A geek rant

Okay, so I found the source code to a Windows program that I wanted to make some slight modifications to in order to enhance it. Not a problem, I just download Microsoft Visual C++ Express, their free "for home and educational use" C++ compiler, and compile it. Except... it wouldn't compile, because Microsoft *DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MICROSOFT FOUNDATION CLASSES IN THEIR FREE PRODUCT!*

Now I hear the majority of you sayin', "what does that mean?" Well, basically what it means is that *basically no existing Windows code on the planet can be compiled by Microsoft Visual C++ Express*. I.e., it is utterly *USELESS* if your intent is to make slight tweaks to existing Windows code as part of the process of learning how to write Windows code.

What's Microsoft's excuse? "Visual C++ Express is for people who are just learning C++, and people just learning C++ shouldn't be using MFC." Excuse me. I learned C++ years ago. I learned C++ years ago for *free* by simply installing Slackware 95 Linux and wiping out the Windows 95 on my desktop computer, which was an Intel Pentium 233 with 16 megabytes of memory and a low-end video card, this was about five months after Microsoft released Windows 95 and I wanted to learn C++ but I wasn't going to pay hundreds of dollars for a C++ compiler when Slackware was *FREE*. I don't need to learn C++, I know C++ just fine, thank you very much, I've been programming in it for over 15 years now. What I was curious about was learning Windows programming, not because I need to learn Windows programming -- I make a very, very, VERY good living writing Linux software for embedded applications, thank you very much -- but because I like learning new things. And hey, maybe I'd write a program or two to release as free software for Windows, there's a few things I'd like to see that don't exist because there's no market for them but for which existing code could be modified fairly easily -- if I had some way to compile it.

But apparently Microsoft is intent upon death. Because look. What I did 15 years ago? It's what *every* kid is doing today. *No* entry-level programmers learn how to program using Microsoft's API's. They all learn Java -- which runs everywhere without modification, without even a re-compile, on Java's own virtual machine which completely disguises the underlying operating system from view. Meaning that all the new software coming out runs on Linux and Mac as well as on Windows. And Linux is *free*.

The only way Microsoft can "win" this war is by getting people to use their API, and then they don't provide any way for people to *learn* their API, instead saying "you can't learn our API unless you pay us a buncha dollars"? What the fuck? Do they really expect the majority of people interesting in learning how to write programs that run under Windows to *pay* to learn their API?! Talk about a company with a death wish!

So anyhow, I'm back to writing Java code. Which runs just fine on my Linux box, my Windows box, and my Macs. Way to go down the road to irrelevancy, Microsoft! What next, you put a time bomb into Windows 8 that destroys everybody's data after six months? It's about the only worse thing you could do to destroy your future...

-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin

Okay, this is fugling crazy

I just got an email from Costco. They're offering me discounted tickets to the Super Bowl for the low, low price of -- get this -- $3,000.

Yes, that's right. $3,000 to go watch a buncha fat millionaires play a children's game. Uhm, yeah. Maybe Mitt Romney can afford to blow three grand to watch a buncha fat millionaires play a children's game, but I got better things to do with my money, like, well, anything, actually...

-- Badtux the WTF Penguin

Gripe of the day

What's with these people who don't flush the toilet? Are they so impressed by the fact that they managed to produce a turd that they want to preserve the evidence so that *we* can be impressed too? Dude. It's shit. We're not impressed. Flush it down. If your feeble little head can figure out how. If not, how did you manage to make it to a public toilet under your own power in the first place?

Which reminds me -- public art here in the SillyCone Valley sucks. Down in LaLa Land, they get silly public art like this:

So what do we get here in the Silly Cone Valley? We get a drunken wife-beater whose statue spent ten years in a warehouse because he loved killing Mexicans and the Hispanic community was outraged that a statue of this dude was gonna be in a public park, we get a statue of drunken schmoos schmoozing:

And let's not forget the crowning accomplishment of public art in San Jose: An 8 foot tall pile of dog poop:

Compared to a giant silvery head of Lenin with a tiny Chairman Mao balancing atop it, We Suck.

