I'm Back

Read my blog if you want to live... OK, OK, I obviously can't help myself at this point and I'll be honest: I was genuinely touched by the outpouring of support and positive words I received in my ostensible last post. I really did appreciate it and I must admit that blogging can be a fun enterprise as long as one does not put too much pressure on one's self to produce, so here's the deal: this blog will remain up and active but I make no promises about either content or frequency. I might post ten times in a day or just as easily let it lie fallow for weeks at a time; I might rant lengthily about how the Senatorial filibuster has paralyzed that deliberative body or I might just post a video of a cute kitten trying not to fall asleep (note: there will be no videos of cute kittens, as an addendum to my long-standing rule banning lolcats). Basically I'm reprioritizing several things right now and while the blog isn't going to the back of the line it has lost some prominence in my everyday life. So that's it. Thanks again to everyone who reads what I write here. I'm gonna get some lunch now.

Brain Fatigue And Rage Deficiency

My sincerest apologies to anyone and everyone who comes here to read this blog on a regular or even semi-regular basis and a special thank you to those who have emailed me to make sure that I've been OK over the past two weeks. I'd like to tell you that I've left the blog sitting idle because I've been too busy with various wacky adventures and sexy hi jinks but the truth is that I've recently realized that I'm extremely tired, so much so that I don't think that I can go on any longer. Don't worry, I'm not so tired of life yet that I'm going to eat a bullet or anything like that but rather I'm actually bewilderingly and completely tired of American politics.

I watch and read about the various races across the country lately and I struggle to give even a modicum of a fraction of a damn. Every campaign commercial I hear now sounds exactly the same to me: "I'm tired of career politicians and business as usual in politics. Our elected officials have forgotten who they work for. Help me send a message to Washington that we're not going to put up with partisan politics any longer. Together we can change the tone in D.C. and take our country back." Blah, blablabbity blah, blah, blah. You've heard it all before; I've heard it all before and you obviously don't believe it any more than I do. I consider this type of boilerplate populist tripe to be no more than insultingly simplistic rhetorical masturbation for the ignorant masses (and I hold the entirety of modern media and journalism specifically responsible for this phenomenon, but that's neither here nor there at this point).

"But James", I imagine you retorting to your computer screens, "I thought you were a big supporter of President Obama! He's all about change and ending the partisan divide in Washington. Have you given up on that message and his seemingly earnest attempts to make America a better place?" No I have not, but I have realized that political culture in this country is so disturbingly corrupt and hopelessly mired in a system of failure and inaction that I no longer possess the zeal to believe that it can be significantly changed within my lifetime, short of a national tragedy or a similarly significantly-sized event to shake the average asshole out of their chronic complacency. In short: I give up, and I just don't care anymore. I'm sorry but it's the truth.

I finally understand what so many of my friends and acquaintances have been telling me over the past several years about politics, about how it's just not that important to get so worked up over people and events that are largely and almost completely beyond the control of the average American. I get it now. It's all a game (as so much of life and society is but that's a topic for another time) to make you feel like what you have to say about how this country is run makes a difference and actually matters to those in power. Now I can imagine many of you similarly retorting to your computer screens, "But James, one man/woman can make a difference! The people still have the power of the voting booth!" I wish I could still believe that matters, but I just cannot.

That isn't to say that I'm going to stop voting or anything as ludicrous or ignorant as that. Hell, I've already registered and the county's going to try to nail me for jury duty as a result so I might as well flex my citizen rights every two years but I've realized that the amount of energy and stamina it takes to remain emotionally invested in American politics is hardly worth the meager reward, either emotional or electoral. I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from the movie Blade: Trinity. Blade (who is a vampiric vampire hunter played by Wesley Snipes, for the woefully uninitiated) is in police custody and a government psychologist is questioning him to assess his connection to reality and concurrent level of sanity:

VANCE: What about the President? Do you know who's in the White House at the moment?

BLADE: Some asshole...

Now of course I don't think that Barack Obama is personally an asshole (the movie came out in 2004 so draw your own conclusions as to their nonspecific target...) but it does speak to a larger problem within our society: most people who decide to go into politics are either self-involved assholes or self-important assholes or both. Yes, there are some legitimately good men and women in Washington earnestly trying to make this country a better place but the vast majority of people who eventually gain any significant amount of power there, and thus have the ability to institute any significant amount of change within the system, find themselves so endlessly mired within it that they eventually become everything they ran against, if they even made any attempt to portray themselves as such in the first place. Again, in short (and with all due apologies to Orwell): power corrupts, and I'm finally sick of it.

