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Thomas Vaultonburg


Last Updated: 8/24/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 40
Sign: Aquarius

City: ROCKFORD
State: Illinois
Country: US
Signup Date: 10/24/2005

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Wednesday, November 04, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
The Democratic party can reasonably expect to lose two Governor's seats tonight. And they might slowly but surely be losing a lot more than that.

I'm a Democrat.

I'm a Liberal Democrat.

And call me crazy, but when the American public gives the Democratic Party a huge majority in both houses of Congress AND the Presidency, to boot, I expect something to get done. Quickly. 

I'm still waiting.

And frankly, I'm a little sick of hearing about Blue Dog Democrats and Arlon Specter Democrats and forgot-who-the-hell-they-are-or-who-voted-for-them  Democrats. Pass something, or I'll tell you what, this newly minted Stray Dog Democrat might get up off the porch and start taking a look around the neighborhood to see what else is going on.

Regardless of how I cast my vote, it seems pretty likely the Democrats will do something that seemed virtually impossible after last November: lose both houses of Congress.

But being gutless, divisive, lazy, unprincipled and abandoning those who elected you to lick the ass of those who buy you off will do that.

You're not bulletproof, and the American public is VERY fickle. If you're assuming even fifty percent of the people who voted for you in the last election even know the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, you got it wrong. They wanted change. And in long about twelve months, unless you grow a pair (and that includes you, too, ladies) they're going to want change again. 

Another thing you did this week that has lost a lot of my respect, and I have to be fair because I called bullshit on this when the Republicans did it, too, is you're lying about the economy.

You're lying.

You're well-selected cabinet and cadre of oh-so-much-smarter-than-the-rest-of-us advisors has been burning the midnight oil trying to cook the numbers so you could tell us the Stimulus Package is working and the economy is recovering.

Really? I called bullshit when the Republicans told me the economy was great because all of their friends seemed to be doing ok and the stock market was booming and now I'm telling you you're full of bullshit when you tell us the economy is recovering. Why, because Ford is making money? Because the banks and insurance corporations you gave OUR money to seem to be doing better. No fucking shit, Sherlock, if you gave me a bunch of someone else's money I'd probably be doing better, too. One number, and one number ONLY should be important to those who actually work for a living... the unemployment numbers. And those numbers are NOT going down.

So, you watch your ass, because I'll put up with a lot. A little corruption here and there, fuck your secretary, dance around the truth... we expect that from inveterate liars such as yourselves. But what I don't expect, and what I will not stomach, is being lied to in the same way the Republicans lied to me. The economy is NOT better, and it's getting worse for the people I know and the people they know.

And if you're going use the wealth of corporations to show me things are getting better I'm here to tell you that you might as well be George Bush. And next November, I might do something I've never done before. Because this Stray Dog Democrat ain't on a chain.




3:04 AM 
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Thursday, October 29, 2009 

Category: Food and Restaurants
I'm stopping the presses for this shit.

Monday night my friend in Texas bit into a banana and cringed. The banana was filled with a blood-like substance.

So I asked her what any of you would: has it been tampered with?

No. Not at all, she says.

So we start searching the internets for diseases or viruses that affect bananas.

Nothing.

We search for other references to bananas filled with a blood-like substance.

Nothing.

She calls the fruit company and they say it happens on occasion when bananas are dropped during harvesting and offer her five dollars and a letter of apology.

I tell her that doesn't sound right to me, call the USDA.

She does.

The USDA agent in Washington D.C. says nuh-uh, never heard of anything like this. We're going to investigate this further.

Here's my question: has science gone too fucking far. Will we all start opening fruits and finding various animal parts because scientists think it's a good idea to fuck with everything?


If I had to guess I'd say what happened here is genetic engineering gone wrong. I'd say it's a glimpse of the future. I'd say it's time to stop these sick cocksuckers before they finally do unleash a virus or create a mutation that kills us all.

Before I show you the pictures I will tell you my friend is of unimpeachable character and these pictures were taken minutes after she peeled the banana. Neither one of us has the desire or the ability to make up something like this.

I'm also going to be a prick and make you go to my site to see the pictures. Oh, boo-hoo, two clicks. When you get there just click the big yellow Mutant Banana link




1:56 AM 
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Halloween is now the second most popular holiday, right behind Christmas. Adults sure have taken to it. I was engaged in a discussion about psychoanalytic defense mechanisms earlier. Reaction Formation, in particular, but adults dressing up seems to say a lot about the unconscious. Is it a surprise a lot of women want to be a slut? Slutty nurse, slutty cat, slutty slut slut slut? Just a curiousity to me. No one seems to want to dress up as Jonas Salk or Ghandi (maybe the Hare Krishna) from Dawn of the Dead.

