Please note: harder language than Crab Media's average in this post. Please be advised if such language is offensive to your sensibilities.

I have held off blogging on substance for a while. So much of my life seems claimed and counter-claimed by opposing forces looking to jam my time, steal it, scrape it, BS me out of an hour here and a half hour there for no good reason. I remain impatient that my apartment cannot easily accommodate my alternative lifestyle, to wit: present Daddy two days a week, quasi-half-assed bachelor nobody for the other twelve. But at least I am keeping it clean, orderly and safe for the little fellows.

Please note: very strong and possibly offensive language used beneath the fold.

Baltimore Sun, May 22, 2008:

Maryland Transit Administration officials are offering discount cards for area businesses to students who pledge good behavior on city buses, an incentive that transit administrators hope will help curb disrespectful and violent behavior. The discount card will offer 10 percent to 20 percent off purchases at 12 city establishments, including Dunkin' Donuts, Cold Stone Creamery, Shoe City, Downtown Locker Room and other places.

...

Baltimore Sun, May 14, 2008:

The state's highest court suspended a Baltimore County judge ... for making profane and uncivil comments from the bench, issuing the harshest punishment for a Maryland judge in more than two decades and, observers said, sending a message to judges to watch their behavior.

The Court of Appeals found that District Judge Bruce S. Lamdin violated the state's judicial code of conduct. It accepted a judicial commission's recommendation that the judge be suspended for 30 days without pay.

I am putting these two YouTubes up simply because I find them funny. They are not new.

The first - safe for work - is "I Am Canadian," a Molson commercial from a couple of years back.

The second - NOT safe for work with some R-rated indecent and suggestive imagery - is "I Am Not Canadian," a radio station's rude satire of the famous Molson ad from, well, the perspective of a different identity. Some of the cracks may be too Canada/Quebec specific to translate easily.

Minister and controversial supporter of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, John Hagee: "The Catholic Church is the Great Whore... [of Babylon, from the Christian Apocalypse.]"

Next Frame: Disgraced NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, wheeling in a Brinks Armored Car of cash with hand signal lights like on the airport tarmac, "As if you'd know from great whores. At this price, they'd better be great." It is alleged that the services of one of the ALLEGED prostitution agencies implicated in ALLEGED connection to Governor Spitzer cost up to $4,500 an session, that's four thou five hunnert.

Better be a great whore. Eliot would be right to be pissed off if they tried to pass a "budget" $2,800 whore. maybe some toothless, high-mileage leatherbeaten retread from Beirut, off on him at that price.

The following is a brief guide for the casual or tourist user of the Washington Metro. Course Coarse (H/T to a loyal unidentified reader) language is employed in distinction to the usual practice of this blog, in order to get the point across.

Allan Uthman of The Beast: America's Best Fiend, "Dumb as Dixie", February 2008:

But why is it really that presidential campaigns pull out their dirtiest, most detestable tricks in South Carolina? Why, after all, do they reserve their metaphorical brawn only for this one primary?

Vulgar editorial comments at end of video of unidentified sourcing.

Thers of Whiskey Fire, February 2, 2008:

"Civility" is typically taken to constitute a virtue in and of itself when it is obviously no such thing. Chamberlain was by all accounts quite civil during his chat with Hitler at Berchtesgaden.

Truth and honesty are virtues. Civility is a mechanism that facilitates conversation among individuals or groups who have some sort of commitment to such virtues: if this is not the case, "civility" itself becomes an instrument of viciousness. See as reference the last eight years of American history.

Please note: unusually hard language below the "fold." May not be for all readers.

Baltimore Sun, February 8, 2008:

The 31-year-old music director of Bethel AME, a high-profile West Baltimore church, has been accused of rape and child abuse in a case involving a 13-year-old girl who is a member of the congregation, according to city police and church officials.

Timothy D. Price III was charged with second-degree rape, assault and child abuse, and multiple sex offense counts, city police said. Since his arrest Wednesday night, Price, who lives in Owings Mills, has been held on $1 million bail at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, electronic court records show.

Jessica Valenti got a raw deal. She could have had a hypothetical review of her 2007 published Full Frontal Feminism from Seal Press here at Crablaw from, well, a feminist woman. A young woman. A hip woman. If we had those here. Instead, she got The Crab: a 38 year-old married, soon-to-be separated father of two boys, tax lawyer and litigation nit-picker who sports gray hair and a paunch, who has been spending most of the last 60 days preparing for and negotiating the financial and visitation terms of his divorce. She could have gotten someone who is, in the term used by Margaret Cho's favorable cover blurb, "cool"; instead she got me, a male nerd who can speak in the dialect of 20-sided dice without an accent.

Observers of U.S. politics may recall references to President Bill Clinton as the "first Black President," though perhaps not the origins of those references. My impression is that Princeton's Professor Toni Morrison may not have been the first to describe him that way in print but this paragraph from a 1998 New Yorker article is often cited as the source of the reference:

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime.

Somebody needs to tell Casper the Well-Coiffed Ghost that American white people are supposed to be 2-3 years behind in their understanding of Black culture, not a full decade out of touch. This blog loves old-school rap - and plays it at any excuse - but we do in fact know that it's an antique collectors' item.

I feel polluted for liking this, as if I just saw "2 Girls 1 Shell Casing."

Read the Beast, and be stained and corrupted.