Quote of the Day

One of the best parts about presidential campaigns is dredging up all the ridiculous frightening shit the candidates said a decade ago and throwing it back in their faces now. For example, I Hate Huckabee, back in 1998 at a Souther Baptist pastors' convention:

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

Very reassuring. Government is wrong, only Jesus is right. Sounds like a guy just dedicated to freedom of religion.

And why is there so much government? He'll tell you:

"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity. And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior."

It's funny cause it sounds like he's saying sin should reign in the heart and life of the Savior, in which case the story would have had a whole different ending. Christ Gone Wild!

Also, it's funny because it is fucking terrifying.

Ron Paul Blimp

Are you a big fan of Ron Paul? Do you have a million dollars? Then you can sponsor the Ron Paul blimp for ten whole weeks! I am not making this up. It's been successfully launched and is flying "to the inauguration!" (They do not specify whose inauguration.)




Wondering where the blimp is now? No need to wonder! Handy GPS device + Google maps will answer your query in real time! Still not making this up.

Wicked Smart Chimps

So apparently chimps have photographic short term memories? Researchers at Kyoto University taught these chimps the numbers 1-9 (or at least what they look like and what order they go in), flashed numbers on a screen, then had them play Memory by hitting the covered-up boxes in the right order of the numbers that used to be there. Like, instantaneously.

Check it out:

Romney For President of Godville

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Oh, and not "the religion of secularism" -- that's not a real religion. As he points out:

"But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong."

I'm not quite sure who "they" are, but yes, it would be quite wrong to establish any religion in the public spaces of America. Including the religion of secularism, whatever that means. Not having the Ten Commandments in a courthouse is not the same thing as having a Christopher Hitchens-penned missive about how there is no god. I don't want have either one, no matter how caught up in my secular religious fever I might be.

I mean, I know the guy belongs to a cult that is stealing away good Christians from Jesus so he has to do everything he can to get the religionistas on his side, but seriously are you motherfucking kidding me?

Civics Lessons

So, you have to be registered as a member of a political party in order to vote in one of their primaries in most states, that I get. However that registration doesn't compel you to vote for their nominee in the general election, which is clearly untenable when you have a bunch of totally unelectable candidates who might actually end up the nominee. And it doesn't apply in Virginia. So, if you're the Virginia Republican Party, where anybody can vote in any primary regardless of party affiliation and you think that's just untenable, you go ahead and make people SIGN AN OATH that they will vote for the nominee, whomever it may be, before you'll let them vote in the Republican primary. Unenforceable? Of course. Still not so much in keeping with the American Way? I'd say so.

Also, I bet you didn't know how committed to the truth honorable Virginians are (unlike Brett, the most dishonorable Virginian I know) -- the Roanoke Times awesomely points out that

Honorable Virginians do not give their word lightly and will not lie, even under these obtuse circumstances. We hope, too, that they put candidates' ideas, character and experience ahead of party affiliation.

I love the word obtuse.

Speaking of

Mike Gravel, that dude is totally awesome. And so is this, which he participated in, cause that's what presidential candidates do:




Seriously, wouldn't Hillary have been great in this?

Amnesty

Thanks for coming to the writeathon last night everybody! Oh right, you didn't. Oh well -- in the meantime, check out these very arresting new ads about genital mutilation (everybody's favorite Friday topic):




And how come people keep calling it female circumcision? I think lopping off the foreskin is a little weird too, but it's still not particularly analogous to cutting off everything that sticks out and sewing a girl up shut when she hits puberty and is totally conscious and screaming and all. Plus, circum means circle -- there ain't no circle you're cutting off with the ladies. More of a teardrop with a couple dots, or something.

Lachrymiformcision?

Whatever.

If I Did It

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says that Cheney and Bush were directly involved in him lying to the public about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby's involvement in outing Valerie Plame. It would seem like that ought to be kind of important, no? Like, more important than lying about a blow job? No? Hello?

[crickets]

America Q&A

Q: What do you do if you're the US Military and your "all-volunteer" army is a little light on its quotas (but NOT in the loafers, hells no), so you give out these signing bonuses, but the stupid fuckers who take them and go off to fight your war keep getting so badly injured in Iraq that they can't fight any more?

A: Demand part of the signing bonus back. Duh!

Stay classy, Ameri -- oh, fuck it.

Angola Q&A

Q: What do you do if you have lost a leg in a landmine accident, you're female, you live in Angola and you just don't feel pretty?

A: Enter the Miss Landmine beauty pagent, where you can be primped and preened well beyond your means, photographed in fancy hotel spots and put on a website for other people to vote on who should get a fake leg.

By the way, this is meant to "redefine" beauty as including people who are missing a limb. Not, however, to include people not dressed up nor wearing makeup. So, baby steps (get it??).

Stay classy, Angola!

Breaking news -- Giuliani running on 9/11

This is apparently news to the NY Post, who is under the impression that "[w]hile Giuliani's supporters have long boasted about his performance after the attacks, he himself had not, until now, mentioned it as prominently". Just under 9 months after the Onion points it out.

Seriously, when you're being scooped by a fucking fake newspaper, do you not just give up?

Some people just won't be happy

So if you're a right-wing type person who thinks that avowed atheist Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, (which does portray religion as less than awesome) is, you know, Satan's dark material, you think you'd be happy that the upcoming movie adaptation removes all the religious stuff and just makes a nice holiday fun fantasy family film. But boy, would you be wrong!

"These books denigrate Christianity, thrash the Catholic Church and sell the virtues of atheism," said Bill Donohue, president and CEO of the Catholic League..."[The filmakers are] intentionally watering down the most offensive element,” Donohue said. “I'm not really concerned about the movie, [which] looks fairly innocuous. The movie is made for the books. ... It's a deceitful, stealth campaign. Pullman is hoping his books will fly off the shelves at Christmastime."

Clever, clever atheist! Get all of Hollywood to dance to your clever ploy of making a movie that doesn't hate God from your books that do hate God in order to sell more books so that kids will hate God! Good job. Does anybody else have anything inane to add?

[Ted] Baehr [head of The Christian Film and Television Commission] said. "We'll put out writings on the book. Children who buy into this are going to be trapped in a sad, desperate world."

Yes, the sad and desperate world of reading fiction. Somebody get those kids out of there and back to Sunday School! Thanks, Ted.

But seriously, the books are awesome, you should go read them if you haven't already. Make them fly off the shelves at Christmastime! It'll be worth it just to see the look on Donohue's face Christmas morning.

Is that a chopstick in your bra, or are you just happy to see me?

No, seriously:



We all want to be part of the solution -- now you have a handy place to stash your reusable chopsticks. By the way, some of the YouTube commenters seem a little confused, and to be fair the model is not really making it clear -- you don't actually eat out of the bra (because that would be crazy?). The cups just look like food. The chopsticks, however, are real.

And don't worry, it's functional too:

[T]he Chopstick bra has benefits beyond protecting the planet - the chopsticks encased in both sides of the bra will push up breasts and "gently accentuate cleavage," the company said.

Ayup.

Quote of the Day

"Unlike the starkly clinical vagina, I see a vajayjay as a happy and inviting place, with a warm and fuzzy connotation. Vajayjay says "hello . . . welcome" and "open for business." "Vagina" screams textbook. "Vajayjay" says Facebook.

"In short, "vajayjay" has got us thinking outside of the box, which makes the feminists nervous. They want to keep "vagina" all to themselves. That is why they are vajayjay naysayers. (I recognize, of course, that linguists may disagree.)"

