Picture it

You're Cindy McCain, it's Friday night, and it's been an hour since Johnny took his little blue pill. You're laying on your back, patiently waiting, and this pops up between your legs.

What do you do? What, do, you do?

In actuality this would never happen as the act of cunnilingus probably makes Jesus cry in John McCain's world. Plus, as Janelle says, "He’s an old man. Same with the blinking, his body has trouble making the usual lubracatory fluids necessary to keep things like eyeballs and mouths hydrated."

Come on November 4th!

Choke

It's October and that can only mean one thing, for me it's post season baseball. The time of year when you separate the men from the boys, where bit players in the grand scheme of the season come alive and make big things happen, where rookies rise to the occasion on the big stage, where the Cubs, if they are still playing, put on another fantastic display of choking. It's just like driving up the highway and seeing a bad car accident, you know there might be a bloody stump of a human on the side of the road, and you don't want to, but you look. It's really almost embarrassing to watch, and you kind of feel bad for them.

Just for fun, I had to go to the Tribune website and view the carnage first hand. Here's a sampling of some of the headlines in the sports section.

"Do-or-Die Turns into Slow Death"

"Are the Cubs Choking Away the NLDS?"

"Now you're one loss away from 101 years"

"Curse removal backfires on Cubs"

Mike Downey had this to say in one of the articles. "But the way they played Thursday night, they couldn't have won a Little League World Series.

I haven't seen a team kick this many balls since World Cup soccer. It was like watching a "Bad News Bears" movie. The entire Cubs infield just qualified for baseball's new Bill Buckner Award.

It was a travesty—a Cubbie comedy of errors."

I love it, the hits keep on comin'. Here's a few quotes from the players.

Cubs Manager Lou Pinella said this before the game. "Do or die? If we lose tonight, well, we might as well just stay home and forfeit the game in Los Angeles."

Dodger outfielder Matt Kemp said that it felt "like a cemetery in Wrigley."

Former Cardinal great, turned traitor, or should we call him saboteur, Jim Edmonds said the following. "I've never seen it before, We have a good team and pretty good athletes, but this is a tough place to play sometimes. The ball takes funny bounces, and that's just the way the game goes. I've been a part of a series where the good team (Cardinals) makes all the errors and the other team doesn't. So nothing surprises me these days."

If the Cardinals can't be there this year, I'm more than willing to watch the Cubs suffer. I discovered an unusual statistic. We'll it's not necessarily a statistic, more of a coincidence, but it's a telling one nonetheless. The Cardinals have missed the playoffs three times this decade. 2003, 2007, and 2008. Each of those three times the Cubs have made it to the post season.

How could we forget 03, the Bartman incident? The Cubs were five outs away from the World Series before a fan reached over the wall to catch a ball that Moises Alou probably wouldn't have caught anyway. As Alou threw a temper tantrum on the field, you knew that the Cubs chances were over, you know that the unsuspecting Marlins, a team that nobody figured would even be there let alone beat the Cubs, would do just that. They came back from an improbable 3 games to 1 deficit to upset the lovable losers. Losers they are indeed.

In 2007, the Cubs where swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks after winning the NL Central title, who were then swept by the Colorado Rockies in the NLCS, who where then swept by the Red Sox in the World Series.

That brings us to 2008. Will the Cubs blow it again, or will they come out of a 2 games to 0 hole and win the next 3? That my friends is something only the Yankees did in 2001 against the Oakland A's. They were coincidentally managed by the current manager of the Dodgers, Joe Torre. I say Dodgers in 4.

I love Chicago, I really do. As long as it's June through August and the weather's nice. I love the food, the architecture, the El, the buses, the sights and sounds. I've even been to Wrigley once, I got to see a full two innings of a Cards/Cubs game before the rain washed away the day. I got hammered on Old Style under the overhang and took it all in. It's quite an impressive ballpark. I'm actually envious of it. I'm very nostalgic when it comes to baseball. While nice, I don't particularly care for the new Busch Stadium. It's like a Wringling Brothers circus. It's like watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "Bazooko's Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday nights if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich." I actually wish the Cardinals still played at Sportsman's park. While I'm too young to have seen it, I'm sure it was quite similar to Wrigley. There wasn't any fancy scoreboard, there were Cigarette ads, ads for soap, gum, and a giant neon AB Eagle that would flap its wings when someone from the home team hit a home run. The players also played for the love of the game, not money.

As it turns out, we have Busch the III. It's okay with it's fake brick fascia, and advertising covering nearly every square inch. It's certainly more attractive than the giant bowl that stood next door. We've been lucky to be fans of the Cardinals, while we've had to suffer heart break, winning makes you forget those bad times, if not for just a little while. The year Busch III opened we won it all. The Cardinals have won 10 world Championships over the years, more than any other National League team. Second only to the Yankees and their 26. Coincidentally, we won our first championship in 1926 at Yankee stadium, the first World Series ever clinched there. Oh yeah, they had Babe Ruth back then, and he hit 4 home runs in that series.

We're lucky to have been around such a great baseball team, with such a great tradition of winning. We might get Chicago's sewage run off, but we've won 17 pennants and 10 World Series championships since their last one in 1908. There must be something in the water. Pitchers and Catchers report in five months and another season begins full of heartache, surprises, and elation.

Day 1...

