Somewhere in the blue-colored upper left corner of the map, under a horrible black cloud, we find Vern, chewing on his fist.

Well, shit.

Let me start by saying to the rest of the world, IT WASN’T ME, MAN. I had nothing to do with this. I can’t justify this but please don’t think this is all of us. It’s nobody I know, none of my friends, none of my family. It’s nobody that writes to me. Whoever these people are who are rewarding that type of behavior, who saw 4 years of horror and corruption and said, yeah, give me more of that… I seen some of them on TV but that’s it.

You know, I was really hoping to travel to other countries some day in my lifetime without having to look over my shoulder thinking, is that guy looking at my head? Does that guy want to cut off my head? And now these people go and make it look like America approves of Bush. It’s like when you’re sitting at a bar (not me, I don’t drink anymore) and you’re making small talk with the guy next to you, somebody you never met before. And you’re having a good conversation, then all the sudden the guy throws in some joke about jews or koreans or something, maybe uses the N word, talking real loud. And everybody thinks this guy’s your buddy, so you get real uncomfortable and try to either end the conversation or talk loudly about how great it is to meet the guy for the very first time ever. That’s what these Americans are doing. Guilting us by association. Thanks alot, assholes. (read the rest of this shit…)

Well here we are friends. Right on the edge of the cliff looking down. Pretty sure we can jump all the way to the other side, but not COMPLETELY sure. Very soon we could be having a celebration like the “ewok” aliens used to have at the end of the movie RETURN OF THE JEDI before the footage was mysteriously lost under suspicious circumstances. On the other hand we might find ourselves throwing flaming garbage cans, rolling SUVs or, you know, rolling up in a ball in the corner sucking our thumbs. We, as a nation, might have to start drinking again. We might have to fly our asses to Washington to protest the inauguration. Eggs would be in such high demand that protesters would have to start bussing in thousands of free range chickens to pump out enough eggs to catapult at the presidential limo from behind the protest barricade 200 miles away. Hopefully it won’t come to that. No, it won’t come to that. We’re gonna do it.

We’ve come a long fucking way to get to this day. We have journeyed courageously while the economy trickled down from the sky, dripping all around us but somehow never hitting anybody. We have seen the wonders of the world, from the abandoned caves of Afghanistan to the naked butt pyramids of Abu Ghraib. From Enron Field to Halliburtonland. From the plane hitting the fucking Pentagon to Governor Bush getting his ass whooped in all three debates even while wearing a fucking earpiece. And they tell us somehow the race is still close! (read the rest of this shit…)

I don’t know about you but I’ve been enjoying these “debates.” It’s hard to call them “debates” without quotes because there are so many damn rules they might as well just play dungeons and dragons or something. I thought one of them was gonna get a balk.

(baseball technicality where a pitcher has stepped too far away from the mound and the batter gets to walk to first)

The best was definitely the first one, unofficially titled Kerry Unambiguously Whoops Bush’s Bitch Ass Part 1. I was a little nervous before the whole thing because you never know what’s gonna happen. Obviously Kerry had a good chance of doing well, and Bush had a very high chance of looking like a complete jackass. We all know the man can’t stand there and answer actual unplanned questions. We’ve seen it many times before, from the campaign 2000 interviews to the Meet the Press interview to even the handful of fake ass scripted “Press Conferences” he’s had. Even when the deck is stacked, he loses all his money. (read the rest of this shit…)

I DON’T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER THIS, BUT THEY LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON

That’s right, it’s the third anniversary of their greatest achievement, LETTING A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON, and the Bush Gang is celebrating with another round of terrorizing the American people. My personal flip off partner, Dick Cheney, led the festivities with his now infamous speech which boiled down to “If you vote for Kerry, there will be another 9-11.”

Of course, no facts, arguments, realities or common sense can convincingly back up this outrageous death threat. It is obviously appalling and creepy for ANYBODY to claim that only they can keep the American people safe and any other government will lead to disaster. But if there is one group of people who LEAST deserve to make that claim, it would be the one who LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON. (read the rest of this shit…)

Well the republicans are in New York now, trying their best to spin half a million protesters outside (and that number is confirmed by a police source, according to the New York Times) into a small, friendly disagreement among intellectuals. Liberals are supposedly apathetic, but here we have the largest protest in the history of political conventions. No big whoop. Rudy Gulianni is trying to say it only proves that Bush is a good leader, because he sticks by his obviously bad decisions even after the public turns against them.