-- Badtux the Random Penguin

Welcome to National Pee Your Pants Day

Today is a national holiday where everybody pees their pants on command while chanting "Save me, oh kindly Big Brother!". We are supposed to either cower in terror that Zombie Dead Osama is coming to get us, or we're supposed to go grab our guns and go kill a darkie for Jeeeezus! The television airwaves today will be filled with death porn commemorating the murder of a couple thousand people in New York City and a few hundred elsewhere with Important People solemnly intoning "we shall never forget". The question of *what* we shall "never forget" is never asked. We've certainly forgotten the names and faces of those who died on September 11, 2001, after all. Well, unless you're one of those who lost a friend or relative in the attack, but folks who lost a friend or relative in the attack aren't one of the Important People who will be intoning "we shall never forget", they'll be someplace private where they can avoid all the death porn.

And let's not even think about all the hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians and not-so-innocent soldiers (both American and otherwise) that were "justified" by the fact that "them darkies attacked us!" (for any random darkies that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, such as Iraqis, the Taliban, and so forth), or the loss of civil liberties where you now must accede to an anal probe and carry an internal passport oops "government-issued ID" if you want to travel more than a few hundred miles from your home or even vote in many states (gosh , just like the Soviet Union!), or any of that. No no, this is a solemn day, where we worship death while whipping out our big swinging dicks and, like, jizzin' *all over*, not just on our own country, but in random other places overseas where we swing our dicks and jizz all over'em just because, well, because we can.

So it goes. It's enough to drive a penguin to the sauce. Herring sauce, that is.

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Random rant

Toddlers in restaurant... allowed to feed themselves, the table, the floor, and everybody at the surrounding tables. Look, folks. Toddlers do what toddlers do. You don't hand an arsonist a match and a gas can, and you don't hand a toddler a saucer with chocolate pudding heaped on it. It just isn't responsible. At the very least, think about the poor minimum-wage wage slave who's going to have to clean up that shit. Do you have a maid at home or somethin'? 'Cause that's the only thing I can figure, if you're gonna do stupid shit like that.

And don't get me started on the ginormous baby SUV's that clog up the sidewalks today. My mom got by with a standard folding stroller and a diaper bag (a *real* diaper bag, remember, no disposable diapers back then in the neolithic). What's with these fucking *tanks* complete with built-in toys for your precious spawn? Uh... people. Did you know that even the dumbest fucking retard in the State Home for the Mentally Feeble can pop out babies? Did you know that? You think you're special 'cause you managed to do something that a half billion other women do every fucking year? Get over yourself, already, 'kay?

-- Badtux the Misanthropic Penguin

Geek fail

Okay, I've been playing with Fedora 15 Linux and their brand new ultra-cool Gnome Shell, which re-imagines how you interact with windows and virtual screens. It's really neat. It's got lots of cool ideas that Apple and Microsoft are ripping off for their next releases. Too bad I can't read my email on Linux.

I mean, c'mon. This is just ridiculous. You got this ultra-cool user interface and then you can't even read your fucking EMAIL?! Talk about pathetic! I mean, the three things that *everybody* does on a computer are... browse the Web (okay, Google Chrome does pretty well there), write documents (OpenOffice/LibreOffice does okay there), and read email. So what does Linux have for reading email? It has Thunderbird -- a re-implementation of the Netscape circa 1998 mail reader (as in, today's college graduates were in THIRD GRADE when it was created!), and Evolution, a clone of Microsoft Outlook 2003 -- gosh, *only* eight years obsolete. Evolution, as befits its creaky vintage, won't connect properly to any version of Microsoft Exchange email server later than Exchange 2003 (and our corporate email is Exchange 2007 -- too bad for me, huh?), while Thunderbird says "Exchange? What's that?" because, doh, Microsoft hadn't even invented Exchange at the the time Thunderbird was invented, back in the days when Larry and Serg were geeky college students at Stanford University rather than filthy rich multi-billionaires, there was no such thing as Amazon.com, and Yahoo was the way you searched the web.

