Thank you, George Carlin

In 1972 George Carlin was arrested for saying out loud in front of a public audience the seven words you could never say on TV. There was no Internet then to run to and find out what he said. The radio stations would have found themselves unplugged the minute they even hinted at what he said. The few newspapers who dared to print approximations of the "offense" were so filled with dashes and asterisks they might as well have been written in a foreign language.

We all had to guess and draw from our very large collection of "bad" words we thought they might be, words many of us, including the moralists who enforced the ridiculous laws, used on a daily basis. Any one of us could have landed in jail at the time for saying fuck in public or telling someone they were full of shit and have it overheard by the morality police.

But the most absurd thing is that it wasn't only kids who were trying to find out what the words he said were, it was also adults, people like me who were already in our 20's, 30's and older who had to guess at what verbal crime occurred to warrant a comedian dragged off in handcuffs and charged with violating OUR public decency.

The temptation is to refer to then as a simpler, more quaint, innocent and quiet time until you remember it was also the decade of assassinations, anti-war demonstrations where people actually died for daring to get out on the streets, and where university students were gunned down by the national guard during a peaceful protest.

There was nothing simple about that time. Nor was it especially moral. In fact, it was the very government who was prosecuting a comedian for saying forbidden words on a stage who were also running an illegal and immoral war where thousands were dying, and who were trampling on civil rights and the constitution in a way that was unimaginable...until Bush became president and brought it all back, even in some cases, with the same cast of evil-doer characters like Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the whole Iran-Contra lie, cheat and steal your ass off murdering thugs.

But the important thing for people like me to remember is that I owe George Carlin big time. I make my living by selling t-shirts on Cafepress with designs and words that consist of just about every single word that he was arrested for saying in public. I write in this blog and use language I could have been arrested for just a few short years ago.

Without George Carlin I would never be able to sell a shirt that says "Fuck your lies, Mr. President" and have people buy it to wear in public without fear of being arrested.

Without George Carlin, I would never be able to sell stickers and buttons that say "Dick Cheney is an evil, lying cocksucker."

Without George Carlin, no one would be able to drink from a coffee mug that says "Why is that lying sack of shit still President?"

Without George Carlin, I probably would be working as a Squall-Mart greeter instead of happily making designs that would have landed me in jail not so long ago.

So from this old rabble-rousing child of the anarchic part of the 60's (I couldn't afford the mandatory designer hippie clothes so I became an anarchist as they didn't give a fuck what you wore) a big, heartfelt fucking thank you, George. We'll miss you.

Thank you, George Carlin

Flies On The Wall #46

Flies On The Wall #46

Cheney Hearts His Cousin

(Image of Cheney and family member by William Edwards. Visit his Cafepress shop)

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I've always wondered how Cheney could mistake his best friend for a duck and shoot him in the face. Now we know part of the answer--he's an ignorant, inbred mother-cousin-sister fucking inbred moron as he stated in his own words.

Of course, a man who would shoot his own friend couldn't possibly anticipate that such a joke would further the idea that incest and inbreeding was natural to him as he's spent most of his life in bed with the oil companies. This article, United States Of Oil, was written in November 2001, shortly after 9/11. Here's a quote from the article: " The Bush administration's ties to oil and gas are as deep as an offshore well. President George W. Bush's family has been running oil companies since 1950. Vice President Dick Cheney spent the late '90s as CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Chevron, which graced a tanker with her name. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans was the CEO of Tom Brown Inc. -- a natural gas company with fields in Texas, Colorado and Wyoming -- for more than a decade."

You can't get much more inbred than that.

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However, this whole topic of ahem...brotherly love got me curious about the whole subject since part of my family tree has roots in Iaeger, West Virginia.



(Image from cousin Sandra's collection of the Garner (among other names) side of the family in Iaegar, West Virginia)

First, let's start with some actual facts. Here's a quote from an article in Salon called "Origins Of The Myth."

"In 1980, anthropologist Robert Tincher published a study titled "Night Comes to the Chromosomes: Inbreeding and Population Genetics in Southern Appalachia," based on 140 years' worth of marriage records. He concluded that "inbreeding levels in Appalachia … [are neither] unique [n]or particularly common to the region, when compared with those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history."

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(Family Wedding photo from cousin Sandra's collection...they look kind of uh...related, don't they?)

Then let's move on to the land of kissing cousins, i.e. the United States of America. Here's the link to the following information if you want to verify it to non-believers.

The following states allow first cousins to marry: AL, AK, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, HI, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, NC* RI, SC, TN, VT, VA (and Washington DC). (NOTE: The NCSL actually includes TX in this list, but TX banned first cousins from marrying back in 2005.) *NC does not allow double first cousins to marrying.

Six other states allow first cousins to marry under certain conditions*: AZ, IL, IN, ME, UT, WI. *Only if they are over a certain age or cannot bear children.

