Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Annals Of Advertising

While idly wondering* about just who & how stupid the target market of the Vaseline Hair Tonic folks was in 1949, we also had to wonder about the evolution of  "small men" into "grunty little malebeasts."
See also.

*Never let it be said that the Great Ideas are not under constant scrutiny around here.

You &/vs. The State

Resistance is futile.
Law enforcement swarmed a rural, wooded property on the evening of March 27 near Adrian, Mich., about 70 miles southwest of Detroit, believed to be the home of Hutaree leader David Brian Stone. Two ramshackle trailers sat side-by-side on the property, the door to one slightly ajar late Sunday as if it had been forced open.
More.

Legion Of Charlies

Via a swell rant at Alternate Brain, we see that the Hutaree need to be defended by the same Satanic society whose footsoldiers they wanted to kill. (Public Defenders be warned.) Good point:
The last time I can think of that a 'general uprising' was planned was the Tet Offensive in '68. Didn't work then either, but I don't guess these clowns read much history. These ying-yangs' thinking was probably closer to Charles Manson's Helter Skelter.
The AP via CBS. WTF?
One defendant expressed anti-tax views during his Monday court hearing. Thomas W. Piatek, a truck driver from Whiting, Ind., told a federal judge he could not afford an attorney because he was "getting raped on property taxes."
Here is the Head UbangiHutaree's double-wide. Looks like rape to us.

Federal Fascism In Florida: "Quality Of Life" & "Pirates"

Between Jan. 1 and March 23, they made 90 arrests, and the federal stimulus will ensure that the trend continues: the Key West police recently received $813,000 to add four officers to its 89-member department. Their sole mission will be quality-of-life policing.

“It’s for vagrants,” said the police chief, Donald J. Lee Jr. “People who are out on the streets, disrupting the quality of life or experience for visitors, residents and businesses.” What some call vagrants, of course, others call simply down-and-out. The police say their targets are people like the homeless man arrested last week after he told two teenage girls they were sexy and offered them a swig of his Jack Daniel’s. Yet in a city of 25,000 that claims to have more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country, enforcement can sometimes look selective.

The police now regularly question the homeless but ignore visitors like the man at a table near Ms. Skinner’s Jeep last week. He was passed out before sunset, snoring, with a 16-ounce beer in front of him and two chickens pecking near his feet. Only his pressed shorts and a half-eaten Godiva chocolate bar suggested that he had a home.


[...]

“The tourists come here and drink all day long,” said Manuel Casas, 43, who moved to the Keys from Miami five years ago. “When we sit here and have one drink, we get arrested.”

Mr. Casas was sitting at the island’s main beach, at a picnic table with a half-dozen homeless friends. With raspy voices and slurred words — some actually sounded like pirates — they all said they deserved to be left alone.

“God gave us this, not the government,” Mr. Casas said of the island. “This is what he’s given to us. Why can’t we enjoy it?”
Homeless going teabag? Gawd over gummint? What'll happen when they get guns?

Actually sounded like "pirates?" Has typist Cave ever heard an "actual" pirate?

Put Me In The Back Seat & They Took Me For A Ride

Nostalgia for the future of the past. Making our hair hurt already.
From Mr. M. Part I.

Hostile, Crude & Frantic, LLC


Added value: W/ the new template, YouTube embeds fit w/o the anal blog-prop having to resize them.

Serving As A Bad Example

NB, kidz: Close to 45 yrs. of debauchery & all we have to show for it is a developing pair of Hugh Hewitt breasts & an increasing resemblance to our mother.

Leave We Alone!

'Taters at Rumproast better stop making fun of us behind our back. To wit:
a certain kind of self-regarding underachieving white Boomer male
It's happened before: First the spot-on descrption, then the hate.

Lest We Forget

The Hutaree.
Westboro Babtiss's Phelps Family on steroids, w/ an extra-generation or two of inbreeding.

Daily Dose Of Uras

Couldn't wait to post another of these.

31 March: Q1 Comes to End


On This Day In History.
Today's Birthdays!

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Psychedelic Cat Party

We wondered when we saw this. We wouldn't feed the wet stuff to a dog, let alone an indoor animal, so we had no idea that what the advertisers claim about "feeding wet" goes on. Our existence has been a protected one.
I asked Friskies marketing director Susan Schlueter to explain. What followed was a fascinating glimpse into the world of feline feeding rituals. (Perhaps you knew this stuff already. As I lack a cat, or any experience tending cats, it was new to me.) Apparently, dry food is left out all day for cats to nosh on. Kitty will take a few desultory nibbles, but then go back to chasing dust motes or clawing at upholstery—leaving the remainder of the desiccated food in the bowl for later. By contrast, wet food is a once- or maybe twice-a-day treat. When that can of wet food peels open, kitty hops up onto the countertop and eagerly slurps until she reaches the final drop of yummy slop.

