Unarticulate.com

If today’s date fills you with fear, you are not alone. But it does mean that you have paraskavedekatriaphobia. My birthdays in ‘85, ‘91, ‘96, and ‘02 fell on Friday the 13th so I always figured I got a pass on the whole bad luck thing. Many people who suffer from this phobia also suffer from the more general triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13. This is so prevalent that most of our hotels and office buildings skip the 13th floor and go right to the 14th. I always thought this was really weird. I really like the philosopher Mitch Hedberg’s take on the whole thing: “What room are you in? 1401. No you’re NOT! Jump out of the window, you will die EARLIER!”.

Multi-millionaires from around the country have come together this week to help the rest of us figure out who is elite and who is not. The Republican National Committee , long known for standing up for the little guy, used donations from lobbyists, Fortune 500 CEOs and government contractors to warn the rest of the country of Barack Obama’s elitism. Hillary Clinton, former first lady, sitting Senator and multi-millionaire, tried to make the case that Barack Obama obviously does not get regular people. Don’t worry though, we should get to the bottom of all of this soon. Ivy League educated, well connected members of the press, working for large trans-national media corporations are using their years of experience to let us know exactly who is and who is not an elite. (Hint: It is the guy who has spent the least amount of time on the Washington D.C. cocktail party circuit) One thing they have discovered so far is that Barack Obama needs to understand that working class people base their vote entirely on bowling scores.

Sometimes there are things or people that are missing from your life and you don’t even realize it. Like the old saying, “You never know what you have until it is gone,” there should also be one, “You never how great it is to have Kathy Lee out of your life until she comes back on the Today Show.” I woke up to that nightmare the other morning. What am I supposed to do? Watch Good Morning America? Not likely.

Good morning?

Whenever I hear people say, “I am just going to be myself and people can either love me or hate me”, I already know I hate them.

We were treated to a lunar eclipse last night. For those who missed it, it was sweet.

UPDATE: More Photos

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I ran across two interesting studies today. The first one was a poll from Newsweek that discovered that only 26% of Americans approve of the job that Bush is doing:

2. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

	Approve	Disapprove	Don’t Know
Current Total	26%	65%	9

I thought that number seemed awful high considering, well, everything he has done. Then I ran across this little gem in the New York Times and suddenly the world made sense again:

One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that if you tried to make a venn diagram using the group of people who think Bush is doing a good job and the group of people who think the Earth revolves around the Sun you would just end up with a circle.

Well, I just got done watching the President’s State of the Union Address. Since President Bush started giving these things his popularity has dropped from speech to speech. I think we would both be happier if he would just stop. It seemed like a mostly uneventful or uninteresting speech but there were a few things that caught my attention.
The president brought back his little game called “spot the irony” when he said we need to become more energy independent. He brings this up every year but it just seems to be getting sillier and sillier. For some reason I have a hard time believing this year he will actually make some big changes. He did add a small twist when he asked the congress to join him in bringing gasoline consumption down 20 percent in the next ten years and requiring 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuel in 2017. He’s not the first guy to come up with a really bold idea that he will have nothing to do with. If I were President, and it were my last two years in office, my state of the union would go something like, “Join me in vowing to cure aids, cancer and the common cold in 25 years. Oh yeah, and we’ll take care of poverty too. By 2207 I take the bold initiative of calling for the colonization of Saturn.” Nobody from 2207 will look up my speech and say, “Where are we on that?”, just like nobody will talk about this ten years from now and say, “Let’s look at all Bush has done with his big bold initiative for alternative fuels.” It is bullshit he can never get called on.

Another part of the speech I enjoyed was when the President of the United States of America took an opportunity to address citizens in his largest speech of the year and decided to tell them what Osama’s been thinking. I don’t think I will ever understand why the President likes to tell us how Osama Bin Laden feels about stuff. Our Dear Leader:

Um. I can’t really think of more idle words. Saying you would rather die than live with unbelievers is a perfect example of idle words if you are not really willing to kill yourself. So I guess I am just not sure if the President understands what idle words or empty rhetoric mean, but then that would explain a lot.

I yelled at the TV about a few more things but I don’t really like reliving the President’s speeches more than necessary so that will have to do for now. I am off to watch American Idol so I can say I watched something smart on TV last night.

He was on my ceiling so these are all upside down. I never really liked these guys. They always look evil. It is like they are almost too big to be an insect. Unless they were in some rain forest somewhere. I also think they kill other insects and eat each other. That is never a good sign in my book. I suppose it is better than meat eating plants but I could do without either.

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The president has declared October 15 through 21 National Character Counts Week*. That would be a lot like me declaring it National Sobriety is Fun Week, it reeks of hypocrisy and you just KNOW my heart is not in it. He signed the Military Commissions Act just a few days earlier making it possible for us to show our character to the rest of the world through torture and removing the right of habeas corpus. Awesome. On second thought, maybe the whole thing is more like if I wrote a book on how to be a millionaire by 25…..you’d be stupid to buy it. Well, add the word “Character” to the list of words that no longer have any meaning. See also: Patriot, Leadership, America. Where are we going, and why are we in a handbasket?
*Unless you are Republican

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As I learned from my brother today, the new Survivor season has a twist. The new season will have four tribes, divided by race. All I have to say is, what could possibly go wrong? Rush Limbaugh was kind enough to put together a deep, insightful and cogent analysis of the upcoming season. Rush has all of his money (that he didn’t spend on drugs) on the Hispanics to take it.

…our early money is on [the Hispanic Tribe] anyway, because these people have shown a remarkable ability, ladies and gentlemen, to cross borders, boundaries — they get anywhere they want to go. They can do it without water for a long time. They don’t get apprehended, and they will do things other people won’t do. So, our money, early money, is on the Hispanics.

What Rush eloquently points out here, is that all Hispanics are illegal immigrants. Am I reading that wrong? He goes pretty easy on the Asian Tribe, he doesn’t even call them oriental.

The Asian — the Asian-American tribe probably will outsmart everybody, but will that help them in the ultimate survival contest?

I am not sure what exactly he wanted to say about the African American tribe. He stutters a lot when he is being stupid.

The African-American tribe, tough to handicap on this one, because you just — it’s — it’s — there are many characteristics here that you would think give them the lead and the heads up in terms of skill and athleticism and so forth.

…

I mentioned the swimming comment only because it’s not going to be fair if there is a lot of water competition in this. It just isn’t. It is not a racial or racist comment at all.

His analysis points out that the White Tribe will get the raw end of the deal, as they always do.

The white tribe put everybody else on some kind of benefit program, but the benefit program, of course, will not be enough.

To understand this last comment, you have to realize that Rush, apparently, does not believe that any minorities pay taxes. But that is not a racial or racist comment at all.

So, whatever you do, please don’t use this one example to say that the Republican Party has had a little bit of a racism problem lately.