Couple of wrestling milestones have happened in the last couple of weeks – neither one of them terribly good.
(I am obliged to issue the standard disclaimer here that no, dumbasses – I don’t  believe that pro wrestling’s real.  The outcomes are determined in advance, and most of the punches are pulled – but there are some of what the industry calls “spots” that are all too real, and these performers do truly get hurt in the process of entertaining their fans.  Up your ass if you’re too stupid to realize that.)
Okay, back to the post at hand –
As many of you may know by now, “Nature Boy” Ric Flair wrestled in his last match last night at Wrestlemania 24.  The stipulation of the match was the same one under which he’d been performing for about the last three months – lose, and be “forced” into retirement, per the edict of one Vincent Kennedy McMahon.  (Now, of course we all know that that doesn’t mean shit, as Flair could jump to TNA Wrestling at any time after “retiring” from WWE – but we’ll invoke the trademark Hillary Clinton “willing suspension of disbelief” and just ignore TNA for the moment.)  Flair wrestled against Shawn Michaels and, in what is reported to have been a five-star match, faced defeat bravely, if a bit teary-eyed.
The “retirement ceremony”, if you will, was at the end of tonight’s RAW – and if it ever gets YouTubed and you didn’t see it live tonight, try and catch it later.  It was a helluva tear-jerker, at least for those who’ve followed Flair’s career from his days in the old National Wrestling Alliance.
The other milestone, speaking of the old NWA, was the death of one of the best wrestling “managers” ever to grace wrestling’s stage.  “Playboy” Gary Hart (not to be confused with “Monkey Business” Gary Hartpence) died eleven days ago at age 66.
Those of you who got the opportunity to follow World Class Championship Wrestling knew of the long-running feud between Fritz Von Erich (and later his boys David, Kevin, Kerry, Chris & Mike) and the Hart stable, which included (at times) the Masked Spoiler (Don Jardine), the Bushman, the Missouri Mauler, “Brute” Bernard, Bugsy McGraw, the Great Kabuki, the Great Muta (Kabuki’s real-life son, if I’m not mistaken), King Kong Bundy and the One Man Gang.  Hart was also the main booker of the feud between the Von Erich boys and the Fabulous Freebirds (Michael Hayes, Terry “Bam Bam” Gordy and Buddy Roberts).
Today’s wrestlers could have learned a lesson or three from Gary Hart – the man knew psychology, both in-ring and on the microphone, like nobody’s business.  No one, and I mean no one, ever cut a better promo than Gary Hart.  Because of his work, he was one of the most hated (by the fans) in the industry – which means that he was a master at his job.
In either case, we won’t see performers like these gentlemen again.  Both Flair’s career, and Hart, will be sorely missed by this scribe.
Got this from Delftsman.  (Speaking of which – hope you’re enjoying that .38, y’old coot.  (grin))
Created by OnePlusYou – Free Online Dating
Well, you guys know what this means:
I’m not fucking trying fucking hard enough. 
Let’s end the week with some good news for a change.
Denizens, you guys remember the brouhaha that ensued last year when this restauranteur in Philly caught flak for hanging the sign in his shop that read “This Is America – When Ordering, Speak English”?
The City’s so-called “Commission on Human Relations” – so-called because their purpose is to see that all humans get a fair shake except  the right-thinkers and producers in this country – had a hearing on whether to subject said restauranteur to legalized official oppression.
Now the good news:  They decided not to.
The owner of a famous cheesesteak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled Wednesday.
In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno’s Steaks telling customers, “This is America: WHEN ORDERING ‘PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,'” do not violate the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance.
[…]
Commissioners Roxanne E. Covington and Burt Siegel voted to dismiss the complaint, finding that the sign does not communicate that business will be “refused, withheld or denied.”
Which is exactly right.  When someone comes in who can’t speak English, owner Joe Vento helps the customer with the English he needs to order.
A Philly cheesesteak and an English lesson for a reasonable price.  Such a deal.
