The Down And Dirty That Is Oregon Politics

Having grown up in Louisiana, I am no stranger to shady politics and backroom deals. Hell, we invented dirty politics, folks. But when Louisiana-style politics come to Oregon, well that's a story. Hell, these kind of tactics would make Huey Long blush.

This year in Oregon we have a particularly contentious race in the 5th Congressional District, which happens to be my home district. In 2006, I was a volunteer coordinator for the incumbent, Darlene Hooley, and sure enough we defeated her challenger, one Mike Erickson. But with Darlene's retirement at the end of her term, the 5th is once again in play. In an area where party registration is nearly equal, both sides are eager to get their hands on the seat.

Whereas the Democratic side is filled with a laundry-list of no-names, there are two heavy hitters for the Republicans. There's the aforementioned Erickson, who managed to at least get over 40% of the vote, and longtime Oregon politician, the infamous Kevin Mannix. Oregonians know well of his shenanigans over the years, but lately has been a big loser in the state-wide offices he sought. Even though he lost state-wide, he managed to win the area of the 5th each time, meaning that the race was going to be competitive.

And it's been neck-and-neck for some time, which means it was time to get dirty. Mike "Because I'm a Cowboy"* Erickson lobbed the first volley, playing the old "you voted to increase taxes" card, which in GOP circles is almost as bad as gay-marrying a terrorist (*the "Cowboy" reference is an inside-the-campaign joke that we had--it really means absolutely nothing, but is fucking hilarious anyway). How does Mannix respond to these fairly benign charges? With this letter.

This letter has it all: Affairs, Abortions, Cocaine, and...HOUSEBOATS?!?!



That's right, a week before ballots are due, Mannix pulls the old "my opponent paid for a secret abortion and had wild houseboat cocaine parties card". I think Buddy Roemer pulled that one in '88, except the houseboat was a pirogue in his case. And since blanket denials by the press secretary of the Erickson campaign isn't enough, the local papers are all over this like flies on shit. Proof? Who has time for that! Of course, the most amusing part about the coverage has been the focus on the secret abortion, and not the wild COCAINE PARTIES ON HOUSEBOATS. How is that NOT the most interesting part of the letter?

Man, leave it to the press to miss a good story entirely.

Firings, Layoffs, and Other Intra-Office Hijinx

Some of you may have noticed the slow downturn in productivity around these here parts. If this were a regular corporate office, we could probably blame intrusive government tax infrastructure and a tightening of the commodities market as being key factors that have contributed to the gradual shittening of our product. Of course, if that were the case, you the consumer would probably blame goddamn illegal immigrants (read: Mexicans) from doing something to fuck up the system, like giving us the plague and stealing our Social Security numbers. And you're both right. In that nothing of the sort has occurred.

No, what has really happened is that we've simply dropped the ball. But it's not our fault entirely. Well, it is and it isn't. Let me explain.

If you take a look at our post count in the sidebar, you'll notice fluctuations in our post counts month to month. We hum along at a good clip for the most part, but we begin to die in November, tailing off into December and January. The natural assumption would be that Shitty Weather = S.A.D. and a lack of desire to offer our deliciously witty insights. But you fool, you didn't look at a big enough sample size! Notice that February saw a rise in postings, when weather has empirically been found to be at it's Shittiness Index Zenith. But in March, we saw our output decline again. Why?



It's because the authors all met each other in person and hung out together. And thus eliminated our desire to write. Because, really folks, the only reason we really do this site is to make each laugh; when we are physically in each other's presence, we really don't need the middleman of WDR to make our brilliant points. Hence, productivity declines.

But The Namesake has had enough of these shenanigans, and he has personally instituted some changes. First off, Joe Reefer has been temporarily demoted to LiveJournal postings as the result of a drunken voicemail message that disparaged the French and retards. He thinks that the punishment of acting like a 14 year-old post-Goth girl is certainly adequate. Second, Mr. Zhuang will have his coke privileges revoked, so hopefully we don't have any repeats of what happened in the lobby of that one Marriott. And I, Nic Ouzo, have been entered into psychological counseling as I attempt to deal with the tragic loss of my Pog collection.



Oh, and our accounting staff has been fired, and Rasheed has been let go. On the bright side, we're on the lookout to hire new interns!

Of Functional Health Units and Holy Hand Grenades

Or: I've Made A Huge Mistake...

