Dishing out spicy liberal social commentary and critical thinking news analysis on America, world politics, the news, fun political humor, cartoons - and a little poetry by Independent journalist blogger Denny Lyon.
Come on; it's common global knowledge the old Cold War intelligence community - the dreaded ruthless KGB - and the current Russian drug cartels basically run Russia, though the public is demanding serious reform. The average Russian knows...
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From Denny: Well, New Orleans, Louisiana, blew it out for this year's Mardi Gras in the French Quarter. And have I got the photos to prove it! Fresh from the guys over at Flickr.
Mardi Gras is celebrated in Mobile, Alabama in the USA and Cadiz, Spain (my great grandmother's home town) and even in Nice, France (OK, not my home town, the homestead is over at Lyon, France.) But no one does it like New Orleans with the cheekiest irreverence for just about anyone and everything!
New Orleans has a particular fondness for lampooning the politically incorrect taboo subjects of sexuality, religion and death. This year they went at it full tilt and certainly did not disappoint.
These tacky photos will definitely make you laugh out loud. If you suffer from sexual prudishness you probably don't read my blogs but just in case, look away. Actually, it's pretty tame - but tacky stuff, not good taste - which is what New Orleans Mardi Gras is all about.
The Spanish Town parade here in Baton Rouge is far tackier where they give out "throws" of condoms and other sexually explicit gay sex toys. And absolutely no one takes it seriously, all done in mocking fun of all society. They pride themselves in meeting the absolute lowest rung on the debauchery ladder. I wonder if they also award themselves medals? :)
Baton Rouge has been greatly affected by New Orleans ever since Hurricane Katrina when half of New Orleans moved here, most remaining to this day. Well, this year was the first I noticed that businesses, schools and banks have started closing for Mardi Gras just like in New Orleans across the city. They treat it like it's a federal or religious holiday and now Baton Rouge is drifting into the same custom.
Typically, New Orleans has always been a party destination draw for Baton Rouge folks. This year over 270 teachers were missing in action - "calling in sick" - the Monday after the big Super Bowl win because they were partying in the French Quarter in New Orleans! :)
Anyway, I was doing that "wondering thing" about how to follow up the big party blowout of Fat Tuesday the day after when the thrill is gone. Of course, the Christian Lenten season has officially begun, a time to think of dialing it back on the excess meter and tuning ourselves to more inner reflection.
What better bridge than to laugh at the Four D's to get folks over their embarrassments from Mardi Gras that even their grandchildren will never hear the tales? The Four D's are Debauchery, Decadence, Denial and Diets. Enjoy the funny quotes, laugh 'til you fall off your chair Mardi Gras photos and news videos about the festival!
To keep your game face on, remember there is hope for the perpetual party person because this is the progression: Debauchery is what you climb out of to get up to the next level of Decadence. You know, it's called graduating college and leaving behind your partying ways. So, you enter the oh, so adult life of Decadence known as credit cards, mortgages, shiny new cars, deep in debt and a few children dotting the backyard suburban landscape.
Before you know it you are done with Decadence after a decade or so and step up into the new house of Denial. Denial is when you experience Empty Nest Syndrome, hoping those screaming kids you so wanted to leave a few years earlier decide to come home to roost and make the house interesting again. Denial is also about figuring you might one day actually get to afford to retire. In those hopes you begin the process of trimming down your debt as your employer trims down your salary.
Eventually, you wake up and figure out you have to leave it all behind and go on a Diet to purge yourself of so much happy excess in order to function in life. What do you do? You retire, picking out your favorite destination and then go on perpetual holiday in New Orleans to begin the partying life all over again. And that, my friends, is why they call it the fast track Life Cycle... Oh, where did all the time go? :)
* May you - Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, dance like no-one is watching, screw like its being filmed, and drink like a true Irishman. - Anonymous
* To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love. - George Santayana
* True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. - Albert Camus
Lino Villaventur 2010 shoe collection
Decadence Quotes
* Decadence Definition: America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde
* Decadence is wonderful. - Jack L. Chalker
* First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. - Milos Forman
* The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it. - Bella Abzug (said back in the 1970’s, not much has changed. This sentiment was also said by other politicians back in the 1800’s which seem so reflect the state of mankind more than anything.)
