Batshit Crazy

Bristol Palin's baby daddy

2008-09-02T18:27:00.008-04:00

Just for the record, I think that dragging children into presidential campaigns is absolutely wrong, not because of some moral abstraction regarding the sanctity of your kids, but just because it's rather pointless. I mean my parents are atrocious at being parents and have the totally fucked up kids to prove it, but are excellent at things like running large companies and getting people to like them, and would make great vice presidents. In fact, McCain really ought to have picked my dad, they see eye to eye on a whole truckload.

But, the New York Post (aka "the rag of record") does not share my compunction, and has reproduced in part the MySpace page of one Levi Johnston:

On his MySpace page, Johnston boasts, "I'm a f - - -in' redneck" who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.
"But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess."
"Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass," he added.
He also claims to be "in a relationship," but states, "I don't want kids."

I mean that's just great. "'Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass,' he added" is a sentence that needs to be used far more often in newspapers. I mean "newspapers".

Confidential to Fox News: please note that my usage of the term "baby [parent]" is not entirely correct as Bristol and Levi are reportedly still involved and plan to wed, but it is an improvement over using it to refer to one's actual current spouse. Thank you.

Film on YouTube

2008-09-02T15:01:00.003-04:00

One of the common criticisms about this whole Web 2.0 user-generated content whatnot is that there is so much crap generated by the unwashed masses that no one will be able to tell what is good or not. Leaving aside the fact that there are plenty of stars forged in the fires of YouTube (many currently featured in that Weezer video), there is also the point that YouTube is simply a distribution channel, albeit one with very few obstacles to entry.

So if you'd made a film about exactly how staggeringly incompetent US decisions made after the fall of Baghdad contributed in no small part to this seething quagmire of a civil war called Iraq we've got going on now, and you'd seen the other fifteen excellent recent movies about Iraq crash and burn in brick-and-mortar theaters (even the crappy ones with tons of famous people failed, and I am pretty sure that Brett is the only person not specifically involved with the making of the film "Grace Is Gone" nor at Sundance 2007 to have seen it), maybe you would realize that getting as many people to see your documentary as possible is what you were going for all along. (Also, its run on YouTube just happens to end on November 5th, which sounds kinda close to some other date that is familiar for some reason.)

So maybe Magnolia Pictures that bought your critically acclaimed movie (Washington Post's number 1 film of 2007!) and planned to distribute it, but so far had only managed to put it in 2 theaters and release the DVD, thought: why not put the fucker up on YouTube so people can see it for free with no ads in the film, and just have a banner ad up top that (presumably) represents some sort of sponsorship from Netflix and Amazon so we can actually recoup some of our expenses?

I think it's a brilliant plan, that I hope more films released by actual studios could follow. A lot of talk has gone 'round about the demise of the major studio indie division, but really, what does it cost you to put something on YouTube? Work out a deal with Netflix, include their ad on your page, and accomplish the goals of 1) having people see the movie and 2) making money off the movie with little to no effort whatsoever. Why is that hard? Like, if this absolutely ridiculous animated baby rap piece of shit advertising some bullshit online cute baby contest can get almost seven hundred thousand views (!), maybe a picture about a war that has dramatically affected the lives of millions and millions of people could get a handful of hits.

Actually, I just scanned some of the comments, and never mind. Back to DVDs, never to be seen by anyone, you brilliant relevant filmmakers you!

forkinass4 says:
why is this video an hour long? WTF MAN!! That aint right! (votes zero)

RNC

2008-09-02T14:21:00.004-04:00

In the spirit of the Republicans taking a day off their convention to go make sure Hurricane Gustav didn't entirely obliterate their chances this November, I will also take a break from mentioning anything about the specific fourth dimensional aspects of exactly how much Bush cares about black people [Hint: not determined solely by when hurricanes are about to hit] and simply inquire: What the fuck is Cindy McCain wearing?

Is it, like, the color of the silty, flooding Mississippi? With a collar that can be used as a flotation device?

Divorced Kids

2008-08-28T18:43:00.003-04:00

Nope, not kids of divorce, divorced children: This 8 year old girl in Saudi Arabia was somehow or other married to a 50 year old guy in secret, arranged by her father, and now her mother is filing for divorce on her behalf. Because she doesn't know she's married, and also because she's eight. Now I understand that lots of people have arranged marriages, and often they are arranged while they are still children, but don't they usually wait until they're at least like thirteen, or, you know, have pubic hair, before they actually get married? At least this one is still living with her parents, unlike this other girl they mention:

In April another eight-year-old girl won a divorce after fleeing from her husband, aged 28, and arriving in the main court in the capital Sana'a.

They don't mention exactly how an eight year old managed to run away and make it all the way to the capital, in Yemen, but that's some accomplished kid. I bet she'll make someone very happy, when she's ready to be a wife. At twelve.

Condom Ringtone

2008-08-26T23:19:00.002-04:00

Neat idea: in India, where there are still a lot of stigmas around condoms, sexual education and their 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the BBC World Services Trust has started a new campaign trying to make condoms more acceptable. So far they've included a contest to answer a riddle to get people to talk about condoms, have a spiffy parrot mascot, and awesomely, a ringtone with a professional singer chanting "Condom" over and over. There's an ad showing the ringtone here, plus you can hear or download the ringtone here. It's pretty great!