Continuing my look back at the weekend that was...Mardi Gras 2008


I left you guys with a quick look at Bourbon Street, which is essentially the soul of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. As a sleazy 70s porn producer would say, "it's where the magic happens." If you've heard any fantastic tales about the debauchery of the holiday, chances are these stories took place on a select few blocks of La Rue Bourbon. And sure enough, that's where we spent the entirety of our Sunday. Before I continue, I should teach you the Rules of Bourbon St.:

1. Don't Pee On The Street The cops allow just about anything, so it's a good idea to at least let them have this one ("laissez les bon temps rouler" officially replaces "To Protect and To Serve" for that weekend).

2. Don't Sit On The Street Because people tend to violate Rule No. 1. Assholes.

With those rules in hand, you're pretty much set for a quality weekend of partying On The Holiest of Streets.


So I woke up on Sunday morning, in the same clothes from the previous day's festivities. And because it's New Orleans, we decided "fuck it", and went out without changing. I mean, who's going to complain about our potential smelliness? The bums? Unlikely. So we decided that we needed to ease into the day, and that meant a quick stop for some alcohol. Everyone talks about New Orleans and their famous Hurricanes, but the official drink of Bourbon Street is the Hand Grenade. It looks like a bong that the Ninja Turtles would use, tastes like the Slimer version of Hi-C, and features a grenade shot on top of the ridiculously copious amounts of alcohol already present in the drink. It would be the strongest drink on the strip, except for a couple of places that feature a Knockout 191 (yes, that's 191 proof), and since I wasn't in the mood to get date raped, I felt satisfied with my choice of Hand Grenade.



While we sipped on our beers and Hand Grenades, we encountered a truck that had a couple of dudes tossing what looked like to be free Gatorades. In fact, it turned out to be some sort of Detox drink, one of those hangover cures you're likely to find at your local 7-Eleven. We grabbed a few, then hit up a local restaurant for some of that down-home Cajun cooking that I had missed so much over these years, which meant one fucking sweet Shrimp Po' Boy for lunch (and there you were, thinking that a Po' Boy was just a random Creedence album reference). Not only were we provided with very necessary fuel for future alcohol consumption, but we got the chance to analyze the scientific benefits of our Urban Detox. There was a fantastic bar graph, pictured here, that showed that it helped alleviate hangovers and nausea and potentially cancer, because it contained so many "functional health units".



Since it was still early in the day, we decided to go to a fantastic shithole bar for some cheap alcohol and that famed New Orleans ambiance. That's The Abbey for you, which has a nice Dixieland funereal vibe going for it. In between meetings with an angry Polish/Greek and an old man with a nose covered in c-c-c-c-cocaine, we talked to the band, which featured a singer from Portland. I'm telling you, Portland musicians are fucking everywhere! Though the finest musical performance went to a local guitar/violin/tuba sidewalk trio, who played the most kickass version of "Stairway to Heaven" you'll hear.


After a quick stop at a cafe serving some authentic absinthe, it was time to partake in the more standard Mardi Gras fare. Which, in one word, can be described as "overindulgence". For this fellow right here, that involved a rack of test tube shots and the body parts of various hostesses at a Bourbon Street club. Frankly, there were a few scandalous photos taken that might prove compromising if I were currently running for office, but you weren't hearing any complaints from me at the time (though my mouth was otherwise occupied). But tough shit for you folks, because those photos aren't currently in my possession. So you'll just have to let your imaginations wander as to what it was exactly that I was doing.


It was at this point (about 54 shots later) that our female companion decided that it was a good time to get bodypainted. Not being one to complain, we ended up at a little place that was able to provide such a service. While waiting for the services to be rendered, we struck up a conversation with a retired Army colonel who's now a private security contractor in Afghanistan, and ended up spending the day with him and his newly-bodypainted ladyfriend. As you can imagine, walking down the street with these two lovely ladies provided quite the commotion. No joke, this was the top attraction on Bourbon Street, and I spent the afternoon providing my services as a bodyguard (even if I wasn't exactly sober). I had my head on a swivel, but you couldn't really ask for a better job. Actually, I'm more concerned about the photos from these events--if you see a fat Greek guy in a goofy pink foam Captain Morgan's hat next to some beautiful ladies, well that was me. I fear my eventual appearance in a Girls Gone Wild video.

