Archive | 2012

Why Barack Obama Is Guaranteed to Win Reëlection in 2012: A Statistical Analysis of Battleground State Polling

24 Oct

Before I became an obscure blogger and show business peon, I was an aspiring academic. I have a B.S. in Cognitive Psychology and have studied many statistical and data modeling techniques for dealing with large multivariate data sets.  I’ve tried to stay fresh in these skills over the years.

As such, I’ve been following the election polls closely.  And playing around a bit with some of the polling data; looking into the methods and models of the various polling outlets.  I’ve discovered a pattern in a few battleground state polls, particularly Ohio, which I can’t find anyone else noticing, at least anyone you can google.  Pollsters are almost uniformly under-weighing a couple unsung but key variables in “likely voter” data.  In my opinion, the correctly weighted model points to a clearer Barack Obama electoral victory than anyone in politics or the media anticipates.  To explain what I mean, look at the latest “poll of polls” from Ohio via the Huffington Post:

Which shows debate-driven fluctuations, and a slight Obama lead, but essentially a race that could go either way.  I’ve taken what raw data I could find and re-weighted it a bit according to my hypothesis, into a new graph below:

Continue reading →

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How Was Your Day

23 Oct

I was awake.  There was a bird outside my window performing a miracle. He had memorized the calls of dozens of other birds after hearing them just a few times and was performing them flawlessly.  Some of this bird’s brain cells die in winter and grow back in spring in time for him to learn new songs.  Discovering this fact led scientists to conclude they had been wrong when they’d said your brain is just slowly dying.  In fact it can build new skills and learn new ways of being for your whole life.  It was revolutionary.  There is hope for us all. I was annoyed at the bird for waking me up.

Cigarette. Honey Nut™ Cheerios®.  Coffee.  Read things on the internet.  Take a shit.  Always a good one; I haven’t had a bad shit in years.  Hot shower.  Another miracle worn into banality by enjoying it every day. The hiss of warm water, the warmth like the womb.  Safe and private.  I washed my ass at least seven times.  Car.  Radio, NPR.  Old people talking about old time musicians no one gives a fuck about.  Or no– about people who were once in those dead old time musicians’ orbit. How on Earth does anyone give one single fuck about the guy who served as the archivist for Ira Gershwin, brought to you by Mercedes Benz of Southern California.  The only way this could be less interesting is if they interviewed the archivist for the archivist of Ira Gershwin. “The Dow” is up seventeen points.  Again, who gives a fuck.  That tells me absolutely nothing. Continue reading →

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Business Review: Automobile Club of Southern California

21 Oct

At the AAA office. The staff is helpful, courteous and efficient.  If you are not a member of AAA, go fucking join AAA right now.  Call their number and a helpful, courteous and efficient person will explain to you in plain language exactly what you need to do to join and the benefits you will attain. If your car breaks down, they will tow it somewhere for free. If your battery dies, they will come give you a jump for free.  If you have a flat tire, they’ll come change it for free.  Their staff that you talk to on the phone will be unrattled and actually know what the fuck they’re talking about.  The tow truck driver who shows up will be a nice dude from somewhere interesting who won’t try to jack you for extra money.  He will commiserate with you over your car trouble and put whatever music on the radio you want as he drives you to a mechanic of your choice for free.

You will receive a complimentary biweekly magazine with travel tips and day drive ideas tailored to your local area.  Like, this is what you should check out in San Juan Capistrano.  When the swallows are there and how you see them.  What local restaurants are suitable for the type of person who reads their local AAA newsletter, whom I infer to be between 60-75 and not wanting to do a great deal of strenuous exercise.  There will be an open letter in the front of the magazine from some higher up in AAA, who looks like the principal of Council Bluffs High School in 1955.  Or the Undersecretary of Agriculture from the Eisenhower administration. He will spout platitudes about AAA’s mission of quality service and the long sterling history of delivering such, from the early days of cars you had to crank to today with added support for hybrids and natural gas vehicles. Alternative fuels are an important part of our energy future and the Auto Club is committed to ushering in this new era of environmentally sound driving.  Letters to the Editor support these claims of excellence, and herald the newsletter’s usefulness.  Dear AAA Westways Magazine, thank you for your recent tips on San Juan Capistrano.  The swallows were beautiful and the AAA recommended motel was a real gem. Sincerely, Frank and Lois Gildersnatch, Whittier CA. Continue reading →

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Protected: Gertrude Part Three

19 Oct

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The Foot Tattoo

16 Oct

The foot tattoo makes her seem more accessible.  Such a person makes poor sexual decisions.  No impulse control.  If you have a tattoo on top of your foot, you have no concept of such a thing as “the future.” Having this poem written in script on your foot, a poem I can only assume is something unbelievably stupid, is now and is always going to be an awesome idea, the way to a dog consuming an entire roll of toilet paper will always be an awesome idea.