Gender Identity

2008-07-31T14:38:00.002-04:00

Confused? Just examine your browsing history! This dude has set up a way to analyze what sites you've visited, compare their male-to-female ratio, and therefore decide whether you are male or female. The ratios are pretty interesting, people's comments seem to imply that they think there's judgement involved, and are confusing actually being male or female with gender stereotypes (why does my college make me feminine??) but it's just a breakdown -- girls are more likely to use financial sites and buy plane tickets and check out the ACLU than boys, for whatever reason. But boy oh boy is The Pirate Bay male! Incidentally, Google is just slightly more used by women whereas YouTube is exactly even. Given that there are more women than men in the world, but I think there are more men on the Internet -- well, I don't actually know what any of it means (nor where he's getting the ratios from) but it is interesting.

Oddly enough, my FireFox self is overwhelmingly female, while my IE self is overwhelmingly male. I didn't realize I was breaking it down like that. I guess I'll go check out this weekend's Hall of Fame football game on FireFox, then. Go Redskins!

Why this woman can't handle Monica Corcoran

2008-07-22T16:04:00.011-04:00

Why women can't handle 'Dark Knight'

Hey, Christopher Nolan.
Ever drink a gallon of Diet Coke and sit for two hours with your legs crossed? Oh and then -- just when it seems like Gotham is safe and credits will roll -- suffer through another 32 minutes of clenching your nether region muscles?

Clearly, the director of "The Dark Knight" and the auteurs behind other interminable fan boy action movies such as "Iron Man" (126 minutes) don't know that a woman's
bladder is about the size of a salted cocktail peanut. Men have bladders that are walnut-sized. And those very gals, after silently praying that the Joker will die or Batman will retire or everyone will just perish en masse and the movie will end, tend to be seated in the centers of theater rows.

Hey, Monica Corcoran.

Don't drink a fucking gallon of Diet Coke before you go to see a two and a half hour movie. Also, don't sit in the center (why do we "tend" to sit there, exactly?). Also, do you honestly have to pee every two hours? How do you sleep? Also, don't tell people how to make their art based on your limitations. Also, salted cocktail peanut?

But it struck me that maybe fan boys are finally getting their revenge on women who mocked them for their comic collections and Spiderman Underoos. Is this comic craze in movies just another Hollywood conspiracy against women? (But "Sex and the City" clocked in at 2 hours and 28 minutes, you protest. Yes, and many women chose to dash off when their least favorite lady hit the screen. Not to mention the fact that it was directed by a man.)

Seriously, what? I chose to not see that piece of shit at all, and I "chose to dash off" out of the English Patient (running time: 162 min) for a completely different reason: it was a terrible movie. And maybe, just maybe, it is possible that the main reason behind the running time of freakin' Batman is not a personal attack on you and your tiny bladdered female friends? I mean, maybe they just hate midgets. Did you think of that? Hmm?

Zack Snyder, director of upcoming geek boy extravaganza "Watchmen," has told the New York Times: "The main picture is nearing three hours long, and I know I have a fight on my hands just with that."
Um, more like a "flight" on your hands at 124 minutes, when a dozen chicks run for the aisles. How about an intermission for the geek girls?

How about if you mess with "Watchmen", I will stab you in your salted-cocktail-peanut-sized bladder with my "geek girl" knife?

Gosh, I am grumpy today. It must be that time of the month, huh Monica? Let's go to the little girls' room together and talk about it. I am assuming your piece is supposed to be a joke, or satire, or funny, or something? But I don't really get it. It's funny how chicks have little bladders? And they don't really like comic book movies, or at least not more than Diet Coke? Where's the funny? I guess I have a little brain, too!

ETA: I just saw Dark Knight yesterday and I didn't have to pee once, so fuck you!

Q&A

2008-07-22T14:59:00.007-04:00

Q: Which telecom, singled out by the NYT piece exposing Bush's illegal wiretapping in the first place for handing over customers' data in a way that might not be, shall we say, consistent with the American way, has spent tons and tons of money trying (and succeeding) to guarantee their immunity from prosecution, aimed at both the current Republican administration and Democratic Congress, as well as potential future officeholders (even though campaign finance laws prevent corporations from donating to campaigns)?

They don't say anything about sponsoring conventions!

Commemorative Prostitutes

2008-07-14T12:23:00.004-04:00

For a much classier remembrance, I take you to Amsterdam, where they have put this statue of a hooker in the Red Light District to "show respect to the millions of people around the world who earn their money in prostitution" (according to the sculptor, Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute):

Hilariously (for me, anyway), Ms. Majoor was "physically assaulted by an elderly lady who apparently was not happy to have the statue close to her home. The woman was taken into police custody, and released after the unveiling had taken place."

This violent elderly lady apparently has no problem with the actual prostitutes working near her home, just the statue of one. Here's a shot of the square the statue is going in:

See all them red lights? THERE BE HOOKERS. Chill out, feisty old lady.

We Will Never Forget

2008-07-14T12:03:00.003-04:00

First of all, as commemorative attack slogans go, this one kind of sucks. Pearl Harbor at least gets "a date which will live in infamy", whereas for September 11th all we have is the fucking date. The Holocaust gets "Never again", which is a little more proactive than just not forgetting (and also used to excellent effect in last week's "Weeds" -- grandfather, Jew and all-around fuck-up played by Albert Brooks tells his grandson that genocide must Never Happen Again. When precocious grandson Shane informs him that in fact it has happened several times since the Holocaust, in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, etc, he gets the very accurate response: "No, to Jews. It must never happen again to Jews.")

Anyway, to aid with the not forgetting, have a $20 silver plated bill:

With the (theoretical) Freedom Tower on the front and 1+2 WTC on the back, PLUS, as their ad on TV breathlessly informed me, it is the First Time Ever that a bill has used two separate numbers to add up to the denomination -- 9+11=20. It's just so, um, special.

