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Army Honors Pig War Veterans

Paul Yokota — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:13:36 +0000

In observance of of Veteran’s Day, Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey presided over a ceremony at Fort Benning, Georgia today, honoring “our nations greatest heroes,” by which of course he meant the veterans of the infamous 1859 Pig War.

For the uninitiated, the Pig War was a brief and very real war concerning a dispute over the border between the United States’ Oregon Territory (modern-day Washington State) and the Great Britain’s Columbia territory (today known as Australia).

Hostilities first broke out on the San Juan islands, territory claimed by both sides, after an Irishman watched as his pig wandered onto an American farmer’s land and. Legend has it the Irishman just laughed as the pig dug up the Yankee’s potatoes. His exact words have been lost to history, but scientists believe he probably giggled in a high-pitched voice and shouted something about children trying to steal his breakfast cereal. The American responded by shooting the pig in the head.

So as we’ve all done when a neighbor has murdered our livestock, the Irishman called in the army. Military forces built up on both sides, the Americans sent in infantry troops, the British responded by bringing in warships. The Americans brought in artillery, British sent in the Marines. Then the big guns started coming out. The Americans flew in John Wayne from his vacation home in Palm Beach. The British responded by deploying the SAS, James Bond, and Winston Churchill and his band of Merry Men. The Americans retaliated by bringing in Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Despite the massive troop buildup, both sides were under orders not to fire the first shot. As a result, they spent the next few months sitting around, trying to goad the other side into firing first. In the end, discipline won the day and the pig was the only casualty of the conflict. However a tense moment almost erupted into full on hostilities when an American officer yelled across the trenches, calling a particularly thin-skinned British corporal a “douche nozzle”.

After the close of the Pig War, the returning troops were hailed as heroes. For their service to God and Country they were declared “The Greatest Generation” by olde-tyme newspaperman Oliver Wendell Sideburns Copperbottom, the Most Trusted Man in America during February and March of 1860.

General Casey’s remarks reflected his deep respect for the sacrifice of the Pig War veterans. “America is the nation it is today because the noble actions of those brave men,” he said, “they upheld the highest traditions of American Values, including opposing Canadian tyranny and shooting motherf**king pigs dead.”

The ceremony opened with the Pledge of Allegiance, the singing of the National Anthem and the Official Army Song, “F**k You and the F**king Foreigner Pig You Rode In On”. This was followed by the ceremonial slaughter of a full-grown adult boar.

Army spokesmen said the pig carcass will not be eaten, and will be left to rot on a spike as a warning to “uppity Brits”.

Cops Taser Wrong Black Guy, Black Guy “Shocked”

Paul Yokota — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:18:19 +0000

U.S. Marshalls looking for crack dealer Vinol Wilson burst into a community center in Grandview, Mo Wednesday, assaulting and tasering Stuart Wright. Wright is not a drug dealer, but a local public servant and father, however like Vinol Wilson, Wright is black, which as one Marshall put it, makes him “close enough”.

“I’ve never been through anything like this before. I was in shock,” said Wright, who either is unclear on the meaning of the word “shock” or lacks any trace of a sense of irony.

In fairness, a confidential informant had tipped off the Marshalls that Vinol Wilson would be at the location wearing a jersey with the number 23 on it.

So essentially the description that the U.S. Marshalls were working with was “a black man in a #23 Jersey”. 23 was, of course, basketball great Michael Jordan’s number, which is why 23 is the top selling basketball jersey number of all time by a large margin, meaning that at any given time “black man in a #23 Jersey” describes over 65,000 individuals in the United States alone, depending on weather conditions.

Coincidentally, 23 is also the minimum IQ score required by the U.S. Marshall’s entrance exam.

Sen. Della’s Bid to Save Baltimore From Beer Pong Thwarted

Paul Yokota — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:56:41 +0000

BALTIMORE - Public safety is a serious problem in Baltimore, with a violent crime rate nearly three times the national average. Maryland state Senator George Della Jr. responded to this crisis in the only sane, logical way: by proposing a ban on beer pong.

Della has spent over 26 years in the state Senate, entrusted with a sacred public trust which he has chosen to use, not to address a homicide rate six times that of New York City, but to take on the looming threat of 22 year-old frat boys improving their hand-eye coordination while getting drunk.

It should be noted that this proposed legislation was not aimed at college campuses or curbing underage drinking in any way. Instead it would ban beer pong and other games from area bars, regulating the recreational activities of adults drinking legally, leading some experts to speculate that Della, while living on a taxpayer’s money, simply had nothing better to do.

What Della didn’t count on was the outcry of protest from the Maryland amateur beer pong community.