Ironically, WV does not allow first cousins to marry!

ALL states allow second cousins to marry.

Then you have the other side of my family who were mostly from a few square miles of each other in Trieste.

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(Image was taken in Trieste when it was a free territory. My mother is sitting on the pillow)

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Currently it is part of Italy so here's the law regarding incest in Italy:

"In Italy, incest is punished as a criminal offense (Art. 564 Penal Code) if, and apparently only if, it causes 'public scandal'. Penalties may vary from a minimum of one to a maximum of five years of reclusion; if incestuous relationship took place, penalties are raised to a maximum of eight years. Incest committed upon minors is punished as a serious kind of statutory rape."

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If you want to look up your own country, here's the link.

So, next time you're at the family reunion, keep this in mind:

(Image from my cafepress shop, Ursine Logic.)

Cheney Hearts His Cousin

Jesus Hates You

Hate always confuses me, especially the kind of hate that doesn't have any personal experience to back it up but instead relies on someone whose business is hate mongering disguised as religion. I really sincerely doubt that cretin, Fred Phelps, has ever come close enough to a gay person to even recognize him or her as a human being, just as I doubt he ever learned to read well enough to understand the message of Jesus which I'm told is all about love. I've yet to see it in action, but I'm told it's about love.

And don't get me wrong here. I'd really really, double and triple really like to see this so-called Love Jesus do a smack down of these morons that spread hate, fear and intolerance in his name. I'd even make a sincere effort to believe he was more than an ancient version of the tooth fairy if only he'd come and make haters like Phelps walk around with a sign around his neck saying "Jesus is making me wear this because I'm an evil asshole who twisted his message of love around to suit my own financial gain." I'd like to see Jesus make people like Phelps get a real job and quit profiting from the ignorance of people like himself who live in fear of anything called education or truth.

Most of all I'd like to get religion out of people's private bedrooms. There's lots of free porn on the 'net if you can't afford to buy it, but quit getting off on making it your business what other people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Once upon a time it was considered rude, insensitive and just plain twisted to obsess on the private sex lives of others. Now it's a national pastime whipped into a religious fervor by churches who obviously skipped over that inconvenient Jesus equals Love and Tolerance part of the Bible.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the fight to allow same-sex marriages. And nowhere is the violation of church and state prohibitions more evident than in this area of people's personal lives. To those who think they should have a say in who should marry, I'd like to remind them it is not Jesus or the church of their choice who legally marries them. It's that piece of paper you sign and turn in with your fees. And guess what, most don't accept checks, so you'd better pay up in cash before you start getting the party started.

Jesus has nothing to do with that. It's not his hand at the city's window going that'll be cash only please. It's all state business and therefore should be free of religious and personal biases. You think I'm wrong? Try getting legally married with just a church service. You'd be living in sin and popping out bastards faster than you can holler Hallelujah I'm an ignorant asshat if you tried to do that.

But that's all paperwork and legal details, something the religious haters prefer to ignore if it doesn't suit them. They would much rather make up crap and throw around ridiculous terms such as "gay agenda" and "special rights." It's easier than reading the law or actually meeting and talking to a gay human being.

So, let's talk about those special rights, shall we? First of all, marriage as we know it is a relatively modern institution, especially LEGAL marriage, the one requiring a license. Few people know that license was devised to prohibit interracial marriage. Here's an excellent article that discusses it in great detail. This is a direct quote from that article "...miscegenation laws were in effect for nearly three centuries, from 1664 until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared them unconstitutional in the Loving decision."

I personally find it very interesting and sad that the same language used by those opposed to gay marriage is almost the same argument down to the hate-filled accusations used by those who didn't want human beings of different races and cultures to legally marry. When it comes down to it, hate is hate, intolerance is intolerance, and ignorance is ignorance, no matter what kind of Jesus love you sprinkle on it.

Marriage, when you remove the religion and politics from it is about love and that's all it ever should be about. If you love each other then you have the right to get married the same as everyone else, no matter if you're blue, green, gay or Fred Phelps. The rest is just plain damned ignorance and hatred that Jesus, if you believe in him, is going to make your ass pay for one of these days. You can deny it all you want, but one day you're going to have to justify your hatred and it ain't going to be pretty to watch you lose the meanest argument in the entire universe.

Having said all that, I'd like to offer my sincere congratulations to my dear friends Andrew and Jason who are getting legally married next month. They asked me to make them some t-shirts and gifts for their wedding rehearsal, dinners, and honored attendants. It's the most fun I've had in a long time designing stuff because it all came from my heart. If you're interested in seeing it and buying some of the for your own wedding and for gifts for the brides and grooms and their honorable helpers, here's the url to my designs in My Holiday Shop.

Jesus Hates You