Personal Trainers are the topic du jour for Wednesday’s issue of the Perpetual Post.
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I have become increasingly suspicious of personal trainers in general, particularly since I took my new gym up on its offer of a free session with a personal trainer for new members.
The personal trainer who provided the free session seemed like a nice enough terrifyingly enormous muscle-bound man, but it was not long before I realized that we were at cross-purposes. You see, at the time I signed up for the free session, I was in fairly decent shape. Ok, I’ll level with you: I was in the best shape of my life. I had begun training to run a half-marathon. I was working out nearly every day, eating healthy meals and drinking lots of water. I had a confident spring in my step. All my pants fit. I was disgusting. I don’t know what I really expected the personal trainer to do when I swaggered into the gym for my free session. Perhaps I was hoping he would look me up and down and say, “There’s nothing for me to do here. Run along now, I don’t want to ruin a masterpiece.”
In any event, he did not do that. He suggested that I could stand to lose a few pounds. When I let him know that I did not in fact want to lose any weight, he changed tactics and told me that I could bring my BMI down by a few points in order to be healthier. When I shrugged, he took me out onto the weight room floor and had me do a few exercises. Possibly ‘a few’ is not the correct word; that man had me doing endless squats, repetitive arm exercises with heavy weights, and a multitude of sit-ups, all of which I accomplished with a certain amount of aplomb.
“I am doing pretty well!” I thought smugly in my head. “I don’t need a personal trainer!”
At the end of the session I received another Hard Sell. Personal training would help me achieve my fitness goals and enable me to attain the best possible physical shape. I should invest in at least one session a week for three months in order to see visible results, I owed it to myself to seek professional assistance in this area, etc. etc. I nodded and smiled and then skipped out of the gym, whistling.
The next morning, I ached ALL OVER. I felt like a punching bag. But I also felt duped.
“That guy WANTED me to wake up feeling like a ton of bricks,” I thought to myself. “Maybe he figured that if I woke up feeling like crap after just one personal training session, I would realize that I owed it to myself to seek professional assistance in this area.”
Well, his plan failed. In fact, it backfired, because I spent the day grumbling about how lousy I felt all because of that damned personal training session. “That guy thought he could show me I needed a personal trainer,” I thought. “Well, I’ll show him. I’m going to gradually lose focus and interest in working out, slack on my training and start eating badly. He’ll be sorry he ever tangled with me.”
And this is where I find myself today; bloated from excess salt intake, constantly forgetting my gym clothes at home on purpose, my pants once again too tight and my arms weak and noodly. Thanks for nothing, personal training.
Like everyone else, we at the Perpetual Post mused about the infamous ‘Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad’ before it aired. It’s since been revealed to be pretty anticlimactic, but our musings were interesting anyway. Read Jeff Morrow’s side here.
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: The already-infamous ‘Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion’ Superbowl ad hasn’t even aired yet, but it’s already stirred up plenty of controversy.
The ad purportedly involves Tebow’s mother telling the story of how she became ill while she was pregnant with him and was urged by doctors to have an abortion for her own safety. As the legend goes, she chose not to listen to their recommendations, and gave birth to a baby who grew up to be named Florida’s Mr. Football, which is every mother’s dream.
The subtext of this ad demonstrates a relatively new approach for the anti-abortion set, and I have to say I’m impressed. Their normal tactics are usually about as subtle as a slap in the uterus. But the premise of this Mother Tebow ad appears to dig a little deeper, at least on the surface. Its view is a bit more nuanced; more thoughtful. It shows the consequences of an enormous and difficult life decision, and demonstrates one situation in which a woman’s choice to go through with a pregnancy results in a positive outcome. At least, if your definition of a positive outcome involves the existence of Tim Tebow. I’m on the fence there.
It should be noted that Tim Tebow’s mother ostensibly wanted to give birth so badly that she was willing to risk her life to carry her pregnancy to term. This places her apart from a majority of women who seek to terminate their pregnancies because they did not plan them and either can’t afford or do not want to have a child. It should also be noted that Mrs. Tebow already had four children when she was pregnant with Tim. It is unlikely that the ad focuses on the fact that she would have left four children motherless if she had died as a result of her commitment to bringing Tim Tebow into the world and thus into the Florida Gators.
