Me: Which was your favorite, Salt, or Pepa?
PW: I don't remember. Which one is the lyricist?
Showing posts with label Poetry. Pure Poetry.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Pure Poetry.. Show all posts
Monday, October 15
Fun With Monogamy, Vol. MDLVI
MY Poor Wife is home for Fall Vacation. It fell to me to keep her entertained yesterday morning, and in desperation I hit upon VH-1's Totally 80s, just in time for "Push It".
Tuesday, December 1
I (Heart) The Internets
• Brave Hoosier commenter BrianK at Doug Masson's place, encapsulating Indiana's "Democratic" junior Senator's heartfelt concern for the fate of his wife's healthcare industry sinecures fiscal responsibility when the topic is Healthcare Reform, but not Building Bigger Shit To Blow Up Other Shit and the Troops We Deploy To Use Them:
"Bayh’s selective deficit disorder".
• SayItWithWookies at Wonkette, on Jon Meacham's Newsweek tree killer "Why Dick Cheney Should Run in 2012":
Come back, Godzilla, we miss you!
Love,
Tokyo
• The redoubtable R. Porrofatto, gracing these pages yesterday and being kind enough not to ask why it took me 1000 more words to say this one-tenth as well:
Springsteen ÷ Oakeshott = Red Lobster.
• As always, We (Heart) Charles Pierce:
But, all Lilly Ledbetters aside, it is becoming increasingly plain that the man is not up to the most important job he was elected to do--which is to wring the accumulated viciousness, ignorance, and hackery of the past eight years out of the various parts of the United States government--and to do it brutally, if necessary, which it is. One of our two major political parties has completely lost its mind. This should be a political issue. It is incumbent upon the other party to eliminate that party's influence until it purges itself and comes to its senses again. It also scarcely needs to be said that the sane party has to watch its own ranks for people who seem to be enabling and abetting the goals of the crazy party. Otherwise, as Ezra Klein memorably put it this week, every attempt at bipartisanship winds up as "a hostage negotiation." President Obama--and does anyone but me notice that he gets the honorific conspicuously less often on TV than the last guy did?-- ot only seems unequal to this task, he doesn't even seem to recognize the task at all. He wasn't elected to change the tone, dammit. He was elected to change everything because everything needed to be changed. So it's a hard goddamn job. So what? He didn't know this coming in? Now we're going to feed 34,000 more American kids into the meat grinder in Afghanistan because we're America and we can do anything we set our minds to? Hell, we can't even keep our own citizens alive by breaking the power of the health-insurance industry. We can't right our economy because it's still in the hands of Wall Street grifters, and the government has fallen into the thrall of a bunch of banker-morons I wouldn't trust with a potato gun. Some people needed to be crushed politically. Some people needed to go to jail. Some people needed to be exiled forever from the serious business of self-government. It's Black Friday, and I'm shopping for another candidate. I'm beating the rush.
"Bayh’s selective deficit disorder".
• SayItWithWookies at Wonkette, on Jon Meacham's Newsweek tree killer "Why Dick Cheney Should Run in 2012":
Come back, Godzilla, we miss you!
Love,
Tokyo
• The redoubtable R. Porrofatto, gracing these pages yesterday and being kind enough not to ask why it took me 1000 more words to say this one-tenth as well:
Springsteen ÷ Oakeshott = Red Lobster.
• As always, We (Heart) Charles Pierce:
But, all Lilly Ledbetters aside, it is becoming increasingly plain that the man is not up to the most important job he was elected to do--which is to wring the accumulated viciousness, ignorance, and hackery of the past eight years out of the various parts of the United States government--and to do it brutally, if necessary, which it is. One of our two major political parties has completely lost its mind. This should be a political issue. It is incumbent upon the other party to eliminate that party's influence until it purges itself and comes to its senses again. It also scarcely needs to be said that the sane party has to watch its own ranks for people who seem to be enabling and abetting the goals of the crazy party. Otherwise, as Ezra Klein memorably put it this week, every attempt at bipartisanship winds up as "a hostage negotiation." President Obama--and does anyone but me notice that he gets the honorific conspicuously less often on TV than the last guy did?-- ot only seems unequal to this task, he doesn't even seem to recognize the task at all. He wasn't elected to change the tone, dammit. He was elected to change everything because everything needed to be changed. So it's a hard goddamn job. So what? He didn't know this coming in? Now we're going to feed 34,000 more American kids into the meat grinder in Afghanistan because we're America and we can do anything we set our minds to? Hell, we can't even keep our own citizens alive by breaking the power of the health-insurance industry. We can't right our economy because it's still in the hands of Wall Street grifters, and the government has fallen into the thrall of a bunch of banker-morons I wouldn't trust with a potato gun. Some people needed to be crushed politically. Some people needed to go to jail. Some people needed to be exiled forever from the serious business of self-government. It's Black Friday, and I'm shopping for another candidate. I'm beating the rush.
Saturday, August 29
You Said It
R. PORROFATTO, at Roy's:
In the liberloons' world, brandishing a weapon isn't the least bit intimdating, except when they're talking about how much it deters crime.
In the liberloons' world, brandishing a weapon isn't the least bit intimdating, except when they're talking about how much it deters crime.
Monday, July 13
Moosespeak
"This is my wife, not my mistress from Argentina."
THAT would be--nyuk-nyuk-nyuk--disgraced accidental Indianapolis mayoral frontman Lt. Col. Gomer P. Ballard, USMC, as reported by the guy who's still working at the Indianapolis Racist Star. Ballard was introducing his wife, Winnie, at the annual state Republican dinner last Wednesday, apparently to someone who was unfamiliar with Ballard's highest-paid assistants.
Of course really great comedy requires that soupçon of frisson, and here Mayor Gomer is nearly the unintentional match of the beloved 60s sitcom character his doting parents named him for: Winnie Ballard hails from the Philippines, meaning she could have passed for an Argentine in a Warner Brothers musical in the 40s, or at any Walgreens in the Indianapolis metro area later that same evening. At any rate, Yer Honor, we in Naptown know you aren't carrying on an international affair, since doing so would require you to make your own plane reservations, and we've had heard about it when you wound up stranded at Tashkent International. But thanks for defusing that emotional time bomb, there, as we're sure there were some Indiana Republican officials who were deeply troubled by that Sanford business. Or maybe just some who were slow enough to get trampled in the This Means It's Mitch! stampede.
By the way, as there was some--possibly intentional--confusion during the election over whether the civilian analogue of "Colonel" was "Mayor of a Mid-Sized Midwestern City With a Justifiable Inferiority Complex", as the few Republicans who actually knew Ballard was running had suggested, I happened upon a table of equivalencies over the weekend. It turns out the civilian counterpart of "Colonel" is "Grammy Winner For Best Gospel or Spoken Word Album or Below, But Still Part of the Television Broadcast, Not One of those Offscreen Deals". The Marine equivalent is "Daytime Emmy Winner". For Lieutenant Colonel it's "Perennial Emmy Nominee (Three or More, No Wins) for Lighting, Sound, or Costume", or "Mayor of Either of the Two Smaller Quad Cities", and for Marine Lt. Colonel it's "Involuntary Commitment But With Daypass Privileges". So somebody fucked up. But then, we knew that.