Also, does anyone else remember a decade or so ago Halloween was so on the outs that trick or treating was canceled in a lot of places in favor of school parties? There just wasn't much interest. Anyway, Halloween is back. And I have some poems to commemorate it. 

Vampyre

Who's vein will my fetid fang
Flay this night and let flow
The scarlet scroll that feeds
My perfidious thirst?

What trick in my trove
Or treat of the flesh
Will she trade for
That hearbeat brief
Flight into fancy
And aeon's Fall 
Into damnation?



Zombie

with your brains
in my brawn
we're unstoppable



Wolfman

being a Wolfman is
tear tear tear
terrific.





Unpleasant dreams.
8:35 PM 
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Monday, October 26, 2009 

Category: Sports
At this time last year Cedric Benson had been left for dead. He had been judged an unworthy teammate, a coward and a complete bust by those who should have known him best. That's why when Cedric Benson ran wild for 189 rushing yards Sunday against the very team (and teammates) that had made these evaluations of his worth it re-affirmed my faith in second chances, perserverance and determination. Watching the smile on his face after he finally reached the end zone after an afternoon of chewing up the gridiron and flattening Chicago Bears said something about true joy and believing in yourself. We got a unique chance to see that rarest of things in this modern society: a resurrection. 

Cedric Benson is by all accounts a strange cat. Aloof, unusual.... strange. And in ultra-conformist, close-knit patricarchal societies like the NFL (and your local country club) there is no worse crime than strange. The NFL is a league populated by rapists, woman beaters and more than a few murderers. But these crimes are covered up, or in cases where they can't be covered up, forgiven, as long as one remains a faithful soldier and is willing to crash into other human beings unquestioningly and fearlessly. In short, no crime is unforgivable in the NFL if you can block, tackle, throw, run, or catch the ball. Any crime except one.... being strange.

Cedric Benson is a jazz player in a league full of hard rock drummers who know less about a creative fill than the drummer for AC-DC. When Cedric Benson was drafted with the 4th pick in the 2005 NFL draft he did what a lot of players who suddenly realize they're millionaires do: he cried. But something was different in his demeanor. If you watched closely he didn't appear to be crying tears of joy. And when a microphone was shoved in his face he didn't utter the well-scripted cliches other top draft picks rehearse so well. He said something like "Look what they made me do."

Look what they made me do. 

Is it possible we had another University of Texas dreadlocked, pot-smoking Hippie running back on our hands? A man who didn't feel that his genius for carrying an inflated leather ball and running over other men in a blind rage to acquire ground obligated him to do so, or was ultimately even a useful application of a body and and a will akin to a musician's talent?

To complicate matters Benson held out on signing his contract and didn't appear to work very hard when he did join the team. His heart just didn't seem to be in it. He didn't run very hard and he shied away from making hard contact. These are unforgivable football sins, especially on a team that already had Thomas Jones, a workout fiend who stays in top shape year round, lives in the weightroom and will run blindly into a brick wall to gain one inch. Thomas Jones was loved by his teammates and Benson was, at the very least, misunderstood.


After fumbling in the Super Bowl, Benson's fate with the Bears was sealed in the summer of 2008 when he was arrested on alcohol related offenses twice in one month. I worked and made my living in the booze industry for most of my life so I won't be a hypocrite by either defending or condemning anyone for an alcohol-related offense, but what I will tell you is he wasn't operating a vehicle in either case and there's good evidence to suggest that all he was really guilty of was being a dreadlocked black man hanging out with white women and seeming to have too good of a time. 

Last September the Cincinnati Bengals took a chance and signed Cedric Benson. And for the rest of that season Benson played well above average. So well, in fact, when this season began he was considered by some to have a chance of being one of the NFL's better running backs. But others were more cautious. Still others were just downright negative about Cedric Benson and wanted to warn anyone that had the audacity to believe in him that he is a coward, a criminal and a weirdo. 

As a Bears fan I can understand the frustration. But when Benson started running over opposing defenses like a Sherman Tank it should have been a time for one of those infamous cliches sports is famous for about effort, determination, hard work and improbable comebacks. But instead it just fueled the growing resentment and even hatred some Bears fans had for a player they think has wronged them and their beloved team in some personal way.

So, this Sunday when Benson insisted upon staying on the field and running over the team, and in some cases, teammates, who had judged him so harshly, even after his own team had the game well in hand, it did seem personal. And who can blame him? 