--Michael Smerconish, Philadelphia Daily News

I dare you

To take this quiz and not end up with a leprechaun on top:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm

Fuckin' Mukasey

So Schumer and Feinstein have caved, and are going ahead to send Mukasey's confirmation to the whole Senate. I caught Chuck's Op-Ed piece in the Times, in which he carefully explains that while "Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to [him] and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee", he's going to go ahead and confirm him instead of letting Bush appoint someone worse for the interim, and then just pass a law against waterboarding which he's sure Mukasey will uphold. Which, if you think waterboarding is already illegal, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and if you think Bush won't veto that, you're not really paying attention.

But whatever, there's totally hope that this United States Attorney General will consider not torturing people: "Indeed, his written answers to our questions have demonstrated more openness to ending the practices we abhor than either of this president’s previous attorney general nominees have had."

Now that is progress at a BREAKNECK SPEED.

Ron Raul is rich

Again. Or, still. He has been putting up pretty impressive funding numbers for a while (beating John McCain and everything) but Monday's haul of $4 million in less than a day is still a standout. Best single day for a Repulican, only loses to Hillary's one day haul of 6.2 million -- really not bad for someone who has absolutely no chance of ever becoming President.

Plus you have to give the guy credit to linking his day to donate to Guy Fawkes Day, in honor of someone who tried to blow up Parliment. But don't worry:

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

Totally.

I'd rather go naked than wear fur?

For Steve-O, that doesn't seem like much of a big deal, since he seems to rather go naked than wear just about anything, but still. Nice jump!

Dust-up

Does that have a hyphen? I just emailed Brett about the debate last night, calling it a dust-up, and then it occurred to me that maybe it should just be a dustup. Or a dust up. Or a clusterfuck, what do I know? Anyway, apparently it was good, including everybody's favorite quote: Joe Biden, saying "There are only three things [Rudy Giuliani] mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11". Funny!

Speaking of America's Mayor, he made a joke himself about a dream he had recently (at the "Defending the American Dream" summit, get it??) -- he was dreaming that France's new president, Nicolas "Le Neocon" Sarkozy, was in a plane crossing the Atlantic on his way to the States, and has a near miss with a plane headed back the other way. Quips Rudy: "Sarkozy can see inside the window of the plane headed for France. They all wave to each other...the people going from the United States to France waving to him are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards."

He seemed to think this was hilarious, and so did the audience (skip to the 7 minute mark for the, um, "punchline"), but I guess my sense of humor is just not très sophisticated like his, cause I didn't really get it. Yes, we hate the Democrats! HIGH-larious!

Whatever, maybe I just hate him, but I maintain that is not funny.

Stephen Colbert's Facebook group will beat up your Facebook group

In the week since Stephen Colbert announced he will be running for president (in South Carolina), a Facebook group called 1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert has been formed and has indeed passed one million members.

Whereas the group One Million Strong for Barak, formed in January, still has less than 400,000 members.

In fact, an actual legtimate polling group has found that SC would get 13% of the vote as a third-party candidate up against Clinton (45%) and Giuliani (35%). And in just the 18-29 age group, Stephen Colbert gets more of the vote than Giuliani.

It can't be much harder to be elected President than it can to win a contest to get a bridge in Hungary named after you, right?

Hello, Australia!

Teaching seven year old kids how to pole-dance is just so...American. The competition for world's crassest country is really heating up, I guess.

USA! USA!

Net Neutrality

AP reports on one of the most egregious examples yet of why we need net neutrality -- Comcast is interrupting file sharing between Comcast and non-Comcast users, secretly and without telling anyone they're doing so. When traffic on any part of their network goes above a certain threshold, a Comcast packet sniffer finds P2P connections and falsifies a message from each computer, telling the other it is unavailable.

As the AP puts it, "Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

So of course nobody can get upset about all those IP pirates out there, not being able to steal "The Transformers" off Limewire. But Comcast isn't just blocking BitTorrent (and of course has no way to ascertain the copyright status of the files being transferred -- the AP tried to download the Bible and got blocked. Comcast is clearly going to hell), it blocks any P2P program, like Skype, which is all legal all the time.

So if this saves Comcast money, by limiting how much traffic its networks can handle, then what's to stop every ISP from doing the same, and turning the "unlimited" access you're paying for into access to only the specific files and services that your ISP wants you to have, and only when it's cheap for them to let you? And then where does it stop? Once Verizon the ISP implements this idea, should Verizon the cell phone provider be able to tell you who you can call with your cell phone minutes, and when too many people were calling, end the call by breaking into your phone conversation and pretending to be you?

Anyway, Save the Internet.

Three-way

So, the math that went into this one is a little on the wishful thinking side, but it's basically set up under the premise that in a Giuliani v. Clinton election, the Dobsons of the world would go shopping for a third-party candidate, sucking the evangelical vote from Rudy, and therefore setting up this lovely looking map here:



Isn't it pretty? Texas! A swing state! Mississippi, blue! Those three all-important South Dakota votes, up for grabs! What a lovely idea.

Kucinich '08

Y'all want something different, fuck Obama and vote for the author of this passage:

"Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends, to return to spirit. The interchangeability of matter and spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: one with the universe; whole and holy; from one source, endless creative energy, bursting forth, kinetic, elemental; we -- the earth, air, water and fire-source of nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic spiraling."

Motherfucker.

Flamingos

Not that I want this to just be a collection of YouTube videos, but I just saw this episode of Nature last night about the Andes, and it is amazing. The mountains are really breathtaking, you can see them in this preview, but the best part is totally this flamingo dance. These flamingos hang out in poisonous lakes in the middle of the Andes, where the only things that can survive are them and the brine shrimp swimming in this toxic water that leeches from the volcanos.




Apparently the song is some sort of traditional Chilean folk tune, and not specifically designed to be humorous, but it succeeds nonetheless.

Anyway, for the whole show which really is great, check your local listings. And, you know, support public television.

How to integrate mass transit in an urban environment

Take a page from Bangkok:




Impressive.

Sometimes liberals are funny

This photo was posted on Salon's War Room, identified as "GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, left, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at Saturday night's National Italian American Foundation gala in Washington. (Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)" with the question "Why is this man laughing?"

User Strangely Enough gives this answer:

Fascist Funnies.
Scalia: What's funnier than subverting the Constitution while claiming to interpret it's "original intent"?
Giuliani: What?
Scalia: Nothing.
(laughs)

...no?
Oh come on, that's funny!
Whatever, it's a scary fucking picture, anyway.

The GOP's crazy aunt

Randall Terry of Operation Rescue is always good for a laugh, in between blowing up abortion clinics and harassing nurses and whatnot, and I did get a chuckle out of his description of Giuliani:

"Rudy is the GOP's crazy aunt. Every family has a crazy aunt in the basement. So what do you do with her? Don't give her the family checkbook; don't give her the keys to the car; and by all means, keep her in the basement."

Nice! The last "talking point" listed (the author is unclear) is:

"Could we vote for a man who right on every single issue, except that he was a racist? Or was a candidate who supported slavery? (Of course, he would never own his own slave, but he would defend any other white persons right to own his own Negro.) How then can we in good conscience vote for a man who supports the destruction of innocent human life, which is far worse than slavery or racism?"

Negro, huh? Classy.

Presto Chango!

So everybody keeps telling me they don't much like Hillary cause they think she will be more of the same, and Obama will really be new and different. Not just the same old Washington crap again! Fresh, innovative, NEW NEW NEW! Still has that new politician smell.

But I remain confused as to exactly what he will do differently. There is an enormous amount of inertia in Washington, and one president cannot change it. You can't even pass laws. You're sick of the same old, same old -- what are you sick of? Lobbyists, Big Oil, bribes and kickbacks? You'd have to elect a completely new Congress to get rid of that, and it would still only take them six months to become the same old Congress again.

