Afishionados,

Obama’s 2011 budget plans would scrap NASA’s Constellation space program that I am rather fond of. No doubt the plan is to use the money saved for a public healthcare option.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Yea, right. Sorry, what the hell was I thinking.

We’re just going to waste it on other shit like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, someone’s gotta continue to bless the camel jockeys with the gift of democracy. Clearly the wars are more important than things like public healthcare in this country or space exploration. I bet if the Moon had an earthquake we’d go there. Or weapons of mass destruction. Of course, even if we DID think the Moon had weapons of mass destruction, we wouldn’t be able to find them.

Therefore, because of my disappointment, I have no other choice but to do something like this:

Click to Play the Video

Afishionados,

Joey has passed along the most urgent of news. Seriously, folks, this is like front page material and should be on all the 24/7 news channels. Heck, I’d go so far as to say it’s THE single-most important story of the year.

Joey sends via The Huffington Post:

A letter from a US Marine captain criticizing Australian women’s clothing, or lack thereof, has prompted angry rebukes from Aussie men and women.

Can you believe this fucking guy? Captain John Campbell has got a lot of guts and a lot of nerve. Seriously, it takes BALLS to join the Marines if you’re a raging homosexual, which John Campbell may very well be. No straight man in his right mind would EVER tell scantily-clad Australian women to cover up! If you click the HP link and read the article, you’ll notice that John Campbell has no complaints about half-naked (or wholly-naked) Australian dudes, just hot Australian chicks.

Here’s what Captain John Campbell probably looks like:

Captain John Campbell, Possibly Gay

I’m embarrassed, folks. Truly. I think the best (and proper) thing for the United States to do is apologize. I’m willing to go that extra mile for my country and apologize to each and every beautiful Australian woman in the whole friggin’ Land of OZ. Yep, I’m all for getting friendly Down Under. If you’re an attractive Australian female and would like an apology, please leave your contact information in the comments below. You may also (and in fact, are encouraged) to attach a scantily-clad photo of yourself. Or two. Or a hundred.

Well, I’d best be off to Australia to clean up this friggin’ mess of Captain John Campbell. I mean, it’s not like this is the first time a NAVY man has to fix a Marine’s fuck up. And someone has to… um… stand up for Miranda and her rights, don’t they?

Miranda Kerr, Hot Australian

Oh, I’m saluting already!

Afishionados,

Click to Embiggen

What are you waiting for? COME RHYME and BE LONG!

Afishionados,

Come one, come all! Come as many times as you can!

Afishionados,

I’ve left Sterling Cooper for another job because Sterling Cooper wasn’t as advertised. I’ve been away from the office for about a week now, but one of my former colleagues sent along an image her latest project:

This would make me want to cut my wrists

According to Peggy, she has to cut 22 triangles out of 800 cards. That’s 17,600 triangles, or 52,800 cuts. This is perhaps the biggest reason I left Sterling Cooper in the first place: All I was ever asked to do was stand and cut shit out. And boy am I glad I left before THIS shit started. I don’t know what happened to the “participate in critiques” and the “work on design projects” spiel that was posted on the Sterling Cooper web site because “bitch work” is all I was ever asked to do.

The new gig is off to a good start, but I already miss Miss Holloway. All the time we spent together coming and going, in and out and in and out and in and out at the office…

*Sniff*.

Goodbye, Miss Holloway, you will be missed.

Afishionados,

Happy Halloweenie! And what better time than Halloween to reveal the Rasputin International Poetry Exhibition’s new poster and official trailer! Honestly, is there anything scarier?

Click to View the RIPE Trailer in HD (SFW)

Click to view Rasputin in… um.. all his glory. You may also view the new trailer on YouTube and embed it on your own site if you so choose. The festivities begin January 1st and if you’re feeling pedantic, you can read up on all the rules right here. And remember, Rasputin’s the kind of joke you don’t want anywhere near your insides, so make sure you put on some kind of protection or something. Also, for the very first time, “official” Rasputin swag is available at the Rasputin International Poetry Exhibition Swag Headquarters, complete with detailed descriptions! Yes, Cowmrades, you can even obtain your very own RIPE T-shirt in addition to other precious things of the shop!

Adorn yourself in His glory!