No, the brilliant part of this ad is not what it glosses over, but that it targets with laser precision a dread that I have come to believe lurks in the reptilian brain of every anti-abortionist, and even some who are pro-choice: the irrational fear that if their mothers had had the option to choose not to give birth to them, they wouldn’t be alive today. Scary, right? Makes you think? Not really.
I personally am a very analytical person. I tend to over-think everything, from what I should do with my career to what I should have for lunch. But I do not now, nor have I ever, nor WILL I ever wonder what the world would have been like if my mother had aborted me. Because really, what’s the point? Obviously I was born. That’s that. Why pursue such vague and disturbing and ultimately useless what-ifs? Either you’re born, or you’re not, and if one happened, there’s no way to know what it would have been like if the other had happened instead, so why waste your time thinking about it?
Yet many do. The fact that their mothers held incredible power over their lives and could have made a choice not to bring them into this world haunts them. It keeps them up at night. They may not even realize it, but by picketing planned parenthood clinics and harassing young pregnant women and creating pro-life propaganda, they aren’t only fighting to save unborn babies they know nothing about; they’re fighting, in some strange way, to save themselves, and to take away the choice that every mother should have to carry a child to term or not, so that they can rest assured that their lives never hung in the balance, the way Tim Tebow’s could have (but ultimately didn’t).
The flip side of the coin of course is that for every Mrs. Tebow there was also a Mrs. Dahmer. It’s hard to argue that the world is a better place because Tim Tebow is in it, without also reflecting that the world would have also been a better place if Pol Pot’s mother had had second thoughts during her first trimester. This pointless line of thinking; this attribution of some greater design to past incidents which relied heavily on chance and circumstance, leads to murkiness, not clarity.
I’ll be curious to see reactions to this ad once it finally airs. Although I find every argument against allowing women the freedom to choose to be unconvincing, I’ve got to give this ad credit for tapping into an inexplicable and profound dread of the anti-abortionist movement. Tim Tebow, not only did you grace the September 2008 cover of Men’s Fitness magazine, but you’re also about to become the poster child of our deepest fears. Do your mama proud!
We took on the Super Bowl over at the Perpetual Post this week. Find other view points here! (But mine is the rightest one).
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I tend to forget about the ‘Super Bowl’ part of Super Bowl Parties until I walk in the door, and by then it’s too late; I’ve got a beer in each hand and my face in a bowl of bean dip and it would be too awkward to back out the door again. So every year, someone I know invites me to a Super Bowl Party, and like a Peanuts character, all I hear is “I’m having a wuh-wah-wuh Party this weekend, you should come!” So I always do, and I always suffer.
Part of the problem is that Super Bowl Parties are deceptively titled. The ‘Super Bowl’ part of the phrase is a tarted-up euphemism for watching football that is easily glossed-over. If people instead invited me to, ‘Come over to my place and watch some football,” as they do sometimes, I would do what I usually do and laugh in their faces. I don’t do “watch football”. Football bores me to tears. Any time I ‘watch football’, what I’m actually doing is marveling briefly at the glint of shiny spandex on giant undulating male buttocks and thighs, and then sinking into a coma. Watching football crushes my gentle spirit, scores a touchdown on my will to live and does a victory dance in the barren end zone of my soul.
But the thing is, I LOVE parties. And I understand that they come in many shapes and sizes, although as a rule, most of them involve snacks and drinks. I personally am fairly liberal when it comes to my definition of what constitutes a party. In fact, you could invite me to your “Watch Me Do My Taxes Party”, and as long as you promise nachos, I will probably show up with a noisemaker. But a Super Bowl Party is a nationally-recognized event that does not meet even my generous requirements of a party, and that is a tragic thing indeed. In this way, the Super Bowl Party is my Trojan horse. It betrays me on a yearly basis.
True, Super Bowl parties usually deliver on the food and booze. That is one thing they have going for them. They also have lots of yelling, which is sometimes fun. But they almost always lack sparkling conversation. Most conversations I have at Super Bowl Parties go something like this:
Me: “So what do you do for fun?”
Person sitting to my left: “Well, sometimes I like to EEUUEUAARRRGGGHH GO GO GO WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! RUNNNN!!!”
Me: “Oh…sorry. Let me wait until commercials are on.”
Me, Later: “So, what kind of dip is th—“
Everyone around me: “Shhhhh! Commercials!”
Me: “This party sucks.”
May I add, that any party whose highlight for some involves watching commercials is frankly a sad affair.
