THIS IS NOT THE ONION

There really is going to be a gala party at Jabba the Fecal Cyst's golf club celebrating and raising money for the traitorous scum of January 6.

These people really have no bottom.

1989

This was the invite for the grand opening of Sound Factory back in 1989 -- the REAL Sound Factory at 27th between 10th and 11th and not the pale simulacrum that catered to the Guido Long Island and North Jersey B&T crowd up on 46th Street that opened in or around 1995.

The BF at the time and I paid our money for memberships (we only really wanted the membership for the laminated member ID cards but the cover charge discount was nice too) and those fucking crooks (Because club owner Phil Smith was basically a fucking crook) took our money and then took two years to give us our cards -- claiming each time we asked that "the machine is broken." And during which time we were forced to pay full admission rather than the reduced admission that the early membership holders got.

Full admission was twenty-five fucking dollars....in 1989! $63 in today dollars. For a club that didn't serve booze!

That shit adds up when a two-person household is going to the club EVERY Saturday for two straight years without ever missing a weekend....as was the case with us.

We'd hit the club one of two ways each weekend -- we'd either take a disco nap Saturday night and set the alarm for 1 AM and be at the club by 2:30 or 3 or, we'd go to the Roxy first and party there until they closed at 4 and then taxi up to 27th Street and hit the Factory at 4ish.

SF at full tilt on a Sunday morning

We'd dance and do drugs until noonish on Sunday (or later if Junior was feeling it and not pissed off and playing banging pots and pans, trying to send everyone home) because those were the days when there was one DJ, not a half dozen in a lineup, and he stayed in that booth and played until the fucking club closed...sometimes for 14 hours or more.

The view from the Sound Factory DJ booth

And then we'd start cruising around the club and dancefloor telling our friends (and pretty much every hot guy we came across -- as well as all our drug dealers) that there was an after-party at 95 Christopher Street Penthouse C.

After that we'd hop in a cab to beat the mob home and the house party at Penthouse C would get rolling to full effect and last well into Sunday night.

Those parties were notorious.

PRESIDENT OBAMA BRINGS IT!

It really is impossible to watch this man lay out who we are as a political party and not wonder how on Earth anyone can vote for the other people.

Oh!  At the 17:40 mark they cut to a shot of a woman in the audience weeping and that got my faucets going until the very end of the speech.

 

PREY

 

HOT "POWDER"?!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

My unit in the marines Beta tested the very first MREs in the field -- and we fucking HATED them!  But one of the things we told the test observers (other than that they tasted like dogshit) was that they desperately needed to have Tabasco sauce included in them.  And it was.

Prior to that we all carried bottles of the stuff in our packs for our C Ration meals and, eventually, when MRE 2.0 were introduced they included tiny, single-use plastic bottles of tabasco in each MRE pack.

Normally I would find it hard to believe that they decided to substitute "hot powder" for real tabasco sauce but....it is the gummint sooooo.......

Anyways, a story related to military meals involved your author and one Corporal Joe Gordon.  Joe was in my unit in Spain and was stuck on what was known as "legal hold" for pulling some unlawful, likely highly depraved shit off base that got him criminally charged by Spanish authorities and under the SoFA (Status of Forces Agreement) prevented him from being able to rotate back to the World until his case was resolved.

Legal holds could last years....or even a decade or more, and Joe had been stuck in Spain on an initial two-year tour for almost five years.  We actually had a sergeant there, Sergeant Noriega, who had been on Spanish Legal Hold since the Tet Offensive -- and this was 1980!

Long story short; our unit had gotten a huge fucking resupply of C Rations from a Marine Amphibious Unit that had passed through on its way to the Eastern Med and they had dropped off a couple hundred cases for us consisting of 12 individual meals per case and Joe and I, being big fans of C Rations, decided we needed to scrounge some for our own uses.

They were under lock and key in the supply shed on the far side of our parking lot and were under guard. But Joe and I knew how things worked and how to get the guard away from the shed and so, late one dark night we lured the guard away, picked the lock to the shed, and over the course of ten minutes we fleeced off with fifty cases of C Rats.  Which we divvied up 25 cases apiece and took to our respective off-base apartments.