"Feeding wet," as Schlueter calls it, can for some owners be a highly ritualized and intimate pet interaction. The pop of the can primes kitty for excitement. The scents that escape set feline nostrils aflutter. This is a time for cats and owners to bond over a heap of moist, processed meat. And, according to Schlueter, many owners like to imagine what their cats are feeling and thinking during these moments of culinary ecstasy. This trippy ad, which is for wet food, is meant to capture the altered consciousness of the cat—the sensually heightened bliss it derives from chewing on a pile of damp Friskies.

Of course, not all cat owners are quite so jazzed about spooning out cat food and watching their pets munch on it. Friskies did some proprietary consumer research and found a specific segment of cat fanciers they wanted to home in on. Schlueter says the target is "owners who are very involved with their cats, and have a deep relationship with their cats. These are owners who love to get inside and experience the magical world their cats experience." Thus the lyrics of the ad's jingle promise that Friskies will help you "excit[e] your cat, day and night, with endless enchantment." (At the risk of forcing some cat owners to contemplate uncomfortable notions, I will note that this pitch is not unlike that of spam e-mails guaranteeing the ability to "satisfy your partner like never before.")

You might assume that these extreme cat enthusiasts all fit into the "crazy cat lady" mold. But, in fact, Schlueter claims that what links Friskies' target customers is attitudinal, not demographic. These ads are meant to appeal to cat owners male and female, young and old, hitched and single. Why all these people enjoy the thought of their pets dropping acid, I can't quite say.
It's spot the stupid. We think we win (for being least inane) because little actual work was involved in the little we did. The schmuck at Slate had to at least make a 'phone call & interact w/ another of you.

Late Night News Break

From the source for late-breaking news, this:
The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal -- a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations -- would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.
Just keep that sort of thing away from California. We might want to go to the beach one of these yrs.

Cliché Corner

It's pick on PuffHo day, we guess. We can't help it if they just point their asses at us & wait to be kicked. Look at this atrocity. We understand that no one who types there is paid for their spew, but that doesn't mean Mme. Huffington can't let the typists borrow a comma (& apostrophe) or two.

The cliché-crammed writing's worse than the punctuation.
with compromised reform bills being the highlight these days there is nothing that really satisfies me deep down in my soul at least from this facet of life.

[...]

Of course even these bits of madness cant [sic] be fully appreciated knowing this corner of the sublimely absurd is also doing things to not only threaten its enemies but attack them as well. I guess the only thing to do is just take it all as a metaphor for this era of politics.

However, before I try to cover this hallowed ground, I must acknowledge the current masters of getting laughs from political shenanigans. The list for me starts with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Stephanie Miller and her Mooks. Letterman deserves an honorable mention and last but not least the Democratic Underground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots by Earl G which I truly hope is only temporally [sic] on the shelf.

Back to the GOP and their hijinks, the one that really jumps right in your face at the moment is Michael Steele and his cohorts spending some serious money on RNC trips and there is just no delicate way to put this "a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex." Is that a mouthful or what?

[...]

Namely that as Billy Preston once sang a number of years ago that nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Of course this argument has a tad more substance than most of the criticisms from this group of right wing brain dead soulless politicians. Which I think has a nice ring to it for the Dems attack ads. As in, Don't vote for right wing brain dead soulless politicians because for one thing they cant add or subtract.
NO HE ISN'T!

Hokey Smokes, our original reaction was that this was the first draft of an average high school student's creative writing assignment. We then gave Mr. Pappalardo the benefit of the doubt; he might have accidentally hit send after blazing through a first draft (Really Tom, we know commas can be trouble, but "cant?"). It's still awful though.

Andrew Sullivan, Please Take Note

Vessel of Truth updated. From LAist.
Bill Rosendahl, the only openly gay member on the Council, noted that he has the same power and authority as his fellow councilmembers, but doesn't have his "basic and civil human rights... I pay into it like everyone else!" He told how he fought aside gay men in Vietnam, but how culture, politics and religion made coming out an even tougher thing than battle. He eventually came out after his mother's funeral when he was 32. "My religion, Catholicism, is also perverted in how it defines us. God made us this way, God makes no mistake."
To contextualize, Bill's a flaming liberal who parlayed his position as VP/GM of the local Adelphia (Remember John Rigas & family, early corporate looters?) cable tee vee operation & exposure (as a public affairs host) on Adelphia narrowcasts to his current gubmint gig.

Let's Have A War, 'Cause, Like, Whatever

War in Context:
The fact that America’s wars of this last decade have required no war effort is one of the most telling ways in which these have not been wars of necessity. In a war of necessity, a civilian war effort is not merely required; it is unavoidable.

