Two Braincells

The hilarity of rioting Canadians

2011-06-17T10:59:00.003-04:00

My favorite part: the commenters who think Anarchists are getting a bad rap, and that the chief of police in Vancouver is unfairly biased against them. Is the current generation of idiotic youths SO stupid they don't understand the wordy Anarchy and why a representative of the law just might have a problem with it? And the guy who totally believes Anarchists have great respect for other people's property: not. So. Much.

Just for my eddification

2011-06-16T16:45:00.002-04:00

Is there really any functional difference at all between a whore and a "porn star"?

Betrayed by Technology Again

2010-11-01T11:18:00.001-04:00

The iPhone took a dump on me apropos of nothing Saturday, so since I have a memory like Swiss cheese, if you see this and we have plans to be somewhere together, you'd better let me know. My calendar has just been cleared.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Predator remake

2010-07-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424381/

And they've cast...Adrian Brody? What's he going to do, cry at the predator and confuse it? Miscasting further compounded with the addition of Topher Grace (the, um...'wiry' lead kid from "That 70's Show"). Not to slam their acting chops, but no amount of Stanislawski is going to give them muscles. Or the ability to shoot a gun with authority. Meanwhile Adam Baldwin is wasted in support of yet another metrosexual on "Chuck" when a movie like this would be cake for him (and more importantly, beefcake for me.)

Only possible bright spots: Danny Trejo and Walter Goggins.

- Via iPhone

Letter from a desperate woman

2010-06-30T18:28:00.002-04:00

Just as background, I spent 400 rewards points from Coke trying to create a stupid refrigerator pad with a pic of Niece2 and Nephew, only to be thwarted by the site that's supposed to create said item. I've written the Coke people 3 days running with no response; now I'm just amusing myself:

Once again we correspond, Faithful Non-Reader. Your refusal to respond to my overtures regarding the wasting of 400 rewards points (that's 40 cases of potables) is about to drive me to the arms of your rival, Pepsi. Why won't you let me love you? Why won't you even acknowledge what you did? I will not stand silently by while you cheat on me, Coke. I will not remain faithful to this sham of a relationship--no, I must assert myself to salvage the tattered remains of my dignity. When I attempted three days ago to cash in some of my rewards points on a refrigerator pad I assumed in good faith that you would not merely steal my points--probably to spend them on some hussy!--I assumed I would be able to redeem them at the EZPrints site, as advertised. Yet, when I went to the EZPrints site, while they did acknowledge some kind of deal, letting me in with the passcode you gave me like a cheap speakeasy, they refused to let me upload a single photo.
That's right, between you, you have taken my money, refused my attempts to put the matter straight, and you brazenly, blandly expect me to pretend that my order was "fulfilled", as it says on the status page. Well, you may tell your other victims that, but between us, you and I both know I am far from fulfilled. We'll see what Pepsi has to say about it! Adieu, my former love. And if we pass each other in a restaurant, we'll both just look away and pretend we don't know each other. I'll order iced tea.

I might have overstated the dignity thing.

- Via iPhone

Capitol records hates cops and firemen.

2009-09-18T21:14:00.002-04:00

That's all I can assume when I read crap like this. I loathe the music industry; people who can't sing, write, or play deciding who gets played and who gets crushed, promoting acts whose chief recommendation is their pliability. It's a disgusting business.

Newt Gingrich is dead to me.

2009-03-08T23:52:00.002-04:00

I'm not saying he has to carry Rush Limbaugh's water, but when heard he jumped on the AGW bandwagon with Pelosi, I knew for a fact what I had only suspected before, that he was a second-rate intellect and an ass-kisser. If he's going to throw Limbaugh under the bus, I don't want him anywhere near the levers of power.

Has the entire Vast Rightwing Conspiracy lost its damn mind? This is not the time to parse whether it's politic to want the president to fail, the barbarians are at the gates. Why the hell are we worried about whether the napkins are folded correctly when the people in charge are just going to break up the furniture and shit on the carpet?

Screw this.

2009-01-21T17:34:00.002-05:00

I don't normally do ceremonial delinkings, since I regard that as a public tantrum and there's usually no personal animus involved when I do delink someone--but in the case of The Corner at NRO, I'll make an exception. I hope Mark Steyn does himself a favor and eases out the back door; they've capitulated to a man, and I don't believe any of them harbor what might be reasonably considered conservative views at this juncture. Like CNN in Iraq, apparently access is more important than principle. So long, assholes.

The Second Coming

2008-11-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
--Yeats

Good news.

2007-07-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

Charles Austin is posting again. Sneaked right by me while I wasn't looking. (In my defense, I was on vacation for a week and a half.)

(via Andrea)

New Bond.

2006-12-05T16:57:00.000-05:00

I assumed it was all hype, as they said the same ridiculous crap about Brosnan being the "best Bond ever", but Daniel Craig, an absolute ninny in real life, really is the second-best screen Bond ever. (The best is Connery. This is not opinion, this is fact. Comments in favor of Roger Moore over Connery will be treated with derision.) The film runs a bit long, as the section after the main action in the casino feels like a really stretched out denouement ala Return of the King, but it works out ok in the end. I even liked the opening credit sequence and I thought the score was fine. The action was slam-bang without teetering over the edge into the cartoonish. Even Judy Densch was tolerable, although I'd still like to have seen them replace her with an actor more like the original M so the dynamic between her and Bond isn't so...maternal. Since I must complain about something: Eva Green's clothes look like crap, and her jewelry--ugh. In fact, the women's clothes in general could have used a boost. But that's really the worst thing I can say about it.

Ladles look out.

2006-11-15T19:09:00.000-05:00

Kevin Federline has crappy handwriting, which leads to inadvertent hilarity.

Mother-hunchin' Blogger

2006-09-17T21:07:00.000-04:00

Ate half the fucking template. I give the fuck up.

Battlestar Galactica: piece of shit.

2006-09-17T19:23:00.000-04:00

The biggest since ST:TNG, and for the same reason: the unholy union of girly soap opera and actionless, brainless plot with just enough gadgetry to claim to be "futuristic". Even the promos piss me off, with their soundtrack of weepy power ballad and expressions of intense concern instead of grim resolve. I want better sci-fi, dammit.

Template goes wonky.

2006-06-29T09:52:00.000-04:00

Reconstructed, more or less, with some changes. I don't understand why Blogger defies implementation as written. Lines I take out reappear mysteriously, things that have been in effect since inception suddenly disappear. Whatever. Oh, and style sheets suck.

The end of the Metrosexual nonsense.