So what is he going to do that is so different? I would really like to know. Cause I'm of the opinion that he seems different cause he's only been a US Senator for like ten minutes, and he has no idea how hard it is to get anything done, and that new politician smell wears off real fast once you start trying. And if we're going to have more of the same, we might as well have somebody who knows how to do it all already, yeah?

Radiohead are rich!

Still. Or, again. Also, maybe?

According to Gigwise, a source "close to the band" says they have sold 1.2 million copies of their digital label-free pay-whatever-you-want release "In Rainbows" in its first week (well, three days, really, but including preorders), beating out their previous album by a factor of four, as well as crushing Bruce Springsteen's new release this week. That's even more than Kanye sold! Although, to be fair, not more than Kanye PLUS 50 Cent, since I doubt Bruce was really eating into Radiohead's sales all that much this week.

But, a) it could be totally not true, and b) who knows how much people paid? If it's one pence a download, that's only £12k. Of course most people paid more than that -- I paid 5 pounds, which (plus the credit card processing fee) converted to $11.11 on my statement, which I thought was awfully nifty.

So we will all wait and watch our rebel bands (NIN is also label-free (see 10/8 comment), and promises to do fun stuff soon, though really, does Trent do anything fun?) and see what will happen. A lot of people who complain about music theft seems to be missing a major thing here -- the market pays what the market wants. If you're turning hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens into intellectual property master thieves, you are charging too much. People would rather buy than steal, but they don't want to be robbed. (Ooh, wasn't that pithy!)

It's the end of the world, right Andrew Keen? Stupid git.

Yay, Giuliani?

It's uncommon. But, in Tuesday's Republican debate, when Mitt Romney was asked if he "believed" the line-item veto was Constitutional (after Giuliani successfully challenged it, causing the Supreme Court to say no it's not in '96, or as he puts it: "So I took President Clinton to court and I beat him") and Romney replied with basically, yes: "I'm in favor of the line-item veto to make sure that the president is able to help get out pork and waste," etc, you gotta give a "Yay" for this response: "The line-item veto is unconstitutional. You don't get to believe about it; the Supreme Court has ruled on it". (Of course, overturning Roe would "um, be OK" but whatever.) It was a great fight. They are messy little candidates, those two.

Anyway, let's continue to cheer for everybody's favorite leprechaun, Ron Paul (that's right, he is BETTER than Kucinich!): When Chris Matthews asked if the President needed Congressional approval before taking military action against Iran's nuke facilities, after others mumbled around about "talking to lawyers" and "it depends", our buddy Ron simply pointed out: "Why don't we just open up the Constitution and read it? You're not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war." Yay, Ron Paul! I really might vote for him in the general if he shows up on some random ticket. It's not like Hillary the Democratic candidate isn't gonna carry New York, anyway.

Of course, right after that, I Don't Heart Huckabee came up with this exchange:

MATTHEWS: ...Governor Huckabee, same question. Do you need Congress to approve such an action?
HUCKABEE: A president has to whatever is necessary to protect the American people. If we think Iran is building nuclear capacity that could be used against us in any way, including selling some of the nuclear capacity to some other terrorist group, then, yes, we have a right...
MATTHEWS: Without going to Congress?
HUCKABEE: And I would do it in a heartbeat.
MATTHEWS: Without going to Congress?
HUCKABEE: Well, if it’s necessary to get it done because it’s actionable right now, yes. If you have the time and the luxury of going to Congress, that’s always better. But, Chris, the most important single thing is to make sure.
MATTHEWS: And if Congress say no, what do you do?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: If Congress says no, what do you do, Governor?
HUCKABEE: You do what’s best for the American people and you suffer the consequences. But what you don’t do is what you never do, is let the American people one day get hit with a nuclear device because you had politics going on in Washington, instead of the protection of the American people first.
(APPLAUSE)


Right. What's the Constitution when there's maybe a bomb somewhere? Good call. (APPLAUSE)

Breaking news -- Thompson is a fucking moron

You heard it here first -- he is a lot like Reagan, but only after the Alzheimer's set in. As tapes from Nixon's Oval Office conversations point out, Thompson was not so well regarded in his position as minority counsel during the Watergate hearings:

"Baker has appointed Fred Thompson as minority counsel," Haldeman is heard saying on one tape.

"Oh shit, that kid," Nixon responds.

Nice! Done with his cons, they go on to highlight his pros (well, pro):

"Our approach is now, we've got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson. He came through fine for us this morning," White House counsel Fred Buzhardt says on a tape from June 6.
"He isn't very smart, is he?" Nixon asks.
"Not extremely so, but --," Buzhardt says, interrupted by the president.
"But he's friendly," Nixon says.
"But he's, he's friendly," Buzhardt echoes.
"Good."

You know, like a dog. Less of a Gipper, more of a Skippy. All I have to say (besides, seriously, what ARE you Republicans thinking? This dude looks like Reagan like the really bad animatronic robot from Disney World's Hall of Presidents looks like Reagan. Except with worse skin) is Nixon really did know how to turn a phrase:

"Oh shit, he's dumb as hell. Fred Thompson."

You said it, Mr. President.

Amy Sedaris on Martha Stewart's show

In which Amy informs us that A1 is basically bong water, and her phone smells SMOOOOKY.






Hilarity.

Suspension of Disbelief

I've been reading this one thing and another thing (the former featuring a most excellent question posed by one Howard Kenty [last question], regarding a fancy trick shot in the film Contact, and I must add that Mr. Kenty is quite the discerning cinephile, as well as being a luxuriously bearded sociopathic robot).

So I have to say, I really don't get this suspension of disbelief thing at all, that's mentioned in the comments in the former about trick or long shots, and in this quote in the latter: "During a drama, if a character from a different show suddenly walks across the bottom of the screen, 'it’s a total disconnect and ruins your suspension of disbelief,' Ms. Sklar said".

Do you honestly believe that these shows/movies you're watching are really happening, and when you see a trick shot that can't have really happened, or god forbid a promo for another show (an AD! On TV! Holy shit!) it suddenly shocks you into realizing that you are, in fact, watching television? But things like, oh, gosh, I don't know, just to pick a couple random examples off the top of my head: the twelve year old girl in Jurassic Park found the application with the commands to lock the doors in about 15 seconds because she recognized the fucking operating system, or, say, maybe, THEY GAVE THE MOTHERSHIP A VIRUS WITH A MOTHERFUCKING MAC LAPTOP (you want to get seriously nerdy? Check this one out. Although I have to say that having in your possession an alien spaceship that crashed 50 years ago to practice on is not a valid rebuttal for being able to write a virus that would crash the entire fucking system in approximately eight minutes -- not only are we talking about you possessing two totally different crafts [could you figure out how to crash an aircraft carrier by fucking around with the jet that took off from it?], but also how much would you say your average aircraft has changed from 1950 to now? How bout your average computer [Hint: in the '50s, they ran on vacuum tubes]? How bout your average operating system and compiler? HOW BOUT YOUR INPUTS? You remember USB from 1950? Yeah, me neither) don't bother you at all?

Anyway. The above scenarios do not bother me in the slightest and this is, in fact, the first time I have ever even thought about them, much less discussed them, and as long as you have never met me you can go ahead and believe that.