Whereas the civilian role in a war effort is an adjunct to the military effort, in a war that requires no war effort, there is no civilian role. There is instead a necessity that civilians be cocooned by an infantilism engendered by consumerism, which is to say, that they be easily pacified and rendered politically apathetic by having their trivial desires easily fulfilled.

From The Radical Center

Former flunky to Rudy Giuliani John Avlon fills some space on the Daily Beast server w/ an excerpt from his now available from Beast Books book, tied in to the nabbing this wk. of another string-of-adjectives collection of American genetic drift, & their alleged guns & bomb-making gear. See: The Internet.

As that goofy Olbermann fellow has repeated several times as we've been typing this, "Where are all the Left-Wing Militias?" Speaking of Olbermann, why is his mug w/ two actual loons on Avlon's book?
Sure, he's what passes for left in these United Snakes today, but do they really mean to include him in the lunatic fringe? Olbermann's not nearly as far in the tank for Obama as Beck is out of said tank. At its worst (& we find it amusing) MSNBC does about what FOX News does during its news, not opinion segments, report everything bad about the opposition. FOX, at its worst, doesn't report a damn thing, but speculates wildly & presents paranoid fantasies as fact. There's where America gets hijacked.

We'll assume (We know what the results of assumption are, thank you.) Mr. Avlon gets at echo chambers, polarization, etc., & offers Olbermann & Rachel Maddow as examples of the left being worse than real Americans in his book, but we've no recollection of his presenting a long list of, again, all those left-wing militias since his contributions to The Daily Bleat began several mos. ago. Is "being objective" objectively pro-fascist?

Felony Menacing

We reserve the right to go juvenile at a moment's notice, let alone after blowing most of the afternoon reading shit & typing & retyping our pained reaction.

Let Us Know When That Cookie Expires, Google Privacy Advocates

SAN FRANCISCO — A broad coalition of technology companies, including AT&T, Google and Microsoft, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum said Tuesday that it would push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws to protect private digital information from government access.
Yeah, keep your filthy Obama Gov't. hands off the data we've gathered from our, uh, um ... oh, yes, customers.

Oil & Holy Water (Eeeww! That's Not Water)

If you remain unaware that Arianna Huffington is some sort of cultist, involved w/ a pervert who calls himself "John-Roger," get this Gawker item from October 2008.

(Added funny:
But it is all but impossible to read the LA Times' three exhaustive articles on MSIA, dating to 1988 and 1994, without coming to the conclusion that the movement is, in fact, a scary cult, and among the last organizations Huffington should be calling on to prepare HuffPo to keep growing as the economy, and soon politics, cools down.
Politics will cool down soon? Ninny!)

Gawker continues:
John-Roger is depicted as a paranoid leader who secretly wires each room in Insight headquarters with a microphone connected to his office, who taps the phones, and who warns that his critics "had been infected by a powerful and contagious negative force known as the Red Monk," a spirit of whom members were terrified. He removed "negative entities" in a popular "exorcism-like" ceremony known as the "Super II's," organized hours-long "Prana Awareness Trainings" involving "repeatedly answering a simple question," and organized followers into a complex hierarchy, including a Melchizedek Priesthood and an inner, elite circle of attractive young male ministers known as "the Guys."The LA Times said one of these favored sons was among at least three close John-Rogers associates who said they had sex with him "as an important spiritual favor:"
In July of 1977, John-Roger put [Victor] Toso on staff, and he joined the rarefied ranks of "the guys." But things didn't go smoothly. "He kept telling me I didn't have what it took to be on staff," Toso said. Finally John-Roger told him that he would have to move from the hillside estate to the movement's Purple Rose Ashram of the New Age in downtown Los Angeles, he said.

Toso says that he dropped to his knees and sobbed, begging John-Roger to tell him how he might become a better servant of the Traveler.

"It dawned on me what I had to do," he said.

To stay on staff, Toso said he knew he would have to engage in sexual relations with John-Roger. "I decided to make the Faustian pact," he said. "And, indeed, I was admitted into the brotherhood."But the pact didn't sit well with Toso, even as he found his life with the Traveler vastly improved. And one day "I walked in on another staff member having sex with J-R. I had been naive enough to believe I was the only one," Toso said.