So, the next obvious and obviously self-involved question here is: does this spell the end of Brain Rage? I would very much like to answer in the negative and say "Hell no! Are you fucking kidding me?!" but the more honest answer is "I just don't know". Continuing on the honesty kick, I have to say that it's been fairly liberating not worrying about what I'm going to write here day to day and it's been even more refreshing not paying much attention to the 24 hour news cycle as if it were my job to do so, despite the nagging voice in the back of my conscience urging me to do just that on a continuous basis. I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy writing about current events here but I'd be lying even more if I said that I find the entire enterprise of caring about most of those said events more fulfilling than I do taxing of late.

So again, where does this leave us? And again, I just don't know. I've always been one to follow my intellect over my instincts on most matters because I've realized over the years that my instincts amount to exactly jack shit when compared to my intellect (which definitely says more about my instincts than it does my intellect) and I'm not planning on abandoning that line of reasoning anytime soon but I have been known to change my mind on occasion. Regardless, I plan to spend the vast majority of my time in the immediate future concentrating on real world plans that've been fomenting for some time now outside of the blogging world, i.e. dressing up as a masked crime fighter by night and solving mysteries. So if these are indeed my last words here, many thanks to those who have taken the time to read the meager thoughts I've committed to cyberspace over the past few years and bon chance in your own future endeavours. I'll be around, somewhere.

I remain, as always, James B. Webb. Adieu.

P. S.: I would be remiss here if I didn't take a moment to address my conservative counterpart and constantly comedic foil Donald Douglas of American Power. Don, I've tried to find even an iota of entertainment within your posts or even from one of your sycophantic commenters over the past few weeks as I have in the past but I've woefully come up short on both counts. To say that you're a caricature of your side of the aisle, again as I have many times in the past, is still entirely accurate but unfortunately it's no longer nearly as entertaining. To happily quote one of my fellow nihilistic bloggers: "You're fucking clown shoes". I'll be around two years hence to collect my one hundred dollars when Barack Obama is successfully reelected as our president. Enjoy rhetorically beating off to your big victory this November: it will almost assuredly be short-lived. And good luck with that whole "leftists hate America and are trying to destroy it" schtick. I can think of no more suitable nor entertaining epithet for this blog. Please have someone explain the concepts of humor and irony to you at some point before you shuffle loose this mortal coil. And again, adieu.

[Update: There's no way I'm going out on a down note by addressing Don. Here's something a thousand times more kick-ass: Sgt. Adam Sniffen from the 101st Airborne Division delivering the game ball via parachute before the Michigan vs. MSU game at Michigan Stadium two weeks ago:


Too cool. Adios.]

This Post Now Has A Title

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Do I Have Writer's Block?

If you haven't noticed I've been neglecting this blog a bit, sometimes out of necessity as I've been fairly busy of late but also at times out of indifference as well. I just haven't felt like writing anything recently. I still have opinions, I still get mad at many things throughout my day, I'm still constantly amazed/amused by things in this world yet lately I find myself not really having much to say about them, or not really wanting to say much about them here. I hope this apparent malaise doesn't last much longer but my apologies in advance if it does.

Brain Rage, Unplugged

Sincerest apologies for the lack of posting over the past several days. I've been taking a much needed self-imposed sabbatical from the Internets and reading these weird old paper things called "books". Apparently they used to be all the rage back in the day, although I can't figure out how they became so popular without an RSS feed. So, is the BP oil well still... It is? Fuck.

Down With The Sickness

You'll have to excuse the glut of videos lately as I've spent the last few days in bed coughing and sneezing as if I were a NyQuil parody. Taking a few days off from work always sounds like a nice little vacation until you realize that you're going to feel like hammered shit the entire time. Hope everyone's doing well. *sniff*

What If You Really Liked Garfield?

I've been trying to take a bit of a break from the news and politics lately in an attempt to retain my sanity so I apologize for the lack of regular posting of late. That said, I have the whole day off today and I'm in a weird mood so I thought I'd spend the day posting some strange and interesting stuff for your enjoyment.