Good on Joey Vento.  And a “Took you morons long enough” for the so-called “Commission on Human Relations”.
And no sooner did Widdle Hugetito™ give me a reason to maybe have an ounce of want-to as far as voting for McLame went, than John-Boy went and took it away again.
“I will clean up the planet,” he told a group of Concord voters. “I will make global warming a priority.”
A little later, a chunk of snow fell from a nearby rooftop and landed near the senator, who didn’t skip a beat: “That’s that climate change right there.”
Shame it wasn’t an avalanche to bury your ugly ass.
And in subsequent speeches (if any of you find the links, lemme know, hm?), he once again indicated his willingness to let the Mexican Invasion™ continue apace, among other things.
Guess I’ll be spending my Election Day stocking up on ammo. 
It happened sometime Monday evening, best I can tell.  Was probably asleep at the time.
Unique (*cough*) visitor number 75,000 visited my little corner of cyberspace.
Once again, guys, thanks for taking time out of your busy day to read my Pearls of Infinite Wisdom™.  (more coughing)
Without you guys there, it’s pretty much me screaming into the wind.  You guys (yeah, even the jackasses) are appreciated more than you know.  (And the jackasses would be more appreciated if they’d ever learn to be civil.)
Here’s to the next 75,000.  Salud.
Aw, dammit.
You just knew  we couldn’t get through this election cycle without falling headlong into a quandary.
Shit, shit, shit.
So here I was, Denizens, all ready to sit out the presidential election and let John-Boy McZhamnesty take his chances with the electorate at large.  I mean, if form holds, he’ll likely still win – polls show him beating either the Duchess or the Manchurian Muslim fairly handily – and I’d still be inclined not to mind that much, since it’ll piss off more than a few limp-dicked fuckheads I know.
(It’ll piss off Misha, too, but there’s nothing I can do about that.)
But then along comes widdle Hugetito del Boyo Pequeñito  to throw a monkeywrench into the whole works – by giving me incentive to actually vote for McRINO.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a socialist and fierce U.S. critic, warned on Tuesday that relations with Washington could worsen if Republican candidate John McCain wins this year’s presidential election.
Dammit, Hugetito, don’t you want your honeybo…uh, honeyfolk on the Left to win?  Why’d you have to go and give McLame a couple million more votes?
Dumbass. 
This just makes me sick.
The ACLU at times has battled San Diego in court over a historic cross on a veterans’ memorial and the use of city facilities by the Boy Scouts, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars of money from city taxpayers for its efforts.
Now the city is considering a plan to honor the organization.
“San Diego City Councilwoman Toni Atkins and Council President Scott Peters have placed on the city council docket one of the most despicable and anti-Christian items in recent years. They are planning to declare American Civil Liberties Union Day in the city of San Diego,” warned James Hartline, who himself is a candidate for the city council this year.
ACLU, ropes, trees…you guys know the drill. 
Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave.
And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.
The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.
“He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.
“Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.”
—Matthew 28:1-7
Happy Easter, Denizens.  Always remember – HE  is risen.
Item:  B. HUSSEIN  Osama Obama refused to disown the Rev’rnnnnnnnd Jerkymiah Wrong, saying – and I quote:
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
Item:  Some five-and-change years ago, B. HUSSEIN  Osama Obama demanded that then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott do that very thing.
While Sen. Barack Obama said he couldn’t throw over his friend and pastor of 20 years for racially charged and divisive hate speech, he had no trouble calling for the head of Sen. Trent Lott, the Republican Senate majority leader, for embracing a colleague with a segregationist past on his 100th birthday.
On Dec. 12, 2002, Obama, then serving as an Illinois state senator and filling in as host of the Cliff Kelley radio show on WVON, challenged the Republican Party to demand Lott’s resignation.
“It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do,” said Obama.
He added: “The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.”
Hypocrisy much, B. HUSSEIN???