One of the biggest goals of RIPE this year (aside from ol’ Rasputin himself) is to try and get more poets and players. So, if you’d like to help spread the word, you can do so by placing a smaller and slightly modified version of the poster in your sidebar. Here is the code:

<a href="http://www.tetherdcow.com/?page_id=1294" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.oldfishandlemonade.com/pix/ripeminiposter.png" alt="Rasputin International Poetry Exhibition" title="Rasputin International Poetry Exhibition" border="0"></a>

That’s it! The link should appear in your sidebar as it does here on The Fish.

The logo is all my doing, but once again I must send out a huge, Rasputin-sized thanks to my good pal Joey Polanski for his help with the RIPE slogan, the post title, and for his assistance with the trailer music. Lots of time (literally hours), effort, and design went into this year’s campaign, folks, so I hope you at least get a laugh out of it. Enjoy, and fuckin’ participate this year, would ya?

Afishionados,

I hope you paid attention when I educated all of you about the shittiness of Windows. If not, go back and read it. I’ll wait here.

As I am sure you all know, Microsoft has released Windows 7 unto the world and I, like a glossy-eyed retard, bought the student version for $30 because I can only play PC games through Windows, XP is getting long in the tooth, and Vista fucking blows. Thankfully, Microsoft was kind enough to let me upgrade my pirated copy of Windows Vista to Windows 7 Pro. Once I was up and running, I tried to easily view an FTP folder and was greeted with this delightful window in Internet Explorer. I followed the instructions given and received an even more confusing popup:

Click for Full Size Stupidity

I also got my first Blue Screen of Death in years. Vista, as much as it sucks, never gave me the BSOD once. Good ol’ Windows 7, however, didn’t waste any time in reminding me of Microsoft’s inferiority. At least it was only $30.

However, lest some other glossy-eyed Windows retard stop by and chastise me for being too Mac-biased [Note: I am], I observed something nearly as stupid tonight for Apple’s Safari browser. I used to have a wonderful ad blocking plugin for Mac that was rendered inoperable with the latest 64 bit release of Mac OS X. Tonight, while searching for an alternative, I came across this site:

Click for Full Size Stupidity

Ad Blocker FAIL. My search for the cure to eliminate Hulu and YouTube Flash ads continues…

Afishionados,

Plugged up

Some of U are so uptight

That I can’t even get an invite!

So go grab a spoon

A bowl and some prunes

And slurp ’til you’re loosened, alright?

Afishionados,

Stopped by a Chipotle restaurant yesterday with Grandma to pick up a tasty steak burrito. On the way home, the dumbest dog in America decided to run out in front of the car. The dog did not have a collar on and it looked a lot like the mangy dog from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And though I could see the dog out of the corner of my eye and I instinctively knew that it was going to bolt out in front of the vehicle, I wasn’t able to bring the car to a complete stop from the 35 MPH that Grandma and I were traveling at.

Holy Fucking Shit That's a Car!

Well, that isn’t completely true. I definitely came to a complete stop once I actually hit the dog. Car definitely stopped then, I promise you. At this point, I wasn’t sure what was worse: knowing that I had hit the dog or hearing an 85-year-old lady trying to figure out what to do by yelling at me like I had done this on purpose.

Sure, I’ve hit animals before, and enjoyed it on at least one occasion. But I happen to like dogs, and I would never want to drive over one on purpose. I pulled over to the side of the road for a moment and saw that the dog had gotten up, was panting (and rightfully so) and then walked away as though nothing was wrong. So I continued to drive home.

And before you PETA Nazis start to chastise me for not stopping, the dog jumped out in front of the car without my permission, I had no idea whose dog it was or where it had been, and I didn’t want to chance something like getting bitten or dealing with rabies. I mean, I am pretty sure that if someone hit me with a car and then approached me after, I’d fucking bite them, no question.

Now, had the dog remained lying there, then yes, I would have scooped it up and taken it to the emergency pet hospital  about a mile away. But, the dog got up and walked away with a goddam smile on its face. And if it can get up and walk away, it means the dog is fully capable of biting. It was very reminiscent of that scene with Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves when he makes the suicide run and lives. I think the dog did it on purpose. Perhaps the makers of Shoo!TAG™ can come up with a really powerful device that emits enough hokum energy to repel a moving vehicle.

And I know what the #1 question on your mind is and I am here to allay any concerns that you may have about it. Rest assured that, once I got home, my burrito was still hot.

My Chipotle Burrito

Afishionados,

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