2006-06-19T21:19:00.000-04:00

Somewhere Orlando Bloom sobs quietly into his Cosmopolitan. Bless his pretty little heart.

Thanks to Angela.

"Fuck you and your girlish metaphors, failure."

2006-06-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

Udolpho reviews the movie "Cars":

[...]soulless, computer-generated offal, this cinematic excrement of such extreme putrescence that its sole redeeming virtue is that it is not presented in Smell-o-vision.

and the reviewers who promote it:

It is my fond hope that Peter Travers burns in Hell.

The fond hope of all who love movies, my friend.

Yeah. Right.

2006-04-10T19:07:00.001-04:00

The Writers Guild of America West picks the 101 greatest movie scripts of all time. Acknowledging in advance that these lists are mostly bullshit, there were only 9 films on the list I hadn't seen, and most of those were deliberate avoidance rather than oversight.

The ones I haven't seen:
24. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY
53. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
54. MANHATTAN
57. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
77. ADAPTATION
87. 8 1/2
88. FIELD OF DREAMS
93. DO THE RIGHT THING

I'd probably sit through Eternal Sunshine and Field of Dreams if I ran out of other things to watch, maybe even Adaptation and Midnight Cowboy. On the other hand, I've seen parts of All the President's Men and 8 1/2, and those are a no go. I can't stand Spike Lee or Woody Allen (Lee for his hate-whitey politics and Allen for his actual movies), so Do the Right Thing, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Manhattan are highly unlikely.

The ones that should be ranked higher, working backwards:
101. NOTORIOUS - probably about 20 points off.
98. THE GRAPES OF WRATH - Probably 20 points off.
97. THE SEARCHERS - Probably 30-40 points off. It's not just a good looking film.
94. PATTON - How does this not crack the top 20?
85. LA GRANDE ILLUSION - For this to be languishing in the bottom fifth of the list while utter formula crap like Rocky prances above it tells me even our pretentious film snobs are of a lower caste than previous generations. "Yo, Paulie, y'sistah's at my place."
84. THE PRINCESS BRIDE - again, how does this rank below Shakespeare in Love?
75. HIGH NOON - About 60 points too low.
71. THE LION IN WINTER - 50 points off. Minimum.
65. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN - Top 20. Maybe top 10.
63. JAWS - Move it up a good 50 points.
47. THE MALTESE FALCON - Top 20, at least.
46. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE - Top 30.
37. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY - Beaten out by fucking TOOTSIE? Kiss my ass and move it up to the top 15, you tasteless Philistines.
31. HIS GIRL FRIDAY - Top 20.

What shouldn't even be on the damn list:
3. CHINATOWN - Fucking awful.
6. ANNIE HALL - Fucking boring.
11. BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID - A cowboy movie for people who don't understand Westerns. Whoever ranked this piece of unwatchable crap this far above High Noon and The Searchers should be slapped. Or just restricted to watching Woody Allen movies.
17. TOOTSIE - Come on, how the hell does this script rate a top 20? It's a gimmick movie sold largely on watching Dustin Hoffman pull off a good drag act. The actual script is eh.
28. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - What the fuckin' fuck?
38. AMERICAN BEAUTY - Seldom has such thin material been so overrated.
51. BROADCAST NEWS - Always overrated, and I still can't figure out why.
58. ORDINARY PEOPLE - Ordinary script.
66. JERRY MAGUIRE - Anyone who voted for this should be kneecapped. Possibly the biggest offense on the list. "You had me at 'hello'." Fuck the Guild for having the nerve to put this on this list.
67. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL - God I hate this manipulative piece of shit.
68. STAR WARS - Enjoyable film. Crap script.
72. THELMA & LOUISE - It's a pretty stupid story, actually.
78. ROCKY - Argh. ARGH.
81. BEING THERE - No. Just--no.
89. FORREST GUMP - No. Gimmicky schmaltz.
90. SIDEWAYS - One of the best scripts of ALL FUCKING TIME? I wouldn't even bother to watch this one a second time.
91. THE VERDICT - It was Ok. It was not a timeless classic.

What's missing: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Beats the unholy shit out of Fargo, frankly. And I liked Fargo.

Miss Smedley, are you trying to make me vomit?

2006-03-22T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Social Affairs Unit, Bunny Smedley division:

Most of all, though, France has allowed Americans who are that way inclined to say something intelligible about who they are, or at any rate who they wish to be. So for every American simmering with gee-whiz nativist contempt for all the things France might be seen to symbolise — which is to say, intellectualism, sensuality, frivolity and decadence, as opposed to the classic American virtues of practicality, decency, earnestness and healthy New World vigour — there's another American who wonders, with varying degrees of guilt, whether an old Chateau Latour and a volume of Collette's more feline stories might somehow have the edge on Garrison Keillor and a super-size helping of Liberty fries. Whisper it quietly, but — well, isn't there something about those cheese-eating surrender monkeys that's actually, when you come to think about it, pretty darned séduisant?

The French just made Jerry Lewis a Legion Commander. The crowd was raucous. I will now look the other way while you slink off in embarrassed silence.

The New Criterion stole my money.

2006-03-14T10:46:00.000-05:00

Although I think the sale of "tokens" to purchase articles is pretty much ass, because I want my free content, I sometimes use the tokens to read articles by people like Theodore Dalrymple, Mark Steyn, and Roger Scruton. I bought 10 last week, I have no token credits, and the money's gone. They have yet to respond to my email. I must therefore assume they are thieves. So that's why they're gone from the blogroll, not that they're going to notice.

F'n Blogger.

2006-02-23T10:33:00.000-05:00

It's eating my posts again. My genius, lost to posterity. DAMN it.

Pretty close.

2006-02-23T06:49:00.000-05:00

Apathy should probably be a little higher, though.

You scored as Justice (Fairness). Your life is guided by the concept of Fair Justice: Everyone, yourself included, should be rewarded and punished according to the help or harm they cause.

"He who does not punish evil commands it to be done."
--Leonardo da Vinci

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Justice (Fairness)

85%

Existentialism

65%

Divine Command

65%

Strong Egoism

45%

Utilitarianism

35%

Kantianism

35%

Nihilism

25%

Hedonism

25%

Apathy

25%

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
created with QuizFarm.com

Via Ace the Hedonist.

Trying to clean up this sty of a blog.

2005-12-22T19:41:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to turn on the unpopular Blogger comments again because I don't plan to renew my backBlog comment system (partly because they refuse to reset my mail account to reflect the fact that I haven't been on AOL for quite a while now). So far I don't seem to be having notable success, I must say.

When Don King is the voice of reason.

2005-12-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

First Fitty calls Bush a "gangsta" (in the good way), now Don King calls him a revolutionary (again, in apparent approbation):

[...]I want to support him more now because it seems like everybody is punching him. You know what I mean? But he's fighting back, and he's throwing great combinations. And I think he's the guy that is really a revolutionary president.

I think he's a president that cares about the people he represents, but doesn't compromise himself to the extent that he acquiesce and accommodate. He goes out there and says like it is, and tries to make things better. Inclusiveness, education, is fighting for that.

These are the things that many guys that don't fight for -- George Walker Bush is a tremendous advocate to America, a great president for the great American people, and he's decisive. He's doesn't equivocate.

Clear and lucid. Politics does make strange bedfellows.

Astoundingly thickheaded.

2005-12-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

First time I'd actually read one of Polly Toynbee's columns, and it produced this gem:

The lion exchanging his life for Edmund's is the sort of thing Arthurian legends are made of. Parfait knights and heroes in prisoner-of-war camps do it all the time. But what's this? After a long, dark night of the soul and women's weeping, the lion is suddenly alive again. Why? How?, my children used to ask. Well, it is hard to say why. It does not make any more sense in CS Lewis's tale than in the gospels. Ah, Aslan explains, it is the "deep magic", where pure sacrifice alone vanquishes death.

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls.

I'm not sure if it's the hostility that offends me most or the rampant ignorance that accompanies it. Loving sacrifice of self is "repugnant"--unless performed by Arthurian knights, of course, whom Toynbee evidently believes were operating in a religious vacuum.

Ah, well, I can't claim I wasn't warned.

(She also misspelled Norman Vincent Peale's last name. Not a substantive complaint, but she needs a copy editor.)

[Via Russell Wardlow.]

White people are evil, yadda yadda.

2005-11-25T12:12:00.000-05:00

Indians pissing and moaning about Thanksgiving:

"It really sounds the end of our lives as we knew it." Marshall said. "Indian life was far superior to what it was today without non-natives here. [We had] very few wars very few illnesses, we had plenty of game, plenty of fish…We had it going on. I kind of take the day and reflect [on what would be] had we been hostile toward the pilgrims and not receptive."

Horseshit. "End of our lives as we knew it", for God's sake. First, it's not "we", since you have demonstrably not been alive since 1620. Second, their lives were nasty, brutish, and short, and their culture so backward they couldn't even be bothered to invent the WHEEL. If the US government were to stick you in a park somewhere and let you live the life of your ancestors--WITHOUT recourse to the various conveniences of the white man, naturally, since those works must by their nature be evil--you'd accuse them of attempted genocide for forcing you to live like stone age man. Like the rest of the nativists, you just want some of my tax money as a handout so you can get filthy rich from building a casino.

Victor Davis Hanson also calls bullshit on revisionist Nativism.

Round up the usual suspects.

2005-11-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to looking up the 3 aye votes on the House resolution to pull out of Iraq right damn now; to my not very great surprise the miscreants are McKinney, Serrano, and Wexler. At least those three loons had the courage of their convictions, however misguided; there were six fence-straddlers who voted "present" (Capuano, Clay, Hinchey, McDermott, Nadler, and Owens.) Democrats to a man, of course. Shame on all of them.

Self-esteem is going to ruin The Children.

2005-11-22T07:03:00.000-05:00

From this article about a restaurant in Chicago warning people to make their kids behave inside, linked by Ace, who got it from Lileks:

"I love people who don't have children who tell you how to parent," said Alison Miller, 35, a psychologist, corporate coach and mother of two.

I love people with children who clearly shouldn't have had them because they don't know how to parent and refuse to learn. I may not have kids, but I do remember why my older brother and I didn't act up in restaurants or anywhere else: because my mother would bring down the Hammer of Justice, swift and terrible, on anyone who embarrassed her in public. The real problem, as far as I can see, is that these people have no shame.

"The looks I would get when I went in there made me so nervous that I would try to buy the food as fast as I could and get out," said Laura Brauer, 40, who has stopped visiting Taste with her two kids.

Good. When they're old enough to behave you can start going back.

"I think that the mothers who allow their kids to run around and scream, that's wrong, but kids scream and there is nothing you can do about it. What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?"

That's it precisely, you silly bitch. Until you can teach your children how to behave, you shouldn't feel entitled to dump them on the rest of us. Enjoying yourself in a cafe while you let your kid sit there and scream instead of taking him or her outside shows an utter lack of consideration for other people, and I can return that kind of lack of consideration in spades. If you won't tell your kid to knock it off, believe me, I'll be happy to take over that responsibility. And I won't be terribly tender with his or her little feelings, either.

Kim Cavitt recalled having coffee and a cookie one afternoon with her boisterous 2-year-old when "someone came over and said you just need to keep her quiet or you need to leave."

So you should just be able to sit there with your cookie and pretend your child is not screaming while the rest of us suffer? It really is all about you, isn't it, Kimmy?

"We left, and we haven't been back since," Cavitt said. "You go to a coffee shop or a bakery for a rest, to relax, and that you would have to worry the whole time about your child doing something that children do -- really what they're saying is they don't welcome children, they want the child to behave like an adult."

Isn't the whole goal of raising children teaching them when not to behave like yardapes? I go into a coffee shop or bakery for a rest, to relax, and the last damn thing I need is your kid going off like a freakin' tornado siren every few minutes.

Less self-esteem. More genuine accomplishment.

Kurt Vonnegut is a goddamned idiot.

2005-11-21T07:57:00.000-05:00

Quoted in the Australian:

Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."

He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."

Goddamned hippies.

Oliver Stone's Alexander, a two-word review.

2005-08-09T20:01:00.000-04:00

Amazingly shitty.

The Shan.

2005-08-02T11:33:00.000-04:00

My brother has a website, with music clips and all. Let's see if he updates this one any more often than I update mine. The smart money says no. Heh.

The Fighting Kentuckians.

2005-06-17T13:02:00.000-04:00

Kicking much ass, as usual.

Er...well, ok.

2005-06-07T20:30:00.000-04:00

Beats being R2D2. I guess.

Darth Vader - 75%

C-3PO - 56%

General Grievous - 56%

R2-D2 - 56%

Anakin Skywalker - 56%

Padme Amidala - 53%

Yoda - 47%

Obi Wan Kenobi - 44%

Mace Windu - 44%

Emperor Palpatine - 42%

Clone Trooper - 36%

Chewbacca - 33%

Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you?

created with QuizFarm.com

(via Bill McCabe, fellow Vader.)

2005-05-24T10:42:00.000-04:00

Senator DeWine (R-OH)
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
Senator John Warner (R-VA)
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

And throw in Voinovich for good measure, I'm not voting for that cocksucker again, I don't care if his opposition is the Anti-Christ. As for McCain, that preening ass can kiss any presidential hopes goodbye.

No, I didn't have to fake my answers.

2005-05-18T10:11:00.000-04:00

I'm just that way.

(Via Bill McCabe.)

swoon

2005-05-17T13:27:00.000-04:00

$18.89. It's like paying an entirely reasonable price for "Beau Geste" and getting 4 other movies thrown in.

God, I do love Foreign Legion pictures.

Suddenly I feel so third world.

2005-05-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

Precious, precious BBC condescension:

In a nation without anything but the most basic social services, without a National Health Service, many of those picking up the pieces are religious, often fundamentalist, Christians.

"Without anything but the most basic social services." "Picking up the pieces." Did I miss something? Is the US mired in a Great Depression or some natural disaster and no one told me? I feel so...urchinlike now.

Via Marc at With Cheese.

Along with 99% of the population.

2005-04-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

Your Brain is 60.00% Female, 40.00% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I suspect most people are pretty well mixed, and the ratio would depend on what's going on the day you take the test. (Via Sheila.)

Oddly relieved to see this.

2005-04-26T06:24:00.000-04:00

Trekkie Appreciator
Survey Says... You scored 58 %

You like Star Trek and have obviously watched more than a couple of episodes or movies, but you don't live or breathe the world (read: you probably don't go to your local McDonalds in your Klingon gear - not that there's anything wrong with that...). Excellent! You've managed to tread the fine line between sci-fi buff and Star Trek nerd (otherwise known as the difference between enjoying Star Trek for its entertainment value and running around with a batleth quoting Klingon battle poetry).

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 15% on Trekkies

The Trekkie Test written by MadameBoffin on Ok Cupid

TOS is the only Trek. (Via Greg, who scored a whoooole lot higher. That's why he's in the Captain's chair.)

Greatest online quiz ever.

2005-04-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

I'm such a geek.

(Via Ace o' Spades. He's a d12.)

Portrait of the blogger as a poorly drawn cartoon.

2005-04-14T15:32:00.000-04:00

Even I don't know if I'm supposed to be a patriot or a pirate. Maybe both. And I didn't use the sea background because it was too bright and I'm all dark and mysterious. Note my grim determination.

(Created here. Via Andrea Harris.)

Worthy cause.

2005-04-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

My cousin Loraine is looking for sponsors for her March of Dimes walk, which is dedicated to her friend Anita's baby Chloe, who was born a micropreemie. Saving babies is good.

Pinpointing where Marc Adamo went wrong in setting "Little Women" as an opera.

2005-04-09T00:06:00.000-04:00

Pretty much as soon as he decided to base it on the Winona Ryder movie version of the story. So before any of the actual notes were written, then.

Most egregious wordplay: "Ours the hours". Gad.

Line that begged hardest for a snappy comeback: "Whitman was at our wedding." My guess is he got drunk and diddled the best man.

Your moment of zen stupidity.

2005-04-08T15:44:00.000-04:00

From the postal employee attempting to explain why the postal tracking software doesn't actually mean the post office has my package when it says it does:

"You'll know we have it when you get it."

What the hell is going on at the Wall St. Journal?

2005-04-08T12:32:00.000-04:00

There have now been two separate "awww, shucks, let ol' Sandy off with a really stern lecture" editorials (unsigned, naturally) in the last week. The first on 4/6 said the Justice dept. showed "admirable restraint" in declining to punish theft and destruction of government property; the second today actually scolds conservatives for daring to question his motives, as though Berger were the soul of probity and not a nasty little political operative whose removal of the documents was neither honest nor a mistake, as he claimed when they nabbed him.

What I can't figure out for the life of me is why the WSJ is making approving noises about the soft kisses treatment for a man who has no respect for the public trust (which, yes, just makes him the perfect poster boy for the Clinton administration.) For the love of all that's holy, he stole documents and then cut them up with his scissors. That's a hell of an effort; you might inadvertently run something through the shredder, but no one inadvertently cuts up big memos with scissors.

Then there's the wording of the denial from Hillman, that the "contents" of the memos were intact in the archives, which sounds a little too preciously precise; if there were, in fact, notes in the margins of the memos Sandy cut into paper dollies, it's possible those notes could be legalistically excluded from the definition of "contents", having been added after the reports in question were issued. If that's not the case, in fact, I don't understand why multiple copies of the same goddamn memo were taken, and I am utterly flabbergasted to see the WSJ happily whitewashing the entire affair. I still like Taranto's Best of the Web column, but I'm becoming more and more perturbed with the Journal's anonymous voice of reason. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to have someone without the nuts to sign his name so that I can evaluate his agenda tell me nothing's going on and not to worry my pretty little head about it.

Today's timewaster.

2005-02-26T14:06:00.000-05:00

1. What’s your favorite kind of cookie?

My friend Beth's iced almond sugar cookies.

2. Who is America’s most overrated actor?

Sean Penn.

3. Name a guilty pleasure.

Orlando Bloom.

4. “Scrubs” or “Everybody Loves Raymond”?

Scrubs, if I must.

5. Name two things you can’t live without.

All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.

6. Your first pet’s name + your mother’s maiden name = your porn star name.

Shoestring Henderson.

7. What song are you listening to right now?

"T'ain't Good (Like a Nickel Made of Wood)", Fats Waller.

8. Name your celebrity crush

Orlando Bloom. But my love for Kurt Russell is real and deep.

9. Favorite punchline from a joke.

"HARELIP! HARELIP!"

10. Who do you want to pass this meme off to?

Meme? How is this a "meme" as opposed to pointless poll?

(Via Farm Accident Digest, who got it from Andrea, who got it from Emily.)

Sound wars.

2005-02-25T08:12:00.000-05:00

James Lileks gets hilariously defensive about his IPod. Dude, if you want to base your mp3 player strictly on its aesthetic appeal, fine, but why lash out when people who focus more on the sound and function don't give a hoot in hell about the aesthetics? (Also, I find the IPod ugly and monolithic. So sue me, I like feedback.)

In which I address Orlando Bloom.

2005-02-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

Go Fug Yourself reports that the Star said you broke up with Kate Bosworth because she told you to choose between her and making Pirates II with Johnny Depp.

You made the right decision, sweetie.

Dames come and go and take half your property with them. A decent role in a movie franchise, even as secondary slightly-swishy beefcake--that's as close to security as Hollywood gets. Besides, her head looks like a pumpkin on a pencil. Seriously.

Now go eat a sandwich.

The Year of the Puppet.

2005-02-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Triumph interviewed in the NY Times:

With your Catskills-style schtick and your Russian-accented English, I must ask: Are you Jewish?

Like Madonna, I'll become Jewish when I need the publicity.

Oh, yes.

[Via Tim Blair, who got it from Jim Treacher.]

Suspicions of gross sentimentality confirmed.

2005-02-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

James Bowman analyzes the political agenda behind Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, and the basis for denial of said agenda by both Eastwood and the critics at large. (With bonus Arthur Miller content, in conjunction with the previous post.)

I don't want to see Clint on-screen anymore unless he's shooting people. Preferably without the weepy self-torment.

De mortuis.

2005-02-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

Terry Teachout views the work of the late Arthur Miller with a gimlet eye. (May require registration, but it's free.)

2/17 update: So does Mark Steyn.

Three cheers and a tiger.

2005-02-14T16:22:00.000-05:00

I noticed yesterday Mark Steyn's website is being updated again.

Cheap shots.

2005-02-10T10:55:00.000-05:00

In response to the launch of Kalashnikov Vodka (counter-intuitively a British brand, albeit under the auspices of Gen. Kalashnikov himself) , Tim Blair suggests a line of similarly-themed liquors.

My favorite: Hezbollah Boozalah. (collapses in a fit of giggles)

Garden State.

2005-02-03T20:27:00.000-05:00

That's it. I'm off slacker comedies. Everyone in the movie bordered on the repulsive.

Clarification: Not physically. They were all just so...damn...stupid.

Huh.

2005-01-24T15:24:00.000-05:00

Turns out Netflix limits you to 500 movies in the queue. Damn.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are still dead.

2005-01-20T14:41:00.001-05:00

And due to be released on DVD on March 22. Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss as the Player. Hell, yes, I pre-ordered.

The Player: We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
Guildenstern: Is that what people want?
The Player: It's what we do.

Sheila always has the best links.

2005-01-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

Overheard in New York, via Sheila O'Malley.

"Easy Rider": the nadir of American film.

2005-01-12T16:41:00.000-05:00

Who the hell turned this self-indulgent piece of shit into a cult movie? Goddamn hippies.

Britain: A Nation of Fraidy Cats.

2005-01-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

According to a Telegraph survey, a sizable chunkage of Britons think the US is less safe than Egypt, Israel, or South Africa:

One in three of YouGov's respondents regards America as one of the world's three "least safe" countries – more than think the same of Israel, Egypt or South Africa.

In fact, the US is ranked *dead last*; 37% of these nimrods think the US is the least safe, vice 19% for friggin' Russia. Possible reasons for thinking so:
1) 37% of respondents on crack.
2) 37% of respondents have never been to any foreign country; believe "Homicide" a reality show.
3) 37% of respondents burglars who resent the fact that it's still legal to shoot people who invade your home over here.

Moreover, while 19 per cent reckon the US is one of the countries "most deserving of international respect", a considerably larger proportion, 25 per cent, reckon that under this heading it is one of the world's "least deserving" countries.

And if I cared that might hurt.

But the US didn't fare as badly overall as Israel:

The violence and Israel's continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza appear to have done immense damage to its standing. Israel comes top of the list of countries where people would least like to live and would least like to take a holiday.
It is also the country thought least deserving of international respect. Despite being the only fully democratic state in the Middle East, it is also thought to be among the world's "least democratic countries".

Which just kinda tells me the respondents may be working with, shall we say, a flawed definition of democracy.

Insensitive reflection.

2004-12-29T14:48:00.000-05:00

Derrida, Arafat, and Sontag, all in the same year. Nice.

An idle thought.

2004-12-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

Having just watched Knights of the Round Table on TCM, it occurs to me yet again how much I despise the character of Guinevere, of all the women in western literature. No matter how you write it, there's just no way to pretty up the fact that she pissed away a kingdom for a shot at some rumpy-pumpy with her husband's best friend.

And Lancelot, by the way, is NOT the best of the knights, that was Gawain. Lancelot's just someone the French threw into the cycle to tweak the English.

National fame comes to Clark Co. again.

2004-12-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

Or the Miami Valley, anyway. If you're a weather geek. (Subject to link rot.)

Work let my people go at 1 this afternoon, and probably should have done so about two hours earlier. The fastest I could go on I-70 was about 30 mph, and the ramps were white knuckle all the way. Apparently I'm looking at a possible accumulation of about 20" of snow through tomorrow afternoon, and a -15' Christmas morning to ensure none of it melts off. The local channels are all having weathergasms, as you might expect.

James Lileks doesn't buy enough liquor.

2004-12-21T08:32:00.000-05:00

For some reason he seems to think Kentucky Tavern bourbon is both obscure and discontinued. It is neither, of course.

Historical defamation.

2004-12-16T14:06:00.000-05:00

Lincoln was gay. Or, more probably, he wasn't, but he's not around to defend himself, so his personal history is vulnerable to any asshole with an agenda.

Regarding the idea that Lincoln didn't get along with Mary Todd because he was gay, please remember that SHE WAS NUTS. You don't have to be gay not to get along with a spouse who's out of his/her mind.

Mets no longer merely flirting with disaster.

2004-12-13T16:09:00.000-05:00

Now they've bought the ring and scheduled a romantic candlelight dinner: Pedro Martinez rumored to be going to Mets. Mike Piazza makes frantic last minute call to Fruit-of-the-Month club in anticipation of next year, increases list of teams to which he will accept a trade to "Anywhere but here."

Hilariously bitchy.

2004-12-03T13:38:00.000-05:00

"The only prerequisite for getting published in Salon is scoring a 23/26 on The Alphabet Quiz."

(Thanks to Sheila O'Malley for the new addition to the blogroll. That's all it takes, folks. Make me laugh.)

From the "Well, duh" dept.

2004-12-01T16:07:00.001-05:00

Anonymous Pentagon guys are concerned about the strategic use of the media as psy-ops tools and its deleterious effect on the military's "credibility".

Although most of the work remains classified, officials say that some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States.
Other specific examples were not known, although U.S. national security officials said an emphasis had been placed on influencing how foreign media depict the United States.
These efforts have set off a fight inside the Pentagon over the proper use of information in wartime. Several top officials see a danger of blurring what are supposed to be well-defined lines between the stated mission of military public affairs — disseminating truthful, accurate information to the media and the American public — and psychological and information operations, the use of often-misleading information and propaganda to influence the outcome of a campaign or battle.

As a member of said American public, allow me to officially lend my whole-hearted endorsement to the efforts of the military to spread disinformation about their actual plans via the fifth column--er, fourth estate. Terrorists watch CNN too, you know. Better I know too little before the fact than that they know too much.

Several of those officials who oppose the use of misleading information spoke out against the practice on the condition of anonymity.

Well, of course they did. Brave, brave dissenters.

(Linked by Jonah Goldberg in the Corner.)

Your moment of clarity.

2004-12-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

From Andrea Harris:

The French are mean, authoritarian motherfuckers and always have been.

This has been your moment of clarity.

Hey hey, ho ho, United Nations got to GO.

2004-12-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Senator Norm Coleman has written a beautifully concise summation of the shamefully underreported Oil-for-Food scandal for today's Wall St. Journal. If the forces within the US media giants had any concept of right and wrong, this would be the biggest political scandal since Teapot Dome, but since they consider the matter of Dubya skipping a TANG physical in the early 70s to be much more important than Saddam Hussein lining his pockets with billions of UN dollars, I don't reckon I'll hold my breath waiting for the scandal to break with any force.

And for those who think we went to war in Iraq because we wanted to take over their oil fields, or because the president is seeking petty revenge for an assassination attempt on his father (perhaps if he'd attempted to assassinate Bill Clinton the high dudgeon of the left might have been stirred), or because the current crop of US warmongers just really enjoy blowing the crap out of other cultures, read the following very carefully:

Mr. Annan was at the helm of the U.N. for all but a few days of the Oil-for-Food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the U.N.'s utter failure to detect or stop Saddam's abuses. The consequences of the U.N.'s ineptitude cannot be overstated: Saddam was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military. Needless to say, he made the Iraqi people suffer even more by importing substandard food and medicine under the Oil-for-Food program and pawning it off as first-rate humanitarian aid.

Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose permanent members were awash in Saddam's favors, would ever call for Saddam's removal, the U.S. and its coalition partners were forced to put troops in harm's way to oust him by force. Today, money swindled from Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in Iraq and other terrorist activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and Oil-for-Food.

I'm not saying the US has acted out of pure-minded altruism in Iraq. I am saying it acted out of reasonable self-interest, and that ought to be enough justification for our present labors.

Radio Free Cincinnati.

2004-11-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

My friend Bern is married to one of the funniest guys I have ever met. Sample his genius here.

Elf me hard.

2004-11-29T17:54:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Bill McCabe, the trailer for the ROTK extended edition.

Yes. Oh, hell, yes.

Happy Thanksgiving.

2004-11-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

The pumpkin pies are out of the oven, the roasting hens are in the refrigerator awaiting the trip down home, the home-canned green beans are packed and ready to go. Hope everyone has a great holiday.

Just briefly:
--has this been the best November ever, or what? Bush, elected. Arafat, dead. Dead in France, yet. Rather, "retired" with extreme prejudice. And I'm going to add in the Powell resignation, Condi Rice's reassignment to State, and Porter Goss starting the ass-kicking housecleaning in the CIA as big dollops of sweet whipped cream on top.

--the flap over the marine capping the wounded terrorist: the Jacksonian in me can't believe we're even discussing this as a possible Bad Thing. I don't see the point of fighting with our hands tied. In the interest of forestalling potential idiocy: no, the Geneva convention doesn't apply.

--the murder of Theo Van Gogh: Bridget Johnson makes a good point in the WSJ, namely that the Hollywood left, which claims to feel the chill wind of oppression every time a red-stater doesn't buy a Dixie Chicks album, has been strangely silent on the actual brutal butchery of a filmmaker by an Islamic fanatic for expressing his views on the treatment of women under Islam. Being shot, butchered like an animal, and used as a mumblypeg board--that's what fanatical Islam has in store for the decadent forces of Hollywood, and that means you, Sean Penn, no matter how nuancy you may think you are.

--Oliver Stone is about to take it in the shorts, and I can't freakin' wait to see "Alexander". Casting Colin Farrell was bad enough; dying him blond and giving him that 80s Miles-and-Miles-O-Keefe 'do bespeaks a miscalculation on an epic scale. Angela and I will be at the Friday matinee somewhere in Louisville, cackling with evil glee and hurling Dots at the screen. (Just for Bern: "Let us pass; my people are jugglers." Yeah, that's exactly what I'm expecting.)

Incidentally.

2004-11-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

In partial reference to the post below, calling the blue states the "reality-based" community is one of the funniest themes to come out of the post-election hysteria.

Malevolent stupidity.

2004-11-08T21:52:00.000-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, the magical blogstylings of Ken Layne. [Via the invaluable Protein Wisdom.]

Credit where due.

2004-11-03T19:04:00.000-05:00

Nothing in John Kerry's campaign so became him as the concession speech*. Seriously, I appreciate him not trying to drag this out for weeks. Edwards, though...that guy's a real shithouse lawyer.

Second best news: the end of Daschole's career as Obstructionist in Chief.

*I swear I did not steal the paraphrase of this particular phrase from Charles Austin.

Quel surprise.

2004-11-02T18:34:00.000-05:00

Election fraud in Chicago. Looks like they purged the Republicans off the rolls. I'm shocked.

[Via HogOnIce.]

The die is cast.

2004-11-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

And so's my vote, at a quarter to seven this morning. They were lined up out the door in Springfield at 6:30. Now to plan my campaign of bitterness and recrimination for the next four years.

Call to arms.

2004-11-01T14:50:00.000-05:00

Steve Graham analyzes Osama's latest video, then breaks out the Patrick Henry:

It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, peace!" But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

If you can read that and still vote for Kerry with a clear conscience, may God have mercy on this country.

Fuck you, Uncle Walter.

2004-10-30T23:13:00.000-04:00

From NRO, via Ace of Spades, this amazing claim by Walter Cronkite on Larry King last night regarding the latest OBL video:

CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principal subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the al Qaqaa explosive dump. Right now, that, the last couple of days, has, I think, upset the Republican campaign.

If I may quote PJ O'Rourke, What the fuck? What the fuckin' fuck? Can Walter Cronkite possibly be suggesting that Carl Rove, ergo the White House, is in a position to manipulate Bin Laden at will? That they are, in fact, working together?

Ace is right. This is the kind of shit that leads to political violence. Like lining up all the current and former CBS anchors we can get our hands on and bitchslapping them until they cry like Nancy Kerrigan.

Sox win.

2004-10-27T23:56:00.000-04:00

I feel like I just watched the moon landing all over again. Only, you know, if the astronauts were spritzing each other with champagne they kept it off-camera.

Feeling the pessimism.

2004-10-26T14:51:00.000-04:00

VDH lays it all out:

We are presented with two radically different candidates with profound disagreements about how to conduct a historic worldwide war. We should remember that all our victorious past presidents were, at the moments of their crises, deeply unpopular precisely because they chose the difficult, long-term sacrifice for victory over the expedient and convenient pleas for accommodation (if not outright capitulation). We are faced with just such an option today: a choice between a president whose call for patience and sacrifice promises victory, and a pessimist stirring the people with the assurances that we should not have fought, and now cannot win, the present war in Iraq.

And there's really nothing more to say. Personally I think the country may have already crossed the line where it can no longer recognize what sacrifice is, much less accede to its necessity.

Is there no shameful act to which CBS will not stoop?

2004-10-26T13:20:00.000-04:00

Via Ace of Spades, Drudge: CBS was planning to run the "missing explosives" story on election eve.

Now, admittedly, the use of past tense would seem to indicate the plan has been scuttled (though Ace seems to think the plans proceed apace; one would hope even CBS wouldn't push a story that's already been debunked by another network.) But according to the LA Times, the tip was handed to them last Wednesday. And they were planning to sit on it until the 31st. As revealing as that is about their political agenda, and their shamelessness in pursuing same, it also makes them look clownishly incompetent for not knowing the piece was being shopped elsewhere. I mean, come the hell on.

So anyway, Jon Stewart.

2004-10-25T16:13:00.000-04:00

Kind of an asshole, apparently. I'm with James Bowman on this; Stewart wants to be able to spew bitter, vicious invective without being called on his opinions. I don't mind that he thinks Crossfire sucks (personally I just find it tedious, but then, I don't assume all programming is tailored to please me), or that he went on Crossfire just to tell its hosts that they suck--I mind him using "I'm just a comedian" as a shield from criticism. He wants his opinions taken seriously, but he doesn't want to be called on them, and I doubt he'd be terribly gracious to a guest who came on his show specifically to tell him he was "hurting America" by not being funny. Which he hasn't been since he realized he could use his position to stump for the dems.

My fortune cookie.

2004-10-25T13:04:00.000-04:00

"A romantic mystery will soon add interest to your life."

Hey, great. "Maltese Falcon" must be on.

Hey, ARod.

2004-10-20T01:27:00.000-04:00

Smooth move. No one will ever notice you swiping at Arroyo's arm while you're wearing those giant white Mickey Mouse gloves. Criminy.

God bless David Hasselhoff.

2004-10-18T19:05:00.000-04:00

He just killed off rap, nearly single-handed*:

HASSELHOFF TURNS TO RAP Former BAYWATCH hunk-turned-London theatre star DAVID HASSELHOFF is turning his attentions to rap music in a bid to become a chart sensation. The actor, who is a pop superstar in Germany and Switzerland, has teamed up with rapper ICE-T in a bid to become an international music star. Ice-T says, "We are going to show a new side of him. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills."

"The Hoff". "Rap skills." Consider that shark jumped.

* Link not guaranteed against linkrot. Item found under "Music News" by Angela, who graciously shared.

Because Greg has to see this and my e-mails are getting bounced.

2004-10-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

Share it with David: Fellowship 9/11. (I also liked the Fast Times at Hero High one.)

[Link via FAD.]

Dear Guardian: get stuffed.

2004-10-13T13:57:00.000-04:00

My friend Sharon alerted me to the following LGF item: Guardian Tries to Influence US Election

In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence's pledge to show "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", we have come up with a unique way for non-Americans to express your views on the policies and candidates in this election to some of the people best placed to decide its outcome. It's not quite a vote, but it's a chance to influence how a very important vote will be cast. Or, at the very least, make a new penpal.

It works like this. By typing your email address into the box on this page, you will receive the name and address of a voter in Clark County, Ohio. You may not have heard of it, but it's one of the most marginal areas in one of the most marginal states: at the last election, just 324 votes separated Democrats from Republicans. It's a place where a change of mind among just a few voters could make a real difference.

Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all.

Gentlemen of the Guardian, as a registered Clark County, OH, resident, let me advise you to re-think this plan. What's going to happen to some unfortunate if my name comes out of the hopper is that I'm going to post the return address on my blog and invite anyone who stops by to respond with the reasons why, in the immortal words of GW Bush, we don't give a shit what the Europeans think.

Dear John Lecarre'

2004-10-13T13:19:00.000-04:00

[...]Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush:

And?

for his bullying unilateralism,

30+ country coalition.

his dismissal of international treaties,

Just the ones trying to wreck the US economic engine or subject US citizens to the whims of a faceless world bureaucracy.

his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures,

As one of the youngest countries in the world (albeit the oldest democracy), it would be unseemly for the US to take the world to raise. Let them see to their own aspirations.

his contempt for institutions of world government,

Oil for food. Srebrenica. Darfur. Yeah, I can see how you'd have a whole lot of anything other than contempt for "institutions of world government".

and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war

Check with your lawyer. S. Hussein was in violation of the cease-fire terms from the first Gulf War for twelve years, and in violation of numerous resolutions from your precious world body, the UN. I'm pretty sure that makes it legal.

- and now anarchy -

War is hell. The aftermath is messy. I hope you don't call yourself a realist.

upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction,

They should have mentioned that. Might have bought them some time.

and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

Aside from the established record of aiding terrorists, which Bush specifically said was an outrage up with which we would no longer put. Abu Nidal ring any bells?

Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues?

No, he's a great war leader because he didn't allow himself to be misdirected by a handful of deluded transnational utopian statist ideologues.

Is Tony Blair a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same hare-brained adventure?

No, he's a great war leader because he stood on principle even though it nearly cost him his base. As much as I despise his domestic policies, the man has grit.

You are voting in November. We will vote next year.

Yes, we're both democracies. How nice for us. And now Afghanistand is too! And soon Iraq. Isn't that nice?

Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told?

Ask John Kerry. His campaign seems to be unravelling like the sleeve of a cheap suit.

The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse.

Uh huh. And Debbie Gibson is pregnant with your two-headed love child.

Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

There's the difference between us: I don't think of the military as a group of big-eyed children in need of milk and cookies.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous.

Wrong on both counts, actually.

He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare.

Meh. Vague and alarmist. To what, specifically, can you possibly be referring?

Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisers promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

I'm sorry, that's a ridiculous characterization, not only of the war and the leadup to war, but of the way the American government functions. No wonder your novels are impenetrable to me.

Meanwhile, your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties which took brave Americans 200 years to secure, and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but at what you are doing to yourselves.

Look, idiot, I live here. Allow me to assure you McCain-Feingold and the Hatch act have done a fuck of a lot more to restrict my constitutional liberties than the PATRIOT act ever will. This kneejerk reaction to the word "patriot" has got to stop if you expect anyone over here who doesn't live in Berkeley to take your concerns seriously.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved.

Bit late to kiss up now.

Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you.

Ah, if only you loved us when we weren't on our knees.

And here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

"The British they cried and cursed Yorktown,
While the band played "The World's Turned Upside Down". -Jimmy Driftwood, "Soldier's Joy"

I display my famous compassion for dead people.

2004-10-11T16:19:00.000-04:00

Jacques Derrida died last week. There was a brief period when I thought it quite possible that this nihilistic jackass had done serious damage to modern culture; now thinking of him just provokes a brief, instinctive snort of derision. It's just too bad he didn't have the decency to get taken out in a suitably post-modernist manner, like Lacan getting creamed by a laundry truck.

Town Hall debate, cont'd.

2004-10-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

How dare John Kerry bring up intelligence when he can't be bothered to attend the meetings on the Senate intelligence committee, which is his ostensible job?

Town Hall debate.

2004-10-08T21:19:00.000-04:00

Bush is finally making the points I've been waiting for him to make, to wit, the WOT can't be limited to the pursuit of bin Laden, and that standing on principle is more important than international popularity.

As for Kerry: if you mean France, say France.

Veep debate, concluded.

2004-10-05T22:25:00.000-04:00

It takes brass balls the size of Wisconsin for a lowlife trial lawyer who made his fortune driving up medical costs by channeling dead babies to keep hammering the high costs of medical care as a main theme of his campaign.

Veep debate, cont'd.

2004-10-05T22:15:00.000-04:00

Note to Kedwards: trying to use the flipflop meme on the current administration is a non-starter. It just reminds people that you're the poster boys for inconsistency. "I know you are but what am I" is not an effective debate technique.

Veep debate, cont'd.

2004-10-05T21:26:00.000-04:00

Edwards blew the AIDS question, going to the "for the children" card out of sequence. Unless there's some epidemic of child-AIDS in this country that I'm completely unaware of.

Veep debate, cont'.

2004-10-05T21:15:00.001-04:00

Cheney just basically called Kedwards a pair of vote whores. It's like watching Mr. Wilson pimpslap Dennis the Menace.

Veep debate.

2004-10-05T21:15:00.000-04:00

John Edwards is doing the Bill Clinton Thumb. That alone is reason to shun him, the dishonest bastard trial lawyer son of a bitch.

Blogging soon.

2004-09-27T22:18:00.000-04:00

I swear. Previous trusty laptop critically injured in terrible DSL installation accident, newly acquired laptop not yet up to speed. Updates soon. Mini reviews:

Sky Captain -- Loved it. Literally slack-jawed in amazement at times. Kept waiting for the evil queen Tika to show up.
Exorcist: the Beginning -- Beginning to wonder how many errors in judgment Stellan Skarsgaard can afford. Opinion of Renny Harlin confirmed.
Hero -- Crouching Pinhead, Hidden Moron. Or maybe I just hate watching the same events unfold four times in different colors.

Time Warner is run by cocksuckers.

2004-09-14T19:05:00.000-04:00

Just thought I'd mention it.

To clarify: I'm talking specifically about the cable service. But that assessment is probably good through the top levels.

Take one week of vacation and all hell breaks loose.

2004-09-13T20:20:00.000-04:00

More like ten days, really, but that was definitely the wrong week to be out of the loop. While I was developing a nasty allergic reaction to something in the North Carolina air, Dan Rather and CBS spent most of last week building a bonfire out of what was left of their "Tiffany Network" credentials over a group of obviously faked memos from the 70s purporting to cast doubts on Bush's Air National Guard service.* I knew Gunga Dan was a bear of very little brain, but holy crow, what an idiot. The sheer wanton hubris of thinking his reportage is beyond fact-checking by the masses (congratulations to the Freepers and Powerline blog for starting the dogpile) is breathtaking enough; the idiotic defense he subsequently mounted earns him a one-way ticket to Palookaville. I'm only sorry there's no way to tie Walter Cronkite around his neck and cast them both into whatever concentric circle of hell is reserved for abusers of the public trust.

*I gathered most of my own info regarding memogate via Ace of Spades and Allah, who covered everything exhaustively. It would be pointless for me to reproduce their work, so go thou and do likewise.

Two Braincells

The hilarity of rioting Canadians

Just for my eddification

Betrayed by Technology Again

Predator remake

Letter from a desperate woman

Capitol records hates cops and firemen.

Newt Gingrich is dead to me.

Screw this.

The Second Coming

Good news.

New Bond.

Ladles look out.

Mother-hunchin' Blogger

Battlestar Galactica: piece of shit.

Template goes wonky.

The end of the Metrosexual nonsense.

"Fuck you and your girlish metaphors, failure."

Yeah. Right.

Miss Smedley, are you trying to make me vomit?

The New Criterion stole my money.

F'n Blogger.

Pretty close.

Trying to clean up this sty of a blog.

When Don King is the voice of reason.

Astoundingly thickheaded.

White people are evil, yadda yadda.

Round up the usual suspects.

Self-esteem is going to ruin The Children.

Kurt Vonnegut is a goddamned idiot.

Oliver Stone's Alexander, a two-word review.

The Shan.

The Fighting Kentuckians.

Er...well, ok.

No, I didn't have to fake my answers.

*swoon*

Suddenly I feel so third world.

Along with 99% of the population.

Oddly relieved to see this.

Greatest online quiz ever.

Portrait of the blogger as a poorly drawn cartoon.

Worthy cause.

Pinpointing where Marc Adamo went wrong in setting "Little Women" as an opera.

Your moment of zen stupidity.

What the hell is going on at the Wall St. Journal?

Today's timewaster.

Sound wars.

In which I address Orlando Bloom.

The Year of the Puppet.

Suspicions of gross sentimentality confirmed.

De mortuis.

Three cheers and a tiger.

Cheap shots.

Garden State.

Huh.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are still dead.

Sheila always has the best links.

"Easy Rider": the nadir of American film.

Britain: A Nation of Fraidy Cats.

Insensitive reflection.

An idle thought.

National fame comes to Clark Co. again.

James Lileks doesn't buy enough liquor.

Historical defamation.

Mets no longer merely flirting with disaster.

Hilariously bitchy.

From the "Well, duh" dept.

Your moment of clarity.

Hey hey, ho ho, United Nations got to GO.

Radio Free Cincinnati.

Elf me hard.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Incidentally.

Malevolent stupidity.

Credit where due.

Quel surprise.

The die is cast.

Call to arms.

Fuck you, Uncle Walter.

Sox win.

swoon