Speaking of Gomer, somehow or other no one thought to inform me that Sarah Palin had referenced the Federal Department of Law in whatever that speech was she gave officially opening the Let's Blow Up Nothing season, despite the fact that everyone knows there's no way I could have watched it. Hell, I barely made it through the excerpts. But this one reminded me of a guy I used to do some work for, one of those heroic small business entrepreneurs, now, sadly, about to be taxed out of existence, who, with only grit, determination, and a few inherited millions had managed to buy an existing business and keep it going. After a couple of drinks--total lightweight--he'd allow as how he'd cheated his way to a Marketing degree at a state college. Which--speaking of equivalents--is pretty much like explaining to the people in the ER that the reason you have a flashlight stuck in your ass is that you couldn't find the gerbil in the dark.
And the guy used to write his own print ads in the most fractured English imaginable, and if you asked about it he'd explain that he did it intentionally because it attracted attention. Of course the real reason--as anyone who had the pleasure of trying to sort through his written correspondence or other evidence of his mental processes--was that he couldn't write English. That's what reminded me of him when I caught that Palin quote a week late, in the midst of a barely-disturbed-by-wall-to-wall coverage-of-Michael Jackson mass analysis of What Palin's Unexpected Move Means. Okay, so sounding like a Blithering Idiot doesn't necessarily mean you are one, but sounding like one over and over, when every goddam political instinct says you need to improve, drastically, or move to FOX (this was what semi-sensible Republicans were saying, fer chrissakes) is at least highly suggestive. It isn't that Palin's, oh, lack of mental agility has gone uncommented upon, of course; it's that people are still writing and broadcasting stuff about her political future as though the question's still up in the air. So she's the Queen of the Twenty-five Percenters. So fucking what? Those people couldn't turn Pig Shit into Paté when it was their Vice President operating with impunity under laws he made up when he even bothered. They sure aren't going to turn Palin into anything except the newest member of the Multi-Millionaire Dumbass Club. How 'bout a little respect for the millions of Americans who took one listen to her and decided they'd definitely vote Democratic? Christ, does everything have to devolve to what the Lowest Common Denominator is gaping at this week? I thought that's what we had teevee for.
And speaking of 25%, how is it that the Sundays still routinely feature one Democrat vs. one Republican? Shouldn't it be 2-to-1 now? And if you've simply got to have John McCain on (you don't) I suppose getting him to flash that stupid phony smile while lying about Palin is boffo B.O., but maybe it's time to go ahead and Get the Candidate to Bite the Head Off the Rat on national teevee, and do everyone, including him, a favor. Watching The Maverick choke down his bile answering a question about What He Unleashed On Those Fucking Ingrates At The Convention was just an exercise in sadism. And at some point yesterday I saw a clip of John Boehner or Jon Kyl--I can't tell them apart; in fact, the only way I can tell either of them from Evan Bayh is that the Junior Republican from Indiana is the one who smoked dope in the Seventies, and then did doughnuts on the St. Albans lawn while listening to the Moody Blues--saying, essentially, that this whole CIA business sure was a lucky CYA for Nancy Pelosi. That would be the same Nancy Pelosi Boehner and Kyl wanted to investigate a few weeks ago for her blatant lies about the CIA, since, as either Tweedledum or Tweedledummer noted at the time, the Agency had the documentation to back its story up.
Is there any way to explain any of this that doesn't include how much David Gregory enjoys living in a really big house?
THAT would be--nyuk-nyuk-nyuk--disgraced accidental Indianapolis mayoral frontman Lt. Col. Gomer P. Ballard, USMC, as reported by the guy who's still working at the Indianapolis Racist Star. Ballard was introducing his wife, Winnie, at the annual state Republican dinner last Wednesday, apparently to someone who was unfamiliar with Ballard's highest-paid assistants.
Of course really great comedy requires that soupçon of frisson, and here Mayor Gomer is nearly the unintentional match of the beloved 60s sitcom character his doting parents named him for: Winnie Ballard hails from the Philippines, meaning she could have passed for an Argentine in a Warner Brothers musical in the 40s, or at any Walgreens in the Indianapolis metro area later that same evening. At any rate, Yer Honor, we in Naptown know you aren't carrying on an international affair, since doing so would require you to make your own plane reservations, and we've had heard about it when you wound up stranded at Tashkent International. But thanks for defusing that emotional time bomb, there, as we're sure there were some Indiana Republican officials who were deeply troubled by that Sanford business. Or maybe just some who were slow enough to get trampled in the This Means It's Mitch! stampede.
By the way, as there was some--possibly intentional--confusion during the election over whether the civilian analogue of "Colonel" was "Mayor of a Mid-Sized Midwestern City With a Justifiable Inferiority Complex", as the few Republicans who actually knew Ballard was running had suggested, I happened upon a table of equivalencies over the weekend. It turns out the civilian counterpart of "Colonel" is "Grammy Winner For Best Gospel or Spoken Word Album or Below, But Still Part of the Television Broadcast, Not One of those Offscreen Deals". The Marine equivalent is "Daytime Emmy Winner". For Lieutenant Colonel it's "Perennial Emmy Nominee (Three or More, No Wins) for Lighting, Sound, or Costume", or "Mayor of Either of the Two Smaller Quad Cities", and for Marine Lt. Colonel it's "Involuntary Commitment But With Daypass Privileges". So somebody fucked up. But then, we knew that.
Speaking of Gomer, somehow or other no one thought to inform me that Sarah Palin had referenced the Federal Department of Law in whatever that speech was she gave officially opening the Let's Blow Up Nothing season, despite the fact that everyone knows there's no way I could have watched it. Hell, I barely made it through the excerpts. But this one reminded me of a guy I used to do some work for, one of those heroic small business entrepreneurs, now, sadly, about to be taxed out of existence, who, with only grit, determination, and a few inherited millions had managed to buy an existing business and keep it going. After a couple of drinks--total lightweight--he'd allow as how he'd cheated his way to a Marketing degree at a state college. Which--speaking of equivalents--is pretty much like explaining to the people in the ER that the reason you have a flashlight stuck in your ass is that you couldn't find the gerbil in the dark.
And the guy used to write his own print ads in the most fractured English imaginable, and if you asked about it he'd explain that he did it intentionally because it attracted attention. Of course the real reason--as anyone who had the pleasure of trying to sort through his written correspondence or other evidence of his mental processes--was that he couldn't write English. That's what reminded me of him when I caught that Palin quote a week late, in the midst of a barely-disturbed-by-wall-to-wall coverage-of-Michael Jackson mass analysis of What Palin's Unexpected Move Means. Okay, so sounding like a Blithering Idiot doesn't necessarily mean you are one, but sounding like one over and over, when every goddam political instinct says you need to improve, drastically, or move to FOX (this was what semi-sensible Republicans were saying, fer chrissakes) is at least highly suggestive. It isn't that Palin's, oh, lack of mental agility has gone uncommented upon, of course; it's that people are still writing and broadcasting stuff about her political future as though the question's still up in the air. So she's the Queen of the Twenty-five Percenters. So fucking what? Those people couldn't turn Pig Shit into Paté when it was their Vice President operating with impunity under laws he made up when he even bothered. They sure aren't going to turn Palin into anything except the newest member of the Multi-Millionaire Dumbass Club. How 'bout a little respect for the millions of Americans who took one listen to her and decided they'd definitely vote Democratic? Christ, does everything have to devolve to what the Lowest Common Denominator is gaping at this week? I thought that's what we had teevee for.
