Question: are you willing, or actively wanting to get rid of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms?

Question: do you believe the government has your best interests at heart?

Question: is civil disobedience as a way to protest laws or police action dead?

Question: does anyone really, truly give a shit about rights, as long as we can still buy Ipods, VW Jettas, stainless steel appliances, flat-screen TVs and custom bath fittings?

Question: does the answer to that question come so quickly that you realize the government probably knows it too?

Question: do you believe the government would like to keep us pliable, happy, consuming and feeling safe?

Question: is right now the most dangerous time in all of human history?

Answer: If you’ve got one, we want to hear it.

Ok, totally offended by the W article: » link to Money Honeys: Celebrities: Wmagazine.com Aren’t we beyond this?

The article is about how hedge funds hire attractive women with no skills as eye candy, and, actually…you know what…..who cares. That’s not the point.

Here’s the point: someone was actually OFFENDED by the article. They were so offended that they SHARED THE F*CKING ARTICLE WITH HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ON TWITTER!!!!

But let’s move on. The thing that actually drives me clinically insane is the fact that people are offended. Apparently “Thou Shalt Not Offend” was the 11th commandment that accidentally broke off the tablet. The entire notion of something being offensive just boggles my mind. It’s a complete sham. It’s bullshit. Nothing can be offensive unless you let it bother you. It’s just that simple. Sure, something can make you angry. Someone can say something that makes you feel awful. I’m not advocating being an asshole, I’m just saying that nothing I say is offensive unless you decide to let it get to you.

The other problem with the “offensive” tag is that it completely conflicts with free speech, something I’m all for. I just recently heard someone complain “I’m sick of people hiding behind the first amendment.” I’m sorry, what?

Now, if you know me, you’ll know that I’m just about as liberal a fellow as you’ll ever meet. But when it comes to the free speech vs. being offended, hurting someone’s feelings, or being politically correct, the choice is clear. Free speech wins every time. Which brings me to the second example of “I’m offended” that made my skin boil.

Back in April, a student from the University of Toronto wrote in article in the student paper entitled “10 Reasons it’s not OK to be fat“. A guy from a site called “Big Fat Blog” caused a shitstorm, and began a campaign to get people to write to the editor of the paper for an apology. A guy from the “Birdman Blog” wrote:

The article in the newspaper certainly got me fired up enough that I called the Newspaper and asked for a statement regarding it and I am still awaiting a response from the school and I fully intend to pursue this story as a journalist and see what I can do it. It might make it to the air OR it might remain on a blog but regardless, I see this as a chance to do something and stand up to the Ivory Tower and perhaps strike a blow against the monster.

Ol’ Birdman then went on to list the email addresses, phone numbers, etc. of everyone at the newspaper, the University President, etc. Then, again using twitter, people started sounding the horn to raise a mob. Cries of “how could a newspaper print this?” were everywhere. “Send them an email and demand this filth be stopped” was heard across North America.

All because of a student’s opinion in a newspaper NO ONE would have ever read. The enemies of free speech wanted to form a worldwide mob to demand retribution because someone had their feelings hurt. Sticks and stones, my friends. Sticks and stones.

Discuss this in the forum

Feel free to post your favorite Carlin clips in the forums.

The guys at assholes and mustaches have officially welched on our blog post bet, and unfortunately, we here at TellHimFred surrendered our thirty-day “take it easy on the welching shitheads” token a couple of bourbon shots ago.

We’re a Boston-based blog, as you know, and the guys at A&M are a couple of West Coasters. Of late, we’ve enjoyed a tentative, Israel v. Lebanon style “we’re-not-actively-nuking-you-so-maybe-we-can-be-friends” style of blog friendship with Magglio and Jericho, but the events of the NBA Championship have led us to an unfortunate and awkward head, which THF is all too willing to exploit for fun and profit.

For those of you without the wherewithal to register a forum ID, I’ll sum up: after game three of the NBA Finals, where 0-2 L.A. lashed back against the many-headed hydra of the Boston Celtics with an 87-81 win, the A&M crew crowed that the Celtics were a flash-in-the-pan team who couldn’t stand up to the might of the Kobe Beef Squad, saying, and i quote: “Fuck you, Boston.” Bristling at this shot across the bow of our fair city, and fully prepared to eat crow and Magic Johnson’s T-Cells if the Cs were to lose, I proposed the bet:

If the Celtics lost the finals, we would compose a blog post, deliniating how the Celtics had lost to the Lakers, and how the team with the best record in the regular season had choked hardcore and let the Lakers walk away with a championship.

However, if the Cs were to win, the Assholes and Mustaches crew were to write a post on tellhimfred, outlining how they were wrong, that the Cs had held up their end of the Ainge-Rivers bargain, and mastered the 2008 finals after all.

Well, we know how it ended.

And we waited.

We gave Maggio and Jericho a THF ID to write a post.

Nothing.