(And even when the public, and the world, was against it before he ever did it. Rudy didn’t mention that part but if you remember what happened in the real world then I guess it’s implied.)

I gotta be honest, I haven’t watched too much footage of this convention with the sound on, because I was planning to eat today. But I’ve seen a few interesting things. #1, they got this whole fake republican news channel thing. I was watching on C-SPAN and suddenly it turned into the fake news. They showed a long republican infomercial on the screen there in Madison Square Garden, so they had to show it on C-SPAN too, and it took them a minute to figure out to put “RNC Video” on the bottom of the screen. (That’s okay, people aren’t that dumb.) (read the rest of this shit…)

Well I’ve been wanting to say something about this whole Abu Ghraib “prison abuse” (torture) scandal for a while, but what exactly can you say that is not obvious or that has not already been said by some other asshole? Well, hopefully I’ll come up with a few things.

First off, let’s get this out of the way: NO FUCKING WAY is this just the work of six or seven numbnuts soldiers. Yes, those people are scumbags who clearly enjoyed what they were doing and should go to (regular) jail for following unlawful orders. But I’m sorry, I’m not a fucking retard, I’m not buying this bullshit. No bottom of the totem pole grunt is going to be stacking up naked prisoners, raping people with glowsticks, setting dogs on people, attaching wires to people’s dicks AND posing for hilarious novelty photos next to the victim, if they are worried they might be found out. These people were comfortable. There were apparently intelligence people shown in at least one photo, and there were CIA people at the prison. I wonder which one of these six acting alone bad apples brought along the electrodes, hoods, whips and chains? And how did they know so much about the best ways to humiliate Arabs? (read the rest of this shit…)

You’d think by now I’d learn to stop apologizing for not writing enough. But I am a polite type of individual so I say I’m sorry alot. It’s what I do man. I’m sure as fuck not gonna WRITE when I could be apologizing.

No, actually I am writing, just out of the public eye for now. I’m working on an ambitious project. I finally decided to bite the bullet and write me up a book. It’s not gonna be a collection of my works or my memoirs or nothing, although I want to do those too. This is gonna be a very scholarly type of study of the works of a specific iconic individual in the Cinematic type world. It’s somebody I’ve written about before, and I decided the topic deserved a whole book. All you film professors out there, I know you’re reading this, so leave a blank line on your syllabus. And if anybody out there 1) happens to be in the publishing industry and 2) has the balls to blow the lid off the world of film writing with me, then let me know. But right now the plan is a self publishing type deal. That means the book might be a little more expensive than I wish so save up your allowance kids. It’ll be worth it. (read the rest of this shit…)

I will be covering a number of topics this week, so if you don’t like one just skip to the next one. thanks.

ONE LAST TIME. GAY PEOPLE CAN GET MARRIED. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

Okay, I thought my last column would be the definitive word on the gay marriage debate, but for some reason they keep talking about this. Especially since Bush announced he wanted a constitutional amendment to put some limits on that pesky “equal protection” crap our forefathers accidentally left in there. This was treated as big, historic news, even though the asshole said the same thing in his state of the union address. which in my opinion is supposed to be a pretty major speech. But anyway let’s go over this again in more detail. (read the rest of this shit…)

Sometimes I think I oughta just change the name of this column to WHAT THE SHIT IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY?! I mean seriously.

Take this Howard Dean business for example. I know the republicans are scowering the shit out of his past. The media wants him dead, and they’ll do whatever they can to nail his balls to a wall and then pee all over him. You know, practically every politician is getting a bribe or a blowjob or some stupid shit and all everybody can find on this guy is, “he went ‘Yeeeahhh!!!'”

That’s a fucking scandal? How did this even make it on TV? It’s been the top story all week. Shit, even Michael Jackson is real news compared to this! This is a waterskiing squirrel. They’re writing epic poems about a 2 second video clip of the guy being goofy to rile up a crowd. I mean, they had more intelligent discussions on the red carpet coverage at the golden globes. They didn’t do that for Bush’s “fool me once, shame, shame on me, shame shame shame, you can’t fool me again” or whatever he said. They didn’t do it for dropping his dog or falling of a segway (previously believed impossible) and it took them months to notice him standing on the aircraft carrier or saying “bring ’em on” or lying about uranium or etc. (read the rest of this shit…)