So what's the response of the Linux types when I ask, "dudes! Where's my email?" Well, it's, like, "why would anybody want to read corporate email from Linux?" Just complete and utter bafflement that anybody would want to do such a thing. And if you say "but Linux is useless on the corporate desktop if you can't read your corporate emaiL!", then they pull out their ultimate trump card: "If you want a great email program for Linux, write one yourself!" Uhm, yeah. Right. Look. You give me a budget of $2,000,000, four of the most gifted engineers that I know, one of the most gifted QA types that I know, and one of the most gifted IT types that I know, and I will have you a world-class email reading program in 18 months. Guaranteed. But the days of one single person writing a world-class GUI-based program in his back room are over. You do the math. That's 90 man-months of work. That's 7.5 *YEARS* of work for one person. Err... yeah. Not happening. If I could interest other Linux geeks in the problem that'd be one thing. But Linux geeks appear more interested in making sure that Linux runs fast on 1024-core processors. Apparently they're fine with using gmail.google.com to read their email, because they're sure not reading it on their Linux systems.

- Badtux the Geeky Penguin

Hysterical ninnies

Birthers, deathers, sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrom, screeching ninnies of the right and left... people. Get a grip. Just get a grip. Whether you're the gang of left-wing lunatics at Corrente or a teabagger, reality simply *is*.

Look. I understand the disappointment that you folks at Corrente have with Obama. You forgot to look at the label on the back that said "Eisenhower Republican". Well, folks, Obama is the candidate you guys chose, he's doing exactly what he said he'd do in all his policy papers on his web site prior to his election, so you have no one to blame but yourself. In the meantime he's the Democratic President we have -- basically Eisenhower Jr. -- and not the Democratic President we need -- FDR reincarnated. But there's no way to get from point A to point B in 2012. There isn't. Attempting to primary Obama will simply end up electing some right wing lunatic as President. Every single one of the Republican candidates I've seen so far makes George W. Bush look like a socialist. Is that really what you want to do to America?! So quit with the deather conspiracy theories (Osama bin Laden is dead, alright, already), and the rest of the weird Obama conspiracy theories you keep messing around with, and live in the world we have, not some alternate universe where primarying a sitting president results in victory for your party.

As for folks on the right... people. Get a grip. All this after-birther stuff doubting the authenticity of Obama's long-form birth certificate makes you look like raving lunatics to the 90% of America who's satisfied that Obama is American. We have a way of handling these situations where you don't like a President. It's called a VOTE. Find yourself a good candidate for 2012, and get the most votes. It's called DEMOCRACY. I know it's a dirty, ugly business, but what's your alternative? Tyranny of the minority over the majority? Yeah, like that ever turns out well...

-- Badtux the PO'ed Penguin

We don't need no edumacashun

Providence, RI, sends layoff notice to EVERY SINGLE ONE of their school teachers. I guess they figure the custodians and school secretaries are all they need to edumacate them thare little brown chilluns.

State of Michigan orders the Detroit Public schools to raise class sizes to 60 students. That's about the same size as seminar classes in college. You can't fit 60 kids into a regular-sized classroom. But again, I guess they figure them thare brown chilluns don't need no edumacashun anyhow, 'cause they's all criminals or athuhleets anyhow, right? Right?!

Remember, this here is AMERICA. Ain't no damn NEGRO got a right to an edumacashion in this here nashion, it's time them darkies picked themselves up by their bootstraps and got right on out of our white Christian nashion, God bless America, Glory Halleleujah, AH-men! If them darkies want an edumacashon, they should just move into our lily-white gated community (where the gate keeper won't let'em past the door 'cause they're all criminals, but hey, ain't no racism here, nosiree!), and go to our segregated all-white suburban school in our segregated all-white suburban school district. It's conservative family values at work, it's the American Way! USA! USA! USA! Whoot yeah!

-- Badtux the Disgusted Former Teacher Penguin

Google officially ruins YouTube

One of my secret weapons for finding interesting music videos for you guys to watch was using YouTube's "Recommendations" function, which found new videos based on my past video viewing. Except Youtube no longer has that function. Instead, they just deployed a new home page that is entirely different. So anyhow, I tried using it tonight and... errm. It won't show more than eight recommended videos when I hit the 'More' link, and it always shows the *same* eight videos, hitting the "load more videos" button doesn't show any other videos, it just shows that same eight in a different order.

