EBAY TO GINANDTACOS.COM - "WE WILL ONE-UP YOU, BITCHES."

Sexy pics. Self-actualizing beatings. Electronics we do not own. Candlelight party sets. Yes, the men of ginandtacos.com thought they were really pushing the eBay envelope. And they thought that eBay had already laid all its cards on the table, what with the fully functioning particle accelerator, iconic grilled cheese, and decomissioned Chilean Navy aircraft carriers.

"We are unimpressed" said eBay. "We are now selling an operational Soviet Zil-35 FROG Mid-Range Ballistic Missile Launcher."

The men of ginandtacos.com paused, contemplated, and then retreated. It would take far, far sexier pictures to top this.

My Favorite 2004 Moments: Best Liberal Meltdown

Side story for a second. My favorite movie moment from last year was the dinner between Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and a family headed by a strangely bearded Richard Jenkins (the dad from Six Feet Under) in I Heart Huckabee's. I won't give too much of it away, but Schwartzman plays an activist, and Jenkins an electrical engineer, and within minutes of first meeting they are at each others throats. Both are coming at issues from such completely different starting points that it is impossible to imagine them being able to talk about anything - sprawl means waste to Schwartzman; fighting it means communism and no jobs to Jenkins.

A few minutes later they are thrown out of the house, and that little side-mini drama captures the high level of discourse this past year over everything. A vote for or against Bush wasn't a vote for or against supple-side economics or interventionist foriegn policy; it was a vote for or against a complete way of seeing the world through faith-based lens.

As such, everybody on both sides spent a good part of 2004 yelling at each other. This award could go to any single one of them, but your Rush Limbaughs were convincing us that liberal are destroying everything for a decade now. So instead I'm naming it the best liberal breakdown and giving it to the person whose change for this year stands out the most: Lawrence O'Donnell.

I'm a "The McLaughlin Group" junkie since high school, and he's been my favorite guy on it for the past few years. He's a nice, polite, smart and clever democrat. His resume has all the things you'd expect in the defender of the democratic party: Senior Advisor to Senator Moynihan, Democratic Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance in the early-to-mid 90s, prodcuer of the West Wing (where he won a few awards for co-writing an episode about the death penalty).

Being on a show with Pat Buchanan, you'd expect him to match his level, but instead he would contain himself. Until this past year. Here are two instances of his year-long meltdown. First off, the first Mclaughlin Group after the Kerry loss (airdate nov. 5th):

MR. O'DONNELL: But the big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government.
MR. BLANKLEY: Did you say secession?
MR. BUCHANAN: (Laughs.)
MR. O'DONNELL: Yes, yes.
MR. BLANKLEY: Are you calling for civil war?
MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety -- not war; you can secede without firing a shot.
MR. BLANKLEY: Not if you have a Lincoln in the White House.
MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government. They collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut, the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from the ward of Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing.
MR. BUCHANAN: (Off mike.)
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let him finish!
MR. O'DONNELL: That cannot hold.

Going to one of my favorite commentators days after the Kerry loss (remember how sad of a day that was?) and having him call for a civil war did not cheer me up one bit. The rest of the commentators were a bit stunned. But I should have known that he was going to be intense that day, because I had seen over the internet him tear apart the head of the Swift Boat Vets on Scarborough Country (with guest host Pat Buchanan). Trust me - watch this video. Keep in mind that this man writes and produces The West Wing - 99% of the time he is smiling politely while discussing poltics. Not this time (follow the image link through to the media file):

Although Buchanan issued an apology, I cheered after seeing that clip, but that was before the election. After the secession talk, I was a little worried about Mr. O'Donnell, and he wasn't on the Mclaughlin Group for about two months - thankfully he was there for the Year End special, in which his resolution for 2005 was to not call people liars, unless they deserve it. Good to have the man back.

rss feeds, la plays itself, something new.

Hey guys. A few quick things. One is that ginandtacos.com has redone it's xml and rdf feeds, so if you are into doing that thing you can get notified to changes quicker and preview them. I use sharp reader for pc and various mac apps; these feeds haven't really been tested with the firefox live bookmarks/sage that everyone is using; so if there are problems drop a line and we'll clean it up.

Two is that I wrote about my favorite documentary of last year, LA Plays Itself, but there wasn't anyway that I could write about it without just going nuts for 2-3 pages, and since about 200 people saw it last year I've quarantined it off to the movie page and started it with commentary about the 77th annual Oscars nominees to give you something to go with.

The staff is also preparing something big, possibly for next week or the week after. Stay tuned.

EBAY: THE ALBANIA OF THE U.S. ECONOMY

One of my fondest wishes, being a devotee of history with an entrepreneurial spirit, is to have lived in a time of expansion and discovery. Sadly, the majority of the world (and the entirety of the United States) has been settled and industrialized. To have lived in a time during which Westward Expansion was a blank canvas for money-making schemes legitimate and otherwise would be a ticket to personal fulfillment for me.

Lacking that, I turn to eBay.

eBay is the wild west of capitalism for the modern era. eBay is the place where pretty much anything goes, and that which does not go (e.g., selling organs) has been explicitly forbidden because someone tried it. eBay was the place where Amadou Diallo's landlord auctioned off the bloody apartment door in front of which the NYPD shot him 41 times. eBay allows the insane and infirm to sell ghosts in jars and beatific sandwiches. eBay is the place where a young man sold ecstacy for 8 months under the listing "fun stuff for raves."

Anyone who knows me is aware that I have always been captivated by this lawless African banana republic of e-commerce. Accordingly, I have had multiple productive periods of profitable ideas that involved the resale of things I may or may not have had the legal right to resell. The specifics are unimportant; I leave the resolution of moral ambiguity to the Lord and copyright attorneys.

Photo courtesy of shykiss.com

Ginandtacos.com has decided to use its greatest assets - drunken violence and raw sexuality - to enter a new phase of profitability. Tapping into the thriving "masturbating pervert" market, Erik Martin has taken to selling a set of sexy pictures of an anonymous individual we'll call "Mike." For the uninitiated, there is a booming market on eBay of creepy, busted-out girls selling pictures (as well as used panties, fake love letters, etc) to creepy, busted-out fat guys who want to pretend that they have a girlfriend. Yes, believe it or not, people do this. And people spend a lot of money in the process. This offers them a useful alternative.

In addition, ginandtacos.com is proud to expand the categories of personal services available via eBay by offering (for a reasonable opening bid) a thorough, professional ass-beating to willing bidders. For those who seek self-improvement through merciless pummeling, ginandtacos.com will be the website that leads them to enlightenment.