My dog Alpha, whom I had just recently rescued as a 10 week old pup, was pretty much raised for the next two years on stolen C Rat meals when we were off base at our apartment -- and when we were on duty on base she ate ham and cheese omelets and freshly baked crullers from the chow hall.

FYI, I took Alpha back to the World with me when I rotated home and she lived with my family in Princeton, New Jersey.  Where she lived to be almost 17 years old.

Alpha at about age 15 at home in Princeton

Israel and Palestine: Let Me Tell You This……

                                                                                                        by Damien

…… about that. 

There are four things to know about me: 

1. I am Pro-Palestine 

2. I am Pro-Israel 

3. I am Anti-Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran 

4. I am Anti-Netanyahu/Haredi/Far-Right 

Israel has a right to exist. However badly the British fucked up (then) Palestine, and however badly the UN/League of Nations fucked up the implementation of the State of Israel, it has a right to exist and is not going anywhere. 

Palestinians deserve a State Nation of their own (the borders of which I have some issue with). They are not going anywhere. It does not matter that they are the historical equivalent of being “bussed in” to the region. They are there. Several generations of families have known nothing else but the region of land occupied currently by what we now know as the modern State of Israel, and, the Palestinian Territories. 

As a Jew, I am often asked by (slack-jawed yokels) I mean the average American I meet what my stance on Israel is. And my response is “Which Israel? There are three Israels. Israel the nation. Israel the people. Israel the government.” Which usually prompts a very satisfying look of confusion followed quickly by several indecipherable verbal exclamations and a quick retreat. 

As a Jew-by-Choice, I did not grow up being taught about the glory of Israel, and yes, the idea of Israel is glorious. Given the multi-millennial persecution of the Jews, a safe homeland was inevitable, and necessary. From the kidnapping by the Babylonian Empire, to the expulsion by the Roman Empire, the Jews have only ever wanted a safe place to live, and live Jewishly. I have, therefore, the ability to look at the conflict with both the horror we all share, but also some objectivity. 

The Palestinians sadly have a bad wrap sheet. They were bussed in by the Romans when they expelled the Jews. Hordes of neighboring Arab populations were moved in to physically replace and displace the then Judean populations. (Please understand that I am paraphrasing history here, so as to not have a 5,000-word essay as my first BIE article). Then generation after generation of what became known as Palestinians were born, lived, worked, raised families, and died in what they came to know as their land. 

I am about to leap frog of many centuries here. Please bear with me. What we have now in 2024 are two groups of people with historic claims to the land. Neither of which has always acted with the moral high ground. Palestine has Hamas, suicide bombings, the PLO and their terrorist neighbors. Israel has had the Hagenah, Netanyahu, Ariel (the butcher of Beirut) Sharon who ridiculously tried to reclaim the Temple Mount, oh…and the Haredi – the Ultra-Orthodox who don’t bathe and believe that they and they alone are true Jews. 

 And yet we have one nation – Israel – who relies on another – Palestine – for its labor force. 

And yet another nation – Palestine – who relies on another – Israel – for economic opportunity. 

The two are tied together in a way that neither can exist without the other. And the Arab financial assistance to Palestine is both pitiful and often stolen by their internal terrorist gangs as is their foreign aid. 

What we have are two groups of people who are being held at gun point by their own extreme forces. True peace will not be known until at least three current generations of Israelis and Palestinians die. And this article barely makes the most infinitesimal scratch in the conflict – both now and historically. 

So, when the conflict is being discussed, take care how you discuss it. The true victims are the Palestinian people who are killed by Netanyahu and their own internal extremists, and, the Israeli people are who killed by Hamas/Hezbollah and Haredi extremists. Remember…...a Haredi Jew shot Rabin. Not a Palestinian. 

And one final thing. I am a deeply observant Jew. A Jewish Professional. And an avowed pacifist. And I have no clue how to fix the conflict aside from putting three generations on both sides up against the Western Wall and pulling the trigger. 

May Israel know security and prosperity. 

May Palestine know freedom and prosperity. 

Shalom to my Tribe, and, Salaam to my Cousins of Islam. 

Damien 

The Aussie Jew.

INDEED!

 

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