* * * New Orleans is expert at putting on the show for parades and decadence. They were ready at a moment's notice to pull off an impromptu Super Bowl win parade that only New Orleans could have accomplished in such a short time:
* The desire to build a risk-free society has always been a sign of decadence. It has meant that the nation has given up, that it no longer believes in its destiny, that it has ceased to aspire to greatness, and has retired from history to pet itself. - Henry Fairlie
* A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect. - E. M. Cioran
* As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. - Gore Vidal
* Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages. - Charles Baudelaire
* Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them. - Emile Durkheim
Photo by Infrogmation @ flickr - Only in New Orleans at Mardi Gras can you walk into a coffee shop without your shirt on if you are female.
* In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it. - Cal Thomas
* The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. - James Thurber
* Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. - Ernest Hemingway
* The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence - luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition - are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. - Cyril Connolly
Denial Quotes
* Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you. - Bill Hicks
In Louisiana, we all blow our diets from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's to the Super Bowl, all the way up to and including Mardi Gras. Ah, the debauchery of too much fine dining!:) Once Lent starts (oh, thank you, God, for inventing it) we all start to dial back on the excessive life style, eat less and focus upon dropping those extra pounds. Even if there are those among us who managed to not gain any weight during this long festive season (who are you and where do you live?) we all catch up on some seriously much needed sleep.
* No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. - George Bernard Shaw
* The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it. - Jackie Gleason
* The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life. - Cyril Connolly
* Food is an important part of a balanced diet. - Fran Lebowitz
* To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed. - Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld
* I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. - Mae West
* The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter. - Barbara Cartland
* I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet. – Erma Bombeck
* A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. - The Cookie Industry
* It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. - Plutarch
* What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. - Alexander Pope
* I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. - Jean Kerr
* There were years when I was a beer and tequila guy, then I got real fat. And then I found that you could actually go on a diet and drink scotch. Then I got hooked on scotch, and if you get hooked on scotch, then everything else just tastes wrong. - Ron White
* The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook. - Julia Child
* Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. - Jim Davis
Some Serious Quotes about Denial to help us happily slide into the reflective mood of the new Lenten season:
* Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd. - Annie Besant
* Delay is the deadliest form of denial. - C. Northcote Parkinson
* Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil, to deny life. – D. H. Lawrence
* How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him. - Frank Herbert
* The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. - Richard Bach
* Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. - Stephen Jay Gould
* You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory. - J. Donald Walters
* Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. - Melody Beattie
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From Denny: By now everyone has heard about it - Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien are competing against each other on the same network since Jay didn't do well in the earlier time slot at night. To their credit and personal friendship, these comedians are making light of a really awkward situation.
Love 'em or hate 'em here's the latest political opinions of gaffes from both sides of the aisle:
From Jay Leno:
There's a rumor floating around that we were cancelled. I heard it coming in this morning. So far, nobody's said anything to me. But Kev, if we did get cancelled, give us time to maybe do some traveling. In fact, I understand Fox (Network) is beautiful this time of year.
Actually, I don't think there's any truth to the rumors. See, in my experience, NBC only cancels you when you're in first place. So we're fine.
The annual list of the most admired men in the world came out today. Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods are tied. I wonder what those two would have in common.
An 86-year-old politician in India resigned after a sex tape surfaced showing him in bed with three women. 86 years old, three women. A lot of his constituents are saying it was a stupid idea for him to make the sex tape of himself. But the guy is 86. How else is he going to remember having sex?'
The weather here in California is very nice. But it's freezing all across the United States. In fact, in D.C., the weather is so bad — this is true — they actually hired convicted criminals to shovel snow at the U.S. Capitol. Isn't that amazing? So it's nice to see members of Congress doing something useful for a change.