We posted on our forums, nakedly goading them into writing something.

Nothing.

(Sigh)

Now, we at THF realize that the rest of the U.S. hates Boston. I mean, HATES us, like wicked bad, like the Superficial hates Heidi and Spencer. It’s understandable; we have the worst fans in all of sports.

But this is worse than that - the A&M guys have demonized Boston sports, under the guise of “we support west coast teams because they don’ get no respect!” to the point where they’re willing to just say “fuck Boston.”

Weeeelllp. Here’s how it shakes out. The LA Lakers lost the fucking finals, and the game which they lost it was the biggest deficit in NBA finals history. Say whatever you want about Boston as a city - The. Celtics. Kicked. LA’s. Ass.

Kobe? He may be the best player in the NBA, but on a team that chokes harder than a man with an auto-erotic asphyxiation fetish, he might as well just strangle himself on the bench, which is exactly what he did for a good portion of game 6. Sorry, guys, but you need starters AND a bench to win in the NBA.

So we gave A&M plenty of time to make good on their bet and they decided to go ahead and not recognize traditional property rights, and therefore, we say:

You, sir, are an asshole.

by the way, in case you haven’t seen the other videos of this guy we’ve posted, it’s Paul “Fitzy” Fitgerald of TownieNews dot com.

I’m sure there are more. Ideas?

Well, this past Thursday I discovered that there is another, more applicable definition of “junk shove”, when I had outpatient heart surgery at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I had, most of my life, a condition called SVT, or supra-ventricular tachycardia. It’s not serious, but irritating, and if left un-dealt with during an episode, can be very unhealthy. Recently, medical science has come up with a reasonably non-invasive process to cure SVT, and after a recent visit to my cardiologist, I was convinced that this ultra low-risk procedure was the way to go.

Now, naivete has never been my strong suit; I consider myself pretty hard-headed and realistic, but after having the initial consult with the doc, he had my head full of visions of a casual, drop-by, oh-while-you’re-at-it-can-you-fix-my-heart kind of a thing, like a “oh, did you just perform surgery on me? I thought I felt something!” sort of procedure.

Yeah, no.

Now, I don’t have any doubts about the skill level of the medical professionals involved with this institution, and after last week, I would recommend them to anyone. But the structure of Mt. Auburn hospital, especially the electrophysiology lab, is reminiscent of a disused rail station or perhaps a poorly kept grocery store. Bad tiles, shitty flourescent light, uncomfortable 1970s-era chairs and magazines, helpful arrows pointing out distant tie racks and exposed plumbing - let’s say my confidence wasn’t initially inspired.

So here we go. Take off all your clothes sir, and put on this ill-fitting paper-like robe. Backwards. Don’t worry about your ass being exposed, we don’t care. Next, lie on this gurney, and lie still while we shave only part of your chest to accomodate the sticky pads for the EKG. (Oh yeah, by the way those are going to hurt like fuck later when we peel them off.) Yeah, your chest looks like someone who fell asleep at a frat party. OK, leads hooked up, check. We’re not through shaving though. We have to denude your downtown of hair, which we will do by having a 60 year old nurse drape a washcloth over your cash and prizes, shove them out of the way, and go completely apeshit with a beard trimmer. bzzzzzshzzzzzbzzzzzzz “so, what kind of band are you in?” bzzzshzzzzzzvzzzzzGGGGggg (aaaaagh!) “whoops, sorry.”

Before you go, there’s a 24-year old female med student who would like to ask you a series of irrelevant and irritating questions about you. Please try to be polite and not to rip out her eyes and piss on her brain, which is of course, what will be going through your head the whole time she is speaking.

OK, time for the surgery! We wheel you, flat on your back into the little anteroom, which looks kind of like the scene from Jacob’s Ladder when the dude with no eyes sticks a horse needle into Tim Robbins’ forehead. Don’t be alarmed, but we’re going to tie your wrists in these restraints. Yeah. That’s normal.

OK, yes - we heard you when you told us that your body is highly tolerant of opiate-based anaesthesia (most medical professionals are aware of the cross-tolerance between opiates and booze, and yeah, you drink too much, dood) but we’re going to go ahead and give you the standard dose, and wait till you grit your teeth in completely lucid pain before giving you some more, then finally some benadryl to make you pliable.

Now:

1. Puncture 6 holes in the groin, three on each side of the junk, to access the femoral artery and vein.

2. Insert tubes into said holes.

3. Play “fun with catheters” in all 6 of these tubes.

4. Run a catheter through the femoral artery, up into the heart, to begin exploration. Oh, you can feel that? Yeah, isn’t that a messed up sensation? A tube running through your whole circulatory system? Yeah, it’s weird.

5. Poke the heart electrically several times, inducing tachycardia, see where the problem lies. That feels good, don’t it? I bet you’re beginning to wish we could put you out for this, no?