Sometimes I wonder if I am not the only one out there who is suckered year after year into spending four hours of my Sunday night drinking Miller Lite and stealthily picking the peanuts out of the Chex Party Mix. When I look around at most Super Bowl Parties, I like to imagine that not everyone there is swooning over field goals and eagerly anticipating the half-time show. There must be others like me—maybe there are even quite a few of us. A covert army of nonbelievers hovering over the Doritos and masking our yawns with suspiciously ill-timed and half-hearted cheers. If only there were some way we could band together and create our own celebrations, far from the mind-numbing infographics and repetitive trumpety theme music of the blaring, omnipotent football game.
Except…Sunday evening is kind of a terrible time to bother having a competing party. Maybe next year they’ll hold the Super Bowl at a more convenient time. Let’s wait and see. And in the meantime, I’ll console myself with beer and maybe a few more hot wings. I guess things could be worse.
Jillian Lovejoy Lowery and I took on the decision by Whole Foods’s CEO to offer increased store discounts to employees based on their overall health. Her side is available at the Perpetual Post’s main site.
I would like to applaud Whole Foods CEO Steve Mackey for introducing a plan that offers his employees a larger store discount based on their overall physical health and fitness. No longer just a patronizing corporation with a moral-superiority complex, Whole Foods is showing that it cares enough about its employees to do what it can to lower its company healthcare costs.
All company employees currently enjoy an impressive 20% store discount, which serves to make Whole Foods products only approximately twice as expensive as the products carried in other supermarkets. However, beginning in January of 2010, employees who meet certain health criteria, including low blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI and no nicotine use, will be entitled to enjoy a further discount of up to 30%.
Upon learning this news, the blood-pressure of many Whole Foods employees temporarily rendered them ineligible for participation in the program.
Still, many agree that it’s about time the obese are punished financially, and not just from health problems and discrimination from their peers and society in general. It’s also fitting that those who are physically fit be monetarily rewarded for being so, as they enjoy few other privileges from being healthy and in shape.
The goal of the program is likely aesthetic as well as cost-conscious. After all, how inspired would you be to purchase a $7 box of organic Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal that has been laboriously stocked by an obese, heavy-breathing Team Member with a pack of Parliaments sticking out of his back pocket?
Mackey’s letter to employees introducing the program, which was leaked to the media by an employee who was interested in sharing the news of their CEO’s generosity with the rest of the world, states that “we believe this is a win-win program that will help both our Team members and our shareholders.”
The next step on this road will likely be for Mackey to encourage healthy behavior in his shareholders by offering them increased stock options based on their smoking habits and weights. I’m sure that this program will be rolling out very shortly, and I plan to keep an eye out for that memo.
Jeff Morrow and I took on Corporations in this week’s Perpetual Post. His side is much better than mine. Read it here!
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I don’t understand why everyone is so concerned about the fact that corporations are now free to donate massive sums of money to promote the political candidates of their choosing.
Corporations are an enormous and hallowed part of American life! We spend our lives wrapped tightly in the warm embrace of a colorful range of different companies. They feed us, entertain us, teach our children what is important, tell us what to drive and how to dress and where to shop. I ask you, where would we be without the guidance and leadership we enjoy thanks to enormous conglomerates and their hundreds of faithful CEOs, boards of directors, advertising executives and other employees? What would we do without them?
Why this sudden indignation at the idea of giving corporations the same freedoms and rights as people, anyway? Corporations already have personalities which we all know and love! You know as well as I do that Disney is the amiable, heartwarming and child-friendly but still evil one. PepsiCo is the dark horse with the evil heart of gold. Frito-Lay is its cheerful, friendly subsidiary that makes evil snacks. Fox is the sneaky evil conservative one. Kraft Foods is the gross one. And on and on! Please—we KNOW these corporations! They are like family to us! Why not give them a seat at the table when it comes to the leaders and issues who shape the rest of our lives?
Corporations already know how to advertise—it’s what they DO! Why stand in their way? I’m sure they’re going to be able to create some extremely compelling political advertisements! It will be a welcome change from the drab, amateurish quality of most commercials we see now a days that are financed by wussy little candidate support groups. How can we lose by letting Philip Morris inject some mystique into a politician’s ad, or allowing a little of GE’s maudlin sensitivity tug at our heartstrings as it convinces us that clean coal is the future?