And yesterday morning in Helsinki, Finland, a train crashed into a Holiday Inn. Here's the odd part. It was an Amtrak train from Connecticut.
On Fox News, Ann Coulter said she's against body scans at the airport because terrorists will still be able to hide explosives in their anus. So, finally, Ann Coulter is speaking on a topic she knows something about.
From Denny: With the Republicans trying to rally the troops these days, they keep up the mantra of how Obama is pulling America away from good values that they all grew up with in their alternate reality. Observe clips of some of the most egregious hypocrites as John Oliver pulls together an amusing "report" on the Republicans' ideal of America from some elusive mythologized intangible era:
John Oliver Searches for Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly's Good Old Days
Cold. Am I right? You know, Rush Limbaugh was ill. And he had to go to the hospital. He had chest pains but he's completely recovered. He'll be back on his job on Wednesday, which is great because the country really can use some hot air now.
How many people flew to get here? I mean, come on, isn't flying more fun than it used to be? I mean, really. They make you take off your shoes, make you take off your underpants. ... I mean you think about the guy, the Nigerian guy, he is going to blow up the thing. He was wearing a pair of Fruit of the Lunatic.
Guy was not too bright. He said that the reason he became a suicide bomber was to work his way up in the al Qaeda organization.
They took the guy to court and the guy said he was charged with having weapons of mass destruction in his pants. And he told the judge, 'Well, I get no complaints from the ladies.'
Do you folks know anything about the Skull And Bones society? It's like a fraternal organization, at Yale University. Well, they're auctioning off a human skull. And I was thinking about this. I believe this is the first empty skull to come out of Yale, well, I think since George W. Bush, actually.
Top Ten Things I've Learned From the Last 20 Years of Television (as presented by Homer Simpson on the Late Show With David Letterman)
10. Better to be bald than have a hairpiece like Letterman.
9. Do not buy sushi from the Home Shopping Network.
8. Thanks to iTunes, now you can get free TV shows for 99 cents.
7. Widesceen televisions were invented to accommodate Keith Olbermann's enormous head.
6. Sadly, "Cougar Town" is not a show about people getting attacked by giant cats.
5. Sitting close to the TV is a cheap alternative to a tanning salon.
4. No one on Earth is funnier than Howie Mandel.
3. There is no good way to tell your spouse you want to go on "Wife Swap."
2. Ever notice all morning weathermen are as fat as a dump truck?
1. Television is not a vast wasteland, it's a cesspool.
There is a sex scandal roiling the nation right now. The tale of one man's insatiable sex drive and the beautiful women who succumb to his magnetic machismo. Does it involve ... lusty golfing legend Tiger Woods? Or perhaps it's six-foot, 15-inch and 174-pound bespectacled White House Budget Director Peter Orszag? Oh yeah, baby. The OMB director had a baby with this lady, a beautiful shipping heiress, just weeks before he got engaged to this other beautiful lady, who is a news reporter. I guess 'OMB' stands for the 'Office of Managing the Boo-tay.' Heeey!
I guess the CBO is the 'Congressional Badonkadonk Office.' ... Ladies, put your husbands to bed and hide your ovaries [on screen: footage of Orszag on talk shows]. Maybe you couldn't feel it through the TV screen, but I am telling you! I interviewed this guy. He's got the kavorka.
From Stephen Colbert:
Folks, I fear we are headed back to those dark days between 1972 and 1976 when a liberal Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty just because it was being 'wantonly and freakishly imposed.' Come on! If we outlawed everything that was wanton and freakish, what would happen to Lady Gaga?" – on reports the death penalty is "fading from use."
Night of Terror - The Crapification of the American Pant-Scape: Airport crotch screening won't be inconvenient for frequent travelers who have a government-issued photo ID of their privates.
Hey, a man in Washington, D.C., was apprehended by Secret Service yesterday for taking off his clothes and jogging naked near the White House. In related news, I say that’s probably the last time Biden ever takes Ambien.