You know that weird thing that turns you on that you've never told anyone else about? The most fucked up sexual fantasy you have that you think is so strange and dangerous? The dark, sticky fucked up thing that you think about when you're fucking the person you fuck to help you fuck them better? That thing? Well you can relax because "weird" is a vast sliding scale and there are people in the world like this guy to make you feel relatively normal about your life. Warning: once read the following resolved question from Yahoo! Answers can never be unread:

Really freaked out my girlfriend need help?

As a teenager I suffered from severe depression and formed a strong bond with the character Garfield and his outlook. Its sad but reading garfield anthologies obsessively was the only thing that made me feel normal and it eventually took on something of an erotic fixation.

To avoid feeling like a sicko I drew pictures of garfield with a womans(Think Pamela anderson circa 1991) body and garfields head, so that I was assured that my fixation wasn't with animals or repressed homosexuality. This garfield/pam hybrid still had the same biting wit and acerbic outlook and tended to cut herself in self loathing while wolfing down a lasagna to fill the void after sleeping with drawings of a much more handsome and muscular version of myself. These drawings eventually evolved into erotic fanfiction starring garfield and myself (In my head Garfield still has a womans body but someone reading the stories would think Im having sex with regular Garfield.) I killed off Jon in a jealous rage, I didn't touch Odie, I enjoy his companionship and don't mind if he watches.

The stories are your pretty basic wish fulfillment stuff, balanced with self loathing rants. I've been doing this near daily for years and I have a substantial amount of writing in a folder I keep buried in 8 different folders.

My girlfriend stumbled across them by accident when they came up in a search and is pretty freaked out. How can I show her I'm just a normal guy with a weird outlet for my psychological problems and not some kind of sicko?

Here is a small sample so you get the picture.

I looked at her as she lay on the floor crying, my satisfied cock dripped droplets of life juice on her toes, flaccid yet still distended, looking satisfied like a man who has just run a mile and is rewarding himself with a slice of pie.

She reached for the knife as she always did and sliced into her familiar wound, mumbling 'i hate you, i hate you'. Its your own worthless soul you hate, god hates us all and thats why he laughs, he created the world to laugh at our pain, now eat up! I kicked her in the stomach incapacitating her and as she doubled over forced a pan of lasagna down her stupid throat, she coughed most of it up but I made her lick up every last drop as she cried the tears of an empty soul I found my cock get hard from her pain and went for her ***, rubbing her blood gushing forearm into her stupid face.

Odie looked at me with a look of fear mingled with hatred but he new not to interfere, and I could tell by his doggie hardon that he didn't truly mind, she would suck him off later he knew for my amusement. I made her suck many people off, to gain friends in the community but mostly to humiliate her and destroy any self esteem she had left.

I'm no psychologist but I suspect that his issues might encompass slightly more than just an odd Garfield fixation. When I first read that I didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or be creeped out by it so I just did both. This could very well be a joke but after all of the other freaky shit you've seen on the Interwebs would you be at all surprised if it wasn't? Crazy.

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Happy Mother's Day

Here's hoping that all the momma's out there have a good one today. I'm working all day so there'll be more blogging come Monday.

Breakfast

As you can see, it's just too beautiful outside for blogging today. Hope you're all enjoying your day as much as I am. Back tomorrow.

Book Club Break

No time for blogging today. My book club is meeting to discuss our latest tome over some BBQ and vino on a day so beautiful that it not only makes me glad to be alive but also extra glad that I'm spending it in Northern California. If you have the means to live here, or even just visit, I highly recommend it. Oh, and how this man is still alive is completely beyond me. I thought that I'd abused my body with chemicals but Ozzy is in a whole other realm of crazy. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Apologies for the lack of posting of late but the weather has been just too damn gorgeous lately to spend time indoors. It'll be rainy and crappy again this weekend so regular posting will resume then. I'll also address Don's latest shot at me then but here's an initial thought: does anyone else find it slightly Rovian for a guy with an actual beer gut to be attacking me for having a virtual one? Kind of like a Sarah Palin supporter attacking President Obama for his supposed lack of speaking abilities, huh? More later, dear readers... (see how cheesy that sounds, Don?).

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Apologies for the lack of posting as of late. The last few days of nice weather here in Northern California have been keeping me busy working on my yard. Despite my considerably less than green thumb I'm trying to cultivate the rose bushes that were here when I moved in and I'm also thinking of starting a vegetable/herb garden out on my back patio as well. Does this mean I'm getting old and boring? Regular posting will resume shortly.

