Category Archives: Washington Redskins

Your Daily Hot Air

Silly Stuff

Recently, I took a couple of those silly BuzzFeed quizzes that supposedly tell you all about yourself. One was What Career Should You Actually Have? and the other was How Much of an Asshole Are You?

The conclusions? I should have been a professor and I am not an asshole at all.

From "The Nutty Professor"

Who, Me?

Jeez, what a load of horseshit!

Meter Mad

A hot Bloomington tomato named Candy Allday found herself in Oak Park, Illinois, this past week. She stopped at a Mexican restaurant with her ever-lovin’ husband and a couple of friends late-ish one evening.

Candy Allday is used to feeding B-town parking meters until the ungodly hour of 10pm, so she began digging in her purse for quarters before entering said eatery. Lo and behold, she stopped and gasped.

“I’ve gotta take a picture of this,” she blurted. And so she did. And here it is.

Photo by Candy Allday

Candy Allday wonders if certain Bloomington City Council-folk can read.

Let’s Dance

Bloomington’s own Brynda Forgas is no longer owned by her business, The Hidden Closet. After a long stay in the Fountain Square Mall, Forgas moved her Closet to Kirkwood Avenue, right behind the Book Corner last year. Biz was no better on Kirkwood than it had been in the relatively quiet mall.

So Brynda decided to call it a retail career a couple of months ago and announced she’d be locking the door one final time as soon as the Christmas season was over. She’s never looked happier.

An old pal of hers, Paula Chambers is set to open her own shop, The Dance Circus, in Brynda’s old space Tuesday, February 4. Paula’s another Bloomington fixture. She’s the boss of the Hudsucker Posse hula hoop girl gang. She, too, is moving her digs out of Fountain Square.

Dance Circus

The Dance Circus will continue to feature scads of dancewear and shoes, hula hoops (all handmade), and plenty of other fun stuff.

Chambers hopes to get better exposure and foot traffic for her store in the new location. She’s pumped. “I’m gonna make a splash on Kirkwood,” she promises.

Go visit Paula. And spend some cash, wouldja?

… And The Blacks Were Happy Under Slavery

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gave the assembled news media of the world a state of the league address last week in advance of yesterday’s Super Bowl. Then he opened the floor for questions. One intrepid reporter asked him about the Washington club’s nickname, you know the one that’s a racial slur. Goodell pulled a Vinnie Barbarino and said, essentially, Whuh?

Pushed further, he elaborated. Why, he claimed, the folks we’re slurring consider it no slur at all!

Do you believe it?

Screenshot from Bleacher Report

I sure as hell don’t.

No, Really, Let’s Dance

Your Daily Hot Air

Masters Of The Universe

ALEC is meeting in Chicago as we speak. You know that, don’t you? I assume they’re refining their plan to control the Solar System.

Solar System

ALEC’s Realm

Because, you know, complete global domination is a half-assed goal for losers. And those who populate the sinister halls of ALEC secret headquarters are winners. How do we know they’re winners? They have money and, in their universe, all that counts is money.

What is ALEC? Bill Moyers presents a swell picture of it here. ALEC Exposed does the same thing here. Or check Right Wing Watch’s mugshot of the gang here.

If you’re too lazy to click on the above links, just know that ALEC espouses, fights for, bankrolls, and — if it has its way — will soon impose by fiat upon us the following, among many other pro-corporate, fuck-you-people initiatives:

  • Stand your ground laws
  • “Shoot first” laws

John Wayne

ALEC’s American

  • The end of public education
  • Schools for profit
  • Defanging environmental standards and regulations
  • Union-busting
  • Deregulating the energy rackets

In its infancy (ALEC is celebrating its 40th birthday in Chi) the club worked tirelessly for prayer in public schools and against the Equal Rights Amendment. Later, ALEC-sters were among Saint Ronald Reagan’s most ardent stage door Johnnies. Now, it is simply the legislative muscle behind the corporate mob.

A number of people I know or am acquainted with are making nuisances of themselves outside the Palmer House Hilton Hotel where the ALEC-sters are perfecting their nefarious plots. These people are to ALEC what mosquitoes are to you and me. And ALEC is employing its very own flyswatter, in the form of the Chicago Police Department, to brush those nuisances away.

The thing is, mosquitoes may indeed be nuisances to you and me, but their bites remain with us for days and days. Sometimes the bites even interfere with our sleep.

Somehow, though, I don’t feel the ALEC archvillains are going to lose any sleep over the buzzing on East Monroe Street. They don’t seem to lose sleep over anything much.

Here are some citizen vids of the protests and arrests:

Meanwhile, corporate media hasn’t yet received the phone call alerting them to the protests. Golly gee, I wonder why!

BTW: If you’re interested in learning whether or not your elected representatives in the statehouse or in Congress are bought and paid for by ALEC, dig the interactive map here.

Now, turn off your TV and let’s do something about these slobs.

The Washington Slurs

In brighter news, Slate, the neo-lib online mag that’s usually as loath to making waves as a man standing up in a canoe, has decided, editorially, it shall never allow the moniker Washington Redskins to sully its portal again.

Redskins Logo

Vintage Washington Logo

Cool. Even though Washington NFL team owner Daniel Snyder thus far has stood on his head to insist he’ll never, ever, ever change its nickname no matter how many Indian groups or sympathizers raise a stink, it’s only a matter of time before the Redskins logo hits the dustbin. And none too soon, I may add.

Then again, the NFL and its devolved fan base really don’t care about trivialities like crippling leg injuries, scrambled brain syndromes, and the families of degenerate gamblers, so why would they care a whit about insulting a Holocausted people?