Well, I'm back on the wagon officially. I don't know how many times this makes now, but this time, has to be the final time. I've turned over a new leaf of sorts, or at least I'm attempting to. In addition to quitting smoking, I've decided it's time to get on a strict exercise regimen and quit feeding my body garbage on nearly a daily basis. I've been taking Chantix off and on for over a year now, and while it removes any cravings I might have physically for cigarettes, it doesn't prevent me from buying them, or bumming one, or needing to have one every time I have a few drinks. I've just got to keep reminding myself what's in store for me if I continue down the path I'm on, Cancer, Heart Attack, Stroke, the big three.

Cancer, "The Big Casino" is basically my biggest fear. Lung, throat, colon, brain, liver, stomach, kidney, rectal, it doesn't really matter, it's in the cards for me. More than likely, even if I do quit smoking, I'll die of cancer. My chances will greatly reduce as the days go on after quitting, and my lungs return to their beautiful pink self. So I have to be successful in this endeavour. I've seen three very close relatives waste away from different types of cancer, one was straight up lung, one was Leukemia, one was prostate which went onto lung; my Mom's mother, whom I've never met, she died of lymphoma when my Mom was in her twenties. I'm sure it won't stop there either, my Mom and all of her siblings smoke and have for 30 - 40 years, their time will come too. After seeing all of that, and knowing that it's in my future, you'd have thought I never would have started smoking when I was 15 or 16, I should have known better. In fact, when I was a kid, I used to piss and moan at my Mom all the time, telling her how bad it smelled. Every time she lit up in the car I used to pull my shirts up over my nose so I wouldn't be exposed. None of that mattered. I eventually graduated to stealing packs from her cartons of smokes and I had friends who looked 18 who could buy them. I even found gas stations that didn't card, who would sell them to me, or there was the old faithful cigarette vending machines at bowling alleys. Here I am, some 15 years later still hopelessly addicted. I'm tired of feeling like garbage, tired of being winded walking up a few flights of steps, tired of paying for them. To be honest with you, I really don't even know how much they cost here, I've never really cared how much they were until I was travelling and had to pay $6 to $8 for them, in Seattle, Chicago. Even then if I lived in those cities, I'd probably be spending that each day for a pack and wouldn't blink an eye. Well, I'm done, I've got to be, this is it for me, no more.

All consuming...

Honestly, this is all I've thought about the past two weeks. At night, when I'm driving, watching TV, as I'm laying in bed, when I wake up, at work, pizza, pizza, pizza.

It consumes me...

Mostly, I'm thinking how much hard work it will be, and how much I look forward to the day when I can tell my dead end job to shove it. I worry that it will be more stress than I can handle, that my personal relationships will be tested to their limits, that ultimately it and I will fail and I will let down the people who matter most.

I also think about how successful it'll be, how much money I'll have to do with what I please, that I'll be able to provide for a future family, travel, buy a vacation home, be comfortable in this Republican nightmare of these United States.

I'm obsessed.

I know that future reward requires great risk; I also know that if I stay this focused, I can't fail and everything will be all right.

John McCain - "War Hero"

During John McCain's speech last night he mentioned several times how he was "tortured" daily, and that he "never, ever gave up pertinent military information". Well, here's the real story.

McCain lost five U.S. Navy aircraft

Navy pilot John Sidney McCain III should have never been allowed to graduate from the U.S. Navy flight school. He was a below average student and a lousy pilot. Had his father and grandfather not been famous four star U.S. Navy admirals, McCain III would have never been allowed in the cockpit of a military aircraft.

His father John S. "Junior" McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe later becoming commander of American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. McCain III's grandfather John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

During his relative short stunt on flight status, McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft, four in accidents and one in combat.

Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about Annapolis graduates and their tours in Vietnam, wrote that McCain "learned to fly at Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it."

McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings. He was knocked unconscious by the impact coming to as the plane settled to the bottom.

McCain's second crash occurred while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula," Timberg wrote, "he took out some power lines [reminiscent of the 1998 incident in which a Marine Corps jet sliced through the cables of a gondola at an Italian ski resort, killing 20] which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."

McCain's third crash three occurred when he was returning from flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. Timberg reported that McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout" and went through standard relight procedures three times before ejecting at one thousand feet. McCain landed on a deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees.

McCain's fourth aircraft loss occurred July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting his turn for takeoff, an accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain's plane. He escaped from the burning aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and threatened to sink the ship.

McCain's fifth loss happened during his 23rd mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1967, when McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. McCain ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being drug from the lake, a mob gathered around McCain, spit on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing. He was bayoneted in his left foot and his shoulder crushed by a rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

After being periodically slapped around for "three or four days" by his captors who wanted military information, McCain called for an officer on his fourth day of captivity. He told the officer, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." -U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain.

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Page 193-194, Faith of My Fathers by John McCain.

When the communist learned that McCain's father was Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific, he was rushed to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable for U.S. POWs.
The communist Vietnamese figured, because POW McCain's father was of such high military rank, that he was of royalty or the governing circle. Thereafter the communist bragged that they had captured "the crown prince."

For 23 combat missions (an estimated 20 hours over enemy territory), the U.S. Navy awarded McCain a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a dozen service medals.
"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

For years, McCain has been an unchecked master at manipulating an overly friendly and biased news media. The former POW turned Congressman, turned U.S. Senator, has managed to gloss over his failures as a pilot and collaborations with the enemy by exaggerating his military service and lying about his feats of heroism.

McCain has sprouted a halo and wings to become America's POW-hero presidential candidate.