This is brought to you by the National Collector's Mint, the same company that was already slapped for selling coins advertised "as having been minted from silver recovered from a bank vault "in the heart of ground zero"", when in fact they were just silver plated, and stating that they are the "first legally authorized government" coins, when the government in question is not, as one might assume, the US government, but is in fact "the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States possession with no authority to coin its own currency."

One More FISA Story

2008-07-14T11:54:00.003-04:00

I read this tidy summary of the FISA bill passed last week, not thinking much of it, until I noticed the byline -- this story about how the telecoms would not be punished, and Bush has managed to legalize his completely illegal wiretapping over the past seven years, was written by Eric Lichtblau, one of the two guys that won a Pulitzer uncovering it all for the NYT in the first place.

For, as it turns out, absolutely nothing:

"The vote came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil liberties. The final outcome in Congress, which opponents of the surveillance measure had conceded for weeks, seemed almost anticlimactic in contrast."

Thanks anyway, dude, hope you enjoyed the Pulitzer.

Arty Porn

2008-07-14T11:40:00.003-04:00

This "magazine" WLTF (Would Like To Fuck, um, obviously?) is kind of pretty, in a full frontal nudity sort of way (really, really NSFW, unless your boss likes dick). Interesting meditations on desire, and while some of the photographs are just whatever (and a lot of repetition, especially in Issue 0), there are some really cool shots.

And speaking of pornography, it seems a lot of you are spending your rebate checks on it:

"Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his 'stimulus package,' but we'll take it," said Jillian Fox of LSGmodels, a site monitored by AIMRCo.

Insert stimulus "package" joke.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

2008-07-13T16:57:00.002-04:00

Coming back Sept. 18th!

If you missed previous episodes, you can always watch them on Hulu. Highly recommended.

Yikes!

2008-07-09T14:12:00.000-04:00

Capital News says: "It is now against the law to smoke in any New York State university or college dormitory. Governor Paterson signed legislation Tuesday prohibiting smoking in the housing facilities of all SUNY and private schools in the state."

Boy, that would have really fucked up 504, huh?

Marriage Protection Amendment

2008-07-09T13:19:00.003-04:00

Purely hilarious that this is being reintroduced with 1/5 of its sponsors being Larry Craig and David Vitter. Protect marriage from two men marrying, but no need to worry about whores and gay bathroom sex. Marriage can handle all that just fine!

Muppets and Liberty!

2008-07-09T13:05:00.002-04:00

Again, thanks to PFAW, I can point you to the Muppets, Big Bird and (obviously) Martin Sheen reenacting the fucking Continental Congress. Cause what else are you doing with your day, really?

Fox News Breezes By New Low

2008-07-09T12:42:00.008-04:00

Media Matters has a comparison of the actual photos of two NYT journalists -- editor Steven Reddicliffe and reporter Jacques Steinberg -- and the apparently ridiculously photoshopped versions that aired on a Fox and Friends segment calling them "Attack Dogs" (in response to an article Steinberg published about Fox News' falling ratings). Later in the segment they put Steinberg's head on a poodle's body, so I guess we are meant to know that all the images here are fake, but this seemed a little less clear:

The NYT's David Carr, who writes about media in the Business section, had a whole article on Fox News where he responded to Media Matter's piece, saying:

"The accompanying photographs were heavily altered, although the audience was probably none the wiser. Mr. Reddicliffe looked like the wicked witch after a hard night of drinking, but it was the photo of Mr. Steinberg that stopped traffic when it appeared on the Web at Media Matters side by side with his actual photo. In a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda, his ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened and enlarged in a way that made him look more like Fagin than the guy I work with. (Mr. Steinberg told me that as a working reporter who covers Fox News, he was not in a position to comment. A spokeswoman said the executive in charge of “Fox and Friends” is on vacation and not available for comment but added that altering photos for humorous effect is a common practice on cable news stations.)"

Very classy.

It's Hard Out There For a Douchebag

2008-07-09T12:04:00.005-04:00

So courtesy of People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch, I saw this: the American Family Association's OneNewsNow site, which is, I guess, the part of the news you would want to read if you were a conservative Christian and didn't particularly want to know about anything else, apparently replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual" in all the articles it "reprints" from the AP. Including articles where Gay is someone's last name. Like Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay:

Homosexual barely averts major flop! Awesome.

Anyway, it seems they've fixed it now, as they have a history of responding to PFAW's items -- this piece shows how the AFA was redirecting links to their own site that came from PFAW's blog to a "Good Person Test" (Question: Are you a good person? Answer: No, and you're going to hell. Invariably. Seriously, take the test). Future links PFAW put up go through an anonymizer, but if you click on the older ones in that piece, instead of going to the test they now, hilariously, rick roll you. Who says the religious right doesn't have a sense of humor!

Plain old fuctional bra

2008-07-09T11:57:00.003-04:00

So maybe I talk about bras too much? But seriously, this story about a woman who was stranded on a mountain for three days and was saved by tossing her bra into a passing cable car so people knew where to look (after having given up) is not only full of that plucky indomitable human spirit, but also gave rise to some awesome headlines. My favorite?

Bra saves woman from twin peaks

FISA FISA yay yay yay!

2008-07-09T11:21:00.004-04:00

So, you know, complete dismissal of the Fourth Amendment, eviscerated Constitution, a President above the law, yada yada yada. The PAA is a train wreck and this new bill isn't much better, telecom immunity makes you wonder what the whole fucking point of "laws" is anyway, et c. You already know what I'm talking about, and presumably you think it sucks (if not, why do you hate America?) so here's a way to maybe help:

Brought to you from the guys responsible for Ron Paul's money bombs plus some bloggy types, they are trying to raise money to put pressure on Democratic Congress members who are up for reelection, to show that "going to the center" by voting against civil liberties can make you lose some of your unquestioned Democratic base, and maybe even your seat. Accountability, y'all! More than just a nice idea! Maybe!