In last year's interview, John-Roger denied he had sexual relations with Toso or any other staff member.
Toso said he was later "defrocked" in front of other church members and stripped of his wallet, credit cards, watch, ring and airline tickets, and had to write a "dishonest" letter to get them back. Other former members, named in the series, testify to brainwashing and other forms of manipulation. "My God, I was manipulated and used," former MSIA newspaper editor Victoria Marine told the newspaper.
So Ms. Huffington has some serious problems dealing w/ reality. Further proof will be found at PuffHo, in this column questioning the "biological" origin of oil.
NASA, the oil industry and its complicit profession of English speaking geologists, many on oil industry staff, have been working for several generations to make us believe unquestioningly that oil and gas are of biological origin. It is a cornerstone of the Peak Oil Dogma that has indoctrinated us into the belief that oil is consummately and imminently finite permitting the oil industry and its allies to drive all over us, setting prices beyond the wildest dreams of Croesus. You see if oil supply is running out quickly -- as we are taught (as it has according to oil industry and geological gospel ever since that first well in Pennsylvania in the 1850s) -- a lesson that the oil industry wants us to learn each and every day is that we will have to pay, pay, pay.
No question that oil cos. may have an interest in our paying them every penny the market will allow, & a "pump use" fee on top of that. And that oil interests complicate foreign relations. But are NASA, Big Oil & "English-speaking scientists" engaged in a conspiracy of some sort to deny the "geological origins" of fossil fuel? Yes.
Well just suppose we have been purposely misled. That the Peak Oil Pranksters and their geologist sidekicks have been the purveyors of one of the great con jobs in history. That oil and gas is not the biological phenomenon that has been drummed into us. Rather that oil and gas are a geological phenomenon, inherent to the geological construct of the earth and all that means to its expanse and availability.
We're no scientist (nor have we even played one on tee vee) but one doesn't need a doctorate to see there isn't much science here. The discovery of methane on Mars seems to have brought the idea to fruition in the author's head, though our artsy-fartsy mind doesn't quite get the connection.
You see last year a team of NASA and University scientists achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates, according to NASA, that the planet is either biologically or geologically active. Giving credence that the existence of methane might indeed be of geological origin rekindles the question whether the theory attributing the origins of oil and gas to biological (fossil) origins on earth is in large measure a myth.
Does he really want to drive the band-wagon down Lysenko Avenue? What the hell,it's a short-cut, right?
As cited in the post here, "Why Does Abiotic Oil Theory Ignite Peak Oil Theorist Fulminations??", 08.14.08," which questions why so little has been published on this issue in English language scientific/geological journals. This in spite of the rigorous work done by the Russian/Ukrainian geological community which is highly supportive of the theory of the geological origins of oil and gas.
He cites (Very science-y, "cites.") a post concerning not the many experiments performed or whatever it is the people in the white coats do, but the fulminations ignited on the other side. That'll teach 'em to fulminate.

The larger picture being that even were energy entities exactly as advertising agencies portray them on telebision, hell, if they were all anarcho-syndicalist workers' paradises that returned excess revenue to the victims of colonialism, burning shit & spewing particulates into the atmosphere is not a good idea. (Yes, we tire of restating the obvious, which also applies to climate change. Whether or not energy pyromania & CO₂ cause warming, nobody wants to stand downwind from a campfire. Or the raging bonfire of capitalism self-destructing.) That OilCo charges the American people for gas at the pump & again every April 15th so the Defense Dep't. will keep the sea-lanes open & the oil-producing nations threatened on behalf of Aramco, etc., is second on the list. We think either approach will get more traction than implying that oil & gas aren't going away or whatever Learsy is attempting to get at.

Who is this Raymond J. Learsy, one might ask. For one, he's a scholar. Good gig that, very generalized.
In the 1980s, he became a private investor, and from 1982 to 1988, served as a Reagan appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, he is a member of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
"Became a private investor." We'll have to guess one of the big oil cos. screwed him royally & he's been bitter (& on wing-nut welfare) since. The W.W. International Center for Scholars? Can you get more medieval? We may to start calling ourself a "scholar" too.

Click on the book covers under Learsy's typing (Arianna doesn't pay you to fill the blank, empty space, but you get free, linked advertising. Nice.) & you'll see this (code in our bold):
Longtime commodities trader Raymond J. Learsy lifts the veil of the Mideast oil cartel, showing how OPEC manipulates the oil markets and destabilizes the world's economy. With refreshing candor and an insider's perspective, Learsy explains how OPEC: Twists bogus perceptions of oil scarcity to hike prices and gain political power; is compromised by Islamist terrorist connections that fuel anti-American hatred with dollars from our own wallets keeps Third-World nations in abject poverty despite their rich oil deposits and became the de facto master of Iraq's newly liberated oil
Red Monks & geological methane. What hath free speech & Arianna wrought?

Tangled Web

Crazy Shelley pretzels herself into more statements about "death panels." Now, according to the Minnesota Congresswoman, the panels are not a deliberate, cold, calculating maneuver by godless atheist liberal fascists; instead "rationing" will be the result of a shortage of medical personnel.
"Because if you have 500 -- over $500 billion in new taxes, and senior citizens have the bulk of the wealth in United States," Bachmann explained. "So you have 500 -- and they should, they've worked their whole life for it -- $500 billion in new taxes, huge increases in health insurance premiums, over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. "No new doctors, by the way. Thirty-two million more people in the system, but according to Barack Obama it's gonna be over 50 new million people in the system, what do you think is going to happen? It's called rationing.

