…of Christmas music. Yeah, I know, it’s makes me gag too. However, there are many “alternate” versions of some of the old favorites. I have my favorites, and I’ll see what I can do to provide you, my loyal readers, a video or link once a week until Christmas. Today’s offering is “Santa Claus and His Old Lady”

“He had some magic dust man….”

“I know that dude. I played a gig with him last year…”

Man, Tommy Chong sounds so ripped in this video. I couldn’t help but laugh. Enjoy!

Anyone who grew up when I did, will probably remember the short show Picture Pages. It had quite a catchy theme song and was hosted by Bill Cosby. I can remember wanting one of those magic markers that made the cool sounds. I don’t remember how the conversation got started, but a co-worker and I were talking about Picture Pages the other night and so I just had to do a quick YouTube search to see if there was a video out there. Sure enough, I found one:

I found his over-enunciating of the word here to be hilarious. Am I the only one?

After reading this post by Karen over at The Farting Geisha, I felt a strong urge to post the following image:

The basics of this story are that a Baptist Church revoked the leasing of a property of theirs from an Interfaith Group that would have had non-Christian groups practicing their religious customs on the grounds during a Thanksgiving celebration. Real tolerant, ain’t they?

Most of you are probably aware of the various Chuck Norris jokes out there on this series of tubes. If not, let me give you a couple and point you to a site that has more:

• Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep. He waits.
• The Chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
• Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk and Kill.
• Guns don’t kill people, Chuck Norris kills people.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t throw up if he drinks too much. Chuck Norris throws down!

Now I suppose you’re wondering why I’m posting Chuck Norris “facts”, right? Well, it’s because Mike Huckabee (R-candidate) has produced an ad with Chuck Norris endorsing him for President. I found it over at Shakesville (Thanks Melissa!).

Now I find this ad hilarious for a couple reasons. One, Chuck Norris jokes are funny because they take shots at Chuck Norris, like all he can do is a roundhouse kick. Apparently Chuck doesn’t know that. And two, why would Mike Huckabee even think to say something so stupid as “My plan to secure the border? Chuck Norris.”? But hey, keep going with that Mike. Finally, we know that the Chuck Norris Facts in the ad and the ones I listed above are jokes. Does that mean that the “Huck Facts” are jokes too? I guess so…

Deuddersun has a post up pledging his solidarity with the striking members of the Writer’s Guild of America. Since, in his support of their strike, he has gone on strike as well (pledging not to post any new content) I will re-post the video he has up that explains the who, what, and why of this strike. I also support the union in their effort to get paid for what they create. Watch the video below and pledge your support for the fine folks that bring us our favorite shows and movies.

Do you have one?

According to the DoD, if you served in any armed conflict you very well could. My brother, Road-Rage, surely has one. My nephew definitely has one. But the question is, what exactly is it? The short answer is “a bunch of bullshit”. The longer answer I heard on NPR yesterday.

Personality Disorder is DoD’s answer to “saving the gov’t money”. Essentially, any soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who feels they are suffering from PTSD or combat-related stress is given a psychological consultation upon the conclusion of serving in a combat zone. Many of you veterans from the Vietnam era probably remember this consultation with disdain. According to the interview, a diagnosis of PTSD requires numerous psychological and psychiatric appointments to put the serviceman/woman on the road to recovery. It also entails several months before said service-person can be medically discharged and given disability benefits through the Veterans Administration. However, a diagnosis of Personality Disorder requires just a couple visits with the Dr. and in a couple weeks your Unit Commander can have you discharged. Adios, amigo. No disability benefits at all. Depending on what caused you to be “singled out” by your commander, it could mean a total loss of ALL benefits.

As a veteran this kind of conduct by the Dept. of Defense as well as the VA has me seeing RED! This is an outrage and is further proof of the current Administration’s complete disdain for our troops. In fact, a House Veterans Affairs Committee reported similar findings:

In the last six years, the military has discharged over 22,500 service members due to Personality Disorders.  The Committee found that once a service member is diagnosed with a Personality Disorder, he or she has a much more difficult time receiving benefits and treatment at the VA(my emphasis). 