Kinetic cell phone chargers

2008-06-26T12:19:00.004-04:00

Here's an idea that was long enough in coming -- a way to power your cell phone by dancing at your summer music festival of choice. It is not specified if the manufacturers would really prefer that you dance, or if you'll be allowed to charge your phone simply by waving your arms in the air like you just don't care, but either way I think it's pretty nifty. It apparently weighs the same as "a phone" and is the size of a deck of cards, and wraps around your arm:

Seems like putting it on your ankle and grabbing the energy from each step between the beer tent to the mosh pit to the bathroom and back again might be more efficient, but then people might think you had escaped your house arrest or something and you would no longer be cool. Or cooler, depending on the festival (Ozzfest loves the felon on the lam).

Rebate checks

2008-06-19T18:11:00.004-04:00

If you were planning on blowing your rebate check on coke and whores, may I suggest the Bunny Ranch? They are offering a 2-for-1 deal:

"According to Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof, "You bring your $600 check in, and we give you the $1,200 George Bush party--three girls and a bottle of champagne." "

Bring your own coke though, I guess. Though it's probably on sale somewhere back there.

Speaking of water bottles

2008-06-10T13:25:00.003-04:00

You can buy $40 bottles of water from Bling H2O -- they are made of frosted glass and encrusted with Swarovski crystals.

And, um, they're reusable! Though not so much practical for tossing in your bag and bringing along. But just think how cool you'll be!

We Can Solve It ads

2008-06-05T16:58:00.003-04:00

I kind of like these Unlikely Alliance ads:

You can watch more and suggest another unlikely alliance here, as well as sign up for the all-important updates.

I also just bought a nifty water bottle from SIGG brought to my attention by the good folks at stopglobalwarming.org -- stupid expensive for an aluminum bottle, but it is a good replacement for the plastic bottles that are always getting thrown out by the cleaning people at the office so I can't reuse them no matter how hard I fucking try. I don't even have drawers to hide them in anymore!

Anyway, the bottle simply states "I am not plastic", reminiscent of that "I'm not a plastic bag" tote that sold out like crazy and was also stupid expensive, but hey, people are excited about reusing stuff. Who knew! There's also a coffee cup, theoretically available now. So go on, people, consume so you can stop consuming so damn much!

The lighter side of total lack of respect for women

2008-06-05T15:57:00.002-04:00

This is pretty funny:

My favorite line: "I can't put my penis in your college degree/I can't shove my fist in your childhood dreams".

Also, stellar breakdancing.

Honor killing mom dead too

2008-06-05T15:31:00.009-04:00

In case you missed it, this is what happened to the girl, Rand:

"She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, [a British soldier serving in Iraq,] considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

"'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

"Sitting on a chair by his front door and surrounded by the gerberas and white daisies he had planted in the family garden, Abel-Qader attempted to justify his actions.

"'I don't have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends. Speaking with a foreign solider, she lost what is the most precious thing for any woman. 'People from western countries might be shocked, but our girls are not like their daughters that can sleep with any man they want and sometimes even get pregnant without marrying. Our girls should respect their religion, their family and their bodies.

"'I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,' he said, his voice swelling with pride. 'My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.'

"Abdel-Qader, a Shia, says he was released from the police station 'because everyone knows that honour killings sometimes are impossible not to commit'. Chillingly, he said: 'The officers were by my side during all the time I was there, congratulating me on what I had done.' "

He also said of his daughter "If I had realized what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her." As "what she would become" was a girl who talked to a British guy.

And then this is what happened to her mom:

"It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. Leila told The Observer in April: 'No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.'

"Her words were to prove prescient. Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

"Even her sons Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, whom she claimed aided their father in their sister's killing, disowned her. Meanwhile, her husband, a former government employee, escaped any charges, and even told The Observer that police had congratulated him on what he had done.

"It is not known who killed Leila. All that is known is that she was staying at the house of 'Mariam', one of the women's rights campaigners, whose identity The Observer has agreed not to reveal. On the morning of 17 May, they were joined by another volunteer worker and set off to meet 'a contact' who was to help Leila travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family."

Then a car drove up with three men in it, who shot and killed her, injuring the two volunteers as well.

This story just sucks, in all its ways, and I don't have a lot to say about it except that if it makes you mad or sad and you wanted to do something about it, there are some places you could go, like the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, which has a link on it to "hide this website" in case your husband or father catches you thinking women should have rights, or Stop-Stoning.org, and you can always just give money to AI. They're good people.

Quote of the Day

2008-06-05T15:22:00.003-04:00

From a highly scientific report showing that men like boobies and things that wrap boobies, and boobie-wrappers change male behavior (entitled "Bikini-clad Women Make Men Impatient")

“It seems that sexual appetite causes a greater urgency to consume anything rewarding,” the authors suggest. Thus, the activation of sexual desire appears to spill over into other brain systems involved in reward-seeking behaviors, even the cognitive desire for money. "After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward,” writes Bram Van den Bergh, one of the study’s authors. “Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert.”

Sexy stimuli is my new favorite phrase. Also, hey, chocolate: not just for chicks on the rag anymore. But don't worry, there's a fix:

"In fact, doing a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction reduced the bikini-inspired impatience, just as feeling full reduces food cravings. Men may want to be aware of bikinis’ effects on their bank accounts and waistlines."