My point is, what is this suspension thing? I understand being caught up in a storyline, or relating to characters, and whatnot. I've even gotten a little sniffly from time to time (in particular, actively crying through literally 4/5 of The Bear), but I was at no point laboring under the delusion that the little baby bear, when he finally freed himself after being captured, just crawled under the skins of the other murdered bears for comfort and slept instead of running away (shut up I am not crying again!), was actually real, and so it didn't bother me when "[t]he rock that kills the mother bear is noticeably smaller than the boulder that rests atop the dead bear" because it is a motherfucking movie and these things happen.

When you're watching a movie or even a show, aren't you paying attention to the acting, and the cinematography, and the lighting, and the costumes, and the direction, and the timing, and the writing? I mean, fine, if you're watching 2 1/2 Men or whatever you can let the cinematography slide, but how much disbelief can you be suspending when there's a freakin' laugh track? But really, I'm curious: it seems like things within the plot that are unbelievable are not such an issue, but anything that reminds you that you are actually watching a movie is not ok? Do you want to be schizophrenic and fail to grasp distinction between reality and fantasy? LSD is actually cheaper than a night at the movies -- just throwing it out there. Thoughts?

Microsoft's new MP3 player

Look familiar?




Well it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft ripped off Apple shamelessly, but I wonder if this one will work. 80 GB for $250 isn't terrible, and the best part? No DRM on songs you buy from their store, and no bullshit AAC. You can buy music and play it anywhere! FUCKING REVOLUTIONARY.

Oh wait you already know all this. Sorry.

Human Chess

Fine, I am an enormous, enormous dork, but doesn't this look like fun? The chessboard is eight square blocks, with the pieces standing on corners, and two chess experts playing somewhere in the middle. When they want you to move, they call you. I assume in the event you take a piece, there is a fantastic death scene. And you can just hang out at the ward when you're not moving or have been taken! Anyway, check out the play-by-play (or lack thereof):

being a knight
the following was written by Zack, who played the black queenside knight in the lower east side game

...

12:57p Double-decker tourist bus stops for red light at corner. I consider whether to yell up to the tourists and inform them that they are entering the space defined by the chess match, but bus moves on before I can take action.
12:59p A bunched-up group of four NYC busses pass North on Allen Street. Bishop, Rook, and Pawn still visible. I wonder if any passers-by perceive the patterns that they are encountering as they walk through the neighborhood.
1:02p Pawn is no longer visible -- has the first move occurred?
1:03p Pawn emerges from a candy store and resumes standing on his corner.
1:04p Pawn suddenly starts striding purposively South on Allen St.
1:06p Bishop moves South out of sight on Orchard St. The game has started in earnest -- we're on the move!

...

1:40p Group arrives at my intersection. It turns out they are the 'Street Art Walk'; I note that several chess pieces have joined them and are out of position. Person leading the walk points out a pair of wooden sneakers and two stuffed iguanas suspended from a wire running over the intersection between two streetlights, which I had previously missed.
1:42p Both Black Bishops have come over to visit. They are bored.
1:43p An attractive woman walks by. One of the Bishops wonders if she is interested in chess. If so, I wonder if she has ever had any fantasies about the Black Knight. Both Bishops express regret that they are men of the cloth.
1:45p The two women who had earlier passed by on East Houston pass by. They again express frustration that some pieces are out of position, saying it makes it difficult to follow the game properly. I sympathize. Black Queen's Bishop gets call on cell phone, ordering him to move South. We note that the Black Queen has apparently moved from her position at c7. We appear to be on the attack! I eagerly await my own orders to move.
1:51p Wind picks up. I put on sweater.
1:55p Still no orders. I chat with the owner of an antique store on the corner -- the sign on his door says "Open Monday-Saturday 12:30 - 6:30, Sunday afternoons by chance". I tell him he is in the middle of the world's largest chess game. He seems non-plussed.



OK, so maybe it's a tiny bit boring, but remember what I said about the ward? Apparently they gave this up in 2005 but I think it's time for a revitalization! Who's with me?

?

Hello?

Rice harvest

You guys remember those awesome rice paddy designs? Like this:

Well, it's harvestin' time, and you can watch them take away the now yellow rice here. The different colors are different varieties of rice so I guess they're just doing one type at a time, but it makes for pretty cool images where the characters are still intact, like this:

Anyway, it's nifty.

People, he really didn't do anything wrong

So Senator Craig's lawyer went on Hardball to explain how the Senator might stay in the Senate even if he can't retract the guilty plea, saying: "I know they say they have the right to discipline people for bringing discredit on the Senate. That's a vague standard. That's well beyond where we are in 2007. I can't imagine that 99 other senators want to be judged by that standard." Which Chris Matthews agreed with, saying "Yes, you wonder about all the traffic violations and other kinds of problems [the other senators] would be facing."

Now some people seem to think Sen. Craig's conduct should not be equated with a traffic violation, that it is far more reprehensible and he should be thrown out of the Senate immediately, since he hasn't the decency to resign when he said he maybe would. Personally, I wonder what exactly they think he did. According to a cop in Minnesota, tapping your foot and running your hand along the bottom of a stall wall is grounds for arrest, and I don't doubt the cop knows the signals for "I want to fuck in the bathroom", but hi! It is not illegal to tap your foot, or run your hand, or even to ask a cop if he wants to fuck, or to have sex, even if it's with a man and even if you're married (ok adultery is still technically illegal in some states but it hasn't been challenged since Lawrence so shut up).

Having sex in public is illegal, yes, but it seems that would be rather difficult to prove that was his intent (I don't exactly know the standards describing "conduct which [he] knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment of others, which conduct was physical (versus verbal) in nature”, but that's all they got, which is certainly a long way from sex in a bathroom), and he really shouldn't have pled guilty, but if you listen to the tape you can totally hear the cop convincing him to plea, like cops do, and Christ, people, this is not that fucking big of a deal! Nobody ever died from watching people have sex in a bathroom, whereas quite a few have from being hit by someone who ran a red light or a stop sign or some other garden variety traffic infraction, so what exactly shouldn't be equated with what, here? (Answer: fucking in bathrooms, running red lights.)

Media Matters

I would just like to point you all in the direction of this excellent piece from Media Matters, which makes the following points more eloquently than I can (though with far less swearing), so I am taking these excerpts directly from the article:

1. During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq "phony soldiers."

2. On August 19, The New York Times published an op-ed by seven members of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division [which advocated withdrawl, or at least that "it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit." --k]

3. On September 12, The New York Times noted: "Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday."

4. As Media Matters for America has documented, Limbaugh denounced as "contemptible" and "indecent" MoveOn.org's much-discussed advertisement -- titled "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" -- critical of Gen. David Petraeus, but has repeatedly attacked the patriotism of those with whom he disagrees. For instance, on the January 25 broadcast of his radio show, he told his audience that he had a new name for Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a Vietnam veteran: "Senator Betrayus." A day earlier, Hagel had sided with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in voting to approve a nonbinding resolution declaring that President Bush's escalation in Iraq was against "the national interest." Additionally, on August 21, 2006, Limbaugh said: "I want to respectfully disagree with the president on the last part of what he said. I am going to challenge the patriotism of people who disagree with him because the people that disagree with him want to lose."

<--- This concludes excerpts, so this is the part where I say "Seriously, Rush, what the fuck?" So where's Congress's resolution condemming this dude who says he is more patriotic than the two phony soldiers who co-wrote the Op-Ed piece just died (not to mention the third who was shot in the face)?

Also, if I am parsing that last sentence up there correctly, Rush is disagreeing with Bush to say that people who disagree with Bush want to lose? So Rush wants to lose? Exile that non-patriotic junkie fuck right now!