Yes, really.

MD Beer Pong pulled together a grassroots movement to oppose the bill, spreading awareness and orchestrating a massive letter writing campaign. Their near fanatical dedication to support the “sport” of beer pong reached a level of ridiculousness only rivaled by the effort to have the game criminalized in the first place.

Della has since withdrawn the bill, the avalanche of mail apparently prompting the realization that his proposed legislation was, in fact, retarded.

Heroic Pilot Manages Not to Kill Anyone

Paul Yokota — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:37:35 +0000

US Airways Flight 1549 crash landed into the Hudson River in New York City yesterday, a harrowing ordeal for all aboard, but a major victory for gravity as a fundamental force of the universe.

The plane went down only three minutes after takeoff, losing power in both engines following the pilot’s report of a “double bird strike”. In layman’s terms he flew the plane into a flock of fucking birds.

Despite what the cynics might say, America is still a place where you can kill a group of small animals, destroy a sixty million-dollar piece of equipment, and be declared a hero.

In fairness, all 155 people aboard did survive the crash which, in a way, makes the pilot pretty heroic. Almost as heroic as all the pilots who managed to not crash into rivers yesterday.

For his part, the pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, was just glad to be known for something other than having the most ridiculous name in the western hemisphere. However, some had a much grander view of the day’s events.

“We’ve had a miracle on 34th Street,” said New York Governor David A. Paterson, “I believe now we’ve had a miracle on the Hudson.” Governor Paterson was clearly making use of the less common definition of the world “miracle” which is “to have a 70 ton aircraft slam into something at 80 mph”. This, of course is the kind of unorthodox interpretation one might expect from a governor who compares a potentially life-threatening event in his state to a 1947 movie about putting Santa Claus on trial.

Santa did not respond to a Secondhand News request for a comment on this story.

Bush Regrets Seeming ‘Anxious for War’

paulyokota — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:47:25 +0000

LONDON, UK – In an exclusive interview with the London Times, President George W. Bush for the first time expressed regrets over his rhetoric in the lead-up to the Iraq war. In a rare moment of public self-reflection, Bush admitted that his aggressive public stance prior to the invasion may have “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”.

No! Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Now, invading and occupying a sovereign nation that had never attacked, and did not pose a threat to the United States or her allies, THAT might have indicated to people that you weren’t a man of peace.

Bush went on to say that phrases like “bring them on” and “dead or alive” may have made him seem like a “guy really anxious for war”.

Come on Mr. B, if anything made you seem like a guy anxious for war, it was justifying the war by claiming that Saddam was not cooperating with UN weapons inspectors and then deciding to invade, ignoring repeated requests for more time by the ACTUAL U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTORS.

Dubya also noted how painful it was for him “to put youngsters in harm’s way”.

It’s obvious why you would feel the need to point that out there, Georgie-boy, seeing as how it’s so easy to get the impression that you couldn’t give a rat’s ass. It’s the little things. Remember the time you used the threat of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and, yes even “a mushroom cloud over an American city” as the centerpiece of the steaming pile of half-truths, fabrications and general bullshit used to sell the war? And do you remember how a year or so after the invasion and after losing hundreds of troops it was exposed that there had NEVER BEEN ANY WMDs IN THE FIRST PLACE?? Remember how funny you found that? I mean, you must have found it funny, because at Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner you showed slides of you looking under furniture in the White House joking “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere … Nope, no weapons over there … maybe under here?” LAUGHING at the outright false pretenses under which you took us into a war that to date has killed over FOUR THOUSAND U.S. and coalition troops.

It’s the little things like that that make it easy to think that “putting youngsters in harm’s way” doesn’t weigh to heavily on the evil black void where your soul ought to be.

And after all that, all you regret is your choice of words?

“I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” you said.

It’s not your tone, Mr. President, it’s your lies, your arrogance; it’s your policies that have needlessly wasted massive amounts blood and treasure and most of all the way you seem to just not give a shit. That, Mr. President, THAT is what indicates to us that you are “you know, not a man of peace.”

Clinton Concedes Losses to Obama, Reality

paulyokota — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:54:26 +0000

So obviously the big story over the weekend was Saturday’s conclusion of the 17 month saga that was the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process.

What’s that you say? You thought the Democratic Nominee was decided last Tuesday, when the final two primaries gave Barack Obama enough delegates to surpass the threshold of 2,118 required for the nomination? When he stood before a crowd of 17,000 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN and declared:

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”?

You thought that was the end? That the Democratic Party could finally heal their wounds, come together and unite behind their candidate?

That’s real cute, but no.

You see, that same night, Senator Hillary Clinton was also speaking. Would she deliver a graceful concession speech?

