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...