Finally, I don’t see how we can say no to the desire of corporations to help us out in the political arena. It isn’t as though we’ve been doing a great job choosing leaders ourselves lately! Why not give our corporate friends the chance to get in there and help us make decisions about our leadership? ExxonMobil knows how much we like to drive– maybe they can remind us that we need to support a candidate who can make sure we continue to obtain as much oil as we can from wherever we can get it. Wal-Mart already knows how much we like cheaply made goods at rock-bottom prices; maybe they can help steer us toward a politician who is going to relax restrictions on child-labor laws to keep down the prices of imports. Now we’re talking! If we can help corporations, they’ll help us! Just like they’re doing now, only even more so.
Akie and I took on the iPad in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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Full disclosure: I am not a Mac. I’m not really a PC either—I’m more of what you would call a ‘poor person’. But the uproar surrounding Apple’s new iPad device got me curious, so for the first time in my life, I visited the good folks at http://www.Apple.com. Once there, I noticed that there were several videos about the new iPad, but unfortunately I couldn’t get any of them to load, so had to judge Apple’s groundbreaking new product by the content they had up about it on the website.
I’m not sure about Apple’s claims that the iPad will change the way we experience the web, but maybe they meant that in a subtle way—kind of like how crazy straws have changed the way we drink juice. In any event, the iPad has certainly changed the way I look at rectangular things.
I was also ambivalent about Apple’s assertion that “with iPad, navigating the web has never been easier or more intuitive. Because you use the most natural pointing device there is: your finger.” Really, Apple? This is your pitch? As ridiculous as it is, this claim neatly summarizes the nature of the exciting and fascinating features of Apple’s newest device.
But wait—there’s more! The iPad also offers a means to…view photos! Finally my wealthier friends will have yet another way to show me their vacation pictures—and they will be bigger and more detailed than ever! Trust Apple to not see the down-side of allowing people to essentially carry entire life-sized photo albums with them at all times. Apple actually brags that: “the Photos app displays the photos in an album as though they were in a stack. Just tap the stack, and the whole album opens up.” Great! That’s my worst nightmare! I can see it now. “Oh good, yet another stack of your vacation photos. Let me just use my finger to tap it and I can spend another twenty minutes learning about ancient monuments.” Apple, after touting the benefits of my finger, you’ve just managed to make me hate it.
There’s also a GPS feature, which will make it impossible to be subtle about the fact that you’re using a GPS device to find your way around. No more slyly navigating throughout a city while surreptitiously glancing down at your cellphone or iPhone GPS program. No, the iPad helps make it clear to everyone around you that you’re lost. Still, this could be good– maybe they’ll help you out!
A prime candidate for the least likely feature to be mentioned on a website introducing the iPad would be the Calendar, which does in fact have an introductory paragraph describing its many thrilling aspects. I know what you’re saying—wait! The iPad has a calendar? Does it have ALL the days?! The answer is, probably. And you can point at them, with your finger! Because as we know, it’s the most natural pointing device there is.
Another iPad benefit which Apple hypes on its website is the fact that it has a ‘Home Screen’. As Apple redundantly explains, “The Home screen gives you one-tap access to everything on iPad. You can customize your Home screen by adding your favorite apps and websites or using your own photos as the background. And you can move apps around to arrange them in any order you want.” I assume that I’ll be moving those apps around with my finger? Because that’s the only way in which this ‘Home Screen’ differs from a little thing called a ‘Desktop’, which I’m pretty sure I’ve come across before, in pretty much every other computer ever. And frankly, if I have to pay an extra $500 in order to touch something with my finger that I ordinarily can’t, I’d rather it be during a lap dance. Touting the advantages of a ‘Home screen’ during a sales pitch for the iPad is also kind of like a real estate agent boasting that the house he’s showing you has floors.
Oh, and you can also watch videos on YouTube using the iPad. The picture on Apple.com which explains the benefits of watching YouTube videos on a 9” screen shows an image of a dog on a surfboard—which is very representational of YouTube, but it doesn’t make me want to run out and buy an iPad in light of all the full-sized surfing dog videos I’ve been missing.
In fact, nothing in Apple’s desperate pitch for the iPad made me want to buy one. Still, looking on the bright side, it did rekindle my excitement at having fingers. Hey Apple, guess which one of my fingers I’m pointing right now? Now that you mention it, I guess that DOES feel pretty natural.