Anyway, please read Rush's whole conversation with Caller #1, cause it's awesome, and ends with:

CALLER 1: -- you know, really -- I want you to be saying how long it's gonna take.
LIMBAUGH: And I, by the way, used to walk on the moon!
CALLER 1: How long do we have to stay there?
LIMBAUGH: You're not listening to what I say. You can't possibly be a Republican. I'm answering every question. That's not what you want to hear, so it's not even penetrating your little wall of armor you've got built up.

You would know, Rush.

Spirited!

Does this cat really look like he's "in the Halloween spirit"? Looks more like he's about to maul the photographer. I am however seriously considering subjecting my (male) cat to this getup:



I think he'd be down. He is a princess.

God, I love Halloween. What is better than adults acting like retarded children, ancient pagan rites and chocolate all at the same time?

Also, pumpkins!

Happy Birthday (You're Sued!)

In honor of Google's 9th birthday, please take a look at this awesome hand-written lawsuit filed by a sanity-challenged Pennsylvania man which alleges not only that "Google" upside-down is his social security number, rearranged (and I guess missing a couple digits?) but also that the US Government is investigating him for crimes against humanity as a result of this complaint? And that he spent 2 years in jail for public drunkenness and resisting as a result? And that he and Google have a responsibility to fight terrorism? So, therefore, he would like five billion dollars, please. It's pretty awesome.

The less important kind of lives

Well it looks like a whole fuck of a lot of people are going to get murdered in Myanmar pretty soon (apparently when the government evactuates the hospitals, it is not because they are redecorating), but don't worry -- Bush has tightened sanctions! Rather meaningless since they mostly just sell drugs, but good call anyway.

I confess to being a bit baffled by the whole matter -- by most accounts Burma was a very prosperous country, full of oil and teak and so on, until it was taken over by the State Peace and Development Council which obviously did the opposite and ran the whole country into the ground, while enslaving and raping everybody in sight. So I guess they took the oil industry for themselves and are getting rich off it and that's the whole point? (Guess who's buying the oil! I'll give you a hint -- they never met a brutal repressive oil rich regime they didn't like!)

But how rich are you really getting? Seems like spending all that time killing people would kind of take away from the fun of it, plus what can you buy in Myanmar anyway (sex slaves and gold toilets? Also shitloads of opium?) but maybe that's just me. Depressing state of affairs, really, but of course nobody much cares...this might be on the front page of the NYT, but the most emailed is still "In Portland, a Golden Age of Dining and Drinking". Way to keep your eye on the ball, people! Oh hey that reminds me, it's playoffs time! Fuck Burma, go Cubs!

Actually on second thought, if people did start paying attention we'd probably just invade them, and if there's any way to make that situation worse, we'll find it, so never mind. I will however recommend Beyond Rangoon (or perhaps it's Beyond Yangon now?), it's pretty informative about the whole mess from '88 on and actually a decent film. Which I am just now realizing had Frances McDormand in it, so there's that, too! You might as well Netflix it, it's not like you're watching baseball.

Britney Spears does not make sharks want to fuck

It's scientific!

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2843967.ece

German scientists say sharks, long considered as just aquatic killing machines, apparently have feelings too and are more likely to mate if the right music is played to them.

James Last, Justin Timberlake and Salt-N-Pepa are among the artists who get the sharks in the mood for love beneath the waves but Britney Spears left them cold.

...

For the study, each Sea Life Centre played two hours of music a day. Each site played a different title, from classic to rock to hip-hop. Visitors and Sea Life staff were asked to watch the behaviour of the sharks.

In Konstanz and Dresden, visitors watched the typical courtship behaviour of sharks. The creatures followed and bit each other in their fins. At the Timmendorfer Strand aquarium, it looked as if the sharks were dancing to the rhythm of the music. Jens Hirzig, display supervisor at Sea Life Timmendorf, said: "The creatures swam around each other and it seemed that they were dancing with each other while listening to Joe Cocker.

He added: "But what surprises us especially was that we discovered 50 eggs. This makes us very happy." At Sea Life Munich, the sharks did not show any reaction to Britney Spears, although staff reported that there seemed to be an increase among cuddles shared by teenage visitors.

Yup.

General Betray Us

All het up over MoveOn's ad, John McCain says:

“It’s disgraceful, it’s got to be retracted and condemned by the Democrats, and MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country.”

I wonder how he thinks he'd manage that? Take the servers hosting http://www.moveon.org/ and chuck them up to Canada? Or perhaps banish all 3.3 million of us to some America-hating place, like France perhaps? The Straight Talk Express continues to roll on, making no sense whatsoever.

I'm not really sure why this ad caused the rancor that it did, except perhaps that we're not allowed to insult military people, ever? It didn't even say he was General Betray Us, just asked the question, quite innocently (fine, maybe not "innocently", but you know). Anyway, the guy pretty clearly made some misleading statements that, if grouped together to paint a picture of a war that is false as they were, seem to me to count as a betrayal, considering we're supposed to rely on his testimony to make decisions moving forward that will affect and/or end American lives (AMERICAN lives, people! Those are the important kind of lives!).

Anyway, I just don't quite get it. Why all the fuss at MoveOn? He's the one lying his military ass off.

Did you say "Obama"?

Because I'm pretty sure you meant "Bush":

As for Obama, a senior White House official said the freshman senator from Illinois was "capable" of the intellectual rigor needed to win the presidency but instead relies too heavily on his easy charm. "It's sort of like, 'that's all I need to get by,' which bespeaks sort of a condescending attitude towards the voters," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And a laziness, an intellectual laziness."

This should be Mitt Romney's blog

Because he has lost his motherfuckin' mind:

"We expect our elected officials to be good role models, not bad examples – thank you President Bush for restoring personal integrity and dignity to the White House."

I was googling for some good examples of why this is utterly insane and came up with this, which is pretty funny (if you like jokes about torture), but doesn't necessarily prove my point, but whatever, Bush has no integrity, I think we're on the same page here.

Shock Doctrine

I don't know if you know much about Naomi Klein (I didn't) but she wrote a book called The Shock Doctrine recently, about how American free market policies have taken over the world by insinuating themselves into the shocked aftermath of tragedies (not particularly well-reviewed at the Guardian, where she's a frequent contributer -- aaawkward).

Anyway, as she says: "When I finished The Shock Doctrine, I sent it to Alfonso Cuarón because I adore his films and felt that the future he created for Children of Men was very close to the present I was seeing in disaster zones. I was hoping he would send me a quote for the book jacket and instead he pulled together this amazing team of artists -- including Jonás Cuarón who directed and edited -- to make The Shock Doctrine short film."

The result is a pretty cool film, even if it may be a touch "conspiracy-theory capitalism is the root of all evil AAAAH" and so here it is!

Lesson from September 11th:

The people need more guns!

See Giuliani explaining to the NRA how he went from "the gun is also the source of a very big problem. And the NRA's, in essence, defense of assault weapons and their unwillingness to deal with some of the realities here that we face in cities is a terrible, terrible mistake." "The NRA, for some reason, I think goes way overboard" when he was Mayor of New York, to supporting the second amendment fully when he's running for President:




That link above is to an excellent NYT piece showing his comments through time, including this one:

"I believe that we should treat the possession of a handgun the way we treat driving an automobile, and therefore, a person who wants to possess a handgun should pass a written test, should be able to pass a physical test in the actual use of the gun and should have to demonstrate good moral character and a reason to have the gun."

Since when do you have to demonstrate good moral character or a reason to drive in order to get a license? Also, what would be on the written test? (It is a good idea to shoot people: True/False)

Anyway, he also totally bizarrely interrupted his speech to take a phone call from his wife (that was totally unplanned!), which is the kind of stunt I bet the NRA is totally behind. They like pistol whipping guys, not pussy whipped ones, dude.