"And when you ration care, that means you get less. You don't get in to see the doctor, you don't get an appointment, you don't get a surgery. You don't, you don't, you don't.

"That's the death panels. And of course, the Democrats go crazy when you talk about death panels. But when you have a senior citizen who is told, no, you can't have an MRI; no, you can't have a CT scan; no, you're not getting a hip replacement; no, you're not getting the bypass, what is that? What is that, when you're told no?"

"What is that? What is that, when you're told no?" It's delusional, is what it is. Has not happened, & is not likely to happen. How stupid is Minnesota's favorite daughter? W/ her around, stupidity will never need to be rationed.

Speaking of rationing, we're calling for a substantial tax on hair color. Some people are using more than their fair share, if Ms. Bachmann will accept our apology for using Comsymp words like "fair" & "share."
Above, earlier, Black Dye No. 3. Below, more recently, a color not occurring in nature. If we believed in Gawd, we'd assume that the big fucking killer in the sky would want us to maintain the hair color that he, in his infinite wisdom, assigned to each of us at birth.

Morbidity At Mickey D's

Just a wk. ago, after a long day of shopping, we decided to indulge our self in two fine McDoubles at The Clownhouse.
We went by in an obviously homeless man (long white beard & hair, etc.) who appeared to have passed out, & was being attended by a pair of police officers.

After the fast food experience, we left, to be greeted by a Fire Dep't. & a private ambulance, a fire engine & truck, & several Sheriff's cars.
We wondered why so much activity for one passed out person, but were more interested in returning to the bunker, & continued to the bus stop, where a woman in a car pulled over & asked what had happened. We responded that a homeless guy had passed out, & she informed us he was covered w/ a sheet, which piqued our interest, &, hurried in the knowledge that the bus was imminent, we took several blurred pix (Dunno wha' hoppened, may've turned off the stabilizer or something when recovering the camera from our pocket.) of which this is the best.
Only the second human corpse we've seen on the streets in 37 yrs. in Los Angeles. (Technically, this one was in W. Hollywood.)

Monday, March 29, 2010

Stairway To Uras

The dialogue in the second panel of today's header doesn't quite fit its balloon, but it wasn't us. Buck wasn't kidding. He took a crack at Uras.

EXCLUSIVE: Galt's Gulch Located! See Photo Here

At least there wasn't any mud at last wknd.'s "Conservative Woodstock."

A Yr. Passes Like Nothing

We are oblivious. Turns out we've been housed, as opposed to parked or moteled, for a yr. & two days now. Whatever. Bigger tee vee, more channels, DVD player.
Not living on fast food (though there are plenty of ways to cook oneself to death) is a plus, if we must sit here & take inventory. But we don't have to. America: Still free!

Filler

We like it when we're not the only ones calling other people "stupid."
 Leo Hickman / Guardian:
Humans ‘too stupid’ to save climate  —  In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action  —  • Read the full transcript of James Lovelock's G2 interview with Leo Hickman  —  Humans are too stupid …
Link Search: IceRocketGoogle, and Ask
Also to be seen are the usual reactionary suspects screeching about "threats to democracy." How often does that shoe hop to the other foot?

Fashion Up-Date

Good thing we're not completely in love w/ the look of our own typing; we might never stop. The black on the white w/ the Georgia (Or Times New Roman, can't remember, & who can tell?) typeface make this den of theft look like a newspaper-styled, adult, mainstream, legitimate Internet offering. One might even take the typing here seriously. Appearances are deceiving. Don't be sucked in.

Continuing w/ just how wonderful (& modest) we are, note that even after spending a fortune of our own money on the Neo-Brutal Pseudo-Post-Industrial look, we refuse to take filthy advertising dollars, or other currencies, from The Man or The Woman.

Currently wearing pants. No socks or shoes.

Withering Critiques

Now more than ever, we need your help yelling Stop. We need your help to demand Repeal, to protect Liberty, and to halt aggrandizing Government!

Let others despair – NRO is going to battle ’til victory. We face more Obama-Reid-Pelosi-Emanuel fights ahead, massive election battles in November, and so much more.

You can count on National Review and NRO to be on the job 24/7 countering the Left.

Our obligations are huge, our means modest. The burden of our task may force us to bend lower than Obama greeting an obscure Middle Eastern potentate. But with your financial support we will in the end stand tall, we will fight, and we will prevail.

We are all of us in this together. NRO provides you with unmatched articulation of conservative ideas, as well as withering critiques of the latest machinations by the Left. Plus, we give you the news straight up. We are the prime source of conservative thought and analysis on the web. Help us remain so, especially in this most critical year.

