For Christmas i got a printer/scanner/fax machine.  The printer part works fine, but I've had issues with the scanner that I just can't reconcile with anything except demonic possession. 

When I first tried to use it, I could not see anything I scanned.  I had selected "send files to computer", and it sent them, but it would not tell me where, nor what it had named to file so I could search for it.  I was able to bypass this particular bit of assholery by saving files to a USB drive plugged directly into the the machine, but this was a pain in the ass.  I had to manually move the drive back to the PC to access files.

Tonight I decided to try again.  When I selected "save to computer", something happened that had never happened before.  Not only did the file save to My Documents, but it opened in Acrobat and displayed the scanned image!  I was pleased.  Except that the file was upside down.

No big deal, right?  Instead of trying to flip the file in Acrobat, which seems impossible, I flipped the page over and scanned it again.  It came out upside down.  Double-you.  Tee.  Eff. 

I then did some experiments.  Since I was trying to scan two pages, I scanned them in various combinations and checked the results.  Whether I scanned text left or text right didn't seem to matter.  I got various images of first page upside down, second page right, first page right, second upside down, both right and both upside down.  Actually, I only got the both right result once. 

Finally, I came to the conclusion that the scanner was reading the page once, first by sweeping to the left, then the second page back to the right, which was what was producing the upside down effects.  Happy with myself, I deleted all the prior garbage, scanned the first page, flipped the second and scanned it.

I shit you not, the result came out second page upside down, first page ****** SIDEWAYS!!!

I refuse to use this scanner anymore until it is thoroughly exercised.

Remember, remember, 11 November, the Godfather's Pizza walk. I know of no reason the Godfather's treason should ever be forgot.

Willy and I awoke the next morning to find ourselves abandoned. Apparently, the college did not take a week-long holiday for Pete's birthday like it should, and everyone had this thing called class to go to. Except for Sam. For reasons that elude me now and can probably only be found in a folder marked Angus, Sam remained. Another point of rising concern was the total lack of food in the house. It was as if a vast desert had blossomed in the refrigerator, and spilled over into the pantry. The only things to eat were a few moldy Cheetos Willy found under the couch, and Sam.

It was at this point that Sam displayed a talent for survival by revealing a trickery and maliciousness in his nature never before conceived of. He looks at Willy and me, and says “Let's go to Godfather's Pizza.” Sam went on to describe a nirvana of four-dollar all you can eat pizza buffets, where the crust was always chewy, the sauce tangy and the toppings varied and fresh, where the cheese drips gooey and warm from a slice of pure oregano-spiced delight. What he described made Domino's, Pizza Hut and even the offerings of our local pie-wizard Papa Louie seem like the cheapest off-brand in the Publix freezers. My stomach gave an uncomfortable growl, and I heard Willy's moan.

We exited the building at a run to find a most unwelcome emptiness in the vicinity of the parking spaces. Apparently, Pete, Anna and Julie had decided Julie's Saturn was no longer sufficient to take them all to class, and had absconded with the Rust Monster. Sam's motorcycle sat with false benevolence under a tree, but having been a victim of said bike in the past, my desire to ride on it was hiding in the hills with Howie (long story).

The evil of Sam's plan had only begun to shake its wings. He suggested we should walk, as it wasn't really that far. The air was a cool fifty degrees and the wind blew forcefully, but the sun was bright and my cold was still just an unpleasant clogging of my nasal passages and scratching in my throat. Innocently, I donned my trusty denim jacket and made the worst mistake of that year.

There are those who have heard the tale of the Godfather's Pizza Walk, whispered around campfires or told as cautionary tales to terrify young children into submission. Some have heard second- or third-hand accounts that have been warped into unrecognizable urban legend. The truth, as usual, falls somewhere between. Today, thanks to the awesome power of the internet and the magic of Google Maps, I can present to you the true scope of the Walk so you may judge for yourselves. Please note the distance meter at the bottom left of the pics!

   

And so we set out. The chill wind and my cold ensured a steady stream of fluid from my nose, which quickly exhausted my tiny pocket-pack of Kleenex. Sol beat down on us with glare unending, and just enough heat to make us uncomfortable. It was either keep your jacket on and sweat, or take it off and freeze. Middle ground was reserved for myth and legend. By the time we reached the first major intersection, where a large, empty field marked the first of many misdierctions by Sloppy Sam, misery had begun to set in and start a nice, uncomfortable butt-raping.