When he finally scored a touchdown and Chad Ochocinco came over to hug him, Benson was where you might typically expect to find him: in a corner by himself. But when Cedric Benson finally smiled for the national audience that had witnessed him use the team that had given up on him as his personal highlight reel, it said everything that is good about second chances, believing in yourself and insisting on following your own drumbeat even when those around you are marching in lock-step formation.

Maybe it's just possible Cedric Benson has done what a lot of people refuse to do in this society: grow up. Maybe some Bear's fans need to do the same.



8:14 PM 
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Friday, October 16, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
     Rush Limbaugh spent the first fifteen minutes of his radio program today explaining that the reason he was dropped from a group of his buddies that are attempting to buy the St Louis Rams is the players union and that the whole incident is a portrait of "Obama's America on full display,".

      No it isn't, you fat, hateful, piece of shit. There is only one reason you will never, ever be allowed to participate in any civilized part of American society, and that reason is simply this: people despise you because you represent the lowest, basest, most ignorant aspects of human nature. People hate you. Maybe you didn't know that because you stay within the insulated cocoon of your little radio show where everyone looks like you sounds like you agrees with you. But outside of that very small sample of America you're hated more than the Swine Flu. Forgive me swines and flu. 

     Rush Limbaugh was just put on a ballot of sorts and put before the American people. ALL of the American people. Not just the small sliver of Americans that are slavish sycophants to his daily dose of misogynist, racist, moronic babbling, and the people overwhelmingly said "Take a fucking hike."

Amazingly, Limbaugh is the first to cry foul. Let me get this straight: your complaint is that you've been excluded from a small, private club based on your race and/or political views? Hmm, isn't that sort of like what has been happening to African Americans since, well since forever? But when the deer is the one toting the shotgun suddenly you got problems with hunting season.

I don't want to go on all day. I'm extremely happy and proud of the American people for just standing up and saying "Fuck you, Rush Limbaugh." On his little radio show he gets to make the rules. He gets to pretend he's the voice of God. He gets to belittle others and put down anyone he chooses to attack with no one to oppose him. But in the REAL world you don't get to do that. He found out this week just how small and out of touch his audience is. He found out he has far less influence on the opinions of the American people than he likes to believe.

He found out a lesson every stinking bully finds out sooner or later: you're just a scared, infintile, weak little boy with an inferiority complex. And you're right to have it.

Now skulk back to your little bitty audience and leave the rest of us decent human beings alone.
2:11 AM 
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009 

Category: Writing and Poetry
I used to have this unconscious habit of saying "And that's how you do that," every time I did something I thought I was doing well. I never even knew I was doing it until someone I worked with pointed it out. Then I realized I was doing it a lot. I'd make the perfect martini: "And that's how you do that." I'd throw a hat trick at darts.... "And that's how you do that" etc.

Then life kicked me in the balls about six thousand times and I stopped doing it. 

Which is probably a good thing, except I've been told I'm marvelous with a little confidence.

So, on the way home from a Cheeseburger and fries intended to fill the void left from another disheartening fantasy football defeat a poem I've been putzing around with for ten years came to me. I came home and wrote it down. First poem in six months.

Whiskey Spills, Bad Lovers, and Celebrity 
Deaths Come In Threes

"You know Johnny fucked
Farrah Fawcett when she
Was still on Charlies' Angels,"
Says celebrity sidekick Ed
McMahon from behind a Scotch
Too cheap for an ex Marine
To a second rate bartender/actor
Paying too little attention.
"And he always said that Michael
Jackson was a fucking child molester,"
Says McMahon, pretending not to notice
The celebrtity tabloid show
Flickering in the corner.
As late night sidekick Ed McMahon's
Shaky hand spills a third trickle
Of rot gut onto the bar he knows
Back home his trophy wife
And the three Pekignese are already
Staring at the couch like
They're seeing a ghost.
Ex Marine Ed McMahon beckons
The two-bit bartender closer
And offers: "I can only tell you
One thing kid: Whiskey spills,
Bad lovers, and celebrity
Deaths come in threes."


     And that's how you do that.



2:59 AM 
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Monday, October 12, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
I remember 9/11. I remember it mostly for two reasons: I was working in a strip club and it was football season. The actual morning I was playing internet hearts with someone from France, someone from England, and someone from Australia. Then I went to bed because I had to work later.

This blog isn't about 9/11. I have nothing to say about it. When you work in a place without windows and are drunk all the time they could drop a bomb on your city and if the club still opened that night that would be your only reality. 

This is about perspective.

Specifically the trite statement people make after any disaster that "This just puts things in perspective."

No it doesn't.

Well, actually it does, but in the opposite way of which the statement is usually intended.