Too many dead people

Two Kansas Senators who have voted against any resolution that would bring troops home (Brownback and Roberts) have found themselves in a pickle -- Kansas' Fort Riley cemetary has run out of room. So they've written a letter asking for more funds to build a new one, since obviously a whole heck of a lot more Kansas soldiers are going to die, and fast.

Luckily, the article points out that in the meantime, "Fort Riley can bury bodies on top of other bodies if family members want to share a plot".

Classy!

Speaking of

Speaking of Stephen Colbert, it really is tragic that he lost an Emmy to an aging American singer's one time special for the second year in a row.

Speaking of Barry Manilow, who knew he was actually kind of cool?

Speaking of the Emmys, what the fuck were you doing shutting out the Sopranos cast? Terry O'Quinn over Michael Imperioli? Really?

Speaking of Really? (and Really old, but whatever, you're too cool for television. Except you, Brett!), this SNL Weekend Update: Really!?! about Michael Vick, back when he was just getting busted for stashing his weed in an Aquafina bottle, is pretty funny:



"So you hid your weed, which is not allowed on a plane, in another thing that is not allowed on a plane. That's like hiding your weed in the barrel of a gun, or in the mouth of an endangered species."

Good stuff.

Andrew Keen

OK, so I'm not as mad anymore as I was when I first saw this guy on the Colbert Report:





I just watched it now and so I'm all pissed off again (Viacom has freely provided me with the ability to embed this wherever I like, by the way, and they're paying Stephen Colbert and somehow making money, so shut the fuck up Andrew Keen, have you not HEARD of Internet advertising?) Also every time AK says "I think you're proving my point", SC is not, in fact, doing that at all -- nobody was convinced there were WMD in Iraq because of anonymous bloggers secretly in the employ of foreign powers, you arrogant fuck, it was Colin Powell on CNN, but whatever.

The point is, I'm not mad (I just loathe you, Andrew Keen). I just think it is ridiculous to state that culture is coming to an end because people can't make money off art because of the Internet. There have been musicians for thousands of years, and only a way to record and play back their music for the past hundred and forty -- I don't think the collapse of Tower Records really means the end of art as we know it. So art will be free on the Internet. People will still make money. The fact that anyone can publish does not mean that anyone is paying attention. Nobody is reading this here blog, for example, I am just another ignorant amateur yelling into the wind, and you don't have to read it any more than you have to pick up every pamphlet and 'zine printed in your local record shop. (Oh I forgot, no more record shops. Sorry.) Anyway, get over it.

Also, never, ever, ever answer the question "Is it art?" with the return question "Does it make money?" God, you're a douchebag.

Patience

I figured out what my problem is, thanks to Salon's War Room:

Bush on Iraq: It's time for buying time again
The Associated Press says George W. Bush will ask the country tonight for "more time to let success bloom in Iraq." The Baltimore Sun says the president will be asking for "patience and sacrifice." Fox News, to its credit, puts it a little more bluntly: "Bush Wants to Buy Time," it reports.

Somehow, this all seems a little bit familiar ...

USA Today, Aug. 26, 2003: "With Nod Toward WWII, Bush Urges Patience in Iraq."
Dallas Morning News, June 11, 2004: "Bush Urges Patience With Iraqi Plans at G8 Summit."
National Public Radio, June 29, 2005: "Bush Cites Progress, Urges Patience on Iraq."
MSNBC, Nov. 30, 2005: "Bush: Iraq Conflict 'Will Take Time and Patience.'''
CBS News, March 13, 2006: "Bush Urges Patience Amid Iraq Violence."
New York Times, June 14, 2006: "After Iraq Visit, Bush Urges Patience."
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2006: "Conceding Missteps, Bush Urges Patience on Iraq."
New York Sun, Dec. 29, 2006: "Bush: More Time Needed to Craft Iraq Strategy."
Financial Times, Jan. 24, 2007: "Analysis: Bush Tries to Buy Some Time."
International Herald Tribune, March 19, 2007: "Bush Asks for Patience on Iraq."
Reuters, July 20, 2007: "Bush Seeks More Time for Iraq Strategy."
Reuters, Aug. 25, 2007: "Bush Pleads for More Patience for Iraq War Efforts."
Boston Globe, Sept. 1, 2007: "Iraqi Civilian Deaths Up, Bush Urges Patience."


I have no patience! Thanks, George.

Windmills

So I'm reading the hour-by-hour of the Petraeus report just thinking how fucking pointless this all is, who cares how many benchmarks he says we hit vs. the GAO says, it won't make a solitary whit of difference (what is a whit? Can I have a solitary one? Whatever, I do) with what our policy is going to be, and everybody knows this, and everybody says this in advance, and is still just breathlessly blogging everything, and I really just don't care, even though Obama sounds a bit like a tool and I did like this exchange from yesterday:

Petraeus: "For what it's worth, al-Qaida believes that Iraq is the central front for the war on terrorism."
(California Democratic Rep. Brad) Sherman: "Well, al-Qaida is telling us that they think it's the central front. They might be lying. They've been known to do so, General. And if we allow Ahmadinejad and bin Laden to tell us where to fight them, they may not give us their best advice."


Good point! But anyway, so like, why can't we just leave right now, leave the embassy, leave everything, let them fight their civil war by themselves? Oil, right? It's always oil? So I was just wondering, how much do windmills cost? And of course if you type that into your Google search bar that exact question comes up as a suggestion, which got me to this page, which suggests that you can buy a 10 kilowatt windmill for $40,000, although if you go look up that model it suggests it's more like 28-30k, but let's round up. The average American household (not person) used about 10,000 kWh a year, and this windmill will produce 10,000 – 18,000 kWh. And it just so randomly happens that the last figure I saw for how much the war in Iraq had cost us (back in January, like forever ago) was 1.2 trillion. And guess what 1.2 trillion divided by 40,000 is? It is exactly 300 million!

With me? For the price of the war to date, we could have bought a windmill for every single motherfucking person in America that would give them all the electricity an entire household needs each year for the 25-30 year life of the windmill.

Weird, huh?

Facebook Islam Kerfuffle

Or, I also hate it when free speech has to be stifled II

So, as you may have seen in NYT, there's this group on Facebook called Fuck Islam. In case you didn't bother to spend a couple hours investigating more thoroughly, you know I did!

Here is the description of the group by the creators:

The Quran contains many lies and threats. Islam is false, no god exists, and someone should say that loud and clear. Heaven and hell are fables, prayer is a waste of time, and angels and jinn are obviously mythology. This is not a group against Muslims. They have it bad enough. If you doubt that go to Palestine. If you hate Muslims or are here to harrass them or promote your religion, go away. Muslims can be and usually are peaceful and respectful. The best thing for the whole world is a rejection of all religions and a renewed discovery of the love for humanity and naturalism. Fuck Christianity and Judaism as well. These religions are just as false and have a variety of disadvantages. There are other groups devoted to each of these false ideologies. Here is one devoted to religion in general: http://unm.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2225572075and here is one for Christianity: http://unm.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5857745671

Now that sounds all fine and dandy and for the record I am with you 100% on the first couple of sentences (though this "Muslims can be and usually are peaceful and respectful" bit sounds just a skosh like "articulate and bright and clean" if you ask me, but whatever). I will concede that your request for those who hate Muslims to stay away seems to have fallen on deaf, hate-filled ears, as one of the three featured discussions currently on the page is entitled "Why are muslims cocksuckers????", so fine.