Howard, Akie and I discussed the EZ Pass System in Thursday’s Perpetual Post. Find the other angry sides of the impassioned debate here.
Those who stand by EZ Pass will defend it to the death, and I appreciate their ardor; but they’re wrong. Just so they know that. I am a fierce opponent of this destructive, elitist system. I won’t stand for any kind of toll booth that won’t accept money. If you’ve ever squinted into the darkness while hurtling toward a toll plaza and searching desperately for that little green arrow above a booth which means that it takes actual currency, well then you feel my pain.
EZ Pass ownership is the worst kind of snobby supper club. Sure, anyone can become a member, but in order for it to be worthwhile you have to have an actual need to pass, in an EZ fashion, through certain tolls in a very specific geographical location in the Northeast.
Now if they wanted to make EZ Pass a nationally accepted method of toll payment; if buying into the EZ Pass system virtually guaranteed that in your travels, you would have an occasion to use it, it would make a lot of sense. After all, it would result in the simplification of an otherwise convoluted and inconvenient toll system—doing for American transport what the Euro did for European commerce. Instead it’s more like Disney Dollars. As a former New Yorker who now lives in North Carolina, I find myself paying tolls in New Jersey and New York when I visit family approximately every six months or so. Is it worthwhile to convert my currency into EZ Pass to ensure a quicker trip during those two times (which are usually during the heavy-traffic holidays anyway)? Not likely. Given the choice between purchasing EZ Pass points (or whatever they’re called) and having Money, I’ll choose Money any day. Because with money, I can buy other things. Virtually anything in the world that money can buy—including, remarkably, passage through a tollbooth in New Jersey.
That leads to my main issue with the whole concept behind EZ Pass. At a certain point in our history, currency became standardized to give us the ability to purchase goods and services in an easily measured way. It worked out well—apparently until now. EZ Pass represents a branching out into a specific type of currency for a specific type of service, which goes against the whole point of having uniform currency to begin with. Why can’t tolls just accept money? And if they’ll accept either money or EZ Pass, then where does it end? Why can’t I pay my toll with an old sweater or a bag of chips? I always have those in my car! Who decides what kind of payment a toll can accept, anyway? It is a slippery slope. There is nothing EZ about it.
I do understand that it’s inconvenient for tolls to take cash only, since in our modern society most people pay for things with plastic and don’t tend to carry much cash around. But instead of creating an alternate form of currency, why not simply make it possible for tolls to accept credit or debit cards? There are already gas stations where you can simply wave your debit card in front of a reader to pay for a Big Gulp. Why not extend the courtesy to toll-paying? What are we waiting for?! The future is now!
Lastly, those who love EZ Pass adore complaining about those who don’t understand how to use it. “Why do they slow down and stop in confusion?” EZ Passers howl indignantly. “Why do they scratch their heads stupidly and back out of toll booths while everyone honks at them?” Why indeed. I’ll tell you why: Because EZ Pass is too complicated for us. It’s the scourge of the common man. EZ Pass, while perfectly EZ for smart people to operate, is beyond the majority of the population. And yes, we’re the ones gumming up the works by switching lanes nine times as we approach a toll plaza and losing our tickets and injuring ourselves on our own side-view mirrors. But that is the point, and that is what you EZtists don’t understand: Each time one of us drops a handful of pennies on the ground while trying to toss them into a toll basket, we are taking a stand against you. We are fighting the good fight to make sure that your fancy technology doesn’t get the best of us and give you the upper hand. Enjoy your EZ Passing while you can, you hoity-toity top-hat-wearing monopoly-man lookalikes driving with a cup of tea in one hand and a diamond-tipped cane between your knees. The revolution is coming. And it’s going to involve a whole lot of waiting in line.
So after working my way up gradually to running 8 miles or so without too much fatigue, I went home for the holidays and ate turkey and rugelah and drank Wassail until I couldn’t feel my face anymore. Granted, it was an excellent week. But now I’m having a hell of a time getting back into the game.
Today on the treadmill I thought I was going to pass out at mile 2. I made it to 8 miles but only after some serious self-bargaining. I hate to bargain. I ran 6 miles at more or less my normal pace, and then did the last 2 at a slightly slower pace. And I feel like face-planting into a bowl of buttered egg-noodles. Just because that might feel nice.