Siiiigh! "Progress". For some definition that reads, "breaking shit that worked in order to justify being employed by Google". Crap like this is one reason I'm glad that I decided to hang up whenever Google recruiters call me. I'm not stupid enough to design a user interface that lousy, which utterly disqualifies me from being a Google employee.

-- Badtux the Grouchy Penguin

Another reason to boycott Arizona

Arizona's tightwad legislature just murdered 98 people. In cold blood. Without a trial, without due process, even offering any real excuses for why they have to die. Because, y'know, it's better that 98 people die, than that Arizona's public have to pay $1 apiece more in taxes to fund those organ transplants for people who mostly need public help because, err, they lost their insurance because they got too sick to work and don't happen to have a couple hundred thousand dollars hangin' around... something that could happen to any of us, BTW, in case you haven't been living in a cave.

What is the price of a human life? In Arizona, apparently, it's $1.

-- Badtux the Dollar Penguin

World Nut Daily wants to use YOUR taxpayer money

Yes, that's right, if you're a taxpayer whose tax money supports a state university, World Nut Daily's Joseph Farah wants to use *YOUR* money to solicit funds for political purposes. In today's outrage, World Nut Daily criticizes Grambling University (Ruston, LA) for reminding people that both state and federal law prohibits using taxpayer-funded state facilities (their email system, in particular) for campaign fundraising purposes. My tax money bought that computer (note -- I am a taxpayer in Louisiana), but Joseph Farah wants to use *my* taxpayer-funded computer system for his partisan purposes soliciting funds for various Teabagger and birther-related political solicitations.

This isn't an issue of free speech -- Grambling students and employees are free to send campaign solicitations on their own time from their own Internet mail provider, you can get a Gmail account for free for cryin' out loud. This is an issue of Mr. Farah wanting a free ride on public facilities. In short, this is a case of Mr. Joseph Farah being a WELFARE WHORE, wanting government money (or an email system bought with government money) for free for his own purposes.

Note: I continue my policy of not linking to wnd.com . If you want to see the nuttiness in Mr. Farah's own batshit-crazy words, you'll need to manually type in the URL and go to it, sorry.

-- Badtux the Tax-paying Penguin

Testilying? You don't say!

You know that Border Patrol agent who supposedly was surrounded by rock-throwing Mexicans and had to regrettably shoot a 14 year old boy by the name of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca in order to save his own life? Uhm, turns out that there was someone making a video of the incident and, err... the agent lied. The video shows nobody was within at least 30 yards of the agent. Here, see for yourself:

But of course the fact that the agent lied won't change anything, because as I noted earlier, there's two laws in Soviet America -- one for the Stasi 2.0 (our very efficient and deadly police forces that enforce a "soft" police state upon us), and one for ordinary civilians. And murdering 14 year old kids isn't a crime if you're a member of the Stasi 2.0. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The Israeli embargo: What's it for?

I feel like I'm in a fucking history class right now. First, Israel attempts to re-enact the Warsaw Ghetto with the Palestinians in the starring role, and then the Palestinians attempt to re-enact the Exodus 1947 except with Israel substituting for the British. Successfully, I might add. They baited the Israelis into doing exactly what they wanted the Israelis to do -- re-enact the Exodus 1947 situation exactly, except with Palestinians in place of the Jews and Israelis in place of the British. And thing is, the Israels *knew* this is what the activists wanted. Fuck, the activists even *told* them so, *dared* the Israelis to do what they did. And the Israelis took the bait anyhow.

So anyhow, the next thing I get from Israeli apologists is, "well, the embargo is necessary to keep military weapons out of Gaza." Really? Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, let's look at some of the military weapons that Israel is embargoing at the moment...

OMG! F33R the Coriander of Mass Destruction! Flee the Chicken Bombs of Biological Warfare! Beware the Canned Fruit of Genocide!

Uhm, honey, if you're gonna claim that the embargo is about keeping military weapons out of Gaza, how about restricting it to things that, like, are usable as military weapons?