Since they are currently only aware of their effects on their dicks? Also, can someone please point me at a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction? Sounds awesome.

Solar Bra!

2008-05-15T22:21:00.010-04:00

Have you guys seen this? It's awesome -- Gizmodo reports that the Japanese (obviously) have come up with this amazing piece of lingerie that has a solar panel attached to it, which can power your cell phone if you leave it out in the sun for a couple hours a day (it's detachable, so you don't have to take your shirt off, but you certainly can!). Check it out:

Those little gel things on the sides of the cups? Boob heaters. Seriously.

Also, while poking around Gizmodo, I found this sweet $100,000 shower:

Which is remarkable both for the very nifty tilework on the floor (not so much the walls) as well as this comment from writer Adam Frucci: "Judging by the photo, most of them are all around you, but one powerful showerhead looks to be a, well, undercarriage cleaner, just in case you like having a fire hose shot at your taint in the morning."

Don't we all, Adam. Don't we all.

Poison Gas Suicide

2008-04-24T15:32:00.003-04:00

So, I totally understand how living in Japan could make you want to kill yourself, but this latest rash of "make your own death gas" has got to stop. People, committing suicide is just like being a doctor -- first, do no harm [to other people]! It's nice that you put a helpful sign on your door informing people that there was poison gas in there, but you still made your whole apartment building sick. And in another instance, a 27 year old guy put a sign on his bathroom in his parents' house warning them not to enter, poison gas, so obviously when his dad saw it he rushed in to try to, you know, save his son's life, and instantly died. If there is anything you could to to hurt your mom worse than kill yourself, it would be to take your dad with you when you did it.

So, once again, all together now: if you really gotta do it, buy a gun and fire it into the roof of your mouth. Do not poison your neighbors/parents. Do not park your car in the path of an oncoming train. Do not blow yourself up in a crowded location. And, you know, make sure your dad isn't hovering above your skull before you pull the trigger. It's really the least you can do, you irresponsible suicidal fucks.

Bitches can NOT drive!

2008-04-24T15:20:00.002-04:00

Wonder why that Russian spaceship landed 250 miles off target? That's right, cause a woman was in charge. US astronaut Peggy Whitson, the first female commander of the ISS, plus the first South Korean astronaut who also happens to be a dumb chick who can't steer, totally messed up the whole ship's mojo. But don't worry, Russia is on the task!

Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov referred to a naval superstition that having women aboard a ship was bad luck when asked about the presence of two women on the Soyuz.

"You know in Russia, there are certain bad omens about this sort of thing, but thank God that everything worked out successfully," he said. "Of course in the future, we will work somehow to ensure that the number of women will not surpass" the number of men.
Challenged by a reporter, Perminov responded, "This isn't discrimination. I'm just saying that when a majority [of the crew] is female, sometimes certain kinds of unsanctioned behavior or something else occurs; that's what I'm talking about." He did not elaborate.

Awesome!

Penis Theft Panic!

2008-04-24T14:55:00.002-04:00

OK, really, this is just an excuse to reference this awesome headline:

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

I mean, phenomenal. But there is one other awesome part, wherein these penises (penii?) are being "snatched" via black magic, leading Kinshasa's police chief to say:

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke[...b]ut when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it?'"

Uh, yah, they "became" tiny. Sure they did. Funny how that happens.

Not so funny -- they had to arrest alleged sorcerers along side alleged victims to skip the result "seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs."

OK, actually, that's still funny. I mean, everybody's got to go one way or another, and being beaten to death by a mob for being a penis snatcher has a certain élan to it, don't you think?

Google Fly!

2008-03-26T18:25:00.003-04:00

Remember how I told y'all about how awesome the Sky part of the new Google Earth is? Well, because I am not that bright, I did not even realize there was a fucking flight simulator hidden in it. Just pop it open, click on the globe, and hit Ctl+Alt+A. Once you do it for the first time, it becomes an option in your Tools menu.

It's kind of tricky, but it's a flight simulator! Through the "real" Sky! Beats the crap out of the landscape in Pilotwings, I can tell you that. Anyway, thanks to Lifehacker's top 10 software easter eggs, though this is totally the best (teddy bears in Picasa? Who gives a shit?).

Feeling good about yourself, ladies?

2008-03-25T13:21:00.004-04:00

Well we can fix that! Just pop open the new game Miss Bimbo, where you can adopt your own bimbo avatar, and make sure she goes through enough diet pills, boob jobs and face lifts to, I guess, win? From the Times:

The Miss Bimbo internet game has attracted prepubescent girls who are told to buy their virtual characters breast enlargement surgery and to keep them “waif thin” with diet pills. Healthcare professionals, a parents’ group and an organisation representing people suffering anorexia and bulimia criticised the website for sending a dangerous message to impressionable children. In the month since it opened the site, which is aimed at girls aged from 9 to 16, has attracted 200,000 members. Players keep a constant watch on the weight, wardrobe, wealth and happiness of their character to create “the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world”. Competing against other children they earn “bimbo dollars” to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, facelifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits.

And how do you succeed, you ask? Never fear, there are carefully designated levels:

Level 7 After you broke up with your boyfriend you went on an eating binge! Now it’s time to diet . . . Your target weight is less than 132lbs
Level 9 Have a nip and tuck operation for a brand new face. You’ve found work as a plus-size model. To gain those vivacious curves, you need to weigh more than 154lbs
Level 10 Summertime is coming up and bikini weather is upon us. You want to turn heads on the beach don’t you?
Level 11 Bigger is better! Have a breast operation
Level 17 There is a billionaire on vacation . . . You must catch his eye and his love! Good luck!

