Steve Likes to Curse Writing, comics and random thoughts from really a rather vulgar man. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 11 1566 119 11416

Articles from Steve Likes to Curse

Scallysburg 2007-05-26 22:19:52 Today was the Memorial Day parade in Sharpsburg, the third for me and Ashley. The guest of honor and keynote speaker for the ceremony before the parade was none other than Lou Scally himself. Ol' Lou took the lectern dressed in his trademark gray slacks and navy blue blazer and delivered a speech worthy of a fifth grader who won an essay contest. Half of it was a recitation of the history of Memorial Day which he'd no doubt printed out from Wikipedia fifteen minutes before he left the house, and which virtually everyone listening to him must have known already. It's Sharpsburg, for Christ's sake ? military-themed holidays are all that keep most of the residents going. They crawl along from Memorial Day to Independence Day to the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam in September to Veteran's Day in November. If they had a Christmas parade in Sharpsburg, you can bet the honor guard and fife and drum corps would be right up front.Anyway, after the speech, while Ash and I watch ...

My cat the feline Newton 2007-05-25 10:35:12 Cats are stupid. I love mine to death, but that?s the truth. Ottie is quick, cunning, and cute enough to warm the heart of even the most committed Goldwater conservative, but her brains aren?t among her most valuable assets. Of course, people never used to be that smart, either. In terms of raw brain power, we?re the same as our ancient homo sapiens ancestors. The big difference is we?ve figured out a lot more shit than they did. Might it be the same for cats? Could the cats of thousands of generations hence look the same as they do now, but have developed a superior understanding of the world and how it works? Who knows? Maybe. And maybe those cats will remember Ottie the same way we remember Isaac Newton. She?s been conducting gravity experiments. I?m convinced that?s what she?s been doing, intensively, almost every day for the last six months. She?ll jump up on a table or a shelf or a countertop, select an object sitting nearby ? a pair of glasses, a contact lens case, a large bottl ...

Mind Shittings 2007-05-24 11:53:52 So yesterday I wrote this article for American Chronicle ? one of my better pieces, I think.  This morning someone emails me to bitch about it.  Their objection?  My definition of morality?  My taste in authors or philosophers?  Nothing so insignificant.  This dude/dudette took issue with the fact that I spent two paragraphs picking on poor defenseless Rush Limbaugh.  Well fuck that noise, jack.  Writing that article took me forever (i.e. one hour) and all this touchy little sheep gives a shit about is that I took a couple 'a shots at his/her favorite natural satellite.On a completely unrelated note, I'm fascinated by the men's room graffiti at HCC.  Apparently if I'm "hard," all I have to do is go to City Park and "touch [myself] by the tennis courts," after which I presume some solicitous, possibly unkempt wayward youth will approach and offer to perform some personal service not explicitly defined on the wall next to the toilet, but strongly implied nevertheless.  Contracting mu ...

Ledger and Nolan set to get the Joker slightly less wrong than Nicholson and Burton did 2007-05-23 10:14:54 I?m a week or so late on this, but I have a thing or two to say about next year?s Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, the photo released of Heath Ledger in his Joker make-up, and Batman fans in general. First, on the film itself, the absence of David Goyer as screenwriter can only be a good thing. The story is based on a plot Goyer and Christopher Nolan came up when they were brainstorming Begins, so he?ll presumably get a ?Story By? credit, but the screenplay itself is by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, who also co-wrote Nolan?s great film Memento. Goyer?s script for Begins was the most conspicuous defect in that insanely overrated pile of dogshit, so to have someone else taking up the writing duties for the sequel is pleasing news. Chris Nolan seems intent on showing us his own idea of Batman (which is his prerogative as the filmmaker), so any allusion to the comics more than is absolutely necessary is probably too much to hope for, but perhaps between the two of them, without Goy ...

I Call Bullshit on 2008 Presidential Candidates 2007-05-22 08:47:49 Steady yourself for unpleasant news: politicians are full of shit. They are full of shit because they really, really want to win their elections and keep their cushy tax-payer-funded jobs for another term, and they figure the only way they can con us into voting for them is by telling us what they want to hear. Since the job they all want most of all is President of the United States, it follows that the politicians running for that office be the most full of shit. This is called logic. I spent several seconds checking out the websites of ten candidates for President ? John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter for the Republicans; Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards . . . who else? Is anyone else running on that side? Kucinich, right? Whatever ? I?ll get to ten by the end. First the Republicans. There are three guys who have a realistic shot at getting the nomination ? McCain, Romney and Giuliani ? and four or five candidates running vanity campaigns w ...

File this one under ?C? for ?Cunt,? as in ?Dr. Laura is a . . .? 2007-05-21 10:12:28 So it turns out that Dr. Laura, the know-it-all bitch who?s spent years giving advice about parenting and how to be the right kind of person to her weak-minded, drone-like radio audience, raised herself a pretty fucked-up kid. According to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune over the weekend, Dr. Laura?s 21-year-old son Deryk, a soldier currently deployed in Afghanistan, until recently maintained a MySpace page that featured, ?cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned ?My Sweet Little Habib?; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.? Sounds like this site. ?I LOVE MY JOB,? the paper quotes Deryk as saying on his page, ?it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nast ...

Fun With the Church Sign Generator 2007-05-20 11:48:21 ...

