Exile on vine street

I want to live like james bond/I want to die like james dean

Rain grey town/known for its sound

Caffeine, gasoline, and a .44

WINGSTERS™ does not refer to the all chicken wings restaurant. WINGSTERS™ are a trademarked product of Perdue Farms and are described in this exciting and informative press release. See kennfusion for details.

The proper name of the restaurant where you can get 31 different flavors of chicken wings is WINGNUTS!

Choose from these flavors…

MANGO HABAÑERO
JAMAICAN JERK
CHARRED WHISKEY BBQ
TERIYAKI
BUFFALO Mild
BUFFALO Medium
BUFFALO Hot
BUFFALO Ouch!
DOUBLE-DOG DARE!
LEMON-LIME
SZECHWAN
SOY-GINGER
CHIPOTLE BBQ
ROADHOUSE BBQ
CHEESY CHEDDAR
ROASTED GARLIC-PARMESAN
HONEY MUSTARD
THAI
SPICY SWEET & SOUR BBQ
KUNG PAO
HONEY BBQ
HAWAIIAN
HOT & SPICY BBQ
TOMATILLO
RAGIN’ CAJUN
LEMON GARLIC
ROASTED RED PEPPER

I suspect that “Double Dog Dare” may well be the “through a goat twice” flavor that friendly_bandit speculated about.

The cool damp fall weather gives our usually hazy Southern California air a Flemish clarity, making all the edges of things stand out and showing textures as though through a microscope. The heaps of ash from the cigar guys on the patio, the melted and splattered advertising flyer on my lawn, the scratches on my car, all of it larger than life.

Tonight, Movie Guy Dan said “My money’s on the toothless kid”.

There was a guy with a shaved head and black-rimmed glasses and a CBGB T-shirt playing the usual crap acoustic versions of classic rock songs at D’s tonight. His special twist was a miniature light show of multicolored bulbs right in front of him.

At Wingsters, a restaurant that specializes in chicken wings, they added a 31st flavor. It’s Orange Cilantro Spice.

“Floods Hit Somali Lepers”

I listen to the local grandees slapping their knees and chortling as they talk about shooting a few liberals so we get the point. I look at the paper and I see an editorial saying that people with my opinions aren’t American and should leave the country. I look at the TV and I’m being called a traitor, a liar, a sympathizer with our enemies. I see nice clean smart educated middle-class people in sweaters agreeing with each other that homosexuals and liberals and non-christians should be excluded from our schools and government jobs because “they just don’t share our values”.

I see this more and more, and a hundredfold again more since this election.

And then I look at my conservative friends, who vote and donate and support these people. I think about people who are very nice to my face and share food with me and appear to enjoy my company, and call themselves my friends. And then I look at their friends. And I think: “What do they say when I’m not around?”

Do they stand up for me and mine at all? Does anyone ever say “No, those people are Americans, too; their viewpoint is legitimate”. Or “Don’t be silly, this country has room for more opinions than one.” Or even just “live and let live”?

I was raised to build bridges to others; to find points of agreement; to share values when I couldn’t share politics; and to agree to disagree. I can’t do that any more, because they’re making total war on me. When I do it with you now, I feel like an idiot, because no one on your side plays that game now.

My father and his father and his father before him back to the founding of this country have fought in all our wars. I am an American or I am nothing. The liberal values we have are Kennedy’s, and FDR’s, and Jefferson’s. But your friends say that’s all a lie, or at least it’s all over with, and it’s time for me to leave and let them have their way.

Is that how you see me, too? Is that what you want, too? Because if that’s the case, please tell me. Then I’ll know who isn’t my friend, and never was. I’d never thought I’d say this, but I don’t feel safe around you any more.

‘Mystery Candidate’ Wins Without Campaign

Sat Nov 6, 2:14 AM ET

By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer

SANTA ANA, Calif. – Steve Rocco didn’t file a candidate statement or mount a campaign for the school board. He’s unknown to teachers and the district and only barely known to his neighbors. Nonetheless, the man being called a “mystery candidate” easily beat an opponent who is active, and relatively well known, in the Orange Unified School District. Now all that’s left is to find him.

What the hey

I’m not a Christian any more because that word in my country now means ignorant, bloodthirsty, hate-filled hypocrite and nothing more. The five of you who aren’t, I apologize.

I don’t tolerate Republicans or “conservatives” or any of that shit because you support the ideology and the party and the people who hate me, who want me and my friends dead, who say that I’m not American, and who want to strip us all of our civil rights and send us to concentration camps. This is not hyperbole; I’ve seen it all said by people in power.

My country is under occupation by a hostile power that seeks a theocracy and the abrogation of the Constitution, war without end, and the destruction of the middle class. No one who makes less than a half million a year benefits from them financially and no one who believes in the Enlightenment ideals of our country’s founders has any business agreeing with their ideas.

It’s total war now. I reject your god of conquest, your worship of wealth, your hate of everyone different or weak, and your ignorance.

Come and fucking get it and find out what armed liberals are like. .40 hollowpoints kill right-wingers too.

In 1991 I underwent a religious conversion during a time of great personal stress. Since then I have been a Christian, but I’ve only gone to church for the first two years and very intermittently since. My particular faith is most easily described as “evangelical”.

The reason I haven’t had much to do with churches is that nothing about the culture of American evangelical Christianity is tolerable to me except the Gospel itself. This is a big problem, because you’re not just supposed to pray and learn, you’re supposed to interact with others. I’m instructed to be a member of a spiritual group and also to share the faith with others. At first it was just the problem of everyone being sort of corn-pone and not culturally aware, which is a lot more important when you’re in your 20s. Increasingly I ran into disagreements about science and politics that were a bit worse, and I stopped spending a lot of time with churchy people. After this election, though, I’m through. I’m walking out.

It’s time I stopped describing myself as Christian. I can’t do it. I look at the people who claim an evangelical faith and they make me physically ill. I can’t break bread with them.

The first thing that happens after a fellow believer discovers my spirituality is congratulation and a big smile.The second thing that happens is some political or theological litmus test. We are all supposed to support the war, support the current government, love capitalism, despise “liberals”, hate homosexuals, and deny the last 300 years of Western civilization. I am not to agree with the theory of evolution. I must support not only my own government’s wars but all those of the state of Israel. I am supposed to care very deeply about unborn children but let them starve or be bombed once they’re born. I’m supposed to reject the last 200 years of biology and embrace crackpot pseudo-science.

I look at the people around me that I love and you want me to hate all of them. I refuse. Hate me too, instead.

You people physically disgust me. All of you. I can’t be in fellowship with a nation of murderous ignorant hypocrites. Go back and read Amos and Isaiah, and think on this: are you the prophet, or the faithless nation?

You can call me a “liberal”, and I’ll thank you. You can call me a “humanist”, and I’ll smile. You can even tell me, as you have been lately, that I’m un-American and unwanted in your country, and I’ll respectfully disagree. But don’t call me Christian. My conscience won’t allow it.

NO.