Now With Handsome Irish Goodness

Our apologies on neglecting the opportunity to portray the handsome Irish goodness from the June 20th post (I assume that would be the fella' with his arm draped all over this blogger's wife, the bastard).

Tax the Middle Class! (Bastards)

It appears that Congress has finally had the insight to do away with out of control tax breaks, such as tax breaks for college tuition or tax breaks for teachers having to buy their own supplies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqKKaxKK5Z9g&refer=home

Comments and questions are always welcome

Squeezing the Big Boxes (They Can Take It)

This story was brought to our attention by Adam, thanks Adam and good luck on your final thesis paper.
I like the fact that Wal-Mart is complaining about having to pay their employees $10 an hour and give them health insurance. I also like how Mayor Daley may veto the measure, in order to "help the people of Chicago".
That's the funny thing about Chicago they think that they want livable wages and health care, but they really don't and sometimes it takes elected officials and big business to remind them of this.


Remember, this is a blog, so comments and questions are encouraged and welcomed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/us/27chicago.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Oh, Sweet Sweet Irony

Man responsible for passing around the Danish Mohammed cartoons which resulted in the destruction of the Danish embassy in Lebanon is ironically saved by the very same Danish embassy in his evacuation from Lebanon back to the safety of Denmark.

http://bibelen.blogspot.com/2006/07/akkari-and-danish-flag.html

"Global Warming is a hoax" Says Professional Liar.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and he is comparing Global Warming to the great lies of the Nazi Party (I'm not sure that I follow his insinuation here). Who in the hell elects these people to office?

Remember this is a blog, so comments and suggestions are always welcomed and encouraged.
http://www.senatemajority.com/
outrageous_quote_of_the_day_james_inhofe

MA Universal Health Care Update

Massachusetts passes Universal Health Care insurance Act. Now officially the first state in the country to do so.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/07/26/national/a133956D72.DTL

Darth Vader Reminisces

If you have 10 minutes to kill, I thought this was funny.
http://www.akjak.com/vader-sessions/

Demon Ducks...by Request

Last week fossils of giant flesh eating Demon Ducks of Doom and Killer Kangaroos were found in Australia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5172292.stm

On This Date (Warning: this is a cop-out post)

July 16
64 A.D. - The Great Fire of Rome, Nero fiddles.
1967 A.D. - Vin Diesel is born. While setting Hollywood on fire, he does not fiddle as he is too busy kickin' ass.

July Reading and Listening Recommendation

A Confederacy of Dunces
The first I had heard of this book was as a recommendation from a friend as we were settling in for pizza on his last night in Spain before making his way back to Ireland (and eventually to South America). At the time he was halfway through the book, but sold half of the book to me as well as he could.
Later while reading 24-7 (the English guide to Valencia) I read a review of it as an "oldie but goodie". The back story is almost as interesting as the book itself.
The author, John Kennedy Toole had committed suicide in 1969, long before the book had been published. In 1976 his mother had found the manuscript while going through his belongings. She read it and took it to to Professor Walker Percy of Loyola to see if he would be interested in doing something with it. Not terribly interested on giving up time on a scratchy manuscript based on the recommendation from the dead author's mother as "pretty good", he let it sit on his desk. He eventually got around to reading the first page with the intentions of not continuing, but he was looking for a substantial reason to tell the mother that he couldn't do anything with it. As Percy tells it he found himself enjoying it and agreeing that it should be published. It was realeased in bits and pieces in 1978 in the New Orleans Review and it was finally published in its full form in 1980, eleven years after the author's death.
The story itself is about Ignatius J. Reilly a 30 year old man that still lives with his mother. He is a self-proclaimed genius and is five years into the process of writing his masterpiece about the decline of civilization since the Middle Ages. He writes at the pace of roughly a paragraph a month and references a previously written 5 page piece on the same subject that he boldly gave shelf space to in the New Orleans public library. Mrs. Irene Reilly is determined to get her son out of her house and into a job, this is where the hilarity ensues.

Broken Boy Soldiers
The Raconteurs is the "not a side project" from Brendan Benson, The White Stripes's Jack White, and Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler of The Greenhornes. Broken Boy Soldiers isn't as experiemental or groundbreaking as The White Stripes, but if you remove Jack White's previous credentials from the equation you have a fun little foot stomping collection of tunes. The influences stem more from The Beatles or the pages of No Depression than any resemblance to White's other band. For any Australian readers, you'll be looking for Broken Boy Soldiers from a band called The Saboteurs. Apparently the name, The Raconteurs, is being used by a local Queensland band that is refusing to be bought out.