Half an hour passed, and what Sam assured us would be a quick trip had not yet yielded cheesy goodness. Sam insisted that The Godfather awaited us not too far after the next turn, and we would soon be donning cement shoes in pizza heaven. After trudging a distance roughly equal to what we had already traveled when Sam uttered that falsehood, we came to our first sign of food. Sadly, it was not pizza we discovered, but a distinctly Brando-less inconvenience store.

Sore and aching from my cold and the hostile weather, I insisted we stop to at least get a drink. That was all we managed to get, as the “store” lacked even the sustenance of basic candy bars. I did discover a dusty box of powdered donuts that I picked up for a cool $3. 1992 dollars, that. Do the math. Additionally absent from that shit store were tissues or napkins of any type to relieve my marathoning nose. Willy suggested I use Sam, which I deeply considered.

After some time spent in the non-50 degree, non-20 mph windy, non-glaringly sunlit store, the owner insisted we leave, by gunpoint. Willy and I had become very grumpy and proposed simply returning to the apartment, but Sam insisted Godfather's Pizza was very close. He pointed in the direction we had been traveling and said he knew we could get there if we went that way, but that recently he had been with Charles who had somehow taken a shortcut by turning right instead. Remember my naivete when you laugh at the trust I placed in such an obviously flawed statement.

We turned right, onto the famed highway 441, sung of by Gainesville's single successful resident, the used-to-be-great Tom Petty. We passed a great many shabby houses and dilapidated farms, observed by angry motorists and the occasional goat. No businesses presented themselves to show we were on the path to our Godfather, but Sam continued to insist it was just ahead. A building dawned on the horizon, and as the leagues passed by under our feet, it resolved into a squat hut shaped like a giant hat.

A billboard proclaimed this the location of the world-famous Brown Derby, frequented by such notables as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. The owners must have been counting on that world-famous reputation, since the sign, visible from orbit, failed to explain exactly what the Brown Derby sold. I assumed it was bad hats. Accompanied by our shadows wavering in the blazing sun, we spared the Derby only a perfunctory spit. Much further down the road, Sam informed us it was a restaurant, and one we may have gotten some food from, but he again avoided decapitation with mythical pizza tales to keep our gullible stomachs plodding forward.

The road beyond was like something out of a Thoreau book – lifeless and devoid of interest. The houses disappeared, and even the farmlands with their forlorn sexually traumatized goats thinned out. Discord frothed beneath Willy's skin in visible ripples, and my cold reveled in it's ascending dominance. As Sam's innate survival skills easily deflected our rage, we fixated our hate upon the last bit of human civilization we remembered- the poor Brown Derby. The Derby underwent a Bruce Banner-like transformation in our minds, coming to embody not only the evils of this trip, but the failures of the entire human race. It's name metamorphosed through a variety of phases including the Purple Fez, Flaming Sombrero and Shit-Stained Fedora before finally settling into it's ultimate incarnation as The Putrefied Skull. We spent nearly and hour verbally abusing the Skull, with even Sam joining in with his psychotic laugh.

At last we crested a rise, and felt hope shit on us as it fled. Ahead stretched naught but endless miles of barren nothing, split only by the needle of highway 441. There was no pizza in evidence, and the Putrefied Skull had long since vanished behind us, taking with it our last chance to avoid starvation. A green road sign, lonesome in the cold and wind and topped by a vulture as hungry as I was, proclaimed “Micanopy 11 miles”. Willy fell to his knees in despair. Sam smiled his dopey smile and said “Uh, I think the place we need to go is in Micanopy.”

From Willy's pocket came the wailing of Joe Camel, indicating that the straw had fallen at last. Eleven more miles in the sun and cold wind was more than either of us could take. Abandoning Sam to his fate, we turned our sails to home. The wind had been on our faces on the way out, and had now obligingly shifted in order to be behind us. Which meant it was now in our faces. Sensing the shadow of the Reaper, who had many options when it came to claiming our souls that day, Willy and I plodded back along the course. We passed the Putrefied Skull, now open for business, with little more than an exhausted fart. Near the Inconvenience Store, I noticed that Sam was behind us. I was tempted to maim him, but exhaustion and my swollen uvula wouldn't let me do more than gollum at him.