And speaking of 25%, how is it that the Sundays still routinely feature one Democrat vs. one Republican? Shouldn't it be 2-to-1 now? And if you've simply got to have John McCain on (you don't) I suppose getting him to flash that stupid phony smile while lying about Palin is boffo B.O., but maybe it's time to go ahead and Get the Candidate to Bite the Head Off the Rat on national teevee, and do everyone, including him, a favor. Watching The Maverick choke down his bile answering a question about What He Unleashed On Those Fucking Ingrates At The Convention was just an exercise in sadism. And at some point yesterday I saw a clip of John Boehner or Jon Kyl--I can't tell them apart; in fact, the only way I can tell either of them from Evan Bayh is that the Junior Republican from Indiana is the one who smoked dope in the Seventies, and then did doughnuts on the St. Albans lawn while listening to the Moody Blues--saying, essentially, that this whole CIA business sure was a lucky CYA for Nancy Pelosi. That would be the same Nancy Pelosi Boehner and Kyl wanted to investigate a few weeks ago for her blatant lies about the CIA, since, as either Tweedledum or Tweedledummer noted at the time, the Agency had the documentation to back its story up.
Is there any way to explain any of this that doesn't include how much David Gregory enjoys living in a really big house?
Tuesday, March 24
Recommended Reading
Matt Taibbi, "The Big Takeover".
Glenn Greenwald, "Howard Kurtz: government and media need a "cease-fire" now and then".
Joe Conason, "AIG is Chump Change--Let's Find Corporate America's Hidden Billions".
Paul Krugman, "Financial Policy Despair".
(bonus corporate media cluelessness, via Digby:)
John Harwood: Well Chuck, I was going to say, if the White House to choose between praise from Paul Krugman or plus 300 points on the Dow, I suspect that they would happily take the latter.
Glenn Greenwald, "Howard Kurtz: government and media need a "cease-fire" now and then".
Joe Conason, "AIG is Chump Change--Let's Find Corporate America's Hidden Billions".
Paul Krugman, "Financial Policy Despair".
(bonus corporate media cluelessness, via Digby:)
John Harwood: Well Chuck, I was going to say, if the White House to choose between praise from Paul Krugman or plus 300 points on the Dow, I suspect that they would happily take the latter.
Thursday, March 5
Suck
OKAY, so Twitter's an abomination; that doesn't mean I want to be the last one to climb on board. So, with a tip of the hat to The Daily Show and the invention of Voweler, I've decided to begin posting random minutiae of my wholly uninteresting life as reduced to action words there in the center column. It's sort of the old-time radio version of tweeting, since the reader gets to fill in the details for himself. So, for example, if I shoot some hoops, you can imagine I'm shooting heroin, or the mailman; if I screw that new bookcase together, you can imagine I'm screwing my head on straight, or the mailman. In this way I might become interesting. Okay, too much. I'll probably be tired of it in 72 hours, unless I win some web award; don't get too attached.
Tuesday, February 17
A Life Tragically Cut Short
Why I watch local news. Karen Hensel, Channel 8:
"Lincoln would have turned 200 last week."
"Lincoln would have turned 200 last week."
Thursday, March 6
Free Curmudgeonry.
• Why is it only the Youth are allowed to construct Official Lists of post-dated cultural jetsam? "Shot of Jager" (see, or don't, Andrew Sullivan ) is now officially as dead as the goldfish in Walt "Clyde" Frasier's platform shoes. Because I say so. You hear me, punk? It is freaking inexcusable for a forty-five year old man to be writing about quaffing execrable alcoholic beverages by referring to them by their frat-boy nicknames. In fact, it's inexcusable to write about slugging any spiritous potable which has a frat-boy nickname. This doesn't mean you can't employ it, if you wish; drink raspberry-peach merlot or Purple Passion, for all I care. In fact, do me a favor and drink a lot more of them. But in writing about it, act like you've learned by this point in life that taste and experience matter, and that they are something either to be acquired or rejected, not flouted cluelessly. Surely this would not be the first time you'd lied to the world about something just for appearance's sake.
• What Tom Watson said:
And unlike John "The Amazing Comeback Kid" McCain, she did this without the luxury of waiting for everyone else to lose, yet I didn't hear a bit of coverage which played that up. Then again, I avoided MSNBC. Maybe Tweety was gushing all night.
• That's not curmudgeonly, exactly, but we're building our way to a complete halt. I found it rather notable that most Clinton Bashing Progressives didn't miss a beat in defeat. "On the one hand, [Ohio] was a big win for her," notes young Ezra, the most ambidextrous of bloggers; on the other, "[her] trends in Ohio weren't that promising." This was demonstrated by the fact that Senator Obama cut into her lead once he started campaigning there, a remarkable occurrence assuming this is the first time you've ever looked. Matt tips the boater to CNN for revealing that Clinton cornered the racist vote. And yes, that was what he did. Josh, befitting his greater experience, waits a decent interval before urging us to return the campaign to the issues, namely, the question of how much we all hate Mark Penn.
Or maybe he just has a lower tolerance for Jager shots and slept late.
• The more I read incontinent primary coverage the more I've come to appreciate the vast majority of the electorate, which couldn't fucking care less and yet, somehow, winds up being no more idiotic than the punditry.
• "This is my real hair. If it were a wig it would look much more natural."
--Quentin Crisp
Okay, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick, * and Barack Obama is overrated as a public speaker. And Will Ferrell making fun of 1970s hairdos is beginning to wear a little thin.
Modulate! The microphone is there to take care of volume concerns. You don't have to worry about being heard over the El anymore.
I was watching him the other night thinking, y'know, I'm sure the campaign thinks he's much better on the stump, since he's a little gaffe-prone in a smaller setting, but I think he's a lot more effective using his inside voice; the best I've ever seen him was on The Daily Show. I'm not saying he's not impressive, au contraire, but that I think he's benefitted from the judging standards being set by people who are more familiar with Bob Barker than Martin Luther King (who, since we're speaking of standards, C. L. Franklin famously referred to as "a baby preacher").
Call it the Quentin Crisp Effect: Senator Clinton, no better than mediocre, over time begins to seem more real on the grounds that she isn't any better. And Senator Obama begins to sound like a guy who watched JFK shout "Ask not..." too many times for his own good.
This campaign has seen two moments I've waited for ever since Reagan made his reputation through paying for a microphone. One was Hillary depantsing Tim Russert. It doesn't matter that it didn't fold him up for good and pitch him in the dumpster; what matters is that it should have, and Russert knows it, and that it proved, however fleetingly, that our best politicians are 20x smarter than those guys, even if the rest of 'em bring the average way down.