But of course the embargo isn't about keeping military weapons out of Gaza. It's about keeping the Palestinians as impoverished and embittered as possible so that they will remain enemies of Israel. See, Israel's politics requires that Israel have enemies. Israel's current leaders came to power because they rant that Israel is under seige, Israel is threatened by enemies on all sides, and only they are qualified to protect Israel. If there was a viable and thriving Palestinian state, the fact that Israel has no real enemies anymore would be embarrassingly clear, and their whole political situation would become unviable. As I have pointed out in the past, Israel no longer has any external threats to its existence, so Israel's toxic politics requires that they manufacture one -- and what better one than those poor schlobs the Palestinians, who lack any ability to be a real threat and thus are safe to turn into enemies?

-- Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin

In which I taunt the cryers of "criticism is anti-Semitism!" again

Okay, so Israel just managed to blow away a buncha folks who were trying to haul food and supplies to the Gaza Strip Concentration Camp, thereby keeping intact the blockade they've had in place for the past three years and, incidentally, risking war with their now-former ally, Turkey. And of course the usual suspects start whining, "we're just defending ourselves from Hamas, what do you want us to do?"

What do we want you to do? Uhm, you really, really want to know that, or you just bullshittin' me? 'Cause it's pretty goddamn simple, actually:

1. Quit bein' a buncha racist fucks. I mean, dude. This used to not be a problem, young Jewish intellectuals were one of the prime driving forces of the Civil Rights movement here in the South that ended state-sanctioned apartheid here, but I swear that every time I interact with an Israeli or one of their apologists nowdays I get the impression that they're channeling General Phil Sheridan when ole' Sheridan said "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." Except substitute "Arab" for "Indian", of course. Shoving the Palestinians onto reservations, killing as many as necessary to get'em to stay in their reservation, and not bothering much with how much food and medical supplies and shit gets in there... dude. That's Sheridan's playbook, we know how this shit works.
2. Quit whining about how persecuted you were back 500 years ago or some shit. Dude. That just makes you sound like a bunch of whiney-ass titty-babies nowdays. Most folks on this planet today weren't even *born* the last time somebody tried genociding Jews, in the meantime we got genocides like, all over fucking Africa and shit, what makes Jews so much more special than the Ibo, or the folks in Darfur, or anybody else who's being genocided, like, *now*? Get over yourself, sheesh. There's 5 billion people on this planet, each and every one of whom thinks they're just as special as you are, and whining about how some folks back before they were even *born* were mean to you is, like, the lamest whiny-ass titty baby shit like, EVAH! Realize that most people don't give a shit that you're a Jew. Playing professional victim might make you feel good, but there ain't a nation outside the Middle East that has any sort of routine discrimination against Jews anymore, and if you don't make a point of being obnoxious about your Jewishness, most people just don't give a shit. This ain't 1937 or some shit, this is the fucking TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. People got better things to worry about now, other than a few sad sick fucks at Stormfront but who the fuck cares what they think?
3. Quit trying to re-enact the Warsaw Ghetto in Gaza, except with Palestinians playing the starring role. Dude. That's, like, seriously unrighteous, and makes you look like a buncha hypocrits.
4. And while we're at it, quit vaporizing a buncha women and children and regular ole' civilians every time some sick asshole sends a rocket your way. I mean, c'mon. The way to deal with criminals is to kill the criminals, not just some random folks who, like, didn't have shit to do with whatever the criminal done! It's as if the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and we started killing all the Japanese-Americans in retaliation, that's some sick shit, yo! Look, the criminals *want* you to kill civilians. It makes their job of recruiting more criminals easier. Quit giving them what they want, dudes!
5. Uhm, and look. When you sign a treaty, like that Oslo one turning over the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, would it hurt even a teensy little bit if you, like, actually did what you agreed to do rather than go ahead and send in "settlers" and armed troops to, like, trample all over your word? I mean, crap. That makes you look like two-face lying bastards, yo. That's no way to make friends and influence people. Just sayin'.
6. And finally... quit accusing anybody who criticizes Israel doing obnoxious shit of being "anti-semite" and wanting to exterminate Jews and shit. That just makes you look like the biggest flaming asswipes on the planet. Dude. Get over yourself. Most of us just don't give a fuck about what religion you are, we just don't like assholes, and if we tell you that you're acting like the biggest flaming asshole on the whole fucking planet it ain't got shit to do with your religion or ethnicity or some shit like that, and everything to do with the fact that, like, you're acting like the biggest fucking asshole on the whole fucking planet, yo.