“This has been a long campaign,” said Senator Clinton, “and I will be making no decisions tonight.” That’s right, she would be making no decisions about the fact that her opponent had won the nomination. She would also be making no decisions about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the removal of the McRib sandwich from McDonald’s menu or any other of a host of things which are facts, in the past, and completely beyond her control.

In an unrelated story the New England Patriots issued a press release stating that they still do not concede losing Superbowl XLII to the New York Giants February 3rd, saying “it’s too soon to make any decisions.”

After all, is losing any reason to accept defeat?

Apparently it is, as on Saturday Senator Clinton finally DID concede, throwing her support behind Obama and pushing for party unity saying, “The Democratic Party is a family”.

It is like a family, and the primary race has been just like a great big sibling rivalry. Remember the sisterly way she used to needle Obama? Like the time she said:

“I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002.”

Now that may sound to the untrained ear like an endorsement of the opposition over her Democratic “family”, but hey, that’s just the way brothers and sisters tease each other, right? It reminds me of the time I threw my brother in front of a moving school bus. Ah, family.

Ok, ok, so maybe Senator Clinton hasn’t always treated Senator Obama like family, between suggesting that he is unprepared to be commander in chief, implying that he might be a secret Muslim, and insinuating that she was staying in the race because he might be assassinated. Maybe the family analogy doesn’t really stand up to rational analysis, especially coming from her, but where is it written that she always has to be in touch with this ephemeral concept we call “reality”?

As former President Bill Clinton said of reporters who criticized his wife’s account of arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire in 1995 (which never actually happened and as far as anyone can tell she just completely made up), “When they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 o’clock at night, too.”

In other words, ignore all the ridiculous, false, and otherwise untethered things Senator Clinton has said. It’s ok, she’s just sleepy. And old.

Air Force Top Brass Lose Nukes, Jobs

paulyokota — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:10:11 +0000

WASHINGTON DC – Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne, the top military and civilian leaders of the United States Air Force were forced to resign today amid accusations of poor performance, incompetence and “general fucked-uppedness” by their branch of the military.

Such serious repercussions at such a high level may seem a bit harsh, perhaps even an overreaction. After all, the Air Force has a budget of over 100 BILLION dollars a year, more than the entire defense budget of ANY country other than the United States of America. With that kind of moolah to spend on equipment and training, how bad could the Air Force’s performance be?

Ok, so they may have accidentally sent components of nuclear warheads to Taiwan instead of helicopter batteries. What, you’ve never made a mistake at your job? So we dropped a few million training these guys on this equipment. So what? It’s all . . . vaguely mechanical looking. Like the old song says, “You say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to, you say harmless battery and I say device capable of arming a ballistic missile . . . ” So they’ve got one strike against them, no big deal.

All right, so admittedly this next one is kind of a bone-headed move. Apparently an Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the country from South Dakota to Louisiana while accidentally carrying a payload of six nuclear-tipped missiles. Somebody misplaced some missiles. Big deal. People are human, mistakes happen. It’s no different than the countless times you’ve probably misplaced your car keys. Only in this case the keys could have annihilated most of the midwestern United States. Two strikes. Not good, obviously, but I’m sure they learned from these blunders and decided to be much more careful in the future.

Except that last month the Air Force’s 5th Bomber wing underwent a “nuclear surety” inspection and failed, in spite of having several months to prepare for the inspection and the intense scrutiny they were under following the previous mishaps. The inspectors concluded that they were was unable to properly safeguard it’s portion of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Sure that’s three strikes, I mean, if you want to be all mathematical about it. But I’m going to give them a mulligan on this one anyway. I support the troops, goddamn it. Inspectors are such pessimists anyway. Maybe they wouldn’t be such Negative Nancies if they didn’t go around looking for problems all the time.

Fine, so the Air Force can’t keep track of their nukes. Really, what’s the worst that could happen?

Supreme Court Justice Announces Monkey Video Game

paulyokota — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:16:37 +0000

It was inevitable, really. Sandra Day O’Connor’s life story and accomplishments, including graduating at the top of her class at Stanford Law, being elected to the Arizona State Senate and, oh yeah, becoming the first female Supreme Court Justice, impressive as they may be, have clearly been leading to this point. At long last she has reached what many believe to be the pinnacle of her long and storied career, the logical conclusion of her life’s work.

That’s right, Sandra Day O’Connor has finally become a video game developer.

The 78 year old has announced that she is involved in the development of the project “Our Courts”, an online video game designed to teach young people about the judicial system.