The second was Senator Obama's reply to McCain's "al-Qaeda in Iraq" comment. One, here's the sort of thing the blogosphere makes plain, over and over, without making a dent in the CW, and two, it was long past time for a Democrat to start talking that way. And then Obama hits the all-caps key: I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR JOHN MCCAIN.... Dude, you didn't have to make sure he could hear it from the podium.
_____________
* Lope de Vega, on being assured that he was dying.
• What Tom Watson said:
Let's look at the scope of Hillary Clinton's victory. She'd lost 11 straight contests to Barack Obama, the most beloved candidate in either party since at least the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan and possibly since FDR's reelection in 1936. Obama's campaign outspent Clinton in Texas and Ohio by four to one, according to some estimates. His field operation was the stuff of organizing legend, and his big rallies made hers seem like church suppers. His online fundraising doubled hers. He led in all the national polls, and her leads in those big states had evaporated. Her imminent departure from the race was declared.
Hillary Clinton was laying on the canvas and the ref was pretty much at nine.
And unlike John "The Amazing Comeback Kid" McCain, she did this without the luxury of waiting for everyone else to lose, yet I didn't hear a bit of coverage which played that up. Then again, I avoided MSNBC. Maybe Tweety was gushing all night.
• That's not curmudgeonly, exactly, but we're building our way to a complete halt. I found it rather notable that most Clinton Bashing Progressives didn't miss a beat in defeat. "On the one hand, [Ohio] was a big win for her," notes young Ezra, the most ambidextrous of bloggers; on the other, "[her] trends in Ohio weren't that promising." This was demonstrated by the fact that Senator Obama cut into her lead once he started campaigning there, a remarkable occurrence assuming this is the first time you've ever looked. Matt tips the boater to CNN for revealing that Clinton cornered the racist vote. And yes, that was what he did. Josh, befitting his greater experience, waits a decent interval before urging us to return the campaign to the issues, namely, the question of how much we all hate Mark Penn.
Or maybe he just has a lower tolerance for Jager shots and slept late.
• The more I read incontinent primary coverage the more I've come to appreciate the vast majority of the electorate, which couldn't fucking care less and yet, somehow, winds up being no more idiotic than the punditry.
• "This is my real hair. If it were a wig it would look much more natural."
Okay, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick, * and Barack Obama is overrated as a public speaker. And Will Ferrell making fun of 1970s hairdos is beginning to wear a little thin.
Modulate! The microphone is there to take care of volume concerns. You don't have to worry about being heard over the El anymore.
I was watching him the other night thinking, y'know, I'm sure the campaign thinks he's much better on the stump, since he's a little gaffe-prone in a smaller setting, but I think he's a lot more effective using his inside voice; the best I've ever seen him was on The Daily Show. I'm not saying he's not impressive, au contraire, but that I think he's benefitted from the judging standards being set by people who are more familiar with Bob Barker than Martin Luther King (who, since we're speaking of standards, C. L. Franklin famously referred to as "a baby preacher").
Call it the Quentin Crisp Effect: Senator Clinton, no better than mediocre, over time begins to seem more real on the grounds that she isn't any better. And Senator Obama begins to sound like a guy who watched JFK shout "Ask not..." too many times for his own good.
This campaign has seen two moments I've waited for ever since Reagan made his reputation through paying for a microphone. One was Hillary depantsing Tim Russert. It doesn't matter that it didn't fold him up for good and pitch him in the dumpster; what matters is that it should have, and Russert knows it, and that it proved, however fleetingly, that our best politicians are 20x smarter than those guys, even if the rest of 'em bring the average way down.
The second was Senator Obama's reply to McCain's "al-Qaeda in Iraq" comment. One, here's the sort of thing the blogosphere makes plain, over and over, without making a dent in the CW, and two, it was long past time for a Democrat to start talking that way. And then Obama hits the all-caps key: I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR JOHN MCCAIN.... Dude, you didn't have to make sure he could hear it from the podium.
_____________
* Lope de Vega, on being assured that he was dying.
Monday, December 31
In Other News, CBS Thinks Bobby Parker Is A Creep, And If He Thinks They're Still Going To The 8th Grade Dance Together He's Crazy.
SOME may say it's just the Vicodin talking (see below), but it started weeks before that. It started with Hillary's cleavage.
I know that people like to imagine otherwise, but the ruling coalition in this country (ruling because it has no more ability to govern than it has sufficient democratic instincts to do so) consists of a bunch of standard-issue Weekly Standard neo-fascists (I'm bringing it back! Why are "conservatives" like fascists? Because they are! Short, but it didn't take three years to get into some semblance of publishing shape, either) throwing shit at a wall to see what captures the, you should pardon the expression, "imagination" of the public. Which I suppose we all, fascist or not, do to some extent, but only these guys and their sorry-assed centrist Democrat dopplegängers get theirs broadcast by major networks or published by the Newspaper of Record.
(Speaking of the Gray Lady, I heard someone say that Kristol would be taking the Bill Safir(e) chair. It's true those two enjoy the commonality of being lying fascist bags of shit, but Safir(e) in his heyday was at least lively, even if you wouldn't have left your nine-year-old alone in a room with him. Kristol's taking the Tierney chair, folks. Tierney represented the Times' Pander Offensive; he was the New Yawk editor's idea of the sort of Midwesterner who finds David Brooks such a delightfully contrarian 19th century mind. In this, as always, we find a reassuring cluelessness, as when a regional symphony orchestra backs Van Halen, or Celine Dion tries to rock out. No Midwesterner reads David Brooks. Few have even heard of him. At any rate, the Tierney experiment is now officially a failure and it's time to return the space to the paranoid ravings of well-born East Coast hucksters, where it belongs.
(We can't pass this by without noting that Andrew Sullivan called Kristol "an extremely talented writer", proving that some people can't tell the difference between a Bartok string quartet and the mock pleadings of a buggered cabana boy.)
Where was I? Oh, so look at Hillary's cleavage. You would not have described it as such. Your grandmother would not have described it as such. It raised no boners beyond the terminally infantile erections of Right Blogtopia, and merited only a half-hearted What The Fuck among adults, but it was on the "News". And look what's happened since. The diapered fantasies of your mewling Chris Matthewses and your puking Tim Russerts, barely contained in the best of times, started boiling harder than an Irish dinner. (By the way, does anyone imagine either of these two has ever had sexual relations without both themselves and the victim being dead drunk?) The smooth-shaven Barack Obama suddenly had a message, and John Edwards suddenly had one that was being heard, his former Breck Girl locks now a Kennedyesque mop. Clearly some switch had been thrown, dear reader, and the resultant light was invisible to anyone with a healthy adult sex life.
Now, this points out a couple of things about the string pullers. One, they obviously realize that sex sells, as we all do, but they also know that infantile notions of sex sell best of all. It wasn't Gennifer Flowers got the faithful all riled up; it was the thought of Paula Jones kissing the Bent Clenis™. It wasn't schtupping Monica, it was leaving a stain. If Larry Craig had been caught in a Watergate suite with a male aide it wouldn't have played three days outside of Idaho. And two, I believe we can take it for granted that they share the Don't Fuck Mommy/Look I Made A Poo-Poo frame of reference; nobody with a healthy sex life could possibly care. We are under perpetual attack by the forces of infantile sexuality, not in a reasonably-well-adjusted, specialist-publication way, but in an Oh My God In A Public Men's Room! How Disgusting, and I Hope They Have More Pictures On A-18! sense.
Of course the real point is power, as it always is for the well-born erectile-deficient; leading the New American Gladiators crowd to the polls is just a means to that end, so once something like this takes hold it gets attached to "important" concepts (if it were all about sex Russert might begin to catch on at some point, though I doubt Matthews would) like Mike Huckabee Is Too Religious (a concept as wistless as the Clinton cleavage, and no less effective. As Jay B pointed out, seven years ago the EmEssEm were outraged someone would embarrass a Presidential candidate by asking him to name the president of Pakistan; now it's outraged that an utterance can be parsed to suggest an unfamiliarity with how its paperwork is progressing this week).
So I was not really surprised when NBC's Richard Engle broke the weekend wall-to-wall Bhutto: The Islamic Elvis bit (someone needs to explain the "she cracked her skull on the limo door" thing to me, though. Is this supposed to suggest it was suicide or something? Are they planning to indict Dr. Nick?) for this:
(although I thought he should have added "Besides, he's too religious,") because that's exactly what NBC's "terrorist experts" said about the last bin-Laden audiotape, and hey, you go with what you know, plus the alternative--having accurately reported the truth about "al-Qaeda in Iraq" for the last four years--is as unthinkable as it is impossible. Still, it's plenty amusing to hear the same guys who were painting him as Goldfinger a couple years back now analyzing the terror threat contained in an intercepted 8-Track message to his evil hordes. Is it any wonder that the abiding symbol of our last war on Islamofascism is a cartoon mouse giving 'em the finger?
I know that people like to imagine otherwise, but the ruling coalition in this country (ruling because it has no more ability to govern than it has sufficient democratic instincts to do so) consists of a bunch of standard-issue Weekly Standard neo-fascists (I'm bringing it back! Why are "conservatives" like fascists? Because they are! Short, but it didn't take three years to get into some semblance of publishing shape, either) throwing shit at a wall to see what captures the, you should pardon the expression, "imagination" of the public. Which I suppose we all, fascist or not, do to some extent, but only these guys and their sorry-assed centrist Democrat dopplegängers get theirs broadcast by major networks or published by the Newspaper of Record.
(Speaking of the Gray Lady, I heard someone say that Kristol would be taking the Bill Safir(e) chair. It's true those two enjoy the commonality of being lying fascist bags of shit, but Safir(e) in his heyday was at least lively, even if you wouldn't have left your nine-year-old alone in a room with him. Kristol's taking the Tierney chair, folks. Tierney represented the Times' Pander Offensive; he was the New Yawk editor's idea of the sort of Midwesterner who finds David Brooks such a delightfully contrarian 19th century mind. In this, as always, we find a reassuring cluelessness, as when a regional symphony orchestra backs Van Halen, or Celine Dion tries to rock out. No Midwesterner reads David Brooks. Few have even heard of him. At any rate, the Tierney experiment is now officially a failure and it's time to return the space to the paranoid ravings of well-born East Coast hucksters, where it belongs.
(We can't pass this by without noting that Andrew Sullivan called Kristol "an extremely talented writer", proving that some people can't tell the difference between a Bartok string quartet and the mock pleadings of a buggered cabana boy.)
Where was I? Oh, so look at Hillary's cleavage. You would not have described it as such. Your grandmother would not have described it as such. It raised no boners beyond the terminally infantile erections of Right Blogtopia, and merited only a half-hearted What The Fuck among adults, but it was on the "News". And look what's happened since. The diapered fantasies of your mewling Chris Matthewses and your puking Tim Russerts, barely contained in the best of times, started boiling harder than an Irish dinner. (By the way, does anyone imagine either of these two has ever had sexual relations without both themselves and the victim being dead drunk?) The smooth-shaven Barack Obama suddenly had a message, and John Edwards suddenly had one that was being heard, his former Breck Girl locks now a Kennedyesque mop. Clearly some switch had been thrown, dear reader, and the resultant light was invisible to anyone with a healthy adult sex life.
Now, this points out a couple of things about the string pullers. One, they obviously realize that sex sells, as we all do, but they also know that infantile notions of sex sell best of all. It wasn't Gennifer Flowers got the faithful all riled up; it was the thought of Paula Jones kissing the Bent Clenis™. It wasn't schtupping Monica, it was leaving a stain. If Larry Craig had been caught in a Watergate suite with a male aide it wouldn't have played three days outside of Idaho. And two, I believe we can take it for granted that they share the Don't Fuck Mommy/Look I Made A Poo-Poo frame of reference; nobody with a healthy sex life could possibly care. We are under perpetual attack by the forces of infantile sexuality, not in a reasonably-well-adjusted, specialist-publication way, but in an Oh My God In A Public Men's Room! How Disgusting, and I Hope They Have More Pictures On A-18! sense.
Of course the real point is power, as it always is for the well-born erectile-deficient; leading the New American Gladiators crowd to the polls is just a means to that end, so once something like this takes hold it gets attached to "important" concepts (if it were all about sex Russert might begin to catch on at some point, though I doubt Matthews would) like Mike Huckabee Is Too Religious (a concept as wistless as the Clinton cleavage, and no less effective. As Jay B pointed out, seven years ago the EmEssEm were outraged someone would embarrass a Presidential candidate by asking him to name the president of Pakistan; now it's outraged that an utterance can be parsed to suggest an unfamiliarity with how its paperwork is progressing this week).
So I was not really surprised when NBC's Richard Engle broke the weekend wall-to-wall Bhutto: The Islamic Elvis bit (someone needs to explain the "she cracked her skull on the limo door" thing to me, though. Is this supposed to suggest it was suicide or something? Are they planning to indict Dr. Nick?) for this:
New bin-Laden Audio Proves Surge Is Working
(although I thought he should have added "Besides, he's too religious,") because that's exactly what NBC's "terrorist experts" said about the last bin-Laden audiotape, and hey, you go with what you know, plus the alternative--having accurately reported the truth about "al-Qaeda in Iraq" for the last four years--is as unthinkable as it is impossible. Still, it's plenty amusing to hear the same guys who were painting him as Goldfinger a couple years back now analyzing the terror threat contained in an intercepted 8-Track message to his evil hordes. Is it any wonder that the abiding symbol of our last war on Islamofascism is a cartoon mouse giving 'em the finger?
Friday, November 16
Friday That's Just The Vicodin Blogging
SHIT, pal, lemme tell ya. The Republic ain't doomed because Campbell Brown is helping us select a President. The Republic is doomed because Campbell Brown has a job. Campbell Brown is Diane Sawyer: The Next Generation. She's Mrs. Dan Fucking Senor, fer chrissakes. She was taped jumping up and down and hugging people when Bush (whom she was covering) "won" Florida. Remember when there was a shitstorm because Dan Rather spoke at a union picnic?
I mean, we're a country full of religious lunatics and nobody, nobody objects when the Spawn of Senor percolates a few feet from the potential Next President of the United States. People believe in UFOs, guardian angels, and the effectiveness of waterboarding, but they're content to imagine The Omen is "just a show"?
It's champions week on Jeopardy! and the other night the category was something like "Women's Names in Song Titles" and a) nobody got "Allison", but they got fucking John Glad He's Dead Denver's "Annie's Song", speaking of waterboarding, and b) some joker on the staff made Elvis Costello a lower-valued clue than Mr. Fucking Billion Units Country Ro-oads Whose Idea of the "Country" Was Motherfuckin' Aspen. Right. Thanks for trying to convince me the world is sane. Try harder next time. If you're not gonna try at all, try Slate, which says that Email Is Dead (cause kids these days IM). See how it's done? Now they just leave it to the reader to be the contrarian! Email isn't dying because teens IM. Email is doomed because once those dumbass little fuckers get ahold of this fucked-up planet everything is doomed. The fuckin' Movement "Conservatives" are just the warm up act, the Shecky Greene to their geriatric no-voiced Sinatra. Goldberg's gonna look like an actual public intellectual by the time this thing's over, I'm tellin' ya.
Okay, so that's unfair. I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. I love kids. And we're already fuckin' doomed anyhow. We've been doomed since Reagan. We've got Captain Queeg on the bridge, only this one never had any marbles, and he isn't even smart enough to realize he steamed through his own tow line, let alone trying to cover it up anymore, and he's just Reagan 2.0. Wait'll we get Reagan Vista. I mean, people talk about what Reagan didn't do, like initiating thermonuclear war, as though this was a positive attribute. He couldn't do it because the public hadn't quite been dumbed down enough. Bush couldn't do it because somebody screwed up and dumbed down the government even faster. It'll all balance out someday. Huh? Well of course I realize Bush didn't have a Soviet Union to nuke. Reagan didn't have one to speak of either, and that never stopped him from pretending he did. You supply the prose poems, I'll supply the Holocaust.
You got another one? Anyway, did you watch Debate #473 last night? Pretty good. I'd rank it with #214, myself. Goddamn it, Hillary Clinton is the best candidate out there. It's not even close. That Huckabee guy might qualify as a promising minor leaguer, and don't get me started on the Quadrennial Let's Elect A Really Insane Guy shit. It's Hillary. She's good. She didn't panic. Just like Bill, she didn't fight fire with fire. She blew the goddam flame out, knocked the fucker over, put a boot to the throat, and said, calmly, "What was that, again?" Bill was swattin' fungoes compared to her. That gender-card crapola from last week just vanished. She swatted Edwards like he was a pouty three-year-old. And Obama, hell, it's "Why Won't You Stop Hitting Yourself?" Krugman:
Damn skippy. I mean, there are worse things than a President light on experience, and there are worse things than a President who fought against the Iraq War as Treasurer of the Chicago Ward-Heelers Society but can't quite bring himself to denounce Smoke and/or Mirrors as a foreign policy tool. But, at least among Democrats, there's nothing worse than a candidate who takes advice from Maureen Dowd.
For cryin' out loud, he tried to compare Clinton to Rudy & Mitt last night. Who the hell is advising this guy? Two-thirds of the Democratic party, and the entire netroots gaggle, is unhappy with the party, fed-up with Congress, and boiling mad about the last seven years, and somehow Barack Obama can't find anyplace to stand because some genius suggested branding him as Mr. Anti-Partisanship amid the fucking wreckage of a government vandalized by the other party's partisans. Lovely parting gifts! Thanks for playing our game!
Say one thing: President Clinton will kick Tim Russert's ass, but she'll probably be too subtle about it. I'd vote for her right now, if I could, for our next Press Secretary. Hell, I'll vote for her if she'll backchannel me and tell me the first thing her Press Secretary will do, on 1/20/09, is to stand up in front of the Press Corpse and read a two-page history of Vandalgate, Pardongate, and Giftgate with particular attention paid, by name, to Mike Allen and Andrea Mitchell, then suggest they all sleep on it and return bright and early tomorrow.
And make Ailes give Bill his own show.
But fer chrissakes, dude, a fucking Centrist Democrat is the best we can manage in a crisis. I mean, I watched the goddam Brian Williams Show last night--the next President should decree they can't call it "News" anymore--and it was just the local news with more helicopters. If you've got nothing to say, at least have a Friends rerun racked up. It's the Reagan Curse. We're a nation of Lucky Lotto players, man. You think trading Babe Ruth was anything compared to electing a bad actor past his sell-by date President? You think I've said "fuck" enough to drop down to "High School Sophomore" yet? Can you get this stuff in quantity?
I mean, we're a country full of religious lunatics and nobody, nobody objects when the Spawn of Senor percolates a few feet from the potential Next President of the United States. People believe in UFOs, guardian angels, and the effectiveness of waterboarding, but they're content to imagine The Omen is "just a show"?
It's champions week on Jeopardy! and the other night the category was something like "Women's Names in Song Titles" and a) nobody got "Allison", but they got fucking John Glad He's Dead Denver's "Annie's Song", speaking of waterboarding, and b) some joker on the staff made Elvis Costello a lower-valued clue than Mr. Fucking Billion Units Country Ro-oads Whose Idea of the "Country" Was Motherfuckin' Aspen. Right. Thanks for trying to convince me the world is sane. Try harder next time. If you're not gonna try at all, try Slate, which says that Email Is Dead (cause kids these days IM). See how it's done? Now they just leave it to the reader to be the contrarian! Email isn't dying because teens IM. Email is doomed because once those dumbass little fuckers get ahold of this fucked-up planet everything is doomed. The fuckin' Movement "Conservatives" are just the warm up act, the Shecky Greene to their geriatric no-voiced Sinatra. Goldberg's gonna look like an actual public intellectual by the time this thing's over, I'm tellin' ya.
Okay, so that's unfair. I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. I love kids. And we're already fuckin' doomed anyhow. We've been doomed since Reagan. We've got Captain Queeg on the bridge, only this one never had any marbles, and he isn't even smart enough to realize he steamed through his own tow line, let alone trying to cover it up anymore, and he's just Reagan 2.0. Wait'll we get Reagan Vista. I mean, people talk about what Reagan didn't do, like initiating thermonuclear war, as though this was a positive attribute. He couldn't do it because the public hadn't quite been dumbed down enough. Bush couldn't do it because somebody screwed up and dumbed down the government even faster. It'll all balance out someday. Huh? Well of course I realize Bush didn't have a Soviet Union to nuke. Reagan didn't have one to speak of either, and that never stopped him from pretending he did. You supply the prose poems, I'll supply the Holocaust.
You got another one? Anyway, did you watch Debate #473 last night? Pretty good. I'd rank it with #214, myself. Goddamn it, Hillary Clinton is the best candidate out there. It's not even close. That Huckabee guy might qualify as a promising minor leaguer, and don't get me started on the Quadrennial Let's Elect A Really Insane Guy shit. It's Hillary. She's good. She didn't panic. Just like Bill, she didn't fight fire with fire. She blew the goddam flame out, knocked the fucker over, put a boot to the throat, and said, calmly, "What was that, again?" Bill was swattin' fungoes compared to her. That gender-card crapola from last week just vanished. She swatted Edwards like he was a pouty three-year-old. And Obama, hell, it's "Why Won't You Stop Hitting Yourself?" Krugman:
But Mr. Obama’s Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you’d expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable.
Damn skippy. I mean, there are worse things than a President light on experience, and there are worse things than a President who fought against the Iraq War as Treasurer of the Chicago Ward-Heelers Society but can't quite bring himself to denounce Smoke and/or Mirrors as a foreign policy tool. But, at least among Democrats, there's nothing worse than a candidate who takes advice from Maureen Dowd.
For cryin' out loud, he tried to compare Clinton to Rudy & Mitt last night. Who the hell is advising this guy? Two-thirds of the Democratic party, and the entire netroots gaggle, is unhappy with the party, fed-up with Congress, and boiling mad about the last seven years, and somehow Barack Obama can't find anyplace to stand because some genius suggested branding him as Mr. Anti-Partisanship amid the fucking wreckage of a government vandalized by the other party's partisans. Lovely parting gifts! Thanks for playing our game!
Say one thing: President Clinton will kick Tim Russert's ass, but she'll probably be too subtle about it. I'd vote for her right now, if I could, for our next Press Secretary. Hell, I'll vote for her if she'll backchannel me and tell me the first thing her Press Secretary will do, on 1/20/09, is to stand up in front of the Press Corpse and read a two-page history of Vandalgate, Pardongate, and Giftgate with particular attention paid, by name, to Mike Allen and Andrea Mitchell, then suggest they all sleep on it and return bright and early tomorrow.
And make Ailes give Bill his own show.
But fer chrissakes, dude, a fucking Centrist Democrat is the best we can manage in a crisis. I mean, I watched the goddam Brian Williams Show last night--the next President should decree they can't call it "News" anymore--and it was just the local news with more helicopters. If you've got nothing to say, at least have a Friends rerun racked up. It's the Reagan Curse. We're a nation of Lucky Lotto players, man. You think trading Babe Ruth was anything compared to electing a bad actor past his sell-by date President? You think I've said "fuck" enough to drop down to "High School Sophomore" yet? Can you get this stuff in quantity?
Friday, October 19
Professional Wordsmithing: A Guide To Being Teached By The Experts
It is true that 54% of the electorate is composed of women...
--Peggy Noonan
Wednesday, October 10
Non-Post, Day Two
OKAY, I was already pissed off--difficult as that is to believe--because late last week Channel 8 (Indiana's Own; I liked 'em better when they were the Action News Team, but I'm guessing they ran afoul of some truth in advertising regulation or other) had their fourth-string weather reader, the one who dresses like a dinner-theatre extra from Guys and Dolls, inform an entire market's worth of suburbanites they'd better water those lawns, and be quick about it, before they died. The lawns, they meant.
He read this over the same footage they'd used six weeks ago as they told the same drought-stricken burghers they could safely comply with those pesky No-Water orders since their lawns were only going dormant, not dying.
This is more than just rhetorically annoying, though I would like to point out first that I don't even listen to these maroons about the weather, let alone lawn care, about which I am remarkably indifferent for an avid gardener. The real irritation stems from the fact that the No Water order--always accompanied by the stern warning that The City May Start Fining Violators, And This Time We Mean It--is basically at the service of the (recently privatized) water company's desire not to upgrade its 19th century delivery system in light of our new, post-agrarian living patterns. Instead of increasing capacity as suburbanites flew into the farthest reaches of the county and beyond, they've simply jacked up the pressure at peak times, and every intervening flapper, valve, and gasket blows out, on average, every eighteen months, plus I'm sure they've killed or severely injured numerous devotees of nozzle fun, although the Star doesn't publish statistics.
And while I grant you that people tend to water their lawns like complete idiots, the whole question of individual vs. corporate good citizenship is solved by simply acting like it doesn't exist. No one tells swimming pools or water parks to close. Every golf course I pass is still green. The big lawn care companies are still showing up with their water tanks, the better to achieve the right dilution of Agent Orange so that your dog won't die on contact with the stuff but linger a couple years while guarding your nice, green grass.
And this is, by my count, one of two ecologically responsible stands taken by the locals (Ozone Action Days being the other) without the required Faux Environment Balance (which is distinguishable from regular Faux Balance in that the two sides are not presumed equal, but linked by Our Knowing Sadness: yes, we're concerned about the environment, but we need jobs, too, so the viewer gets to feel good about himself without giving up the M-1 Abrams he tools around town in). If the residents of some one-time farming community try to fend off a new Wal*Mart it's a controversy. If some auto-parts manufacturer in Anderson dumps a half-ton of solvents into the sewers, resulting in a 150-mile fish kill, it's an industrial accident. For that matter, if there's a line of killer storms that looks promising on radar they send off all fourteen staff weather readers in their personal helicopters so the home-bound weather buff can see what the wind in Shelbyville does to an exposed parka.
And so it was that after a second hour spent raking thatch last Sunday, after which I plopped down to watch the Colts game, I came face to virtual face with a local weekend talking hairdo (I had the wrong channel; it was an NFC game for broadcast purposes) who in succession touted a) The Bi-Monthly Anti-Abortion Shout At Passing Cars Fest, which was held under a bridge because it was, like, 97º outside, a matter which failed to daunt the cameraman, who still managed to make the crowd of a dozen protestors look as big as that Saddam-statue-toppling one; and b) the aforementioned "largest Christian pornography site", which, at least, provided some laughs and the impetus to find the correct channel.
He read this over the same footage they'd used six weeks ago as they told the same drought-stricken burghers they could safely comply with those pesky No-Water orders since their lawns were only going dormant, not dying.
This is more than just rhetorically annoying, though I would like to point out first that I don't even listen to these maroons about the weather, let alone lawn care, about which I am remarkably indifferent for an avid gardener. The real irritation stems from the fact that the No Water order--always accompanied by the stern warning that The City May Start Fining Violators, And This Time We Mean It--is basically at the service of the (recently privatized) water company's desire not to upgrade its 19th century delivery system in light of our new, post-agrarian living patterns. Instead of increasing capacity as suburbanites flew into the farthest reaches of the county and beyond, they've simply jacked up the pressure at peak times, and every intervening flapper, valve, and gasket blows out, on average, every eighteen months, plus I'm sure they've killed or severely injured numerous devotees of nozzle fun, although the Star doesn't publish statistics.
And while I grant you that people tend to water their lawns like complete idiots, the whole question of individual vs. corporate good citizenship is solved by simply acting like it doesn't exist. No one tells swimming pools or water parks to close. Every golf course I pass is still green. The big lawn care companies are still showing up with their water tanks, the better to achieve the right dilution of Agent Orange so that your dog won't die on contact with the stuff but linger a couple years while guarding your nice, green grass.
And this is, by my count, one of two ecologically responsible stands taken by the locals (Ozone Action Days being the other) without the required Faux Environment Balance (which is distinguishable from regular Faux Balance in that the two sides are not presumed equal, but linked by Our Knowing Sadness: yes, we're concerned about the environment, but we need jobs, too, so the viewer gets to feel good about himself without giving up the M-1 Abrams he tools around town in). If the residents of some one-time farming community try to fend off a new Wal*Mart it's a controversy. If some auto-parts manufacturer in Anderson dumps a half-ton of solvents into the sewers, resulting in a 150-mile fish kill, it's an industrial accident. For that matter, if there's a line of killer storms that looks promising on radar they send off all fourteen staff weather readers in their personal helicopters so the home-bound weather buff can see what the wind in Shelbyville does to an exposed parka.
And so it was that after a second hour spent raking thatch last Sunday, after which I plopped down to watch the Colts game, I came face to virtual face with a local weekend talking hairdo (I had the wrong channel; it was an NFC game for broadcast purposes) who in succession touted a) The Bi-Monthly Anti-Abortion Shout At Passing Cars Fest, which was held under a bridge because it was, like, 97º outside, a matter which failed to daunt the cameraman, who still managed to make the crowd of a dozen protestors look as big as that Saddam-statue-toppling one; and b) the aforementioned "largest Christian pornography site", which, at least, provided some laughs and the impetus to find the correct channel.
Tuesday, October 9
In Brief
DUE to some unknown and unintended offense I've given a minor diety, today's post, a charming, Thurberesque tale of autumn lawn care, power tool rental, a comic misapprehension, and the resultant 911 call which segued into a report of a local news channel running a story about a suburban church partnering with "the leading Christian pornography site", which, it turns out, is, if anything, the leading Christian anti- pornography site (which the viewer was supposed to have understood), before denouncing local news and everyone involved in it while briefly reprising the lawn-care theme and adding, as a icy wind blowing off the frozen river of American competence, that the zebra-striped professional arbiters of Sunday night's Bears-Packers game could not manage to get a Too Many Men on the Field call correct despite access to videotape from a dozen cameras, will not be completed in time. Refunds are available at the counter.
Sunday, September 16
Tiny Rewards of Getting Around to Reorganizing Your Hard Drives, 2004 Edition
"(Green Bay) leads the league in intangibles."
-Leslie Visser
-Leslie Visser
Friday, September 7
Why Are We In Iraq? Part 627 in a Series.
I HAD to rush in to the grocery this afternoon. I generally try to avoid the quote Express end quote Line, but there was no choice this time, and as a result I was, predictably, stuck two persons behind the woman who read her receipt all the way to the exit, spun around, and came back to announce she'd been overcharged. Which, predictably, she hadn't, and which, predictably, takes four times as long to establish than if she had.
This did nothing to ameliorate the high viscosity service in the quote Express end quote Line due to its being manned by Gabby (not her real name, but definitely her real description), who mistakes making random comments about your selections for "personality", which, evidentally, the store manager has urged her to both acquire and share. This took the form in my own case of the following exchange:
Gabby (scanning my twofer pack of ribeyes): These'd be great on the grill!
Me (inaudibly): I'm so glad you mentioned that. I was gonna take 'em home and boil 'em for a couple hours.
Anyway, the delay provided enough time for two twenty-something Jeopardy! contestants to turn up, each towing a case of warm Bud. After a brief period spent determining which character Sacha Baron Cohen had played in Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, ("I'm pretty sure he was the French guy.") inspired by the $8.99 Borat DVD hanging on the rack, the talk turned to the possible life-threatening results of consuming all that Bud in a sitting.
"You could go out and get shot in the woods."
"Yeah, especially if you went hunting with that Dave Cheney guy."
This did nothing to ameliorate the high viscosity service in the quote Express end quote Line due to its being manned by Gabby (not her real name, but definitely her real description), who mistakes making random comments about your selections for "personality", which, evidentally, the store manager has urged her to both acquire and share. This took the form in my own case of the following exchange:
Gabby (scanning my twofer pack of ribeyes): These'd be great on the grill!
Me (inaudibly): I'm so glad you mentioned that. I was gonna take 'em home and boil 'em for a couple hours.
Anyway, the delay provided enough time for two twenty-something Jeopardy! contestants to turn up, each towing a case of warm Bud. After a brief period spent determining which character Sacha Baron Cohen had played in Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, ("I'm pretty sure he was the French guy.") inspired by the $8.99 Borat DVD hanging on the rack, the talk turned to the possible life-threatening results of consuming all that Bud in a sitting.
"You could go out and get shot in the woods."
"Yeah, especially if you went hunting with that Dave Cheney guy."
Monday, June 18
MoDo: Just the Hot Parts
MAUREEN Dowd is a columnist. For the New York Times. The following is from her column. In the New York Times. It was (as far as I can tell) a column about the race for President. Of the United States. It was in the New York Times.
busty brunette
wriggles
pink bikini
frolicking
surf
undulating
red underwear
Obama
teased
Obama Girl model
music video
lipsyncs
sultry-catchy [sic]
featured cage dancer
dreamboy
beef up
image
buzz
beefcake
pretty boy
drawing attention
superficial charms
Ralph Lauren
shop
clothes
GQ
cover
how good he looked
swimsuit
oppo-researchers
sneering
Clintons
sleazy
pelting
juicy
conflicts
Obama Boys
whack
cloak-and-dagger
Clinton camp
leaking
over-the-top
stereotyping
flippant
rich
supermarket mogul
fly on his plane
his pal Bill
fund
tut-tuts
astrological software
Playboy
Leo
First Lad
$10 million a year
$150,000
Hillaryland
panting
an opportunity to paint
hoists his pedestal so high he's bound to fall off
proving he's pure
proving he's tough
act high-minded and do-gooding [sic]
hit men
tangled in contradictions high and low
saint and killer
Hillary
moves like a shark
lean over
bite his ear off
Charlie Cook, the political analyst
do what it takes
immaculate conception
busy
modeling
so easily wrapped around the fingers
rich
willing
give them millions
Al Capone
busty brunette
wriggles
pink bikini
frolicking
surf
undulating
red underwear
Obama
teased
Obama Girl model
music video
lipsyncs
sultry-catchy [sic]
featured cage dancer
dreamboy
beef up
image
buzz
beefcake
pretty boy
drawing attention
superficial charms
Ralph Lauren
shop
clothes
GQ
cover
how good he looked
swimsuit
oppo-researchers
sneering
Clintons
sleazy
pelting
juicy
conflicts
Obama Boys
whack
cloak-and-dagger
Clinton camp
leaking
over-the-top
stereotyping
flippant
rich
supermarket mogul
fly on his plane
his pal Bill
fund
tut-tuts
astrological software
Playboy
Leo
First Lad
$10 million a year
$150,000
Hillaryland
panting
an opportunity to paint
hoists his pedestal so high he's bound to fall off
proving he's pure
proving he's tough
act high-minded and do-gooding [sic]
hit men
tangled in contradictions high and low
saint and killer
Hillary
moves like a shark
lean over
bite his ear off
Charlie Cook, the political analyst
do what it takes
immaculate conception
busy
modeling
so easily wrapped around the fingers
rich
willing
give them millions
Al Capone
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