It do get curiouser & curiouser, it do…
Denizens, yesterday I promised you an analysis of B. HUSSEIN  Osama’s Obama’s half-assed, pathetic attempt to make us forget that the Rev’rnnnnnnnnnd  Jerk-i-miah Wrong, The David Duke Of The Black Community™, ever even existed.
Frankly, though, Denizen & fellow blogger Alan K. Henderson pretty much knocks anything I was going to say outta the park.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, Ann Coulter weighs in with her take.
But here’s one of the things that bugs me, and it came about halfway through this screed of his:
The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.
And you almost start to believe he may, just may, start to get it a bit.  (We’ll ignore, for the moment, the fact that whites as an ethnic group aren’t really blaming their ills on “blackie” as the black community is constantly (perpetually?) blaming every bad thing that ever happens to them on “whitey”.)
But then he reverts to type:
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.
Uh, Obambi?  How about the reverse racism that ills the white community, hm?  How about the black-on-white crime that doesn’t get reported and fawned over nearly  as much as, say, the Duke lacrosse team?
In 2001, Obambi, we had a black church get vandalized – someone painted swastikas all over it.  For weeks it received national attention, and the state of Texas passed unconstitutional hate-crime legislation due largely in part to that vandalism.  When it was discovered that the vandals were actually two black kids at the church (and speculation arose that they were put up to it by certain Dallas black “leaders”, the story died pretty damned quickly.
Would it have even been a story had the perps been black against a white church?  Somehow, I think not.
The message from here, Osama Obama, is this:  Wipe your own nose before trying to wipe mine for me, mkay?  You can start by not only completely  disassociating with Trinity, but by encouraging those who remain there to get rid of Jerkymiah Wrong.
You can work with the black community to get rid of the gangs.  The drugs.  The pimps.  The ho’s.  (Yes – even the nappy-headed ones.)
You can tell the hip-hop gangsta rappas to clean up their act, or else.  You can get rid of all the “X” merchandise – the hats, the shirts, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
And you can quit whining about how it’s all the fault of “whitey” – ’cause it ain’t.  We don’t have the monopoly on racism, B. HUSSEIN, as your pastor/mentor has pretty clearly shown – and it’s about time you realized it.
Denizens, as you know by now, B. HUSSEIN  Osama Obama delivered a speech today in a half-assed, pathetic attempt to distance himself from the David Duke Of The Black Community™, Jerimiah “J-Ho” Wright.  (He wasn’t very convincing about it, when you compare what he said  with what he does – but that’s another post.)
Time permitting tomorrow, I’ll have something to say about it.  Tonight, Pegasus  made another unscheduled trip through the Migraine Nebula™, and nothing was going to get written this evening, in any case.
(I do note that the buttheads at Nightline  called Wright Osama Obama’s “former paster”, then not 30 seconds later noted that Osama Obama refused to distance himself from the race-baiting bimboid.  Make up your minds, ABC.)
Watch this space.
Denizens, Your Obdt. Svt.™ (a little Blackie Sherrod lingo, there) got about four hours sleep last night, and feels like crap tonight as a result.  We, therefore, return to the Grab-Bag™ and bring you this – again, courtesy of the Mothergoose in Denton.  Again, ’tis below the fold for your convenience.
Denizens, it’s been a long couple of days, and I don’t feel like writing tonight, so we go to the Grab-Bag™ and get this gem from the Mothergoose in Denton.  You can find it below the fold.
Enjoy. 
Kinda had a busy night, Denizens – such is the nature of my side business:  Customer screams that her computer is on the fritz, you go.  (grin)
So I wasn’t going to do any blogging tonight – until I saw this.
When you gotta go, you gotta go. But sometimes, you don’t wanna come back for a while.
That’s apparently the case of a 35-year-old Kansas woman, whom police say was on her toilet for two straight years, actually becoming stuck to the seat.
“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself,” Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple told the Associated Press, explaining it appeared her body fat had grown attached to the seat.
Ew.  Just, ew. 
MERLIN:  I didn’t know you ever exported your Train Wreck Stew™…
LSIK&T:  Shut up before I shove that pointed hat and  your magic wand up your ass.