Camping Trip Cut Short On Account Of Rain

The camping trip to Salt Point started out really great. My buddies and I took a long hike out to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific ocean, saw some beautiful nature along with some sea lions and whales in their natural habitat and much meat (no, not sea lion or whale) and alcohol was consumed by all. Then yesterday evening God decided that I was having just about enough fun for an atheist so he took a massive piss on our campsite. Even though we had a strong fire going at this point we decided that we wouldn't be able to cook dinner or hang out and drink so rather than spending the rest of the trip huddled alone and hungry in our respective tents we broke camp hurriedly in the dark and drove home late last night. Still, I'm glad we went. It's always nice getting away from everything that stresses me out every day and I really should make an effort to do it more often. So, what'd I miss?

Obama Reacts To Health Care Vote

After a hard fought victory President Obama gets in a few shots at obstructionist Republicans whilst kicking back and taking a well-deserved rest:


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A Camping We Will Go...

All right Ragers, I am out of here. I'll be spending the next several days at Salt Point State Park about 90 miles north of San Francisco, camping out, eating roasted animal flesh and drinking copious amounts of alcohol with regular commenters Doug"e" and Intrepid Californio. I've queued up a few fluff posts to entertain you while I'm gone but nothing too substantial so just go ahead and lower those expectations right now. Talk amongst yourselves and try to keep it clean. Back in a few.

Tech Break

Apologies for the lack of posting as of late. I just really needed to unplug for a couple of days, plus I was able to finally got everything squared away after moving into my new place. I promise to start reading the news and making asinine comments about it again very soon.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Renewed apologies for the continued lack of posting as of late. Between work and unpacking my house I've hardly had any time for the Internets at all this week. It's actually been pretty nice having the TV and computer off with just music playing instead. Of course I can only do that for so long before I go through information and cable news withdrawal so this shouldn't last too much longer. Regular blogging will proceed shortly.

Unpacking Life

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, I'm unpacking everything I own in the world at my new place. I really have too much shit. Most of it's nice though...

NFL AFC/NFC Championships Today

No time for blogging today (yes, yes, I know, I didn't blog yesterday either but I was busy and I've been trying really hard to write more lately so sue me), the AFC and NFC championships are on. I'm calling the New Orleans Saints as the 2010 Super Bowl champs right now; we'll see if history agrees with me.

This Is Why I'm Not A Democrat...

Because the level of pussification of that party in standing up to Republican obstructionism, even in the face of actual real-world threats to this country's safety, is unacceptable to me:

Imagine that after 9/11, a liberal Senate Democrat had quietly placed a hold on George W. Bush's nominee to lead the Transportation Security Agency. The problem in this case wasn't qualifications. The nominee was a former airport security chief, FBI officer and university professor. The problem was that the airport security chief wouldn't say that he wanted the Transportation Security Agency employees to unionize.

Then an Islamic radical tried to blow up a plane.

The Democrats would have been hammered for holding up the TSA chief's nomination. Bush would have made a recess appointment. Republicans would have gleefully campaigned against the liberals who would have left our air travelers defenseless.

That same story just played out, but the parties were reversed. It was Barack Obama who nominated Erroll Southers, the former airport security chief and FBI officer, to lead the TSA. And it was South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint who blocked his nomination over unionization. Did DeMint back down after an al-Qaeda-linked radical attempted to detonate a plane? Nope. Did Obama step up and make a recess appointment? Nope. Did Democrats make a major issue out of it? Of course not.

Instead, Erroll Southers formally withdrew his nomination today. Score one for DeMint, and another against the Democrats.

At this point I really do feel like a man without a country. Democrats have all of the power in our government yet they won't use it to protect this nation while the Republicans could care less because their tactic of chipping away at that power garners them some semblance of electoral strength and both parties just watch as we become more vulnerable to our enemies without. This last week has been extremely depressing politically and maybe I'm a bit too drunk as I write this (I am) but I'll admit that I've seriously considered just stopping caring about both parties and their never ending machinations and callous posturing at the expense of the American people. This system is completely broken and I don't see it being fixed anytime soon by anyone of conscience or consequence. I now understand why so many people in this country don't give a shit about politics and I'm seriously considering joining them in not doing so. I'm simply tired of it all.

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