¡¡¡REMISSION!!!

15 Oct

Nikol D.S. Hasler, the person with the most accurate middle initials in the world.

You know that feeling when you’re having a shitty day at work and people are assholes and you have no money and the car you just bought is now beginning to show signs of a flawed cooling system, but you just tore off a new piece of ass the night before so nothing can really get you down? Well, Nikol’s cancer is in remission.  So nothing can get me down today.  Also, I tore off a new piece of ass. But mostly it’s Nikol.

Nikol’s cancer is in remission.  I never even thought about her cancer, when she had it, unless some big shit like surgery was happening, or it was right after her hair fell out.  Unless it was in my face.  She was sick, but she’s always sick, because she can take a handle of Von’s brand whiskey to the head and does tons of drugs; she’s the kind of person who texts you “I just took 30 tylenol PM’s and I’m going to die” and you can just laugh it off because she can eat pills that would make a billygoat puke.  She’s a tank.  But you could never tell if she was just hung over as fuck or if it was, you know, terminal illness. She wasn’t one of these cancer talk people, cancer cancer cancer all the time, my treatments, my symptoms, my positive thinking program, my misguided attempt to use alternative medicine from Mexico that will only accelerate my death. You didn’t think about it. Continue reading →

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Goodbye Greta

13 Oct

The head gasket was blown. I drove it too hot, and now the engine is dead. Repairs too unwieldy  to do on my budget.  The coolant would just boil over in 10 minutes.

Also, there was a sound like a rake being dragged across the undercarriage when you made a hard right turn.  Or too hard a left turn. The front windows didn’t roll down.  Or they did, but they would just drop into the door at a diagonal.  The stereo was stolen.  The driver’s side seat belt didn’t work; you’d have to reach over and stick it in the passenger side and if you had a passenger you’d have to entwine their seat belt with yours and explain this rather unsafe-seeming process to first dates you were getting to go back to your house.  The sunroof was stuck closed.  The back rear window was always open about four inches because I’d replaced it myself while drunk; I had shattered it with a rock when I locked my keys in the car. Also drunk.  Unbeknownst to me the left rear door lock didn’t fully lock and I could have just opened the door.  The hood latch didn’t open.  Or it did, but you had to reach into the innards of the car with vice grips and yank on the hood latch cable.  Eventually the cable would have come off its moorings completely and snaked into some impossible rusty depth of the body and the hood would have been sealed shut.  The brakes were going.  The master cylinder.  The vacuum pump was going.  There was no heat. There was no air conditioning.  There was not a god damn motherfucking thing you could do about it when it was a hundred nine degrees and the car, with half its windows not rolling down, was like a greenhouse, and you were basically microwaving yourself getting in it on an August day in Los Angeles.  It didn’t want to start when it was cold.  The starter just cranked over and over and over, first slowly, then quicker and quicker with a horrible metal-on-metal grinding until it turned over and spat out a huge and weirdly stationary cloud of white smoke that smelled like parts of your car that you really need burning, and then you had to lay on the gas for a minute or else it stalled out when you put it in gear.  It needed a paint job. I always meant to get a paint job over that worn out silver that looks like primer gray. The signals didn’t work; they didn’t flash and you had to flip the lever up and down by hand trying to keep a rhythm. I got a ticket for a burned out license plate light and it was impossible to fucking fix because every time you tried the bulb just got sucked up into some weird hole behind the impossible-to-get-your-fingers in soot covered bay for the license plate light. Continue reading →

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Pet Theory: Barack Obama Sucks Now Because He Quit Smoking

12 Oct

You ever quit smoking?  For a year? Five years? A decade?