The Secret Service was alerted when someone reported a man with a suspiciously shrinking package.
Legal experts are saying, if he's convicted, the underwear bomber could be sentenced to life in Federal prison. But even worse, for the rest of his life, he'll be known as the underwear bomber.
Next week, President Obama will visit the auto show in Detroit and look at cars from the Big Three automakers. Or, as the Big Three automakers put it, 'the new owner is coming for a visit.
Today, President Obama honored more than 80 teachers for excellence in math and science. Then he begged them to leave China and come teach here in the United States.
This is weird. Yesterday, a naked jogger was stopped near the White House. Secret Service grabbed the man and immediately allowed him to attend a state dinner.
President Obama has appointed a transgender woman to a position in the Department of Commerce. You know, in this era of partisan bickering, President Obama deserves a lot of credit for taking a chance on Ann Coulter, I think.
Now, some people are really upset because President Obama has decided to redecorate the Oval Office, and he got rid of former President Bush's bust of Winston Churchill. When he heard about it, Bush was furious and said, 'Winston Churchill? I thought that was Higgins from 'Magnum P.I.'
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Profiling actress Mae West who specialized in cheeky quotes!
From Denny: After profiling Will Rogers last week from America's early Hollywood entertainment history I started thinking: who else might be of interest? Then I remembered "the risque one" herself that today's saucy singer and comedian Bette Midler surely might be a sure fire reincarnation of that oh, so original and tiny powerhouse of a woman: Mae West.
Mae West grew up in comedy, notable the Vaudeville and entertained America during the dreary Depression years of the 1930's. Her image was that of an independent woman, a bit risque - which was considered downright pornographic for the prudish time period. In her movies she was draped in jewels and looked to be enjoying the high life, something ordinary Americans could only dream about at that time.
The woman's movies were constantly censored; she kept them busy anyway, knowing the risk. By today's standards she is actually quite tame. She is still risque, full of either the obvious or the innuendo, but definitely ranks high in the Cheeky Quotes category to land a starring place on this blog today! :)
There are pages and pages of quotes attributed to actress Mae West. She often wrote her own material for the movies since she had studied comedic techniques from the time she was a child in the Vaudeville arena. YouTube has plenty of her movies; here are a couple of well known examples.
Mae West, American actress, Vaudeville entertainer, total ham of the exaggerated, 1893 - 1980.
I'm No Angel 1933 comedy classic:
Mae West with Duke Ellington Orchestra in the 1934 Belle of the Nineties:
Quotes
* “It's not the men in my life that counts--it's the life in my men.”
* “I see you're a man with ideals. I better be going before you've still got them.”
* “Opportunity knocks for every man, but you have to give a woman a ring.”
* “When women go wrong, men go right after them.”
* “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.”
* “It's not what I do, but the way I do it. It's not what I say, but the way I say it.”
* “I speak two languages, Body and English.”
* “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
* “I've been in more laps than a napkin.”
* “I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action.”
* “I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.”
* “When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.”
* “It is better to be looked over than overlooked.”
* “A hard man is good to find.”
* “Good sex is like good bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.”
* “Look your best--who said love is blind?”
* “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
* “The best way to hold a man is in your arms.”
* “All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.”
* “The score never interested me, only the game.”
* “A man's kiss is his signature.”
* “I like a man who's good, but not too good--for the good die young, and I hate a dead one.”
* “Any time you got nothing to do--and lots of time to do it--come on up.”
* “Don't keep a man guessing too long--he's sure to find the answer somewhere else.”
* “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”
* “I only have 'yes' men around me. Who needs 'no' men?”
* “Personally, I like two types of men--domestic and foreign.”
* “Love thy neighbor--and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.”
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*** For a much more detailed recounting of her funny life, loves and movies, the day after this post I wrote an article for HubPages:Funny Quotes Wordsmith: Mae West, go here.