But, the reason why this is a story is because of another group which has sprung up with a petition, entitled "if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook". Their description:

if the group "f**k Islam" and all similar disrespectful groups of religion are not shut down before the end of september..we are all goin to close our facebook accounts..and thats the least we can do to show our respect to religion and our disagreement of such humilating and ignorant groups.

Now I am not going to make any comments about the relative grasp of English grammar, spelling and punctuation betwixt the two, cause, you know, the internet (honestly I can't even read any of the posts to try to figure out who has a point cause it's just all this

nate forget dee, i forgive from his sideand for the verses u gave>>wat u posted was very short, and to make complete sense u also hav to read wat comes before and after thesethey talk about maountains and rivers, and animals [beasts] etc createdthat allah made the sky, the stars; he brings down rain and then clears the skybut yet they[non muslims] do not believe

and this

hey realy i respect all religons and respect evry one but when some one say talk about islam i will be to angry fro this fuck u alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

and this

hey amanda fernando realy i think ur a great bitch and i hope have date with u to fuck u gooooooo tooooooooooo hilllllllllllllllllllllllfuck u bitch u talk about islam what u know about islam

and like are you people even talking? I mean, is this in some way intelligible to others? (Go to hill?)

But anyway, I just think it's weird that in the group Fuck Islam they link to their other Fuck groups, such as Fuck Religion and Fuck Christianity and yet nobody seems to be all that het up about those, except some spillover by the Lebanese (they do take their Christianity seriously in Lebanon) on the Christianity one (I can't stop quoting):

i will talk in english to let everyone understand what i am going to say. First of all, I hope that someday I will meet the creator of this group because I swear that I will let him regret of creating this group. Second, I will fuck his mother and sisters because I am surethat they are bitches. Third, I will fuck you (creator of this group) in your big fat ass and I will let you scream very loud because my dick will really heart you motherfucker. kiss 100 2ekhtak bi2ayre w ya reit fiyye 2etkammach fik ya akhou l 1000 charmouta. ya zaber

and

this mexican variable variable? or u living in your truthful world or not? if u wanna think scientifically, u won't be more than a small sand stone, tiny one!!!! that in case we say that we are scintifically thinking and arranging our selves in the world each by his role! are you gonna say, that all this systimatic, escimatic, and well planned & executed system, is without a creator?probably cocain, wead, or marijuana, have effected your mind and thinking, and got you so high where you reached a stage that you think that you are darwin or nitshe or Dostayevski.

I mean, really, what?

But anyway, it seems to me like the majority of the hate speech (and rape threats) seem to be coming from people not belonging to the group (Fuck Islam has 813 members. "if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook" has 61,199 members), so -- and I know this is crazy -- stop looking at the group. It just seems weird to me -- there is so much true hate on the Internet, why do you focus on a silly little thing like this? (61,199 people! It's the fucking Internet! Do you have ANY IDEA what is out there?)

So fine, Facebook, if you're going to censor, you're going to censor, I can't stop you. But I can't believe you're considering removing this group, and not banning the account of the guy who threatened to rape the group's founder as well as his mother and sisters. I really hope that's not how you decide.

And, while I'm at it, a brief shout-out to Google, host of this here blogger blog, who will just put the whole thing behind a content warning if people identify hate speech:

Special Case for Hate Speech
When the community has voted and hate speech is identified on Blog*Spot, Google may exercise its right to place a Content Warning page in front of the blog and set it to "unlisted."

I love you Google. So on that note here is a handy little doohicky from Amnesty International which will load up a new serving of content that was censored by somebody every time you reload. Enjoy whatever it is, and click on it to find out what it is.

Lead shmead

I have little interest in this whole lead paint toys thing, except to ask: Why do babies put everything in their mouths? I understand they are curious and exploring with all five senses and all, but you'd think that behaviour would have been selected out, what with all the poisonous plants and rotting detritus and various unfriendly fungi lying around in our species' more forested past. Not to mention all the lead coated Barbies. So maybe it's time to start going on that bit of evolution, towards a brighter future where children are not stupid enough to swallow the lead charm on their bracelet.

It is not food. It is metal. Don't eat it.

But, I do want to ask, in all seriousness: what the fuck is up with China? Hacking into the Pentagon, sure, who wouldn't? Getting the husbands of your mistresses executed, I can understand the impulse. Sticking a bunch of needles into an infant girl because you wanted her to be a boy, who hasn't been there? But your royal jelly is fucking with our bees?? È basta.

Rolly!

Why not?

TV on the Internet

There's all this fuss about NBC failing to renew their contract with Apple, and Apple then summarily yanking NBC shows from iTunes in a fit of pique, claiming NBC wanted to raise the price up to $4.99 per episode (which does sound awful). But then NBC's shows all show up at Amazon's Unbox for the same old $1.99 per episode they were on iTunes, and it turns out that Apple really wants to make the price for every TV show it sells 99 cents, the same as a song.

Which, when you think about it, is really not that much compared to what I pay for cable, especially if you really only watch a few premium shows. You can get all the networks for free, so all I have to pay for is the Daily Show and whatever's on HBO. I think that would come under $80, wouldn't you?

Once this Apple TV thing gets going, it really might replace the cable paradigm in my mind -- instead of being able to view 700 channels, 685 of which you have zero interest in, you can instead download any episode of any show that has ever come out on DVD right then and there. Plus rent movies, as Apple seems to be leaning towards and Amazon is already doing.

Pretty much all the broadcast networks are streaming their shows on their websites already, with ads you almost have to watch, and NBC is already planning this whole Hulu thing ("Why is Hulu the new venture's name? According to a note posted on the site by newly installed CEO Jason Kilar, it's meant to connote fun and simplicity. "Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce and rhymes with itself," he wrote." As lots of other people have pointed out, all words rhyme with themselves, dumbass.) Reaction has been mixed (it means "butt"!) but whatever, it's hard to come up with a name.

Anyway, I can't wait to get rid of cable, is my point here. I'd pay $20 to get a whole season downloaded onto my computer at once if you made it easy for me to get and easy to get it on my TV, and I would fucking relish calling up my satanic cable providers and telling them to go fuck themselves. You know what I mean?

Practice what you preach

People keep talking about how anti-gay Sen. Craig is, what with his Senate record and whatnot, and calling him a hypocrite for it. (Or talking about how people aren't talking about it, whatever.) Now I've never met the dude, but this all seems a bit myopic to me -- does an interest in a nice slutty airport bathroom man-on-man hookup automatically mean you should support gay marriage? You don't get to pick who you're attracted to, and your desire doesn't dictate your politics. Whatever various and sundry factors have led to him choosing to (attempt to) appear as a straight man (who definitely does not enjoy sex in airport bathrooms with men!) for his whole life have presumably also made him an opponent of gay marriage, and that's not really that weird. Now if he was in fact secretly married to a man, that might be a different story, but the guy obviously doesn't much like gay people, including however big a part of himself that is (around 6 inches, i bet).

(Aside: on his web site, the "Hot Topics" section says this:
Idahoans are contacting me most about these issues:
Cigarette tax in SCHIP
Increases in CAFE standards
Gas Prices
New passport requirements for US citizens

Really? Are you sure you're not, um, overlooking one?)

So I've been trying to avoid making some sort of pedophilia comparison here (like, lots of people who are unfortunately attracted to kids think their attraction is wrong, and we're all OK with that. We don't call them hypocrites because they're not in NAMBLA), because who am I, Santorum? But really that's sort of my point -- the only thing wrong with engaging in sex with children is they're not able to consent and you'll fuck 'em all up. Resulting in more people like The Honorable Larry Craig, and who wants that?