As for the rest of the night, it involved a lot of drinks, and a lot of bars. In between various stops and shots, we managed to watch the majority of the Super Bowl, but had to make the trip back to Baton Rouge once the Giants gained the lead in the fourth quarter. Of course, we missed the best part of the game, but considering everything that happened before it, I'd say we made a fair tradeoff. Plus, we got to enjoy the replay of the game, so it really worked out well in the end.



While this certainly was the craziest day, that's not all the tales I have, so keep tuning in for more this week. For those of you who just hung around hoping for the pictures of the bodypaint, for shame! We are a blog of standards! If you want them, you're at least going to have to e-mail us. Come one, we have standard practices to follow.

The College Football Fan's Dilemma: When Is It Okay To Root For Your Rivals

Or: Potentially Acceptable Uses of the Phrase "Go Auburn"

While Mr. Zhuang spent last weekend cheering for his Mighty Ducks of Oregon to defeat Broseph U (also known as the current residence of Joe Reefer (who did no cheering at all for his school)), I sat in my room for some quiet contemplation. With no specific rooting interest that weekend since LSU was taking some time off to get in nightclub fights over the weekend, I certainly had the time to think. So it was during that time that I puzzled over one of those eternal questions: who do I root for when a team that my team has beaten faces off against a team that has beaten my team? In other words, do I want my team's defeats to look more impressive, or their triumphs?

Of course, this is only a question because of the nonsensical lack of a playoff in BigTime College Football, so instead of proving everything out on the field, one must have to contend with impressing fallible human voters and cold heartless computers each week. And without spending a sizable chunk of change on hookers and blow and RAM chips, one must seek other ways to impress the voters. And arguments about strength-of-schedule seem to be the prime method of choice.



As for the question at hand, I suppose it's a matter of philosophy--do I want my accomplishments to speak for themselves, or be able to explain away my failures easily? Due to the premium put on losses in college football (with more than one pretty much guaranteeing an absence from championship contention), it would seem that the focus should be on the quality of the opponent in the losses. If your team battled hard against a great opponent, it looks much better than crapping the bed one week against Directional State U.

However, with a resume of a series of impressive victories, one could certainly argue that their team had performed admirably, and that their one loss to a mediocre team was a fluke. What we have is an aberration, not something around which one can build an argument. Say we take the inverse of the situation: your team loses one game to a quality opponent, but then all your victories seem less impressive as your quality opponent then proceeds to defeat your other opponents--you have victories over three- and four-loss teams over two- and three-loss teams as a result. What was once an impressive looking resume is now just a mediocre set of half-assed accomplishments.



So who do I root for? I'd still say you should root for the team you lost to, simply due to the scarcity of losses. Which means that the Kentucky Wildcats better get their act together and take care of some fuckin' business.

So You Find Yourself Living In L.A. (Part 4)

aka Hawaiian Punch is Liquid Shit
aka So Your Roommate is a Raging Coke-Fiend

I know it's been a while since I posted. There is a long-awaited post still coming that was originally to bear the subtitle "Hawaiian Punch is Liquid Shit." However, there has been a long quest to find a camera I can borrow to take some necessary pictures for that one, and as such it hasn't happened yet. Then, this little gem came along, and obviously takes precedence. So, here we are. The post originally intended to be So You Find yourself Living In L.A. (Part 4): Hawaiian Punch is Liquid Shit will still appear, of course now it will be wildly out of order and pale in comparison to this one... but that's how life goes. For now, just take a gander over to the Vendettas list and know it's there for a reason.

Now that all the pleasantries have been taken care of, on to the meat of the post!

So, one of my roommate's friends came down from northern California on Tuesday. He was giving my roommate an air conditioner. Not just any air conditioner, but an insanely expensive air conditioner. Clearly this made me wonder about this friend. What kind of friend drives across a state to give a friend a $700 air conditioner? What exactly is the monetary status of this friend, and what exactly is the relationship with my roommate?

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I ignored it and went about my business. That evening they went out for drinks, as is usual, and then I went to bed as I had a 9am class. This is where it gets interesting...