Service members discharged due to a Personality Disorder, rather than PTSD or some other mental health condition, are generally not provided military disability benefits because the military classifies Personality Disorders as existing prior to entry into military service(my emphasis). 

The report goes on to say:

Joshua Kors, a journalist that been reporting on Personality Disorder for the last ten months, stated that a Personality Disorder discharge is a “contradiction in terms.  Recruits who have a severe, pre-existing condition like a Personality Disorder do not pass the rigorous screening process and are not accepted into the Army.”  Kors interviewed soldiers that passed the first screening and were accepted into the Army.  “They were deemed physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well, before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat,” said Kors.  “In each case, it was only when they came back physically or psychologically wounded and sought benefits that their pre-existing condition was discovered.”

The relaxed recruiting standards were just the beginning to undermining our military’s quality, reliability, and effectiveness. But this report surely spells it out in plain English that Bush could give a damn about our troops. Once again, it’s all about dollars and cents. How an Administration that claims to Support the Troops and then pull this kind of crap is beyond me. It’s shit like this that forces me, a proud Marine Corps veteran, to tell my son that I don’t want him joining the military at all. And it’s all because of they’re lying bastards, every last one of them.

I’ve got a pretty eclectic mix of music on my iPod. I’ve always been a lover of music. Lately, I’ve been listening to some indie stuff that I find here and there on the Internet and I must admit, most of it is pretty good. My musical tastes traverse the whole gamut of musical genres from Country to Classical to Electronica to Alternative to Death Metal. And yes, even the occasional Polka tune. I am in Milwaukee you know. When in Rome as they say.

Anyway, I wanted to take a minute to direct you guys (and girls, can’t forget the girls) to a couple websites that I like to get some of this interesting music from:

Spinner.com Spinner is a blog that is brought to us courtesy of AOL but they have a feature I really like called the MP3 of the day. One of the ones I downloaded recently was Cake’s version of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. Awesome take on an old song whose message is arguably even more potent today than it was when first released.

Daytrotter.com Daytrotter is site that offers newer musicians a chance to be heard via the Internet. They offer MP3 downloads from bands that participate in their “Daytrotter Sessions” that are recorded at Studio One, a smallish recording studio located in downtown Rock Island, Illinois. One of my favorite downloads found amongst their many pages of artists Cold War Kids’ song, We Used To Vacation. A heart-wrenching story of an alcoholic who promises to stop drinking but finds it incredibly hard to do.

And finally there’s Jamusa.com. This is the site for Jam Productions which sponsors a lot of shows in the Chicago, Minneapolis, and Central Illinois areas. The site itself doesn’t have much for downloads that I’ve been able to find but if you signup for their weekly newsletter, there’s almost always a Featured Artist of the Week that usually offers a download or two.

So if you’re into music as I am, very strange, hardly-ever-heard-of music, I encourage you to check out these sites. They’ve served me well and are helping me keep my iPod full of new and different music. Catch you guys later, I got some music to listen to!

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Not that we here at The Bulldog Says… have much to worry about from the intelligence community. Hell, I’ve been checking my Sitemeter stats pretty regularly and the most government “monitoring” I get is some GS puke looking for Calvin & Hobbes snowman pictures.

For those of those just joining us, or those re-joining us here at The Bulldog Says… I got a new look. Still trying to tweak the code to get things to look the way I want them to. Let me know what you think!

My name is Bulldog and I’m an addict. For the past several months I have been collecting what those in the know call LOLcats. You may have seen them at your favorite blog or at icanhascheezburger.com. I’ve gone as far as to put them on my iPod. I know I’m an addict and I think I may need help.

For those of you not in the know, LOLcats are basically user-submitted pictures of cats, kittens, etc. that have cheezy misspelled captions posted on the pictures themselves. The most famous of which spawned the website icanhascheezburger.com. It’s a picture of a gray American shorthair cat with its head cocked slightly to one side with the caption “I can has cheezburger?”. I never found that one very funny but it’s the one that seems to have started this tacky Internet trend. Below is one of my favorite LOLcats: