As you know, we here in Illinois are trying to get rid of our governor. But, see the problem is that our governor doesn’t want to go. In fact, he is flat out refusing to go. Even though 92% of Illinoisans disapprove of him since his arrest earlier this month, he refuses to step down. And its not like when New York’s governor Eliot Spitzer was parading around with $4,000 whores; after a while he stepped down. Governor Rod Blagojevich refuses to leave. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He is still proclaiming his innocence. I honestly think that its not that he is in denial about his guilt, but instead I really think he is dumb enough to think that what he did wasn’t wrong, like it is acceptable to do the shit he did. If I were the feds, I would still be listening to his phone calls because he is totally dumb enough to still try to sell the senate seat, shakedown people for money and try to force his way into getting companies to do what he wants them to do. Now everybody is saying that he should be impeached and then removed from office. Our Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn, is saying that he won’t be impeached until February 12 at the earliest. This is too long. We should not have to wait for this piece of trash to leave office. Therefore, I think we need to force him out. See, its kinda like the houseguest that won’t leave after the holidays. You gotta kinda make them want to leave. So here are some ideas that we can use to make the fucker leave within a week at the most:

• If he doesn’t leave we remove 92% of his hair. Why 92%? Well the way I see it is if 92% of Illinois wants him gone, then he deserves to lose 92% of his hair. Why not all of his hair? Because getting rid of all of his hair might look good, but think of how ridiculous he would look with only 8% of his hair scattered all over his head. That’s right, I don’t want the 8% to be in one section, I say we spread it out. And I don’t mean just simply shaving his head, I mean we should actually find a way to remove it forever, much like we will remove him from office forever.
• Give him the ol’ Noriega treatment and blast music outside his door day and night. Now normally I would suggest something lame and extremely annoying like Tom Jones or Captain and Tennille, but something tells me his I-POD is filled with that shit. So say we blast something that he really wouldn’t like, such as System of a Down or Rage Against the Machine. Bonus in that they are both very political bands who would be against thugs like him. You might say what about his neighbors why should they have to go through it, but its kinda like the military, they would be punished for his actions and therefore he would have even more pressure from them to quit.
• Dump all of Chicago’s snow on his driveway. Ok, so if it does snow soon, that would be a hellva a lot of snow. Maybe all of Chicago’s snow is too much, but shit I’m thinking we can dump at least several hundred feet of snow on his driveway and in front of his house. We remove it when he agrees to resign, otherwise he has to shovel all that shit by himself. And you know the pressure would really be on then as his wife probably would be bugging the shit out of him to shovel the drive. Now I know what you are thinking, he would probably hire people to do it. But honestly, would you want to remove that much snow? Plus, how much money could he have left as his legal bills are going to be huge.
• Send in Bush and Cheney. Sure, it might be a little longer then I want him to stay but Bush and Cheney are going to have plenty of time on their hands in a few weeks. Wait. Come to think of it, we want him gone and it needs to handled by competent people. Also, even I don’t think Blago deserves somebody as evil as Dick Cheney. 
• He has to actually live in Springfield and see Lt. Governor Quinn and his father in law, Dick Mell everyday until he leaves. Why are those things significant? Well, the gov lives in Chicago instead of the governor’s mansion in Springfield, where he should live. Instead he commutes to and from Springfield which is a three hour drive. My guess is that he doesn’t commute via car. Also he has not had contact with the Lt. Governor since the summer of 2007! Turns out he doesn’t get along with him. Same thing with his father in law, Dick Mell who is a Chicago alderman and who was vital in him being elected governor. Turns out he has not spoken to him in three years! My guess is that spending time with those two might be enough to make him quit.

Really, I can go on and on here with things we can do to get rid of the bum but at some point, I need to stop and he needs to fucking quit.

So I watched the Dark Knight last night for the first time, meaning that there are now only 8 people left in the country that have not seen it. I have to say, I thought it was really good. When Heath Ledger’s character was on screen with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character I couldn’t help but wait for him to say something like “You aren’t as hot as your brother, but let’s see if you are as good of a kisser.” I’m sure most of you know that her brother is Jake Gyllenhaal, who co-starred with Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain.

One thing that was really weird was how Ledger kept making that sound with his mouth, almost like he had something stuck under his gums. Sure, I know that the Joker was insane and had those scars, but still, it was weird.

Most people don’t know that the Dark Knight is a fact based movie. Also, due to a scheduling conflict, Heath Ledger won’t be able to be in the next Batman movie. In fact, I’m being told that he won’t be making anymore movies, at least not for the foreseeable future.

That’s all for now. I’ve got to go sulk because the Bears couldn’t beat the fucking Houston fucking Texans.

Well I’m sure most of you had a normal Christmas and I did have for the most part a normal Christmas, with one exception. I spent part of the morning killing coffee makers. This is deserving of an explanation. About a month ago I tried making coffee in my coffee pot only to find that the coffee tasted like shit, most likely because the coffee maker had not been cleaned in, well, forever. Now I don’t drink much coffee at home but I did clean it and made some coffee that didn’t taste so bad but still was not as good as it could have been. So I rummaged through the shit on my garage to find a percolator pot which makes the coffee on the stove. Ever since then, I have been making coffee with that instead of the electric maker. Well, Christmas morning John and I were making breakfast (ok, mostly John was making breakfast) and therefore I could not use the stove for coffee. So, I had to make it with the electric maker. I pulled out the thing that the filter and coffee grounds goes in to find something very surprising. Turns out that I forgot to remove the grounds from the last time I made coffee……………….a month ago! There was mold growing inside of it, so I just threw the whole thing away.

I went out into the garage to get another coffee maker that had belonged to Dave’s parents. I brought it inside and filled it with coffee grounds and started to make the coffee. Five minutes later I come back by the coffee maker only to see that the coffee was not dripping into the actual pot, but instead was running all down the sides of the coffee maker and into the electrical part of the maker. I quickly turned it off as I did not want to electrocute myself making coffee. That is how the second coffee was murdered.

In the end I waited until we were done cook to make the coffee on the stove, where its almost Mike proof to making the coffee and I’m glad to say it turned out just fine.

You have got to check this out, I got an email from a friend that shows who famous people look like. Normally I’m VERY anti joke email and forwards, since we have all seen so many of them over and over. Hell its like the same 3 emails keep getting forwarded around to everybody in a vicious circle. Also, most of the joke emails are not very funny at all. And the chain emails are all bullshit anyway. But this one I found very amusing. Here is the link to the website:

http://totallylookslike.com/

Every year as we get towards the end of the year, I always go back and read my posts from the past year. I like to look back and reflect on the year that was. I normally don’t post about it until after the year is over, because you never know what might happen in those last few weeks. And I do intend on doing a little something to sum up the year after it is officially over. That being said, this year has been a very trying year for many people that I know. If my life had a story of the year, this one story would be it. Because it was something that did not occur to me but instead to a very good friend of mine, I don’t want to post openly about it. I fully intend on a protected post and if I can figure out how to give people access to my protected posts, you will be able to read it. If not, then I can always email it to you.

As for the story itself, its going to be a long post, maybe even more then one post. I do not intend on writing it probably until at least the weekend, as I need a great deal of time to write it. Over the course of the past few weeks I have done a lot of thinking about it, as I know that I want to tell the story without sparing much detail. The events happened in what was a wild month of August for me. I want this to be one of the best things I’ve ever written. The whole thing is gripping, compelling, sad, tragic and even funny at times. It was all stuff I wanted to write at the time as we were going through the whole thing, but I could not find the time and I didn’t feel it was the right time to tell the story. Although I’m sure that I will lose some of the details by waiting 4 months to tell it, but the main details are still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. It truly is unlike anything that I’ve ever been through before or seen somebody go through. It was an earth shattering, life changing tragedy the likes I had never seen and hope to never see again.

So why write it? Well, I’m hoping that it inspires people and teaches people. Although it is a tragedy on a scale so grand that its still hard to grasp 4 months later, there are some wonderful things that came from this. It really shows how wonderful people can be in a time of tragedy and how friends and family can pull together to support one another in their ultimate time of need. You might be thinking that I’m overselling or hyping this up to be more than it is. My intentions aren’t to hype it up, but instead just to show people the value of a solid support team of friends and family.

As many of you know, I’m prone to bouts of extreme stupidity. Well, today I had another unfortunate and painful bout. Let me explain first of all that for those you that don’t know, we here in the Chicagoland area had a nasty winter storm the other day. It started with ice, then snow and then another layer of ice. This left the snow damn near impossible to shovel, but on the other hand the ice on top made it frozen so that you could walk on it like it was ice. It was actually pretty cool, although it would make your shoes wet, it would not leave them all messy like normal snow would. Well, last night I was leaving Mark’s house and while walking out to my car I slipped and fell. Not that big of a deal, after all I think all of us in the midwest have fallen a time or 2 in the snow or ice. In fact, you might remember that last winter (I had a post about it in January of this year) I took one step outside and fell. Well, last night it was a rather comfortable fall, in fact the snow cushioned the blow and it really didn’t hurt at all. Ok, so you are probably saying to yourself “Mike, there is nothing stupid about this, get to the fucking stupid part.” Today I had to move my car and since I was just about to get into the shower I didn’t want to put all sorts of clothes on to move my car. I was wearing shorts and no shirt and just threw a coat on and shoes. Now this afternoon not only is it butt fucking cold outside, its also windy as a motherfucker making it very cold, actually right now its 0 with a howling wind and I’m sure that the wind chill is probably -10. So I go outside, move my car in my shorts and coat. Its so cold that I decide to run back to the house. Well, we had a fresh coat of snow overnight which made things slippery and as you might imagine, I slipped and slammed right the fuck into the ground. This time, it hurt. And it was cold, since I had nothing covering my chicken legs.

Ok, so I’ve had a couple of requests to see my private post, so I guess I will have to make it protected instead of private. Originally I thought private meant that some people could still see it, but that is not the case. Of course the worst part about it is that its not like its some sort of juicy post with all sorts of good stuff. Instead its just something that I think makes me look ridiculous, so I made it private. So I hope when you read it you aren’t expecting something really good because I’m afraid you might be disappointed.

I just added a private post. I don’t think I’ve got anybody on my private list, so if you are interested in reading it, let me know.

You might remember from my December 8th post that I’m reading a book called “How the States Got Their Shapes” or perhaps you don’t remember because you have done so many drugs that you have chronic ADD and suffer from…………………oh look at that, a balloon. Sweet. I’m sorry what was I saying? Oh yeah, see the thing that really pisses me off about abortion is its not the best weight loss program for some ladies. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer that…………wait a minute, I wasn’t talking about abortions at all. Oh, yeah, right. The states. So I’m reading this book called “How the States Got Their Shapes” and last week I posted interesting facts I learned from the first 10 states plus Washington D.C. Well, last night I finished the next 10 states, so once again here are more facts starting with the great state of……….

• Hawaii- Sure it seems all nice in simple,what with Hawaii being surrounded by ocean. But the interesting fact here is that the Hawaiian islands are just really large pieces of shit from a now extinct massive half dinosaur half spaceship.
• Idaho- Got the size of its large panhandle after President Andrew Johnson lost a bet as to if he could deep throat a banana. He nearly choked to death and in the process had to scream as loud as he could “I da ho, I da ho!” and give Idaho a funny shape. Hence, we have a state with a really funny name made even funnier by being shaped like like a penis with infected testicles.
• Illinois- On the surface this one is easy since a good portion of it is bounded by water. But the boarders not bounded by water were determined when the governor sold them to the highest bidder. Since then, the boarders of Illinois have changed 39 times as each governor has sold the boarders to the highest bidder. Oh Illinois, you are about as pure as Dick Chaney’s soul.
• Indiana- With Illinois’s boarders constantly changing, it put Indiana in a constant state of flux. In the end though it was determined that Indiana would be best suited if it was shaped to look like it was spooning Illinois.
• Iowa- Originally Iowa was to be a very short state, as they didn’t want people going from Minnesota to Missouri to kill themselves out of the pure boredom of Iowa. In the end though the Illinois governor through enough money at people to make Iowa taller to help take attention off the fact that Indiana was trying to hump the shit out Illinois’s leg.
• Kansas- I swear I’m not making this one up. Gold was found in the western part of Kansas. The people of Kansas thought having gold would be too much of a pain in the ass, so they let Colorado have the most valuable part of their land, hence Kansas evolved into the state it is today. I can see why they don’t believe in evolution in Kansas, after all if they are too damn stupid to keep their gold then they are probably too stupid to understand evolution.
• Kentucky- Part of the northern boarder of Kentucky was created to make it look like it was eatin out Indian’s ass as it spooned with Illinois. But in true Kentucky fashion, it was born when Virgina fucked her brother, West Virgina.
• Louisiana- This one is really kind of evolving even still today, as the Bush Abomination is doing everything it can to remove New Orleans from the map. As for its shape, President Thomas Jefferson thought it would be really funny if Louisiana kicked the shit out of Mississippi just like the red headed step child it is.
• Maine- People think Maine was one of the original 13 colonies. It wasn’t. In fact, Illinois had even managed to bribe its way into the union a couple of years before Maine. Since then, Maine has been running around like it just got its fucking head lopped right the fuck off, which is what both boarders look like. The western boarder kinda looks like a nice smooth blade and cut was made to behead it. On the northeastern boarder it looks like some drunk guy got to messin with the guillotine.
• Maryland- The shape of Maryland was created by pure chance. One day Lord Baltimore got really really fucking drunk. Like, more drunk they he had ever been in his entire 12 year life. He got so drunk that he threw up and the shape of his vomit became the blueprint for the shape of Maryland.

Some of you may remember that at the beginning of this year I wrote a post stating that I made it a goal to donate at least $1,000 to charity this year. Well, its time to check on that goal. I kept tract of each month’s donations. And while the year is still not done, I do plan on donating at least $100 this month. I didn’t put my paycheck deductions to the United Way in the monthly totals, so I will start with them.

United Way         $405
January                $102
February              $110
March                  $110
April                    $128
May                      $165
June                      $122
July                       $135
August                   $117
September             $119
October                 $162
November             $111

2008 Total            $1,887

Now this is a best guess estimate. I did write everything down on a sheet of paper when I remembered. To be counted on the paper, I had to give at least a dollar. There were countless times in which I gave my change when I bought something in the store to whatever charity they had at the register. We also had jars at work in which we could donate money to charity. None of those are included in the totals, but I would guess they wouldn’t have totaled anymore then $20-30. Still, I felt it was a very successful year for this goal. I wanted donate $1000 for the year or $100 a month (even I know that $100 a month would equal $1,200 for the year). The monthly average wound up being $157.25 or $36.28 a week or $5.15 a day, and yes that does include the extra day for leap year. I’m thrilled at the amount I donated.

Each month I budgeted $100. Anything else that I gave throughout the month was a bonus. For example, if I saw a kid raising money by selling candy, I would buy some and that would be a bonus donation in addition to the $100. I know nearly $1,900 might sound like a lot, but honestly it was money I never even noticed being gone. I would just write out a check each money just like I was paying any other bill. In the grand scheme of things, its a modest total. But what if everybody who could reasonably afford $00 a month gave that amount to charity each month? We would make a huge difference.

As for the charities I gave to, it was a wide range of charities. There was Amnesty International, the American Red Cross, the American Cancer Society and then some lesser known ones, such as the Human Rights Watch among some other lesser known charities. To be considered a charity, it had to be considered tax deductible. For example, I gave money to the ACLU a few times this year but they are not tax deductible and therefore not a charity. At least, I don’t think they are tax deductible. Either way, I didn’t consider them a charity.

So why add up the totals now with still 3 weeks left in the year? Because last night I came across this website:

http://www.givewell.net/

Its a charity watchdog group that let’s you know if the charity you are donating to is doing actual good with the money. It was an eye opener to say the least, knowing that some of the charities I gave to (American Red Cross, I’m looking at you) were not doing good with the money. Although it is very important to donate  money, its equally as important to donate it to a quality charity. Like the website says, don’t give more, give better. So next year, I will not only try to give more money (after all, I want to top myself!) and give better. I can see myself referring to this website a lot to determine if what I’m doing is good.

Yesterday was another Christmas party except this time at Scooty and Kris’s instead of Rene’s, where we normally have it. Of course we did a grab bag for gifts. I had to buy for Keith. Recently Keith has been going on and on about about great Dave Grohl is. So I decided to get him a Foo Fighters dvd. As for me I got a tin of popcorn and a Blockbuster gift card from Chistine. The card will come in handy as I still need to get seasons 10&11 of the Simpsons on dvd. Plus the popcorn was fun last night, for a while we all sat around trying to throw popcorn in each other’s mouths.  That’s right people, we get REALLY wild by throwing popcorn at everybody. Heather got Dave the perfect gift: $20 in scratch offs. One of the tickets you could win up to 10 times if your numbers matched the winning numbers. I’ve never seen anybody match every single number on a card before………….until last night. Dave won 10 times on one ticket! Now you might be thinking that this was some sort of huge jackpot, but each win was only worth $2 and therefore the total win was $20. Sure it may not be a big winning, but if you think about it the profit was 10 times the cost of the $2 ticket so when you put it that way, its a good profit. The rest of the party was fun, but nothing overly exciting, it was pretty much all over by 1 in the am.

With Barack Obama’s historic win last month, many blacks were moved to tears with joy. And although I’m probably a little late in writing about this, better late then never, right? Nevertheless, I’m going to write about it anyways. I personally know a few whites who thought it was kind of ridiculous that blacks were crying when Obama won. These were people who voted for Obama and are not racist people in the least, but they still found it odd that blacks cried. I don’t think those whites are racist, I just don’t think they get it. This was not just a monumental event for blacks, it was a monumental event for everybody. To fully understand it, you have to look back and remember everything that blacks have been through not only in American history but also in the world. Blacks have come a long way in America, some of it in a short period of time. There are a lot of people alive today who could not eat in the same restaurants in the segregated south just 40 and 50 years ago. These people remember this and experienced this first hand. Also, blacks were not guaranteed the right to vote in America until the mid to late 1960s. Blacks and whites could not marry each other until around the same time. These are all things that have happened in Obama’s lifetime. Now look back and realize that these were the same people who were legally enslaved to rich white guys. They were the same people who were literally considered half a person. These are the same people who were stolen from Africa and forced on a ship to be slaves in America. They were even not allowed to do something as simple as play professional sports until 60 years ago. And these are all things in the past, they don’t include the racism that still happens today. When you add it all up, to overcome what they have been through, Obama’s victory is huge and worthy of these people crying. Many of these same people who were forced to ride in the back of the bus or not allowed to stay at hotels or even drink out of the same water fountains as whites, believed they would never see a black person elected president in their lifetime. They have always dreamt of it, but never believed it would happen. They have been told no so many times in their life that they assumed that the door to the presidency would remain permanently closed to their kind; they believed the White House would always remain a white house. Now that barrier, the final barrier has been broken. In some ways, its as if blacks have finally reached the mountain top that Martin Luther King Jr preached about. That is why these blacks cry. If you don’t understand it now, then I can’t help you.

Many of you may know that today, December 10th, was a Day Without a Gay. I think I might have misunderstood what they meant by this. I thought they meant a Day Without Gay, meaning a day that you go without being gay. So I took the day off work and tried to make myself as least gay as possible. First, I didn’t shower, because as we know straight guys are slobs. I had meat for breakfast. Not really any meat in particular because a straight guy would eat any meat. I just started shoving any meat I could find into my mouth, stuffing it full of nice, juicy, thick, long sausage. The whole time, I chewed with my mouth open, just like manly man John Madden.

After breakfast I searched out a way to do a man thing like work on a car or change a tire. I saw an old lady with a flat, the perfect opportunity for me to manify my morning. I walked up and with the deepest voice I could muster, said “Hello there, frail, pathetic old lady, do you need help changing that tire?” She hit me with her purse. But I was determined to change this tire, after all I was a man. So I got out the jack and started to jack the tire up, pumping the jack up and down at a frantic pace. Whoa. I almost needed a cigarette after that jacking. Next I pulled out the long, round and hard tire iron. I eyeballed it for a second, thinking of how much I really wanted something long, round and hard right about now. I spent the next 28 minutes trying to remove the hubcap. Finally the old lady came up and tore the damn thing off. I started to remove the lug nuts when she took them off with her teeth. Now it was time for the tire. This proved a challenge since the tire weighed more then me. So she took it off too, which was a challenge for her since she had to balance the tire and her cane. She then grabbed the other tire and put it on, screwing the lugnuts with her teeth. Next was the hubcap which she hit the hell out of to get back on. Finally it was time to jack the damn car down and I told her I was pretty damn good at that and would be able to do it for her. I must have hit the wrong thing because the car came slamming down nearly tearing off my hand Luke Skywalker style. It was all good though, as it only hit the old lady in the head knocking her right the fuck out. So with my first manly duty of working on a car a complete success, I was on my way to more manly things.

Next I had to find some chicks to fuck. At first I thought I might be able to kill two birds with one stone by fucking the old lady while she lay on the pavement unconsciously clinging to life. But I thought the better of it since I heard a story recently about a 70 year old lady having a baby, I mean if I get somebody pregnant today I wouldn’t want my baby mama to be old. I know her driver’s license said she was 83, but that still doesn’t mean she couldn’t get pregnant. So I went to the next best place: a lesbian bar! As it turned out though, none of them were interested in me for whatever reason. I figured since this was a Day Without Gay, they might be willing to sleep with me. No such luck.

I went over to the library to fuck a librarian, because hey, aren’t librarians sexy in a nerdy sort of way? I saw this rather tall lady with a slender body and a long face. She wore glasses, LOTS of make up, had her hair up and a long flowing dress. I walked up and gave her the “LOOK”. You know the “LOOK” people, the one that says “hey baby, why don’t you climb on board my man meat.” She knew exactly what I meant and instantly led me into a locked stairwell without even saying anything. It was kinda dark in there and we instantly started making out. She was feeling my junk up and down and I could feel myself actually getting a little excited by a female. She quickly tore down my pants and shoved my coxal into her mouth. After a few minutes of intense sucking, she came up and whispered into my ear “fuck my ass like its never been faked before.” For the next one minute and 38 seconds, I faked her ass like its never been faked before. Right as I orgasmed I thought about how perfect this was, I get to fuck this chick’s hairy ass and not have to worry about getting her pregnant. Here I am experiencing a Day Without Gay by having sex with a girl. She then made me reach around and jerk her off until she came, leaving a huge load all over the stairs. She then said in a deep voice that she hoped her boss slips on her man jizz and breaks his fucking neck. I found that a bit odd. All these years I thought sex with a chick would be way different then this, but it turned out it wasn’t much different then sex with a guy; shit she even had a bigger dick then me just like every guy I’ve been with.

Well that was it as my Day Without Gay. Tomorrow I return back to my normal Day With Gay.

Obviously I was kidding about the whole post. A Day Without a Gay was a day in which gays around the country were protesting the passing of Prop 8 in California defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman. I think it is fairly certain at this point that gay marriage is the defining civil rights battle of our time. It is unacceptable that gays do not have the same rights as everybody else in America. Gays are expected to contribute to society in the same way as everybody else; pay the same taxes, follow the same laws and perform the same civic duties such as jury duty (not military duty, unless of course you suppress your own freedom to fight for the freedom of others). Gays contribute to society as much as straight people do, yet gays have fewer rights then straights. On that basis alone, gays should have the same rights. But yet, here we stand, a society and country that refuses to grant equal rights to all.

Gay marriage might be the issue that gets all the press and attention, yet it is not nearly the only issue gays should be concerned about. There are still the matters of gay adoption, anti-gay hate laws, and gay discrimination which are of equal importance as gay marriage. Gays should not stop until their is equality with heterosexuals in every area of life. To accept any less would be to be forever treated as a second class citizen or as an afterthought in this great democracy in which we live.