So let's recap: 1) Quit being racist, 2) Quit whining, 3) Quit with this Palestinian ghetto shit, 4) Quit killing civilians, 5) keep your word, 6) Quit calling anybody who points out you're being an asshole of being an anti-Semite (you just prove the point when you pull that shit, yo).

Or, to make it even simpler: Don't Be An Asshole!

Sounds simple enough. Well, except the question of what to do with those sad sick fucks the Palestinians if you aren't gonna put them into apartheid-style Bantustans or Warsaw-style ghettos, but hey, I never claimed to have the answers for everything...

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Sigh, another asshole company speaks

Subway's lawyers tell rest of world to stop using the word "footlong" because they have it trademarked.

And I have a footlong schlong, Subway. Trademark that, why doncha? Right up your collective lawyer's ass, preferably.

-- Badtux the Rude (and well endowed?) Penguin

Color me unimpressed

Self-entitled bitch claims she shouldn't have to pay $640 fine for blocking a handicapped parking spot.

Color me unsympathetic. The woman blocked the wheelchair zone so that people in wheelchair vans could not deploy their wheelchair lifts, and now she's going to whine moan groan and complain? I have friends who lost legs serving in the military in this country's wars who are reliant on having the ability to use the wheelchair lift on the side of their vans, and they're itching to have their M-16 back to deal with self-entitled jerks like this woman. She better be lucky that a cop, rather than one of these veterans, found her blocking the wheelchair lift zone, or she'd be missing a lot more than $640, she'd be lucky to have a car left 'cause they don't play.

Bitch needs to get a fucking clue, that's what she needs. I wish the judge had the power to have his bailiff shoot her knee off right there in the courthouse so that she could legitimately use the handicapped spots and realize that, yo, it ain't there for fat self-indulgent assholes. Thankfully the only power the judge has is to laugh her ridiculous ass out of the courthouse and whang her with court fees, nevermind that the stupid bint already hired a lawyer and she's going to have to pay his ass too. And all she had to do was behave like a civilized human being and avoid parking in the handicapped zone... you'd think this fine would be, like, getting slapped over the head by a Clue Stick(tm), but alas, some folks just are too fucking stupid to ever get a Clue(tm)...

-- Badtux the Unsympthetic Penguin

Idiots and Landlords... but I repeat myself

Well, been busy looking for a new place to dock my iceberg... and came across some great looking places. Well, they could be great looking places, if the landlords would invest the minimal amount needed to make them look great. You know, paint, replacing worn-out plumbing fixtures, that sort of thing. We're talking about a couple thousand bucks max here, most expensive thing would be replacing a worn-out tiled-in cast-iron bathtub (something not for the faint-at-heart). At least, a couple thousand bucks max if you do it yourself, and if you're in the small-time landlord business you better damn well be doing it yourself, because otherwise there's no way to make owning a rental property pay, the maintenance expenses will kill your ass.

Yet they don't do it. And their properties look ugly. And people like me, who like to live in a nice looking place and will live there for years (I've been in my current place for almost six years), turn our noses up at these properties, leaving the Silicon Valley equivalent of trailer trash to move in and not pay the rent, trash the place, and have to be evicted. So what's the deal here? I mean, one of my friends was a small-time slum lord and he let his properties get pretty trashy, but his properties were in the *slum*. As in, if he'd put nice stuff in there, the meth-heads woulda broke in and stole it and sold it for meth. With my friend we're talking about the sort of properties that rented for $80 per week. Yeah, *those* kinda properties. (And he rented by-the-week so that if they didn't make their week's payment, he could start eviction proceedings right then and there without waiting for the end of the month). But none of these properties I've looked at have been in the ghetto. They've been in nice looking neighborhoods.