I’m starting to realize that I may have lost some ground here, which Brian confirmed. “Sometimes when you stop exercising for a little while and then get back into it, it’s harder to get back where you were than it was to get there the first time,” he said. I wish I’d realized that while I was double-fisting eggnog and pumpkin tartlets. But I guess sometimes you have to live and learn. At least the living part was delicious.
I am aware that I appear to have jumped on the Julia Child bandwagon here, but yesterday on a spur of the moment decision, I decided to cook boeuf bourguignon following her recipe.
It was a 4-5 hour endeavor. Granted, 2 1/2 hours of that time was spent keeping an eye on a simmering casserole in the oven, and about 1 hour of that time was spent crouched over, reading and re-reading the recipe as though I were deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. But still. It was a long project. I probably should have begun it earlier than 5pm, but in my initial shopping trip, I forgot to buy bacon, and I knew that turkey bacon would be an insult to this recipe, so I had to venture back out to the supermarket at the last minute.
The last time I attempted boeuf bourguignon, it was with a dear friend of mine, at the tender age of 12. We had decided that we would prepare it for her grandmother. I don’t remember much from that escapade, although my friend has since reminded me that we skipped about 1/3 of the steps in Julia’s recipe. Now that I’ve done it again, on my own, I can see a bit more of the whole picture, rather than the daunting step-by-step process. Sort of like climbing Mt. Everest– once you’ve done it, you have an overview of the process in its entirety, rather than the dull, plodding one-foot-in-front-of-the-other bits and pieces that you saw on the way up and down. Not that making boeuf bourguignon is like climbing Everest, but it could be.
I can also see the steps that I might gloss over, the next time I attempt it. Boiling the bacon before frying it, for one thing, seems unnecessary (although it made the house smell cheerfully, and oddly, like boiled bacon). Next time I might add some chopped celery, and coat the beef with a little more flour before adding the wine, to further thicken the sauce. (I enjoyed learning that “3 cups of wine” is an oblique way of saying, “1 bottle of wine”.)
Overall, though, I enjoyed the experience. It was fun to undertake a large cooking endeavor on a cold, dreary winter day. And the end result was boeuf-licious.
Akie and I discussed Alan Grayson’s telling Dick Cheney to “STFU” in today’s Perpetual Post.
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Can Dick Cheney morph into liquid form and slither under doors and into our homes at night? Can he suck the souls of his victims out through their mouths, Dementor-style? Is there a reason to be afraid of him that I don’t yet understand? Because where others see a respected political figure who tells it like it is, all I see is an angry, cantankerous old man who used to wield enormous power and now wields enormous bitterness. He’s Walter Matthau’s evil twin; a Ralph Steadman portrait of a malevolent old grouch come to life.
Granted, Dick Cheney IS a little scary. He’s got the piercing death stare down—and he’s perfected the twisted, grimacing smirk of someone who would enjoy watching you march to the gallows. Apparently he’s also writing a book, which is sure to be an even fouler Necronomicon than ‘Going Rogue’. When you open that book, spirits will drift from the pages moaning ‘eeeeevil’. (Unlike the spirits which drift from Palin’s book, which simply wink and say ‘youuu betchaaa’.)
But he shouldn’t be scary! Not anymore! What he SHOULD be is out of the public’s eye. Why, now that he’s no longer directly involved in politics, does Cheney feel the need to pop up in every corner of the news like a bald, sneering whack-a-mole to make dire predictions and offer scathing, hate-filled words of warning to the current administration? There’s enough vindictiveness and negative energy in Washington without our former Vice President telling everyone that our current president is ‘projecting weakness to America’s enemies’. You know what I want to tell someone who goes around badmouthing the current administration, when he and his cronies left the country to them in the worst shape in decades? I want to tell them to Shut the F*** Up.
And someone finally did! Alan Grayson! And he wasn’t vaporized into a million pieces! His entire family was not found dead in their beds the next morning! Hopefully this is only the beginning of Dick Cheney being told to shut the f*** up in myriad ways by multiple people. I’m betting that there are plenty of others who have long wanted to tell him the same thing, but weren’t sure exactly how to. And maybe now they have an idea! So thank you, Alan Grayson, for telling Dick Cheney what he should be told every time he opens his ugly mouth. As Cheney himself once told Senator Leahy on the senate floor, “Go f*** yourself”! No, Cheney—YOU go F*** yourself! See—it feels good! Everybody try it!
I Heard Tell 