Geminga: a combination neutron star/party game? 2007-05-20 10:45:15 There?s a documentary about the universe and such narrated by Patrick Stewart called From Here to Infinity that I first saw when I was about 14. It was impressive then, but watching it now, it plays like a savagely truncated, vague, slightly updated version of Cosmos. The most interesting bit it has that isn?t touched on in Cosmos is the description of Geminga.Geminga is a neutron star in the constellation Gemini (the word is a contraction of ?Gemini Gamma Ray Source?), the remains of a star that went supernova 300,000 years ago. This was relatively recent on the timescale of the universe; recent enough, the documentary points out, to have been witnessed by our distant ancestors. For weeks after the light of its supernova reached the Earth, Geminga was visible in daylight, and cast shadows at night. It may have outshined the moon for a short time. It was so bright that its points would have stretched all the way across the sky. ?The Earth must have appeared cradled in a basket o ...

2007-05-20 10:25:44 Blargh. ...

The Pastor Had No Clothes: The Hypocritical Legacy of Jerry Falwell 2007-05-18 11:16:12 Jerry Falwell threw me a curveball this week. I?ve spent the last six months on death-watch for D. James Kennedy, another agent of intolerance who conjures credibility by disguising himself as a man of God, who suffered a heart attack around Christmas and hasn?t been seen publicly since. The discovery of Falwell croaked on the floor of his office Tuesday morning was a surprise; he?d been off my radar, having not said anything appallingly stupid or offensive recently. We all wish we could make the world a better place, but it?s a rare and special person who actually makes it happen. Jerry Falwell did it merely by dying. For the first time in nearly 74 years, humanity can look optimistically across the horizon and behold a Jerry-Falwell-less universe. What was it about him that made me despise him so, that made me so livid at the sight of him, that made my skin crawl? He was full of hateful bluster, absurdly small-minded and prejudiced against any system of belief or government that he f ...

Tom Jane pulls out of Punisher sequel; no word yet on status of Dick N. Harry 2007-05-17 10:03:32 This morning at Bent Corner I saw the news that Thomas Jane won?t be reprising the role of Frank Castle in the sequel to The Punisher. He told Ain?t it Cool News that he isn?t happy with the direction of the script and doesn?t want to waste his time making a shitty movie. Good for him, but a shame about the movie; The Punisher was by no means a masterpiece and was quite far below the bar of quality set by Superman Returns and the Spider-Man series, but it wasn?t that bad, either. Definitely a step-up from Daredevil in terms of B-level Marvel movies. With Jane out, the question becomes who will step in to fill the role, assuming Marvel and Lions Gate still want to make the flick. I?ve got just the man. He looks the part, he?s got tons of experience in front of the camera, he?s affable and witty and self-effacing ? all the things the Punisher should be! I?m speaking of course of the host of the Discovery Channel?s Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe. He?s not your first choice, perhaps? I figured as m ...

My new favorite album 2007-05-16 09:35:40 I picked this up at Borders over the weekend. It?s called Something You?ve Never Heard Before, and is an album of Modest Mouse covers done by Iron Horse, who are a bluegrass band. Modest Mouse songs reinterpreted with banjos and three-part vocal harmony ? it is beyond awesome, friends. It?s not perfect ? they?ve altered the lyrics in a few places to remove the profanity (?I?ve got this thing I consider my only art of working people over? doesn?t have quite the same ring to it, ya know?) ? but the pros massively outweigh the cons. There are great versions of well-known Mouse numbers like ?Float On? and ?Gravity Rides Everything,? and stuff like ?Night on the Sun? and ?Interstate 8? which only fans of the band would know. They even do justice to my favorite, ?Trailer Trash.? These guys Iron Horse are a terrific bluegrass band, so if you dig bluegrass, pick this one up. If you?ve never been that into bluegrass but you?re a Modest Mouse fan, pick it up, too; it?ll surprise you. I know gimm ...

Falwell dies, instantly improves world 2007-05-15 15:03:53 What a wonderful day for humanity, a fine, glorious, happy and hopeful day ? the first day in nearly 74 years that men and women have looked out on a Jerry-Falwell-less universe. Yes, the fat old cocksucker who founded the extraordinarily inaptly named Moral Majority is dead. They found him croaked in his office this morning; his doctor guessed it had something to do with a preexisting heart condition, but no cause has yet been announced definitively. I assume Liberty University, the ?college? he founded and was able to keep afloat thanks to donations from Sun Myung Moon, will be holding a massive memorial service in Falwell?s honor in the near future. I wonder if Larry Flynt will be sending flowers? Which reminds me: ?real, real, real fucking soon? apparently equals about nine months. Good to know. The person I feel the worst for is John McCain. With Falwell out of the picture, who will he ardently fellate to suck up to evangelical Christians from now on? Pat Robertson? James Dobson?  ...

The Key to Biblical Prophecy: It Doesn?t Exist 2007-05-15 10:20:36 As I?ve mentioned before, I have a bad habit of listening to conservative talk radio. Usually not Limbaugh, who hasn?t had anything interesting to say in seven or eight years; not O?Reilly, that deeply deluded narcissist; and for God?s sake not Glenn Beck ? I?m not that self-loathing. In the mornings the last few weeks it?s been Dennis Miller, who has grown progressively less funny over the years but still manages to make me laugh every once in awhile. And at least Miller is hip to modern popular culture and has decent taste in music. Then in the afternoons, as I?m driving back and forth to school or wherever, it?s the G. Gordon Liddy show. Liddy burglarized the Watergate Hotel on behalf of President Richard Nixon in 1972 and wound up serving four years of a twenty-year prison term for it (he was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter). Since then he?s been an author and touring lecturer, and since 1992 a radio host. I find myself agreeing with virtually none of his personal opinions, but ...

HCC Comics #2: "Salvation Rejected" 2007-05-14 15:51:36 ...