Is it that these landlords are simply idiots who don't know how to maintain their homes? I mean, I might have unrealistic expectations here based on the fact that my father was a hotel maintenance man who did kitchen and bathroom remodels on the side. I painted my first interior at age 15, and did my first bathroom remodel at age 16, including sweating in new copper pipes to relocate the water heater (the house was built in 1925 and had a gas water heater in the corner of the bathroom, alongside a claw-foot tub). I still remember being up under the corner of a house that was only 8 inches off the ground with a propane torch, sweating in the new pipes and wondering if that was a black widow spiderweb over in that floor joist... and if you're wondering how even a skinny 16 year old gets under a house that is only 8 inches off the ground: Shovel. Seriously. It was like being in a grave.

So I guess my point is: Does anybody know a good real estate agent in the San Jose, CA, who a) specializes in buyer's representation, and b) knows the west San Jose area (Burbank/Buena Vista) well?

-- Badtux the Near-homeless Penguin

Targeting the Church? Fuck yeah

So the Catholic cardinals and bishops are upset that the media is revealing the depth of their moral corruption when it comes to the pedophilia scandal? They whine that they're being targeted for protecting pedophiles? Oh wah, cry me a fucking river, why doncha?

Look: The Church for decades has treated pedophilia as a sin, the equivalent of breaking your Lenten promise or some shit like that, rather than a crime. A few Hail Marys and Our Fathers after a confessional, and all is forgiven. But it's not. It's a crime, and the people who do it are criminals.

In other words, the Church has been complicit in covering up crimes, yet appears to not Get It even now. Transferring a priest to a position where he has no contact with children is not an appropriate response to a pedophile. Handing him over to the civil authorities so he can be placed in jail for the rest of his life is the appropriate response. And until the Catholic Church gets this simple fact, fuck yeah we're going to target them as an organization of kiddy-diddling asshole protecting bastards. The Catholic Church has unclean hands, has participated willingly in a moral atrocity, and has no -- ZERO -- moral authority to criticize *ANYBODY* right now until they clean house and hand over every child-molesting bastard in their ranks to the civil authorities -- starting with this bastard they moved to India to keep him from being arrested in America. So they might as well shut their fucking traps in the meantime. 'Nuff said on that shit.

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Gays are the new nigger

I was in the American South when desegregation became the law. When school districts in Bigotsville were forced to hold bi-racial proms, they did what bigots always do in that case -- they cancelled the prom, and instead the White Leagues held a private prom -- no niggers allowed, on penalty of being arrested for trespassing by bull-necked white Sheriff's deputies stationed outside. And believe me, if you were a black boy or girl, that's the last thing you wanted to have happen to you -- because you might never make it to the police station afterwards, and then the FBI would be dragging the river for your body a few months later.

So when I hear that the same thing happened to a gay girl in Mississippi, it's like I'm having dejavu all over again. These inbred redneck cracker motherfuckers ain't learned a goddamned fucking thing in the past forty years. They're still the same hate-filled spiteful cocksucking bastards as always, pure festering evil masquerading as human beings, just looking for a new nigger to hate now that their old ones have given them the finger and worse. And now they found one: Gays.

So it goes in the State of Mississippi. We shoulda let'em secede in 1861. Just sayin'.

-- Badtux the Observant Penguin

This just in: America disappearing into black hole of suck

54% of Americans don't know that Medicare is a government-run healthcare program. 54%. The black hole of suck is so fucking big that it's amazing the whole goddamned country hasn't disappeared into one giant black hole of suck yet.

Jesus fucking Christ in a goddamned handbasket. How can so many people be so fucking stupid? Oh wait. "President George W. Bush". Fucking *TWICE*. Nevermind.

Maybe I ought to just go ahead and apply for Canadian residency. It's clear that any nation where 54% of the population can't figure out that Medicare is a government program is too goddamned stupid to continue to exist for a whole lot longer. Maybe getting out before the black hole of suck finishes the USA off is the best thing to do after all.

- Badtux the Rude Penguin

And appropriate music: