Hi, I’m Isaac, and I’m an alcoholic, and this is Alive In The Public Eye – An Atheist’s Perspective On Alcoholics Anonymous.

Today, Sunday, the 29th, I celebrate 100 days of sobriety.  This is officially the longest I’ve gone without a drink since my first one six years ago, and each day I wake up it breaks the record.  The best thing about this is how it sneaked up on me.  I have been paying no attention to the days, I’m not counting them, not focusing on it, and I didn’t realize that it was a day worth note until I checked the calender on my phone.

This is definitely a good thing.


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If AIG bonuses weren’t enough for you, here is someone else that will make you feel better about yourself. Vince Shlomi, The ShamWow guy had a run in with a feisty, tongue-biting hooker in Miami. The Smoking Gun has the details here. The big surprise? “Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons.”

The mugshot is definitely Capital One customized card material. At least there wasn’t a SlapChop involved.

Wow!

Poll for the weekend: Who kisses hookers?

*Apologies to Pinky & The Brain.

WASHINGTON (April 30, 2009) — President Barack Obama and Congress today continued their bold lockstep program to revive America’s staggering economy, even as Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush faced intensifying scrutiny over misdeeds allegedly carried out by his administration.

Buoyed by the success of his programs to strengthen the social safety net and head off a second Great Depression, Obama directed the SEC, Treasury Department and Justice Department in a coordinated effort to “get to the heart of the credit crisis and determine whether criminal misconduct helped bring about our current troubles.”

These initiatives and more promised to make Obama’s first 100 days among the most significant of any presidency. Seldom has a chief executive inspired such uniform cooperation from the notoriously fractious Congress. Representatives agreed early on that the economic, social and international crises afflicting the country were too important for partisan squabbling.

“It’s true I might have once had questions about whether President Obama was a secret Marxist, and whether he would remove references to God from our currency,” said Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn. “But then after I touched the hem of his suit, I was suddenly able to comprehend language and use tools, so I read The Communist Manifesto. Do you know he isn’t mentioned in there anywhere?”

Welcome to wordsmoker movie night at the movies!

I’ve always felt that film has an intimate bond with literature, and not in that, “What?  Subtitles?  I didn’t come to the movies to read!” kind of way.  As the master Akira Kurosawa said, when asked what was more important between the script, the direction, or the editing, he replied (and I’m paraphrasing), “All three, but if the script’s no good it doesn’t matter how good the other two are.

The rules are simple.  I pick a theme or common tie to group five or so films together (suggestions welcome!), present them here, you vote (winner will be decided democratically), set a date to meet in the chatzy room, have the film watched by then and come prepared to do your best Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert impersonation.  Note, I clearly did not say Peter Travers, because that guy’s a douche.

In the wake of the recent vote in the House of Representatives to impose a 90 percent tax on those goddamn AIG bonuses, high-powered legal thinkers like Howard Fineman and Lawrence O’Donnell have weighed in on the constitutionality of the measure.

Finally! How were the rest of us supposed to be able to figure out whether that shifty lower house of Congress was trying to take away our precious right to be paid millions of federal dollars for performing our private sector jobs in the worst way imaginable without the sage analysis of a Newsweek hack and an oily beltway insider/actor? According to Fineman, this new tax may even be double unconstitutional(!), while O’Donnell praised Nancy Pelosi’s decision to put the clearly unconstitutional tax measure forward as a brilliant parliamentary move designed to “trap” Republicans in their own hypocrisy. Savvy!

There’s just one problem with the Fineman-O’Donnell doctrine: The ex post facto clause and the prohibition against bills of attainder are widely understood to apply only to criminal laws –not the tax code. And most of us know that Congress is constantly reshaping the tax code to encourage certain behaviors, such as buying a house, and disadvantage others. If you have ever tried to cash out your 401(k) before turning the magical age of 59 and one-half-years old, then you know what I’m talking about.

But Fineman and O’Donnell (along with many others, including MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer) shouldn’t be discouraged. Everyone knows that our constitution is a living document whose genius lies in its ability to be reinterpreted for changing times. These Betsy Rosses of the new millennium clearly think it’s time for our courts to expand their interpretation of the ex post facto clause and the prohibition against bills of attainder. After all, these clauses haven’t been used in years. I mean when was the last time you heard about Congress passing a law that tinkered around with the retroactive criminal liability of an individual or discrete group of people? That would be positively un-American! Oh wait.

A Corner of Entertainment History Many Would Prefer to Forget

Tardabell Day! began as a weekly segment on the CBS Radio program Arthur Godfrey Time. A pantomiming clown with marionettes on the radio would seem an unlikely hit, but it did capture the public’s imagination in 1947, then becoming common to refer to Mondays, when the show aired, as “Tardabell Day”. It consisted primarily of light orchestral melodies punctuated by Tardabell’s signature sound of a strip of inner tube rubber slapping against his bare left thigh.

Time is drawing near. Next week on April 7 at 9 pm EST we will CHAT like mad hillbillies about Denis Johnson’s novel Tree of Smoke.

I was walking along the seashore and reflecting upon all the times my life has taken a wrong turn. I thought about my oversized and misshapen head. I considered every birthday party gone horribly wrong. The manslaughter charge I’d avoided by taking flight in a gorilla suit.

Oh, those many sad months in a gorilla suit.

This was a beautiful summer’s day, but I couldn’t see the glory for the sand that filled my shoes. I raised my fist to the sky and shouted, “Lord! Why have you forsaken me?”

Suddenly, I heard Christ’s voice at my side.

Finger nail clippings,
staples and more on the floor
vacuumed up.  This sucks.

Marathon runner
has office in back of the
construction building.

Chain mail hangs on wall
’bout Christian soldier knocks out
atheist teacher.

Clock out at 2:10.
Collect paycheck on Tuesday.
Shower, dry, repeat.

Does your job suck too?
Express your hate in haiku
in comments below.

Image via arearugs-blog.com

Lawrence H. “Summers” (his grandparents used the surname “Samuelson”) is the former 16-year old MIT freshman cum Harvard Department of Economics wunderkind cum hedge fund shill cum Director of the White House Economic Council cum cumstain* whom historians may very well identify, years hence, as the single most important reason why Obama’s first term as POTUS was also his last.

Also, have you heard that he doesn’t think lady-thinkers can do math?

Awww, lookit da wee doggie on the TV! Augie’s so CUTE! Isn’t he ADORABLE? Lookit his liddle face! Awwww, he’s so pretty. And innocent. Who could hate Augie? Awww – he’s so lovely! Well – NO.

NO, HE’S NOT. HE’S UNLOVLELY.

HE’S PART OF THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE.

WTF?

On Thursday night, Barack Obama made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a late night talk show.

After host Jay Leno made the Commander-in-Chief sit in the green room while he made fun of cat muzzles, Obama came out to talk about – what else – the economy, Tim Geithner, and AIG, before launching into an anecdote about how his daughters love Starburst candies.

Then, Jay Leno asked the President if he was getting rid of the famed White House bowling alley.  Nope, Obama said, bragging that he bowled a “129″.  Leno politely applauded – quasi-mockingly saying “That’s very good, Mr. President” – to which Obama, under the audience’s laughter and applause, said “it was like the Special Olympics or something.” (Click for video)

This tarantula might be a bit of a tease.  This one is hard to come by.  You can put it in your fucking queue, but they don’t know when it will be available.  You can find it online, but for a hundred dollars or more.  Your best bet currently is to visit your local tarantula purveyor.  Mine only has it on VHS.  (What am I?  Amish?)  But make this your tarantula grail.  Keep your eyes peeled for this particular tarantula.

Thank you for smiling,

for breaking trend

with wait-a-whiling,

and causing misery to end.

Thank you, friend,

for doing what you must -

leave sadness, forsaken,

and loneliness, nonplussed.

I’ll see you soon,

by light of day,

by ray of moon,

I’ll come your way

and we’ll have words

to leave us smiling

and time to lend

to wait-a-whiling.