In case you missed it earlier, this game is aimed at girls 9-16. You know, when they're at their most confident about their weight and breast size, and totally not susceptible to outside influences (like "Bigger is better! Have a breast operation". Not a lot of ambiguity there, hmm? ). I'm all for freedom in gaming and all that, but one does wonder what sort of parents approve of this sort of activity for their prepubescent daughters.

I am an American and yet not a Christian

2008-03-24T13:54:00.011-04:00

Doesn't that mean this is not a Christian nation? How else could that be true? I do not get it and you people fucking piss me off. I should not be allowed to LIVE HERE in your fucking Christian nation, as an affront to everything you believe in. Yet somehow, I go on, day in and day out, not being Christian. It boggles the mind.

Regardless, people disagree, and some are willing to go! All! The! Way! to the Supreme Court to be able to issue a prayer before a City Council meeting that specifically mentions Jesus Christ. A non-sectarian prayer is already ok (bastards), the only issue is making it exclusively Christian, which is, you know, not OK. The plaintiff, a Jesus-loving council member, has already lost the district case, but will not give up the (holy) ghost, claiming that he is exercising his right to free speech, that the official City Council prayer is not government speech, and therefore their failure to let him invoke Jesus infringes his "First Amendment rights of Free Speech, Free Exercise of Religion, and non-Establishment of religion and equal protection under the law". The district court sanely disagrees -- from their decision that his prayer is in fact government speech:

Plaintiff’s characterization of his speech ignores the primary purpose of the prayer, and the effect it has on others. First, the central purpose of the program in which the speech occurs is to conduct City Council business. Second, the local government can (and must, to comply with the Establishment Clause) exercise editorial control over the speech’s content. Third, the identity of the speaker, Councilor Turner is a government official, acting in his official capacity. Contrary to Councilor Turner’s assertions, the ultimate responsibility for the content of the speech, rests upon the City Council on whose behalf the prayer is offered. Additionally, the Mayor presides over the City Council meetings in his official capacity, and recognizes individual Council members to deliver the City Council’s opening prayer. The prayer may not be offered without the Mayor’s permission. The prayer by the City Council member is an official agenda item, listed on the meeting agendas.

Thanks! Everything else pretty much follows from there, based on Marsh v. Chambers which still allows legislative prayer based on historical precedent as long as they're not sectarian, and that's the end of that.

Except it's not, because a federal appeals court just heard arguments on this case last week. But whatever, lots of luck getting it to the Supreme Court. Of course Brennan who is still on the Court wrote the original dissent for Marsh, back in 83, saying:

The most commonly cited formulation of prevailing Establishment Clause doctrine is found in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971): [463 U.S. 783, 797] "Every analysis in this area must begin with consideration of the cumulative criteria developed by the Court over many years. Three such tests may be gleaned from our cases. First, the statute [at issue] must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster `an excessive government entanglement with religion.'"

That the "purpose" of legislative prayer is pre-eminently religious rather than secular seems to me to be self-evident. "To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws," is nothing but a religious act. Moreover, whatever secular functions legislative prayer might play - formally opening the legislative session, getting the members of the body to quiet down, and imbuing them with a sense of seriousness and high purpose - could so plainly be performed in a purely nonreligious fashion that to claim a secular purpose for the prayer is an insult to the perfectly honorable individuals who instituted and continue the practice....

Damn skippy. This whole thing is an insult! To me, anyway, though I am not that honorable. But the decision to overturn the appeals court in favor of permitting legislative prayer is all predicated on tradition, and given special dispensation since there has always been a prayer before Congress, etc. Of course the original folk being prayed at and writing the Establishment clause in the first place also wore ridiculous wigs and rode horses and walked around in shit all the time, and we seem to have no problem with losing those traditions in favor of tasteful toupees, cars and indoor plumbing, but whatever. The main decision in Marsh justified itself and pointed out the special nature of opening prayers by including this:

In the very courtrooms in which the United States District Judge and later three Circuit Judges heard and decided this case, the proceedings opened with an announcement that concluded, "God save the United States and this Honorable
Court." The same invocation occurs at all sessions of this Court.

Well then stop fucking saying it! Problem solved! I should be on the Court. Jesus Christ.

The Truth About Space Invaders

2008-03-20T19:57:00.003-04:00

They're not just faceless aliens, people! Witness the destruction of a whole society in this fantastic music video for Ken Ishii’s “Space Invaders 2003”:

It's really rather depressing, on top of its awesomeness.

What to do

2008-03-19T17:30:00.002-04:00

When you're a free market, limited govermnent loving rich person with a bunch of commie liberal heirs? Leave your money to DonorsTrust, of course! From one of their emails:

"We love our children, our grandchildren, and our families. But that doesn't mean we always see eye to eye with them. Sometimes we just have a difference of opinion on trivial matters. Other times it becomes quite obvious that they do not share our fundamental understanding of the world and the way it operates. That's why our clients use DonorsTrust. They love their families but know they can rely on DonorsTrust to carry out their charitable intent. DonorsTrust erects a protective boundary, which means our clients' successor advisors will never be able to support the likes of Greenpeace or MoveOn.org."

Not Greenpeace! NEVER!