There is nothing inherently wrong with being attracted to anybody, it's what happens when you act on it that makes the difference, so child molestation=bad, gay sex=good. Fucking your poor little Chihuahua in the butt? Probably not so comfy for the dog. Sucking off a horse? Looks like he's having a pretty good time. Not that I've ever seen a video of that. So, to recap, pedophilia is like small-dog-anal-sex, whereas homosexual activity is like equine-oral-sex. Just so we're clear.

However, other people disagree with me, and think being gay is morally wrong. This is also not a choice. I mean, maybe you can go to Isaiah Washington's rehab or whatever, but by and large you have come by that opinion for a totally irrational reason, and therefore it is very difficult to change. Best I can hope for is that some sort of terrible tragedy happens to you and causes you to lose your faith in God, thereby also abandoning all your retarded ideas about artificial morality. That would be good.

So, since the desire to proposition men in airport bathrooms is not a choice, and the thinking that gay sex is morally wrong is not a choice, it is really not so strange that both would exist within the same person. Of course he could choose to not act on either or both of these things, but wouldn't that make him a hypocrite?

Dem academic ho's be all up in my shiznit

For those in academia (ahem): please, if you have not already, enjoy this, "The Professor’s Ten Commandments, Thanks to Notorious B.I.G.". It's pretty much what it sounds like. Sample translated commandment:

Number six: That goddamn credit, dead it/You think a crackhead payin’ you back, shit, forget it. For “crackhead,” think “student with a late paper.” For “credit,” think “extension.”

Anyway, I don't really know much about how useful his advice is here, seeing as how I'm not a professor and all, but the comments rock. I mean, wow. The debate rages over whether it was appropriate to have "that sort" of language on an education site, with many people talking about whether or not it's ok to say "fuck" in class. I had professors drop "the F-bomb" in class, and I was a-ok with it (as you might be able to tell), but as far as I can tell, this is a fuckin' web site, not a classroom. The dude's making a point. Anyway, the whole thing derails into some sort of screed against misogyny in hip-hop for absolutely no apparent reason, and then you get this sort of shit:

"I am stupefied, nigh aghast, at several of the dubiously contempt faculty that believe hip-hop somehow precludes education. If anything, I would imagine any culturally versed faculty member might appreciate the musical metaphor. As scholars, should you not broaden your horizons and conceptualize ideas in new, abstract, and creative ways?"

It goes on in this vein for, um, quite a while. And, like, good on ya, dude, I'm totally with you, but who the fuck talks like that in a blog comment? Excuse me, I mean: Whilst I appreciate the erudite nature of the above respondent's discourse, I find its timbre to be a tad inapt for this particular medium.

Pretentious motherfucker.

Also, s/he includes this sentence:

"Ebonics, through psycholinguistic studies, has been found to contain it’s own unique language structure (see Jean Wofford or Robert Williams)."

Which contains a rather pet peevish error on which I will not comment, as the laws of the internet dictate that if I do, I will shortly make a similar error, but DUDE.

Anyway, funny stuff.

Don't cry, Souter

Apparently Justice Souter was so distraught over Bush v. Gore he almost resigned, and cried a lot. Like, you know, most of America. Anyway, thanks for not leaving, we need you sort of desperately. And thanks for Casey. Also, you're kinda funny:

Souter isn’t all despair in Toobin’s book, however. The author relates a story in which Souter played along with a stranger who mistook him for Justice Stephen Breyer. After the person asked him what the best thing about being on the court was, he replied: “Well, I’d have to say it’s the privilege of serving with David Souter.”

Also, is it just me, or is he smokin' hot?

Just me? Fine, whatever. I'm just saying, relatively speaking...

Webdings? Really?

Why the hell is that one of my (very limited) font selections? Do people really want to read like this?

Although I will give a brief shout-out to Microsoft for caving in to the demands of complete raving lunatics, and replacing the oh-so-ominous translation of "NYC" into Wingdings as

(Which clearly means Microsoft's basic mission statement is "Death to Jews: Thumbs Up!") into the nice, pleasant, inoffensive and entirely deliberate new Webdings version:

NYC. I suppose that could be any city, but point taken, Microsoft. You've learned to stop encoding your messages of hate in in your completely useless fonts. (Are there people out there who like, know which symbol goes to which letter, so when they want to include some kind of fucked up bug thing they just type "k" in Webdings [k]? If so, why?) Anyway, I look forward to a new Windows security patch that makes subtle changes to my registry that spells "Hitler" in ASCII.

Penn Jillette wrote something pretty funny about it, including his own interpretation of the symbols:

"To me, means 'Jewish people make really good pesticides?' "

He's pretty angry about it too, which you know we like around here. Nothing like a nice self-righteous fury at dumbasses.

I will not even mention this retardedness:

Seriously, he's totally not gay

Look, he says so himself, repeatedly:




It was all just a smear job by the, um, local newspaper? Anyway, the first line out of his mouth is "Thank you all for coming out today". Fine, I'm 8, but that's fuckin' funny.

So, it's murder, but you shouldn't go to jail?

Check out this little piece interviewing pro-life demonstrators who support making abortion illegal, where they are each asked "What should the punishment be for women who have had an illegal abortion?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

Now I have no idea how many people they had to ask this in order to get these few people who were totally taken aback by this question (and it's also interesting that they were almost all women, while most of the pro-life demonstrations I've seen have been well represented by the dudes, maybe the menfolk are a little quicker to suggest locking the abortin' ladies up), but I will point out that I used to live not far from Libertyville, IL and it's a pretty small town that's also pretty liberal, so I doubt there were more than a couple dozen people at whatever that was.

Particularly the second person, the lady with the red shirt and glasses, who was totally confident that abortion was the murder of a human being but thought we should just pray for the women who have illegal abortions, they shouldn't go to jail or be punished in any way. If her point is that judgement is for God alone so we don't need to punish them here, then why wasn't she quick to offer that murderers being given jail sentences is also irrelevant when pressed on that point?

Also, "Is that your judgement or God's judgement?" "Both." Glad they're on the same wavelength! The interviewer is a bit of a douche, but really it's just striking how these people haven't thought this through at all. The one thing pro-lifers have on their side is a clear-cut definition of when life begins, there is a pretty specific moment when a sperm hits an egg. No pro-choicer out there can tell you the exact moment when they think a ball of cells become a human being. So anyway, pro-lifers, think it through a bit more. You can't go waving photos of bloody fetuses in my face all the damn time screaming about murder but tell me the girl I'm escorting to the clinic shouldn't be punished if you succeed.

Wait, actually, don't. Stay confused.

Anyway, there are plenty of countries where abortion is illegal and women are prosecuted for it, and that article is pretty striking all on its own:

"The abortion rates are highest in Chile and Peru (where one woman in 20 has an induced abortion). In Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, it's about one woman in 30, and in Mexico approximately one in 40. (In the United States, the rate is 21.3 per 1,000 women.)"

and

"And while abortion is legal in cases of rape or a threat to life, the actual mechanism to get permission to have a legal abortion is so complex that it discourages women. Alonso points out that last year in Mexico City, only 17 legal abortions were approved, yet there are 30 rapes reported to police per day there."

I'm not sure how reliable her facts and figures are here, as I have no information whatsoever about the fact-checking group over at "WeNews", but you can read more about the incredibly sad state of Mexico's abortion and sex policies in this report from Human Rights Watch (the age of consent is 12! All incest is consensual! Dios mio!). I don't really feel like independently verifying that 1 in 20 claim right now, but if it's close to true, yikes! (Also note she said Mexico's rate is "approximately one in 40" but the US's is "21.3 per 1,000 women". Do you have better data, or does "21.3 in 1,000" look better than "approximately one in 50"? Hmm.)