About half an hour later, my roommate's friend burst through the front door. He woke me up, and proceeded to babble incoherently and pace around the apartment as if he were looking for something. The friend was very clearly drunk/high/something out of his mind, and kept going on about how my roommate was in some kind of huge trouble. Eventually I get out of him that something happened, and that he needs to find the police station... which eventually I narrowed down to the campus police (luckily, since I have no idea where the real police station is, or how to get there.)

As he is in no condition to do anything unassisted, I walk him to the campus police, where I sit for the next... many hours... watching this bizarre play unfold before my eyes. This was sort of like watching one of those time-disjointed movies where you can't know what's going on until the very end because all the pieces come together out of place. Very wanky for the viewer, yet simultaneously entertaining because you get to try to put the pieces together yourself. All I really gathered, was that some unhealthy amount of cocaine may or may not have been used by my roommate and his friend...
There was also something about a car; my roommate's or his friend's, I have no idea. Those are really the only details I got, because the rest of the time involved the friend babbling frantically and trying to get the police officers to do something... but nobody seemed to know what he wanted... I was fairly certain that he just didn't know what to do, so he got himself arrested. Meanwhile, I was just sitting on the couch in the campus police station until one of the officer s finally came over to ask me why I was there. He says "And where were you while all this was going on?", and I (having just sat through some of the stranger hours of my life) just crack a smile and quietly laugh as I say "... I was asleep in my apartment... I have absolutely no idea what is going on."

So the officer says "Well, I'd suggest you just go back to doing that" and I respond "So I'm good to go?" and he goes "Yeah, get out of here." There was talk of taking my roommate to the hospital... which realistically they probably should have done (or in fact did), I don't actually know.

After all that, I get home and go back to sleep. About an hour later, the friend comes back to the room. This is of course rather surprising to me, as I imagined he would surely have been arrested since he wandered into the police station incoherently rambling on about his friend who had just been arrested for the same things that he was clearly on, and then proceeded to try to give a police officer his credit card. But no, here he was in my room again. I couldn't get any coherent information about him as to what happened, where he was going, etc... but he packed up his stuff and left. As it was, I had no way of contacting either the roommate or his friend since I don't have the friend's number, and my roommate's cellphone has been broken for weeks. There was some ringing on our apartment's phone... which only the roommate uses... but it was about an hour before my class, and fuck that; I was not dealing with anything but going to classes.

At this point, I should also mention a hilarious sub-plot of this whole adventure:

When the friend and I left my apartment building to go to the campus police, we were confronted by a dude on a skateboard asking if there was a water fountain in the block my apartment is on. I replied "I think there's one in the building over there," and he says "No, not a drinking fountain... a water fountain."

Confused by this exchange, and in the middle of doing something much more important, I just go "Uh... no, there's not... but there's one over there" and point to a building with a fountain. (This was so random and confusing that it also stopped the boozed/coked-out-of-his-mind friend dead in his tracks.) So, we take about two more steps before realizing there is a HORDE of people marching toward us in the street. All of them simultaneously start drunkenly yelling about fountains, and if there is a fountain, and whatnot... and dude-on-skateboard, who appeared to be their leader, yells "there's one over there!" and points in the direction I gave him.

They all start stumbling that way, like a mass of inebriated zombies. As we pass by, one of the guys at the back of the group grabs my shoulder and leans in toward my ear yelling:

"DUDE!!!... HOW MUCH PUSSY DO YOU GET... LIKE... BY THE HOUR???"

...To which I responded, "Yahknow... It's hard to say. There are a lot of hours in a day," and I just kept walking.


As it stands now, the roommate did eventually come back to the apartment with his friend. It turns out that the police didn't do anything to the friend, for some reason they let him go totally free... which just makes me wonder how fucked up my roommate really must have been... because my roommate received a felony charge. Apparently, the LAPD officers I saw entering the station as I left had come to take my roommate to jail. The next day, the friend bailed him out.

Neither of them seem to really know what happened. The friend didn't even remember most of the journey that I was there for when I relayed it back to them. They don't actually remember what was happening when they got stopped, but apparently the campus police claim my roommate was snorting coke directly in front of their station... off one of the metal window frames... Now, while I am fairly sure that this is just complete police bullshit, exploiting my roommate not knowing what was going on to cover up a potential illegal search and seizure... There is no way for me to know, and given my roommate's possible mental handicap, I'm inclined to believe it's true just because it's hilarious.
So, here I am living with a possible felon. You gotta love L.A., baby!