Figuratively speaking, Congressman Darrell Issa can suck my dick.

I am watching a re-airing of Real Time with Bill Maher -- which has fallen into considerably less favor with me since host Bill Maher buried his, shall we say, opinion in Ann Coulter -- and Darrell Issa is so irrevocably full of shit, it makes me want to push him in front of a bus.

But this brings me to another point. It really irritates me when people have so little imagination that my saying that someone or something can suck my dick prompts them to ask me if I have one. I always answer that question with a yes, and I usually leave it at that. But, please, people. When I went to see The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2 with friends at the cinema and the end credits began to roll, one of the boys in my party said, "The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2 can suck my cock." And no one asked him if he had one. But I'm also going to wager that no one thought he really hoped for a blow job from that movie. It's a movie. It can't give him a blow job. People seem to be fine with that. So it's a figurative expression. And yet when I use it, the figurative nature of the expression goes out the window.

Gender skews the meaning of a lot of things. So much so that you can't replace certain phrases strictly by shuffling their gender meaning, because their effectiveness is completely affected. If I were to replace "suck my dick" with the equivalent that would be correct for my gender, it would hardly carry the same weight. In fact, I would guess people might think I have a thing for Darrell Issa and want him to come over late night. I don't.

I also think I may be giving up on Bill Maher. The comedy bits aren't that funny. The guests aren't that good. And I'm not entirely sure I know where Bill stands on topics outside of the importance of pretending to be a guy with any amount of sex appeal whatever. I used to really enjoy the show. I don't know. Maybe it's just the war. I've grown weary of so many programs because of how tired I am of hearing the same messages, the same arguments, the same shallow pin-pricking at the surface of what really matters. My friend Adam sent me a sound clip of President Bush admitting in no uncertain terms that there was no connection between Irag and 9/11, despite years now of subtly and insidiously encouraging Americans to come to the opposite conclusion. I believe the pull quote is Bush saying, "Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq." And my response to Adam was, Why don't we ever see any backlash when these things shake out? The most I expect to hear is a wry mention of it on The Daily Show. If anything. I'm just so tired of everyone shrugging it all off. The news that we were lied to provokes maybe a shrug and a, "Meh. What do you expect? It's the government. They also screw me on parking tickets constantly. Assholes." Remember when there was all this passion in the debate? Passion that was squelched in me by too many years of unsubstantiated neener-neeners from Republican acquaintances who don't read the newspapers but care very much about paying less in taxes.

But maybe I'm just as tired of arguing as everyone else. I'm assuming it's now just taken for granted that our next president will not be a Republican, unless it's a Republican who completely takes this administration to task on the campaign trail. I'm so disillusioned that that scares me, too. I'm thinking, Come on, Democrats. Don't get lazy. We have no laurels to rest on. The electorate is not energized. There are no more unicorns on the Beltway. All is surely lost.

What a downer.

Anyway, Congressman Darrell Issa can suck my dick.