Google, still not evil

2008-02-29T13:27:00.003-05:00

Google, in one of those pretty nifty, innovative type moves, is giving a free phone number with voicemail box to every homeless person in San Francisco. Now you can say, as many do, hey Google, why not give food to the starving or medicine to the dying or whatnot. But Google.org has made it clear that they are not giving money to those types of ventures -- there are plenty of reasons why that doesn't work as well as it ought to (infrastructure, corruption, lack of teaching a man to fish, etc.) One of the larger obstacles in getting out of homelessness is the lack of a phone number to put on a job application, or a way to be reached for an interview or follow-up. Google can solve this systemic problem for not a lot of money, then let the people that don't need a handout pull themselves out of the system. Which really works a lot better than just throwing more money at an unsolved problem. Go Google. Keep not being evil!

Oh, the Onion, you can still make me laugh

2008-02-29T12:47:00.001-05:00

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

McCain's Laser Death Ray

2008-02-06T12:06:00.000-05:00

Do not MAKE me shut my other eye!

(photo from the Drudge Report)

Waterboarding

2008-02-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

First of all, I am no fan of Mukasey's at all, that has been well-established. I am also, on matters of general principle, opposed to torture, especially as practiced by the state. On 24 and in the bedroom, it's fine.

However, I think people are being a little unfair about Mukasey's refusal to come out and say if waterboarding is torture. People seem to be under the impression that when he says that as the Attorney General it would not be responsible for him to make this determination, he means AG's should not be giving opinions on the legality of torture at all. But it seems to me pretty clear that all he is saying is, since the CIA is not officially doing waterboarding now, there is no set of instructions for him to judge. It's a vague term. In the future, the CIA might discover that the best way to get information is to gently drip some water on a guy's nose while he's on a board, to pick a mildly unlikely example. Is that waterboarding? Maybe. Is it illegal tortue? Probably not. But Mukasey would have already ruled it out, and then he would have let the terrorists win!

Seriously though, all he's saying is there's no definition for the term, and people disagree on exactly what would be torture, so it would be irresponsible for him to say. Like it or not, America engages in interrogation. There is a tolerance for certain techniques, and we're supposed to draw the line. He is supposed to draw the line. But it's a fine line, and he needs something to actually draw it between. If you think it should be out of the question all the time, you're probably some kind of crazy "human rights" supporter and that's fine. But you're missing the point. As long as some kinds of interrogation are ok, he's going to have to keep deciding on a case-by-case basis what is and is not torture, as the CIA presents him with a specific scenario and conditions for deploying it. Fun job! But he's right -- he can't make a blanket statement about it now.

Detachable Testicles

2008-01-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

People are always saying that birth control is supposed to be both partners' responsibility, but assuming you don't want to use condoms forever in your long term relationship, what's a man to do? Short of having a vasectomy, you really don't have a lot of options. And you know your girlfriend will one day replace her birth control pills with Tic-Tacs and trap you into a marriage, that bitch.

Well, never fear: scientists in Australia (yay, Australia!) have invented a remote-controlled valve that you just pop in your vas deferens and can open and shut as you see fit. Trying to get the wifey pregnant? Open! Don't want the stripper filing a paternity suit? Closed! So handy. Just make sure, as always, not to let the bitch touch the remote.

Also one commenter suggests it should be named the StopCock, which I think is just brilliant.

Citizens United Not Timid

2008-01-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

Is "a 527 organization to educate the American public about what Hilary Clinton really is". And guess what she is? Guess what those initials spell? That's right, cunt! They spell cunt. She is a cunt. You can buy a t-shirt with this valuable information on it:

Check out that logo! At least Hillary is a patriotic, star-spangled cunt.

Anyway, that's the whole point of the group -- selling those $25 t-shirts. And the guy behind it, Roger Stone, used to work for Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon between his shoulder blades! That is fucking committed!

Presidential Paintball

2008-01-22T19:17:00.000-05:00

Remember that time Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face?

Well, you can't be Dick Cheney in this game, but why pass up a chance to bring that up? You can be one of the 6 leading candidates and try to shoot the rest of them. In the face.

Search Wikia

2008-01-08T17:23:00.001-05:00

So, ok, I know people have different opinions about Wikipedia (I'm STILL looking at (and loathing) you, Andrew Keene!), but I think this is a pretty good plan right here. You know how Google gets its results to be all handy and relevant? Right, you don't -- nobody does except Larry Page and he's not talking, cause those algorithms are mighty valuable.

So what if instead of writing an algorithm that would somehow rank pages in the right order of relevance without ever looking at them, you just got the whole Wiki universe to actually look at search results and tell you which ones were right? Cause, you know, we don't have anything better to do, and we have a lot of free time.

And what's the point of doing this, when we already have Google and it rocks, whereas this project is going to take a really long time to be good, assuming it ever happens? Well, nobody knows how pages get ranked. And while Google continues to not be evil so far, they are pretty neatly taking over the whole fucking world, and I don't know how long that's going to last. And if they started tweaking their algorithms so just the opinions and articles and products they wanted you to see started coming up, and you had no way of knowing they were doing it? Well, you don't need to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to see where that might be bad.

But even if you have perfect faith in Google, transparency is still always a good thing. You should know how things get made, even sausages and laws (maybe you shouldn't be eating those sausages if they're so fucking gross to make, hmm?). So knowing exactly how my search engine works and what goes into its rankings is something I'd rather know than not know, you know?

In short, fuck ignorance.

All I Want For Christmas

2008-01-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

Is a combination Taser holster/MP3 player. Seriously, what else would you get for the girl always running in dark, crime-ridden alleys? Besides some fucking common sense and a gym membership? Answer: this!

Oh, and is that a leopard print Taser peeking out of there? OH YES I BELIEVE IT IS!

Hott.