6. Electrically destroy the small extra piece of tissue on the heart that is causing the tach. ZZZZZZZZZAP! Wow, that looked painful!

7. Poke the heart electrically again, to make sure you can’t induce tach anymore. Yep, we fixed it!

Now for the fun part! We remove each tube rather painfully, and bandage you up. You now have to lie absolutely flat and more or less motionless, on a hospital gurney, for 4 hours, lest you pop those holes open and bleed out in less than 2 minutes. OK, ok, i see you’re losing your ever-loving mind. Here’s a valium.

OK, 4 hours is up, let’s get you the eff up and out of here! See ya!

Seriously. In at 8 a.m., junk-shoved at 9:30, and out at 5:00 p.m. What a crazy world.

P.S. - Huge props to Mrs. Hoffa for taking care of my cranky ass for the last few days. I would have had some pretty serious issues without her.  Big ups.

And ontop of that, TV is equally worthless with a new “The Mole.” This is the same reality show that failed before. Perhaps it was ahead of its time? Were we, the American public just not ready for such a compelling reality show?

Nope. That’s not it. There are just no new ideas. Wait, that’s not true. There are plenty of new ideas, but the head honchos at the movie studios and TV networks just won’t take risks. It’s just easier to remake something that people remember from years ago instead of trying something new. It’s not about quality, it’s about making profit. I understand that. But come on, can’t you make money from something innovative?

So, since I’m so sick of the bullshit we’re being fed in TV and the movies, I’m going to just give away some great ideas. Go ahead, steal them. I’ll watch ‘em. And to you, dear TellHimFred.com reader: please submit your own ideas. I’ll compile them and send them to NBC, CBS, and Fox. Oh, and HBO. Just not ABC.

I. The “In Space” Series:

This is a series of reality shows inspired by the Ron and Fez show. It starts with the general premise that everything is better in space.

• Afraid of Space- The idea: let’s say 30% of all people would love to be astronauts. They’d love to go to space. But what about the other 70%? We have a reality show where we send people who are absolutely petrified into space. Whether they compete to see who stays, or if we just shoot em into space against their wishes (X Effect Style), that’s up to you, Network Brass. But tell me you wouldn’t stay glued to the tube watching people fight to stay on the planet, and when they’re in space…..just losing it.
• Pigs in Pace- That’s pretty self-explanatory…..you send pigs into space.
• Celebrity Rehab in Space- You send a bunch of drug addicts and Dr. Drew into space without drugs. They have no alternative to staying clean.

Again, the “In Space” series is from a discussion on Ron and Fez.

II. Oh really? Prove it.

This is a reality show where you guess how well you can do on ridiculous tasks, then make you do them. For instance, we’ll ask you how many 5 year olds you can take out before being knocked to the ground, then we’ll make you do it. Stupid shit like that. Yeah, not a great idea, but I’d watch it.

III. Five Minute Movies

A show where you give people a camera and actors, and they have to make a five minute movie. Best one of the week wins and moves on.

IV. Rating The Talent

Dead simple: Two guys in lawn chairs set up on the sidewalk on the beach. As girls go by they rate them, and the audience can agree or disagree with their scores.

V. Sex and the City: The Next Chapter

In this movie, we go 40 years into the future when all the bags on Sex and the City are in their 90s, and we have old ladies reciting the same dialog the awful hens did during the show.

So, let’s see what you have for ideas. I’m just warming up, and I think the overall idea is much better than the stupid examples I just gave. Other than pigs in space: I’m all in on  that one.

The Lakers are trying to play the Celtics at the C’s kind of ball, and the bottom line is they don’t know how to do it. They’re trying to play physical, aggressive, in-your-eye ball, and the C’s dig that. Their defense is walling the Lakers off from the boards, and forcing guys to hit fadeaway jumpers under pressure. Solid. The Cs are walking away with this series.

Our friends, Magglio and Jericho at Apples and Moustaches have made some remarks to the contrary, however, and expressed some fairly unambiguous comments re: their feelings about our fair city. This aggression will not stand, man. I hereby throw down the blog post gauntlet. To wit:

- Should the Cs win this series, Magglio (or Jericho) will author a guest post on tellhimfred.com, breaking down the series, talking about how the Cs kicked Bryant & Co.’s collective asses up and down the parquet. And they have to apologize for saying “Fuck Boston”, just the one time.

-Should the Lakers win, I will guest author a post at A & M, talking about how the Lakers figured out the Cs game plan and came back to beat them, causing Boston to edge out New York as the Kings of Choke. I will also make one other pejorative, anti-Boston comment of M or J’s choosing.

So…what do you say, fellas? You got the stones to back up your ‘phones?

(I’m not even sure that means anything either, but I like the way it sounds, so shut it.)

Squirell eats a ritz cracker to Huey Lewis If This is It - Watch more free videos

Now back to trying to find something to write about.

So close the door to your office, plenty of NSFW language here. Oh, and nice Fight Club reference Fitzy!