! And don't get me started on asset allocation and bell curves!

I know some people who could really get in on the ground floor just providing product to the FX sector of the dirty movie (now, don't get me started!) business.

Anyways. We're Googling away and, splat! "Did you see that? Did -- did you see that?" A naked lady making a doo-doo. What's that about? I mean, I'm not shocked, I'm not delicate, but I have to admit I'm dismayed. I just want to say, "Hey sexyturd.com, why are you so into the scatology? Why so literal? You're so into it that you've got your own website about it and -- I'm sorry to say -- you kind of hit people over the head with it. Over on the left you've got a list of recommended links to other poop sites. Are there any you rejected, or do you just accept whatever comes down the chute?"

Or maybe it's not an obsessive fetish, but just some guy (we know it's a guy, right?) who had a whole pile of photos of poop-covered gals scattered around the den and he just wanted to get them all into a relational table structure or searchable archive. Maybe he just thought, "Well, it's an enormous heap of snapshots. I can't just shit-can them." Hell, I looked twice at them, right? I'm the first to say I took a look. When I happened upon them. Unawares. In hindsight, I'm pleased to say I'm not in the targeted demographic for this material. And that my boss and I pinched off the taxation conversation and turned instead to social conservatism.

Mission Accomplice

Got so all-fired mad I went and made me a bumper sticker. Beware, tyrants! You shall know the sting of my scorn!




If you're a Halliburton stockholder, you'll be happy to know the value is up – it was under $10/share in November, 2002; today it's just over $40. It seems to me if we could make it a crime for companies contracted for wartime goods & services to make more than, say, a 1% profit on those contracts this whole tent show might pack right up. I wonder what they charge us to FedEx a body from Baghdad back stateside – $5K? $10K? $50K? Whatever it is, the margin must be pretty good for the stock to have quadrupled.



So I channeled my anger over war profiteering into a bumper sticker of dissent.

But now, if you really want to see people honoring the Chicago Seven school of activism, take a look at this Code Pink protester, Desiree Farooz. This was earlier today just as the Secretary of State walked in to testify to the House Foreign Relations Committee that Iran is "perhaps the single greatest challenge to US national security." (Sound familiar?)


This photo is simply iconic (credit Charles Dharapak, AP).


Here, a little later, is White House Press Secretary Dana "Venti Cappuccino" Perino responding to a question about an innocent Canadian whom the US kidnapped and shipped to Syria to be tortured. He was held for a year until Canada was able to get him released. Perino couldn't comment on this particular war crime because – although it was perpetrated 5 years ago – she hadn't seen Secretary Rice's brief, shrugging, mistakes-were-made blow-off of the topic during today's hearing. In place of addressing that question, though, Perino went out of her way to say she thinks, based on "a picture" she saw, that today's Code Pink protest was "despicable." That's a word that means something ought to be despised. Indeed, for shame!

Even at $40/share*, Halliburton stock is probably still a good bet (NYSE: HAL).


*Advertised Halliburton share price does not include the value of your soul.

Monday morning, 08:20

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Why I'm moving the coffee pot out of my office:

“... so I don't know if I pulled it or pinched it. And I was thinking, ‘I hope I don’t have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.’ But anyway. That was. Not an issue ... Are we out of two-percent?”

Free Brochure

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A few fans of FlapScrap will sometimes wander to my little sister's little spin-off blog when they're scouring the internet for references to me. There was a dearth of those on her little site this past week or so (a paucity) after I showed her a photo of my friend's kid who is prettier than her little girls.

But yesterday all the lines lit up when, for sweeps week I guess, she dedicated an entire post to a bagel I'd recently discarded. That post inadvertently created a blog buzz when she also mentioned she'd pulled a couple of first-round promo poster proofs out of my trash for the upcoming Flapjack Thundercrack Smack-dab Can't Fail Off-the-Rails Yard Sale™, tentatively scheduled for October 26-28. When you rabid FlapScrapper hordes got an online glimpse of just a corner of that poster you launched a frothy clamor for more. Much, much more!

So, feast your winkers:


It's a first draft, but we usually stop there anyway to preserve spontaneity. Of course this poster is only one component of a major Yard Sale marketing blitz that will include all the conventional channels – print, electronic, direct mail, outdoor, pop-ups, ringtones, skywriting, shoutouts, and doorknob hangers – plus a few product placement surprises in the new season of "Lost." This particular poster is designed to be included in gift bags at the upcoming impeachment hearings.

This Yard Sale has been a dream of ours for a long time now. Some of the merchandise we'll be offering has been boxed up since we decided we couldn't live without it ten years ago in Eugene, before we moved to Richmond, before we moved to San Francisco, before our most recent move to Portland. With all the moving van miles this stuff has traveled it's got a bigger carbon footprint than a NASCAR night race. We're very excited to finally crack open the boxes, find all the bubble-wrapped stuff, carefully unseal and reveal it, and stick a round yellow dot on it: "$1."

I'm also thinking about selling fresh flapjacks and hotdogs on the sidewalk during the event ("Swine in a Sweater^®! PIPE-ing hot!"), but discussions of all the details are ongoing.
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Angst Addiction

I'm seriously considering a change in lifestyle -- more reading, more bike riding, less electronic media -- because I find that the more audio-visual stimulation I get, the more I want. It can become a little immoderate.

When I was a kid, my Dad watched the weather report every evening on the TV news. I know what you're thinking: he had to because he was a blimp pilot. But he wasn't a blimp pilot. And I'm the same way except instead of traffic & weather my drug of choice is political news -- and no, I'm not a Prime Minister.

On nine-eleven, when all the mayhem was unfolding, I was in our apartment in San Francisco with Jude watching news and flipping all around the web. Hour after hour after hour, watching that replay video and listening for even the slightest new piece of information. It was like drinking a lot of coffee on an empty stomach.

And I remember that evening we went out and had dinner in a restaurant. We felt a little weird about it, as if our going out for a meal was a violation of the sanctity of the day's events. But, walking around the City, we passed our local firehouse at dusk and noticed flags had been added to the trucks, and we saw candles in a lot of peoples' windows, and we found to our surprise that the restaurant was busy.

As I moved the salt and pepper shakers around, unrolled my silverware, and talked with Jude I realized that I'd spent most of the day preoccupied not with what had happened to all those people, but with what else might happen. I'd wanted an overview of the entire story arc -- how big is this thing? That's natural enough, I guess, considering that if the overall story were large enough it might actually affect my own life, or even death. But we'd actually done nothing all day and were exhausted by evening just from trying to find the beginning and the end of the story, like two ends of a huge, wet, tangled rope. Since the mission of news sites and shows is to find more news and keep you watching, you never find the end.

But walking hand-in-hand to that restaurant, looking at the candles and sitting with all those strangers, I felt for the first time that day that I didn't care at all what might be happening on CNN. I ordered the special, butternut squash ravioli with saffron, and a glass of wine. If San Francisco were to be attacked that evening and the restaurant incinerated, I'd find out soon enough.

Watch This Space

Nine/Ten is the dark and holy day, fellow believers. Keith Everyman is putting a crease in his stonewashed Oscar DeLaRentas and striding down to face the judge. Head held high! Shackled! Wrongly accused!

What will transpire? Will Keith's machine-gun line of questioning cause Officer VonStrasburg to break down on the stand, mewing like a kitten? Although we can expect the mainstream press to continue to ignore this story, the entire blogosphere is watching this space for the exclusive poop on the matter.








UPDATE: DATELINE 09102007, 1230 hours

Keith showed up for court one hour late and missed his name being called. So he had to wait through all the other miscreants for the judge to re-address him. He scolded Keith for being late and, like me, Keith doesn't respond well to scolding so he made an excuse ("I got here at 9:30 [ed. note: it was 10:00] because I had to go back to my car to leave my briefcase [ed. note: HA!]"). The judge asked if that took 30 minutes. Yada yada, long story short: new court date in two weeks.

And you know what? You may have to follow this story on some other civil rights site because I was really kind of counting on it being over today. I'm already backing the Democrats and the Cubs; I can't take on any more heartbreak.

Flapjack Poetry Slam

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A lady from North Carolina
Was referred to a doctor from China.
She wrongly deduced
That he tried to seduce her:
He said she'd acute angina.














The mistaken lady from North Carolina.

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