Life is stupid and petty and vain and shallow and people are ignorant and selfish and cruel.

That's the perspective we live in.

Post 9/11 they canceled the football games the first week (I think) saying it just puts the game in perspective. And for that whole season no one would say football cliches like "We're going to war or it was a battle out there today." 

That season.

Then Hurricane Katrina introduced nature to New Orleans. They hadn't seen it much before that. Like me they were in a place and time that seemed removed from reality.

And the cliches began again. The New Orleans Saints won a few games early that year, and despite the fact that the owner had wanted to move the team all spring and summer, no one seemed to remember that. Then the Saints played on Monday Night Football. And the shit that came out of the national media's mouth was not to be believed. Football was saving New Orleans. The Saints were bringing the city back. 

So, which is it I've been wondering. Is football just a game, a distraction, and something to be put on the back burner during more pressing times. Or is it what the media postulated: a savior?

I think I got an answer Saturday evening when the latest football messiah, Tim Tebow, suited up and took the gridiron for the Florida Gators.

Alright, so a college kid played football. So what? you might be asking.

So what is the previous week Tebow suffered a pretty nasty hit and a concussion.

Concussion? So what, they've been getting them since the beginning of the game.

A concussion is when you get hit so hard your brain dislodges and strikes the skull. Not much has been known about it until recently, only that boxers and players in contact sports seemed to get them from time to time.

But the latest research is showing it's a huge deal, leading to early dementia and a variety of motor and cerebral conditions. Point is, it's a very serious deal and it's unlikely there's anyone in college sports that doesn't know that by now.

But the Florida Gators, Tim Tebow, the national media, and perhaps worst of all, his parents, didn't seem to care. A week after being struck so hard his brain was bruised because it dislodged and struck his skull, Tim Tebow was out there slinging a leather ball around. 

If you research Tim Tebow you'll quickly find out he's this season's darling. Last year, too. A lot of people are calling him the best college football player ever. He's a big deal and a lot of people are invested in him throwing that ball.

What they won't tell you is he's actually not very good. Any person in the know about college football knows he's not even in the best 100 players to ever play, probably not in the top 1000, and will never play a single day on a professional football team. 

But none of that mattered the past week leading up to the game with LSU. This kid's brain didn't seem to matter to anyone. Even his parents didn't seem to care one day maybe not too far down the road he might wake up and not remember how to tie his shoes. All that seemed to matter was the game. The trophy. The adulation. And the ultimate payoff (which isn't coming). His coaches, his parents, all the hangers-on were willing to risk his brain for their gain.

And that put the game in perspective for you.

The game is bigger than 9/11. It's bigger than Hurricane Katrina. It's bigger than Tim Tebow's brain.

Because it's what we are. Mean, ignorant, cruel animals trying to gain ground against anyone we consider our opposition. Willing to sacrifice our humanity, our children, our morals for a shiny cup. A shiny cup full of blood.

And that's the real perspective and what you need to know about humanity.








7:20 PM 
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Sunday, October 11, 2009 

Category: Life
Here in Northern Illinois long about October it's become very fashionable for couples and families to go pick apples. People seem to show the same exhuberance every summer over corn boils. I see women surrounding the bin of corn at Walmart like crows as if they've never seen corn before.

Which is sort of funny because...

In Northern Illinois we're literally fucking surrounded by corn and apples.

I'd say what has happened here is an absolute disconnect between people and the environment. A disconnect so profound they consider the fruits and vegetables growing around them to be foreign delicacies. Spooky, really. 

I think people really have lost track of anything that exists outside of the Walmart that seems to create the border between "civilization" and whatever exists "out there." 

Corn?

Apples?

Heard of them?

I know, I'm an asshole, and probably the only person in the world who sees harmless, romantic, family activities like obsessing over apples as a symptom of a larger sickness in society, but that's how I feel.

Is it possible one day Walmart will sell virtual apple picking tours to young lovers and families who are too oblivious to their surroundings to know these objects once actually grew somewhere "out there?"


2:04 AM 
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Friday, October 02, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
I don't really have a topic for this blog. I"m really more curious what some of you think. Especially on this Roman Polanski issue. I'd always had it in my brain that this was a woman closer to eighteen and someone who was hanging around the scene and that maybe it was more of just a legal technicality. But that's not the case. I just actually read the details of the conviction today and it was a pretty horrific crime. 

So, my problem isn't with bringing Polanski back to answer for the crime, it's more with the application of the law to one person when I have this sick feeling if they had the inclination they could put half of Hollywood in prison for this same crime. And not just Hollywood. It's like this mob mentality we have in America where we like to find one person and make them answer for the crimes of the society itself, as if by scapegoating that monster we purge the land of all sin.