No.  No you didn’t.  Because if you ever smoked, you still look at a cigarette in front of you like it’s the other guy on the deserted island turning into a talking hot dog in those old Looney Tunes cartoons. You walk past one of those tall outdoor ashtrays with a nice long butt in it and you turn your head as you walk, track it with your eyes.  And your heart beats a little faster.  You imagine it– the feeling, the tickly rush over your limbs as you take that first deep drag, hold it in; your head takes off with sparkles and stars and suddenly everything’s going to be just fucking fine.  You will never feel that again.  You will never even feel “OK” again.  If anything remotely adversarial happens you will ascend into an ever-escalating paranoid freakout and blame everyone around you for everything bad that ever happened until you want to murder your own children with your bare hands. And you will never, ever be able to do anything about it. You didn’t quit smoking.  You’re just waiting too god damn long for your next cigarette. Fiending for decades while your mind slows and your soul turns into a hard flinchy thing that only knows hate.  Friends, family, society, helping people– who gives a fuck.  I need to glare out the window and mutter about those who done me wrong. Gonna get them back some day.  Once I get the energy.

Continue reading →

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Reader Mailbag: Are You Dead or Something?

11 Oct

My 4 fans ask:

How come you haven’t posted in so long– did you die?

No, I just took a week off.

It was just such a weird week that I didn’t even beat off.  Or I did, but less than usual.  I have beat off just about every day for the past 26 years, but this week– the car was dead; I would have to take the bus home.  The 218 half an hour over Laurel Canyon, drop off at Sunset and Crescent Heights, wait half an hour for the 2– not the 302, which Google Maps had assured me in its public transit directions would pick me up and take me home toute fucking suite— the 2.  Because the 302, which is the bus that comes by two minutes after the 218 reaches Sunset and Crescent Heights, that one will just blow right by you as you stand hanging half off the sidewalk holding your briefcase like a jerkoff in a whirlwind of leaves and wrappers stirred up by the 302 and you’ll swear that the driver had a malicious gleam in his eye. Black guy.  I assume he’s thinking “Haha! Fuck you, cracker!” as he deliberately ignores my stop.  In reality, he’s thinking “Haha! Fuck you cracker!” As he goes about his prescribed route which does not include my stop.  Go ahead and think “fuck you, cracker,” by the way, black people.  None of us care. Continue reading →

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Diary: Gertrude Part One and a Half

11 Oct

You get a text on Monday morning from a girl you left at your house. The text is inventorying the contents of your jack drawer.  Notably there is an artificial vagina in it made by filling a plastic cup with water and flour paste, pushing a hole into it, and covering it with a condom.  You microwaved this creation while on cocaine and affixed it to your vibrating rubber duck and ergonomic airline neck pillow and it was the ne plus ultra of artificial vaginas; so far above and beyond the not inconsiderable amount of previous prototypes.  This is the one that flew.  It is has now taken on opportunistic airborne yeast and sat in the sun and become a perfectly formed uncooked dinner roll with a warped cast of your half-stiff cocaine penis in the center.  She’s amused.

She had written you a letter.  Like out of Bukowski’s WOMEN.  Dear so and so, I’ve read your blog and your OKC profile and blah blah blah.  We should have sex.  Well, yes.  Yes we should.

Still.

Still. Shouldn’t have sent her that second text this morning.  But no.  No.  Don’t overgame.  She’s a very straightforward person.  The larger issue is, making decisions about whether you want to hang out with a girl when you’ve been fucking her at night, receiving her unparalleled blowjobs, but not cumming.  Not cumming because she told you very matter of factly that your small penis could not get her off.  Also because you were fucking her and it got hot, she got into some position that was going to make you pop instantly; you stopped, and she said you should have gone ahead and cum anyway because your dick is too small to get her off.  You can’t tell if it’s because of this or just getting past that rubicon; sometimes you’re either going to cum prematurely or not at all.  Then you sleep with her all night naked and just keep making out with her in the morning; her little body… and you should have beat off in the shower, but you didn’t, so all day in the office your nuts feel like some swollen half-fermented fruit hanging overripe from the tree ready to fall off. You can feel your heart beat in your nut sac, painfully.  So you desperately want to see this person again but it’s just because you’re horny like an animal at your desk and you just keep seeing that ass, that ass, that ass, the way holocaust survivors must see the mule carts stacked with bodies flashing in their mind’s eye over and over again.
Continue reading →

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