At an age when most would be concerning themselves with budgeting their pensions to afford name-brand denture cream and adult diapers, O’Connor is more worried by ignorance about our system of justice among today’s youth. Naturally there could be only one solution to such an issue. That solution? A video game featuring a 3-D animated monkey.

“It will allow students to engage in real legal issues,” said O’Connor, as if anyone could doubt the seriousness of this project. After all, the monkey is right there on the home page.

One can only assume the limb the monkey is swinging from is the Judicial Branch.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo!, Google Pissed

paulyokota — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:25:23 +0000

On Friday, the Microsoft Corporation submitted an offer to Yahoo!’s board of directors, proposing to purchase all outstanding common shares of Yahoo! for $31 per share. For those of you who only speak English, that means Microsoft wants to pretty much buy Yahoo! for a grand total of around 44.6 billion dollars.

The company who stands to lose the most from such a deal is Google, who made it clear they would not stand idly by as two of their biggest rivals merged. Less than 48 hours after the announcement of Microsoft’s proposal, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, had posted a condemnation on the company’s official blog, warning that the buyout threatened competition and raised antitrust concerns:

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies – and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”

Did you catch that? It went by quick, but Google has raised the specter of the m-word. According to Google, a Microsoft-Yahoo! deal would result in . . . a Monopoly! (And we’re not talking the classic Parker Brothers property trading game that usually ends in either you or your brother throwing something at the other and storming out of the room [which, incidentally, there are scientific strategies to win at].)

What were we talking about? Oh yes, Microsoft + Yahoo! = monopoly. Never mind the fact that Microsoft and Yahoo! COMBINED account for only 33 percent of all internet searches in the United States and just 10 percent in Europe. Google, on the other hand, has a massive 75 percent share of worldwide internet searches (and the revenue those searches generate), not to mention their prolific advertising programs, AdWords and AdSense, in addition to other acquisitions like San Bruno, Ca based YouTube . . . [Portions of this blog have been removed by Blogger® a subsidiary of Google Inc. Blogger® would like to remind you that Google is NOT a monopoly. Google is cool, hip and fun. Google appeals to the carefree younger generation. Google in no way owns you, or a controlling interest in your soul. You are a beautiful and unique snowflake. Google loves you. Google sees you when you’re sleeping. Google knows when you’re awake. Google has that picture of yourself that you sent, just as a joke, to a friend saved in a cache and would hate to have to show it to your mother. Google wants you to remember the three slogans of Google:

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

Google is watching you.]

EDIT: Some of the above jokes may have worked better when this was originally posted on Blogger

Mayor Faces Recall over Myspace Pics

paulyokota — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:48:17 +0000

Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, mayor of the ridiculously small town of Arlington, Oregon is facing a recall vote, mostly because she is a great big whore.

Kontur-Gronquist has sullied her town’s damn near non-existent reputation. Was she involved in an illicit affair with a city official? Sexual harassment? Prostitution? Incest*?

Nope.

Her ho-baggery took a far more sinister form. Check it: several years ago, before she was mayor, Kontur-Gronquist posed for pictures to submit to a women’s fitness contest wearing only a bra and panties. These photographs were later posted on a MySpace account created by someone else. I really don’t think it gets more despicable than that.

Local busybody Lorena Woods took time out from her massive, massive amounts of free time to call out the mayor for this completely unacceptable behavior.

“It’s a picture of her in bra and panties on a rural protection fire truck in a rural protection fire hall,” Woods said. “This isn’t the way we want our city to be portrayed.”

Amen, Lorena, amen. These photographs clearly send the wrong message, that message being something along the lines of “Women who stand on or near fire trucks and may or may not at some point in the future become mayor of Bumf*ck, Nowhere not only own underwear, but actually wear it.”

Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children??

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the network news, it’s that the internet is probably the single most dangerous threat to children since the invention of children, with the possible exceptions of Michael Jackson and catholic priests. This is just another example of the insidious nature of this “inter-net” where this kind of filth can pop up where you least expect it, on a site like MySpace.com, where innocent children would otherwise have no chance of being exposed to such gratuitous T&A.

I mean, a woman wearing garments that cover exactly the same as a bathing suit?? A recall is too good for her. If it were up to me, she’d be stoned in the village square, and I don’t mean “stoned” in the much more pleasant, traditional Oregon sense of the word.

But a recall vote it shall be, as a petition has garnered the 41 signatures required to recall her. That’s right, 41. Because Arlington has a population roughly comparable to a New York City crosswalk on a Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, the other 450 or so residents of Arlington have been eerily quiet on the subject, possibly because they are all at home, logged into Myspace.com.

*No, no, no, you’re thinking of Arlington, Virginia

Read less in this article by the Associated Press