Attacks on Obama

2008-01-08T16:38:00.000-05:00

In between all the bullshit about him being a Muslim terrorist and whatnot (his middle name is Hussein, you guys! Al-Qaeda!!!), I must have missed this last year: Obama paid late parking tickets -- Racked up penalties while at Harvard.

That's right, people, between 1988 and 1991, Obama got seventeen whole parking tickets, of which only two were paid at the time. That is, until he decided to run for president and had to clean that shit up, twenty years later.

The part that amazes me is that apparently in Boston, fifteen parking tickets and two decades of late fees only adds up to $375.

Also, lucky he never had the fucking marshals seize his car. Cause seriously, that shit sucks.

Wait, who was our mayor on September 11th again?

2008-01-08T16:28:00.001-05:00

In re: Hillary getting a tad weepy, Rudy assures us:

"This is not something I would judge anybody on one way or the other. And the reality is, if you look at me, uh, September 11th, the funerals, the memorial services, there were times in which it was just impossible -- not to feel, uh, the emotion."

Just in case you had forgotten!

William Kristol

2008-01-08T15:29:00.001-05:00

Not that I know a whole bunch about William Kristol, but cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has gone to the trouble of rounding up a lovely sample of quotes showing what we might expect from the NYT's newest columnist. My personal favorite? From March 1st, 2003: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." Even Ol' Rummy was agreeing that "you go to war with the Army you have...not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time" by the next year.

Oh, look who wrote that article I just linked to quoting SecDef! Right up there in the Google results. William Kristol opens with the quote then goes on to explain why he disagrees (rather disrespectfully: "Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has."), and apparently is under the impression that he is a more competent judge of the army's strength than the fucking Secretary of Defense. No matter how lacking that Secretary may or may not have been. Kristol goes on to highlight Rummy's failings by saying:

"Leave aside the fact that the issue is not "the number of troops we had for the invasion" but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task -- and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available. Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003. And leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11."

Gosh, don't you think some of that would have been, you know, prepared for?

Anyway, I digress: my point is, William Kristol. Writing for the New York Times. Yesterday's column goes something like:

"Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq."

I am all for balanced perspectives in the media but isn't this why God in His infinite wisdom invented Fox News?

The Bible from Godless China, Just Like Jesus Intended

2008-01-08T14:57:00.001-05:00

The city of Nanking, previously famous mainly for being raped, has a new selling point: it will be home to a printing plant that can produce "more than one Bible every second" (!). At the risk of being blasphemous, that is a lot of goddamn bibles. Of course, as the article points out:

"There is a massive irony in China becoming the leading exporter of Bibles at a time when religious freedoms in the nation of 1.3 billion remain tightly restricted and smuggling of unauthorized Bibles can still lead to a jail sentence.

"Earlier this year, one of the leaders of China's underground Protestant church was released after serving three years hard labor for possessing thousands of unauthorized Bibles. He reportedly spent his sentence making soccer balls for the 2008 Beijing Olympics."

This is what we need in America. More jail sentences for Bible possession, with a net result of much-needed sports equipment (Get it? Net?). Get those looney motherfuckers off the streets and into prison where they belong!

No, seriously. Off the streets.

My New Favorite Google Maps Mash-Up

2008-01-08T14:28:00.001-05:00

The World Bank, Mapped. It's a pretty handy mash-up, really, allowing you to see country data and active World Bank projects all laid out on their countries. Like, if you were wondering how the Cotton Sector Recovery Project in Tajikistan was doing, how would you ever know where to find this information? Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is clearly the recovery of the cotton sector in Tajikistan, so good luck with that.

There is also genuinely helpful (or at least interesting) information in all the data sections. Like, did you know the infant mortality rate in the DRC is 129 out of 1,000 live births? And that's before you even have the chance to get shot in a violent uprising!

The site also includes this awesome DISCLAIMER: "This map is powered by Google Maps. Country borders or names do not necessarily reflect the World Bank Group's official position." Just in case you thought the solution to your border dispute was hacking into Google Maps.

Cheap Toys and a Surprise!

2008-01-03T16:18:00.000-05:00

When you shop at Wal-Mart, you don't just get a doll, you also get a shank. This video from CNN reports on a family who bought a doll from Wal-Mart that also had a knife wrapped in electrical tape in it. Wal-Mart neglected to provide an explanation or give a refund for the doll, which does seem a little not in the Christmas spirit, but what do I know.

Also Mattel assures us that this is "an isolated incident", in case you thought they might be changing Polly Pocket to Polly Pocketknife.

Quote of the Day

2007-12-28T13:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-17T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-11T17:11:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-07T18:28:00.000-05:00

"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

2007-12-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-07T17:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T16:54:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T16:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T14:17:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-08T14:54:00.000-05:00

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?

2007-11-08T11:30:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-07T17:05:00.000-05:00

"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

2007-11-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-07T16:24:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

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?

2007-10-31T14:57:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-31T14:13:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-26T15:40:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-10-23T13:10:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-23T10:53:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-18T15:06:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-18T12:03:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-16T14:11:00.000-04:00

Take a page from Bangkok:

Impressive.

Sometimes liberals are funny

2007-10-16T12:33:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-16T12:03:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-10-15T16:54:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-10-12T14:02:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-10-11T12:27:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-10T12:55:00.000-04:00

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

Hilarity.

Suspension of Disbelief

2007-10-05T14:16:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-04T13:25:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-04T12:26:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-04T11:20:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-02T16:34:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-10-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

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!)

2007-09-27T14:12:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-26T12:59:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-25T14:29:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-25T13:32:00.000-04:00

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"?

2007-09-24T13:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-24T12:45:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

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:

2007-09-24T11:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-24T11:22:00.000-04:00

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!