Not true. And especially not true in the case of violence against women. If the DA in Los Angeles is serious about this crime I encourage that person to go ahead and seek out and prosecute EVERYONE guilty of this crime. They can turn the whole area into one large prison. 

Shit, wouldn't it have been great if Bin Laden had had sex with a thirteen year old girl in LA...

Maybe after the Mayor of Chicago gets through spending his year trying to get the Olympics to come to a city that can't even fill it's potholes and the DA there in LA finally gets to the bottom of this forty year old case they can start thinking about how they can stop the students from beating each other to death in the schools.

Roman Polanski is a sick son of a bitch. And would you like to know something: he's got plenty of company. You've got a pedophile or a wife beater or a rapist or a child abuser right there on your block. But I bet we don't even get down to having a serious discussion about that because we already got the guy in custody responsible for all the villainy in the world. And all it took was forty years and a few million dollars and fuck there probably isn't even sex crime going on in Hollywood tonight. 

Warren Beatty?

Jack Nicholson?

C'mon, now. 

If we're going to get the lynch mob together let's go ahead and clean some house. 

We're living in a society that absolutely sexualizes teens and profits from it. It's fucking Swingerland, baby. So until someone starts taking sex crimes seriously across the board I ain't buying any of this shit. 

What I don't understand at this point, and now actually having read the details of the crime, is how anyone can defend the man. It's almost like Hollywood is saying "Ya, he brutalized this child, but he made Chinatown."

It looks bad, Hollywood.

And yet (two conjunctions) somehow I have this sneaky suspicion this type of depravity isn't the exclusive property of Hollywood.

What do you say America, should we go ahead and shine that bright light of truth and justice into the dark corners of the human experience?

I see some of you balking now. I happen to be one of those sickos who likes woman about two to four years younger than me, naturally born female, straight sex, no beating, fetishes or need to hurt anyone. Monogamy. Don't like to share my toys. Don't want to degrade, diminish, dismiss, tie up, tie down, beat up or in general put down anyone to get off.

I know, I'm a sick fuck.








10:31 PM 
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009 

Category: News and Politics
Around two this afternoon I see the post office jeep drive away, which can mean only one thing... a new bill in my mailbox. 

But which will it be: Con Ed, AT+T, who knows.

None of the above. Or neither of the above, more correctly. What I found in my mailbox made my day.

A bill for $4,149 for an MRI at Swedish American Hospital, where I was born.

I was dancing. Literally. This made my day. Four fucking thousand dollars for an MRI. You could buy one of those fancy Indian automobiles for that kind of money. 

So, what the fuck about receiving a huge medical bill made me so ecstatic?

One simple thing...

I have no intention of paying it!

I just got $4,149 worth of free medical attention. I feel like I won the lottery. 

It's Christmas for the crazy. It's Halloween for the homeless. 

Fuck, next they might start passing out eye exams and dental care.

But let me tell you one thing, my friends: being disabled has this one very great benefit: time.

And let me tell you why...

Bill collectors.

Pain in the ass, right? Well, maybe not. These are people who have to get things done. 

I, on the other hand, am someone who doesn't have anything to get done.

Call me up, dumbfuck. I'll tell you about my hernia, the tomatoes I'm ripening on the windowsill, how I really want to add Legedu Naanee to my fantasy football team beacause he has a funny name but I don't think he'll really help me win. Two, three hours later maybe we can get down to finances. And here's the lowdown, Dog the Bill Collector... I ain't got none. I ain't getting any. And since they don't have debtor's prisons anymore there ain't a motherfucking thing you can do about it, but feel free to continue calling because I got plenty of stuff I'd like to talk to you about. 

So, I'm having a great day.

And let me make a recommendation to you: quit paying for shit. Just stop. There ain't a motherfucking thing anyone can do about it. Credit card debt: fuck it. Corporate America just showed you how they handle debt: they don't pay it. They stick their creditors and vendors, declare bankruptcy, then keep the profitable aspects of their businesses and let you hold the bag.

Do the same thing.

Bills out of hand... don't pay them. That's fucking capitalism, man. Stop for paying for shit you already consumed. 

As for me: joy. I have an arthritic back and will probably lose most of my mobilty in the coming years, but victory is mine because at least I have a pretty little picture of my deformed back now and for a scant $4,149. 

By the way, this is a pretty decent argument for the public option because guess who's going to pay for the fact that I'm not going to pay for this anyway....

Ding, ding, ding.

8:47 PM 
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