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Thu.Jun.02.2005

2:35 pm EDT        68°F (20°C) in Newcomerstown, OH

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You won't notice it, but starting with this update, I will be obtaining my temperature reports from a different source. After nearly five years, spanning nearly 180 updates in this section, I have ended this site's association with AccuWeather Inc., which is based in State College, PA. It recently came to light that AccuWeather donated $2,000 to the campaign funds of Sen. Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), who, as that nickname suggests, is obsessed with that particular bestial sex act. (Actually, Santorum fell victim to the "slippery slope" logical fallacy that homo-haters love to employ, contending that the aforementioned act would have to be allowed if committed same-sex couples were allowed to share in the legal benefits of civil marriage. But as far as I'm concerned, if he enjoys having sex with dogs and box turtles, that's his business.)

The very fact that AccuWeather gave money to such an ignorant jackass is in and of itself enough justification to terminate my use of their services, but this story gets even worse. It seems that AccuWeather's purpose for making the donation was to get Santorum to introduce a bill in the Senate that would have forced the National Weather Service, a government agency under the jurisdiction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to start charging the public for its weather-forecasting services. This would have been favorable for AccuWeather in that it would have removed the competition of a free service from the weather-data marketplace. This just makes it all the more obvious that you can count on Republicans to rig the free market and screw the average American consumer — while they continue to claim to be the party of the people. Bullshit; Republicans only give a flying fuck about their corporate buddies, at the expense of everybody else. Such a system, in which corporations are basically running the show, gutting environmental protections, widening the gap between the über-rich and the dirt-poor, has a name: fascism.

I will not stand for such behavior on the part of corporations and fascist politicians. I understand that, in all likelihood, far more corporations are doing evil things than we are aware of, but at the same time, it is only fair to apply the standard of "innocent until shown to be guilty" in these cases. All of that said, I have replaced AccuWeather with its most hated competitor, The Weather Channel. From this point forward, I will employ TWC temperature data in this section, and the link I once had to AccuWeather has been replaced by a link to TWC.

While I'm on the topic of corporations, I also have to put in a good word for the Ford Motor Company. Ford has, in kind of a backhanded way, said "fuck you, you incompetent idiots" to the American Fuckwad, er, "Family" Association. In an attempt to deflect public attention away from the utter failure of their nine-year "boycott" of the Walt Disney Company, the A.Fuck.A. very quickly and unceremoniously ended said failed "boycott" of Disney and just as quickly announced a new "boycott" of Ford and its gay-affirming corporate values — among which is providing domestic-partner benefits. I don't know why Ford even bothered to respond to the ignorant nitwits, but the company did release a statement saying that it will stick to its core values of equality and tolerance. We gay folks can show the A.Fuck.A. who really is the boss by snapping up a bunch of Five Hundreds, Focuses, Crown Victorias, F-150s, Explorers, Escapes, Expeditions, and Excursions. (Of course, if you want to thwart the Bush regime's policy of enriching his Big Oil buddies at our expense, I'd suggest a hybrid Focus or Escape.)

What is even more unbelievable is that the A.Fuck.A. has claimed "success" against Disney. Their barometer of "success" seems to be the fact that former Disney CEO Michael Eisner was ousted by the board of directors last year. Hmmm … given that Disney's subsidiary ABC has been putting more and more non-A.Fuck.A.-friendly programming, such as Desperate Housewives, on the air since 1996, it is quite clear that the A.Fuck.A. has, if anything, had the reverse of its intended effect on Disney. A similar performance against Ford would result in all of two rednecks trading in their 1978 F-250s for 1982 Chevy Suburbans — come on, do you honestly think most A.Fuck.A. members possess the intelligence required to hold down any job that pays more than $6.50 per hour? At that rate, even a $500 car is a once-every-10-years expense.

I'm going to get to run a nice easy weekend load between now and Monday. Within the next 24 hours, I have to get back up to Michigan to pick it up, and I'll have until Monday morning to get it to upstate New York.