Redskins Cheerleader

Slurring Two Groups With One Stone

Ah, forget it: The Redskins they shall ever be. That doesn’t mean we have to say the word, does it?

The Pencil Today:

POT VERSUS KETTLE

I’d imagine the number of local residents paying the slightest bit of attention to last night’s debate between Republican candidates for president hovered somewhere around, oh, zero.

This is, after all, Bloomington, Indiana, the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union and geographical magnet for this holy land’s unscrubbed beatniks, bomb-throwers, abortionists, and other Democrats.

So, The Pencil will do y’all a favor and point out the most eye-opening statement made by one of the fine and decorated statesmen and women who gathered to verbally spar in that other locus of undesirables, Washington, DC.

Minnesota Congressbeing Michele Bachmann dug deep into her her pocket thesaurus and threw a sophisticated two-syllable pejorative at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Bachmann: “Fingers crossed — Someone Has Less Of A Clue Than I Do.”

The issue was Pakistan and Perry had just pronounced all future financial aid to that nuclear armed Stone Age nation a no-go as long as its leaders wouldn’t keep “America’s best interests in mind.”

Y’know, the way every other nation on this spinning globe keeps the well-being of the land of Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan, and Black Friday in the forefront of all its deliberations.

Well, our plucky gal Michele found Perry’s logic rather lacking. Bachmann is a member of the House Intelligence Committee which, if nothing else, proves our elected representatives possess a sense of humor. She reminded Perry and the world that this country gains a lot of inside dope on the doings of the wild-eyed gun-toters who populate much of Pakistan’s desolate countryside. Our dough, Bachmann insisted, also insures that the borderline lunatics who run the place aren’t overthrown by certified lunatics.

Bachmann characterized Perry’s statement thusly: “I think that’s highly naive.”

Kudos to Bachmann on grasping the fact that the syllables of a word needn’t be separated by consonants.

Now, imagine how discouraged the cowboy governor is this morning to realize that Michele Bachmann — Michele Bachmann — considers him naive.

The election, folks, is a mere 49 weeks away.

“KILL URSELF”

I have a Twitter account, I’ll admit it. On the other hand, I haven’t touched it in more than a year.

Twitter is the 140-character preserve of semi-literate pro athletes, pathologically self-involved Hollywood stars, and that portion of the populace that was born, sadly, with the condition known as anencephaly.

Take the recent Twit (screw “Tweet” — I’m going with Twit) from Washington Redskins pass catcher Jabar Gaffney.

Poor Jabar was in a funk after his team lost to the rival Dallas Cowboys Sunday. Some Cowboys fan sent him a Twit ridiculing him and his Redskins mates. (By the way, I was under the impression that this was the year 2011. And still there’s a pro team called the Redskins? The Redskins?!)

Anyway, Gaffney promptly advised the Twit-sender to, um, commit suicide.

Yup. Gaffney thumbed these proto-words into his connection to the civilized world: “… I’m just proud I ain’t you get a life or kill urself.” The line is close enough to the human language known as English that I needn’t translate it for you.

Naturally, the NFL and representatives of the sane population of America had apoplexy. Hell, if people can blame Judas Priest, whose song obliquely referred to the ultimate form of self-determination, for a couple of teens’ deaths in 1985, then Gaffney’s unmistakable advisement is fraught with peril.

Gaffney then quoted another Twit-person who agreed with his original broadside. Gaffney thumbed: “I do want that man to kill himself..one less cowboys fan…”

Existential Advice

Sheesh. Now we know there are at least two people in this nation who don’t know ellipsis is indicated by three dots, not two. America is indeed going to hell.

Cooler heads got to Gaffney and he apologized — the way many celebrities, politicians, and corporations apologize these days, which is not at all.

Gaffney Twitted a third time, “They say I can’t tell people to kill themselves didn’t know freedom of speech had limitations so I’ll just say #uknowwhattodo #HTTR better?”

In case this puzzling series of electronic grunts is indecipherable to you, I’ll help. Gaffney is saying: “My heavens, despite the landmark US Supreme Court decision wherein the noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. opined that shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater is a practical violation of common sense, civility, and the spirit of the original 1st Amendment, I was under the impression that the concept of Freedom of Speech is sacrosanct. I will therefore alter my original pronouncement by saying, ‘Sir, do you recall that action I advised you to take which, apparently, I am not at liberty to utter in a public setting? If so, please take it.'”

Big time sports and the reprobates who perform in it and operate it are becoming less and less attractive by the week.

DON’T CRY FOR ME HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY

The Loved One was incensed that First Lady Michele Obama caught the raspberry Sunday at a NASCAR race in Miami.

Obama: “I Can’t Hear You Because I Have These Big Things On My Head.”

Many in the crowd of some 80,000 booed the president’s wife lustily when she was introduced prior to shouting “Start your engines” into a microphone.

Aside from the fact that the speedway was filled with people who find deafeningly loud cars continually turning left at life threatening speeds entertaining, the race, it must be said, was held in Florida. That double-whammy indicates the crowd probably was lacking in thinkers who grasp the subtleties and nuances of today’s domestic and geopolitical debate.

Who was the last Nobel Prize winner to hail from the Sunshine State?

No matter, I actually tried to defend the crowd, which caused my lovely bride to eye me through narrowed lids.

I said, “The fact that people feel free to boo the wife of the boss of the most powerful nation on Earth is a good thing.”

The Loved One shook her head almost imperceptibly. And, I have to admit, I’m not thrilled with my argument either.