MERLIN:  (snicker)
I’ve been a conservative Southern Baptist most of my life.  My earliest memory of Southern Baptist churches came almost to the day that my mother divorced my father.
Up until that point, and for a time right after “hah skrewl” (a little Rush lingo, there) when I was in a rebellious period of my life, I was a Presbyterian.  But soon as mother divorced dad, she began to go to the church where her mother had been a longtime member.  And dragged me and the Sibling Unit™ along with her.  And thereafter, I’d always felt most comfortable…well, more comfortable than not…in the Southern Baptist Convention.  Especially after the conservative takeover thereof in the 1980s.
That all ended Sunday night, when I read this RCOB-inducing bullshit.
In a major shift, a group of Southern Baptist leaders said their denomination has been “too timid” on environmental issues and has a biblical duty to stop global warming.
The declaration, signed by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention among others and released today, shows a growing urgency about climate change even within groups that once dismissed claims of an overheating planet as a liberal ruse.
We’ll forget for a minute that this country just went through one of the coldest, if not the  coldest, winters in history.  I mean, even though the frigid-as-a-witch’s-tit temps generally missed Dallas/Fort Worth, we still got our share of cold weather – it even snowed nine fucking inches  in parts of the Metromess the other day.  Putting that aside for just a minute, the very fact that it’s the liberal Donktards pushing this Glow-bullshit Wormening™ thing on us, not even wanting to invite debate on the matter, should  have the heretofore-conservative Convention raising red flag after red flag after red flag – right?
Oh, but not only no, but HELL NO!  (Pun only partially intended.)
“We believe our current denominational resolutions and engagement with these issues have often been too timid,” according to the statement.
I’d probably have to agree with that statement.  Their reactions have been “too timid” in that they apparently have lacked sufficient spine to tell the Left Reverend Albert Arnold Algore, The Mostest Mostest Highest (on what exactly, who can say?) Glow-bull Wormening Goreacle™, exactly what he could go do with all of these so-called “issues” of his.
Not to mention trying to shove some of the aforementioned March D/FW snow up his fat ass.
“Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better.”
Oh fer Cthulu’s ever-more-blasphemous sake.
“Mounting evidence” like nine inches of snow in March in a place where it won’t even snow in December, January or February most winters?  “Evidence” such as massive blasts of winter cold everywhere the Goreacle travels?  The fact that the average  temperature has risen one whole fuckin’ degree in the last century  or so?
“We can do better” my ass.  Quit trying to sound like John-boy F’n Qetchup-Ass and pandering to the environ-mental case asshats, huh?
But these paragraphs here, Denizens, are what have my blood boiling:
No one speaks on behalf of all Southern Baptists, who leave decision-making to local churches. Yet, the signatories of today’s resolution represent some of the top figures in the convention.
Among them are the denomination’s president, the Rev. Frank Page of South Carolina; two former presidents, the Rev. James Merritt of Georgia and the Rev. Jack Graham of Texas; and the Rev. Ronnie Floyd of Arkansas, who helped conservatives solidify control of the denomination in the 1970s and 1980s.
Didja see that name?  Jack Graham of Texas?
Up until this past Sunday night, that was  my pastor.  Yes, sportz fanz – I was a member (whether in good standing is anyone’s guess) at Prestonwood Baptist, where Graham rides herd.  And when I read that my pastor had signed this piece of abject bullshit, I promptly emailed him and told him – nicely, of course; he is  a pastor – what he and the Southern Baptist Convention could go do with themselves.
Memo to the SBC:  If I wanted to be a member of a liberal, touchy-feely, Gaia-worshipping cult, I’d go with the Pepsi-cola church.  Or the Unitarians.  Or the Catholics – hell, none of them worship Creator God anymore; what difference would it make?
But hey, SBC – enjoy pleasing mammon rather than the God who created you.  And do go get your Bibles and read Revelation 3:14-17.  Before you suffer the same fate that  church did.