Through miracles unheard of in human history, we returned to the apartment safely. My feet were swollen, my lungs full of phlegm, my head full of fuck and I was sunburned. Willy was in little better shape, since my cold had migrated to him. Sam, having fed off our misery like Pete in a sugar processing plant, was cheery and ready to go out for more. Class had let out during our odyssey, and when we had recovered the gift of speech, Pete, Anna and Julie we regaled with the legend of our epic journey. As it involved the suffering of someone other than themselves, they found it hilarious. Then Pete confirmed what we suspected by informing us that Godfather's Pizza was in the exact opposite direction from which we had traveled! From Sam's room came a chuckling, which evolved into a giggle, then a rough guffaw. By the time it reached the maniacal peals we had heard on the road, Willy and I were hammering at the door with the force of Grond. But he had barricaded it well.

That night, Pete performed a feat of mercy by piling us into Shit Piece and driving us to Godfather's Pizza, reveling in the humor of Sam having led us wrong from the very first turn. Sick, sunburned and exhausted, Willy and I took our pizza with sullen chagrin, somehow unsurprised that it was the shittiest pizza we'd ever had. We made a vow that day, a vow that has stood for eighteen years: Never, ever take directions from Sam.  To this day Sam insists that we would have reached Godfater's Pizza if we had just kept going!

Well, it's that time.  220+ years and 42 good and bad leaders have led up to this, the single biggest disgrace ever to shit upon the office of the President, the American people and the world population in general.  try as I might, I cannot find one single, solitary positive thing George W. Bush did in his entire term as President of this nation.  Every last act seemed to be designed to cripple America, every word he spoke to embarrass Americans and make us hang our heads in shame.  However, the greatest failure falls on the American people.  Not only did we elect this asshole, but we failed to produce a Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wilkes Booth, or even a kooky Charles Guitea or John Hinckley to clean up our mess.  I'll never apologize for America, but I do feel deep shame over this piece of shit. 






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NAME: George Warmonger Bush (Failure Incarnate)

PRESIDENT NUMBER:  43

ILLUSTRATION: Asshole as a chimpanzee marionette, in a cowboy suit riding a rocket. A grinning devil with Cheney's face pulling the strings.

BIRTHDAY/DEATHDAY: July 6, 1946 / The world is counting the days...

TERM: 2001-2009. Eight years too long.

POLITICAL PARTY: Himself and his cronies

PRESIDENT OF VICE: Dick(Head) Cheney.

PREVIOUS OCCUPATION: Oil Baron

SPOUSE: Laura Belch

RELIGION: Methodist

QUOTE: “Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere!”

FACTS:

W was not elected but appointed to the office, and only then because the Supreme Court was sick of Al Gore jumping up and down whining about how much he wanted to be President.

One should rate a President by the condition of the country at the beginning and ending of his administration.  Clinton handed W a country at peace, with a fantastic, growing economy and a plan for a balanced budget. Bush handed his successor a country reviled by the rest of the world, two unsuccessful wars, a record deficit and an economy at its worst since the Great Depression.

On September 11, 2001, W showcased both his intelligence and leadership ability by quietly sitting and reading a children's book - upside down - while the nation came under attack. To be fair, he was in a kindergarten class at the time and possibly felt intimidated by the superior intellects surrounding him.

After the billions he embezzled from the US taxpayers through his war contracts and oil money, Bush's doubling of his own salary from $200,000 a year to $400,000 just seems like a slap in the face

Like Harding, Bush Jr. did not really have a will of his own. He was a puppet for criminal mastermind Dick Cheney, who manipulated world events from behind the scenes, approved the use of torture and passed the Constitution-destroying PATRIOT Act. Cheney is the most corrupt devil on Earth today. When told by a reporter that most Americans disapproved of the Iraq war, he simply said "So?" Death can't take him soon enough.

Bush lied to Congress and mounted an unjustified invasion of Iraq under false pretenses while the nation was already engaged in another war. He spent incredible amounts of money on his two wars, most of which went to his buddies in the oil and defense industries. Somehow, Bush has avoided prosecution.

In 2004, a hole opened in the Bozone when the orbit of Mr. Happy Pants decayed, and he plummeted screaming into the Indian Ocean, causing a devastating tsunami. W observed the suffering with a bemused giggle. He later repeated this same action on American soil after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.

Bush Jr. dashed hopes of billions of American and foreign citizens by not being assassinated.

It's possible that a visit to the White House basement during his father's term resulted in an encounter with former President Benjamin Harrison, which would account for W's prominently displayed lack of a brain.

W's greatest contribution to society has been as a scapegoat.  Whenever the Obama administration is faced with a problem, Barry calls upon a special, gold-plated finger that points directly at the Bush administration.  Most of the time, this is the correct answer.