The months ahead will be tougher and (for us) costlier than ever. For success we depend on your generosity. Please use the form below to make a much-appreciated donation. You will not regret doing so. Tell your conservative friends to join in the fight by helping us, because no dollar can be better spent fighting the Left than the dollar given to National Review Online.

Many thanks in advance.
How is that "free marketplace of ideas" working for you? Nobody's buying any more? Huh.

Added moments later: Per TNR (Ha!) NR (at least in one case) not as bad as the Weekly Standard.

"I Know They Have An Opinion ..."

There's just no need for "them" to express it, right pal?

Left, Right & Loony

The man arrested in Philadelphia for a video death threat made against Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) did not limit his activity to the GOP minority whip. At his YouTube account, going by the name shiamuslimcantbestop, Leboon recorded hundreds of rambling, poorly-lit video threats against movie studios, politicians, religious figures and media pundits.

We gotta start using our webcam. Or burning down malls. In our bathrobe. Gawddamn movie studios!

Open Keyboard

If your primitive Earth technology doesn't allow you to view the fabulous New Industrial design we now offer
(The Template Designer is not supported on Internet Explorer 6, nor, for that matter, are the new templates. While we’ve made an effort to ensure that they’ll still be readable, the new designs are not going to look particularly attractive on IE6. We strongly encourage the very small number of bloggers and readers still using IE6 to upgrade to a more modern browser. For more information about browsers, visit Google’s What Browser? site.)
or there are other complaints, suggestions or questions we can't/won't answer, please feel free to shove/ram/jam/force or otherwise insert them right down the throat of the suggestion box.

Oh crap, lost the favicon. Pain, work, yada.

Annals Of Nostalgia

Happy to see fellow nostalgiast Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., of Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear, out of the hospital &, if not on his feet, at least before a keyboard, whence he brings news of Dragnet 1968's impending availability in the DVD medium. All well & good, though it's not as if we haven't seen each episode of Dragnet 1967, 1968, '69 & '70. (Twice? At least.) It wouldn't kill someone to put out audible & viewable discs of the original Dragnet either. The 16-mm. public domain prints copied directly (or non-remastered) to disc, which we got for a cool $5.00 at the supermarket won't hold us forever. It wouldn't kill us to look about & see if such exists, but it could be quite painful.

Truly thrilling to the knowing fan of crapola is the availability to the masses of Highway Patrol, through MGM's Manufacture on Demand program, which somehow involves Amazon.com. Do those greedy bastards have their fingers in everything?
Not clear if Netflix will have Amazon run off a copy we can then rent from Netflix, or if we'll have to shell out purchase money to the piratical Amazonians.

Evil Empires Up-Date

    New York Yankees: Highest Paid Sports Team in the World Each Yankee earned an average $7 million in 2009, topping the $6.3 million average for Spain's Real Madrid soccer team. Read original story in The Associated Press | Monday, March 29, 2010
    Vatican Bracing for More Abuse Allegations And this time they'll be coming from the pope's own backyard in Italy, where hundreds are expected to come forward. Benedict is under pressure to call for an emergency meeting of bishops from around the world. Read original story in The Guardian | Sunday, March 28, 2010

Open Auditions

From.

29 March: Is This Thing On?


In 1971, Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. (He spent three years under house arrest.)
Yep, all functional. The present day blogger indeed refuses to die!

Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Way We Live Now

From the Waaaaaaay Too Much Info File:

Went out to get the Sunday fish-wrap & sundries about 0800, went to sleep, woke up three hrs. ago & are still not wearing pants.

Who Mocks Whom, Now?

See BS Eff The Nation wrap-up:
On CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, DeMint, R-S.C., who had previously claimed that the health care reform battle would be Mr. Obama's Waterloo, declined to admit that the president won his Waterloo.

"We'll find out in November who won or lost this battle," he told host Bob Schieffer.
Meanwhile, on the same program, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the Delusional Party member from Minnesota's Sixth District
... told "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer she meant it.

"[N]ow we have the federal government taking over ownership or control of 51 percent of the American economy. This is stunning. Prior to September of 2008, 100 percent of the private economy was private."

Ms. Bachmann offered no facts to back up her assertion that the government owns or controls 51 percent of the U.S. economy.
CBS refutes Bachmann & anyone fool enough to believe her. Video as well of the two tools mocking anyone who believes a word they say.

(Recommended for people who've recently lost their vision: This will make them feel a little bit better about not being able to see. Sighted humanoids are warned.)

Sunday Pope Picture

No, really.

Please, No More Links To Tea Parties!

How Ex-AK Gov. Palin & other commonsense conservatives plan to run OUR gummint:
Just getting there was a challenge. Some 50 miles south of Las Vegas, Searchlight is a very small town with very few amenities. Its mining boom peaked in 1910, and the town's been pretty slow ever since. Its sole motel has 21 rooms.

Compounding that problem, organizers staged the event about half a mile off the highway, in a secluded ravine accessible only via one dirt road. With thousands of people forced through a single choke point, the traffic jams before and after the event were ridiculous. I rode with three other Las Vegas journalists. We left the city at 8 a.m. It was smooth sailing until 8:52, when we joined the line of vehicles on the highway's shoulder. We finally parked, in a sea of pickup trucks, SUVs and RVs, at 11:04.

Followed by attempts by leftists to mock the Patriots & their clever spelling & grammar, yada yada. How hateful people are, making fun of Americans like that.

And look who's a celebrity now! Isn't that sweet? Just like that Obama fellow now, bless her heart. But that's a mighty small pond she's working in.
Along with the grime, the quality of the warmup speakers quickly ebbed the crowd's initial excitement. One unknown Republican after another took the microphone and tried to fire up the crowd with routine quips and broadsides, all with limited success. It was clear the crowd was interested only in the headliner.
Headliner Palin never having cranked out a routine quip or broadside in her life. She's made style over substance a cliche. Sarah Palin's Alaska, here we come.
Based on Saturday's rally, the Tea Party seems to know what it's against -- socialism, taxes, health care reform -- but it has no clue what it's for. The people are angry, but they struggle to articulate why. For many, it seems, the Tea Party provides a welcoming umbrella for whatever single issue they're fired up about, whether it's immigration, terrorism or the bank bailout.

Some Tea Party officials have said they're fed up with both parties, but as the 2010 election approaches, that sentiment has been squelched, at least in Nevada. Party leaders have shunned a Tea Party candidate, Jon Scott Ashjian, who is running against Harry Reid. The notion of splitting the conservative vote, and thereby allowing Reid to slide into another term, is too much to bear.

Leaving the rally was even more excruciating than our arrival. It took us three mind-numbing hours just to get back to the highway. It seemed like it took forever to pass the port-a-potty festooned with a sign that read, "Harry Reid Donation Center." The most important lesson from the "Showdown in Searchlight" rally was this: If the Tea Party can't show a modicum of competence in controlling traffic, we sure as hell don't want them running the country.

Geoff Schumacher is publisher of CityLife, the alternative newsweekly in Las Vegas, and a political columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Please believe us, we'd reached the conclusion of our opening (& almost only) sentence long before we made it to the end & found that this Schumacher had gotten there about five hrs. ahead of us. (Or we picked up on a telegraphed conclusion almost immediately for a change. It could happen.)

Video courtesy J —, self-commenting, more info at the L.V. Sun, enough already.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

That's Rich (It Sure Ain't Us)

Frank Rich re-caps the wk. in outrage & resentment. We skip the interminable list of events & links thereto (May be useful to slobs w/ jobs —& lives— who can't keep up w/ events; doesn't mean shit to us, the gainfully unemployed.) & steal the best parts. Here goes:
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause [...] But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.
A-hem, T.P.s: Just fucking chill already. It's, like, over, y'know?
To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
Almost as satisfying as typing it oneself! Wooooo! Thanks also to Mr. Rich for "playing the race card" we avoided mere items ago. (Mostly on the basis of "A little obvious, isn't it?") And for upping the ante w/ the sexism card (We're such a grunty little malebeast we forgot the little ladies entirely.) & not in the "You're a sexist 'cause you called Sarah Palin an airhead" sense of sexism.

Beyond all the above fear factors, we're sticking to our story that the brain-washed (into white liberal guilt by unionized public school teachers) children of the Tea Partiers are just as guilty of country rustlin' as any less-male, more-ethnic types, & this is what really has their hides so chapped.

Internet Party's Over Kids, Mommy's Home!

Jonah, of course, is the Goldberg under discussion.
We know others who don't like the slippery slope of fantasy violence.

Lay-Tar (0100 the next day): Moments earlier. Not sure this qualifies.
Perhaps it is necessary to remind when there is a sudden outburst of that sort of thing. Obviously OK to call Goldberg "stupid & ugly." That couldn't be construed badly, could it?

Hey, You, Get Offa My Lawn!

After asking ourself "Huh?" & "From Whom?" for the last X mos., we finally realized who (other than the "colored guy," obviously) these aging wretches think "took their country" from them.
Their children. Who else? And they should be scared of the yout'. Hell, we get nervous whenever we read an Internit 20-nothing whining about Boomers being selfish assholes who put the country on the road to ruin. (NB: We in the draftable generation damn well had something to say about the awful shits of the Greatest Generalization who spawned us & Vietnam, by the fucking way.) Will enough people, some where, some time, eventually wise up & stop this crap?* Even futility is futile at this point.

We un-digress: Whatever they think "took" means, no one actually snatched their country & hid it under the North Pole or in China or put it on the moon where it can be mooned overstared at it half the month. They can move from Detroit & SLC to Vegas & California w/o travel papers. The tee vee's still on. The yoke of coercive taxation? Only in their victimized minds.

The huge cross-section of honkies over 50 who spoke "In Their Own Words," as NBC News puts it, were articulate (multi-syllabic, even) did not have cracker accents, & weren't shoving bibles, guns or both at the camera, yet, like the schmuck w/ the "I didn't vote for this Obamanation" sign, just won't admit that several million more people voted for Obama than voted against Obamanation.

Whatever. It's fear. (And a quick mention of race & its card.) We wish the bi-coastal Gloria Gunn had been asked if Social Security & Medicare had enslaved her to gov't. tyranny, put her on that ol' road to serfdom or anything remotely like that. Or how she'd feel about the gummint taking those SS checks off her back.

Fear can be used to encourage spending too. "Defense" spending? Never a peep about the Pentagon's sacred $700 billion/yr. from these brave American Eagles. (Just how many fucking "third rails" are there in American politics & gov't., anyway?) Until a red circle-&-slash superimposed on a picture of a $135 million F-35 (Or: "What if the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale?") is seen at a Tea Party gathering, we refuse to take any of the whining about going into debt any more seriously than their other fears & loathings.
In Depth Analysis (He heh, we typed "Analysis.")
We're Not Gonna Siddown & Shut Up. Thank You For Standin' Up.Reduced to making fun of that poor woman again.
*And so totally dulled out we seem to be making pleas for, like, human understanding & kindness or something. Sort of. This is not good. We really need to pay more attention to this stuff.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Another Big Fucking Deal (Not Safe For Work, Christians, Or Sensitive People)

We love Tommy, a real gawd-fearing America lover who had some issues w/ his son. (Also a cock-sucker, oddly enough.)Fucking goddamnit, we hadn't heard all of those.

Nonetheless, we think Earl Weaver tops Tommy in a mere minute & 45, as he takes on the fans, players, announcer & ball club. Heavens!Awww. Some kind of joke there, second time through we could hear Earl almost breaking up. Still fun, but we have to give it to Lasorda for fucking meaning it, man.

Today In Anti-Semitic Hate Speech

A tip of the vieux chapeau to Peabody, who informed us of War in Context, a wonderful source for statements many consider outrageous. We think the Congress members are the outrageous ones.
A letter signed by 300 members of Congress and sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declares:

A strong Israel is an asset to the national security of the United States and brings stability to the Middle East.

What an accomplishment! That so many fallacies could be packed into a single sentence!

But the lunacy isn’t confined to Congress. Right in the middle of what is being described as the worst rift in US-Israeli relations in decades, when it comes to the business of business it’s business as usual:

Even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received the full wrath of the Obama administration, the Defense Ministry and Pentagon were concluding yet another huge deal.

Israel will buy three new Hercules-J transport aircraft, built by Lockheed Martin, at a cost of $250 million. The planes will be manufactured according to Israeli specifications and include many systems produced by Israeli military suppliers.

The deal goes to show that a continuing diplomatic crisis between Israel and the United States has still to make itself felt as far as defense relations are concerned.
Where is all that fucking outrage?

We Have Met The Enemy And ...

In its entirety, old blather, but a wonderful example of losers turning on themselves, & a good test of our new subtlety/laziness approach. There's no fucking reason whatsoever to type clever crap, bolding should serve as commentary enough.

Charles Murray: Frum Isn’t Telling the Truth About AEI


The “Bell Curve” and “In Our Hands” author and AEI scholar writes at length in National Review about the departure of David Frum from AEI. The argument: Frum had become “invisible as a member of the institute,” and that he can’t be serious about donors complaining about his work.
The idea that AEI donors sit down to talk with AEI’s president about who should and shouldn’t be on the staff, or what the staff should write, is fantasy. David has never seen the slightest sign of anything like that at AEI. He can’t have. He made it up. AEI has a culture, the scholars are fiercely proud of that culture, and at its heart is total intellectual freedom. As for the reality of that intellectual freedom, I think it’s fair to say I know what I’m talking about. I’ve pushed it to the limit. Arthur Brooks is just as adamant about preserving that culture as Chris DeMuth was, and Chris’s devotion to it was seamless.
Meanwhile, Frum’s wife Danielle Crittenden fires at the critics of her husband:
We have both been part of the conservative movement for, as mentioned, the better part of half of our lives. And I can categorically state I’ve never seen such a hostile environment towards free thought and debate — once the hallmarks of Reaganism, the politics with which we grew up — prevail in our movement as it does today. The thuggish demagoguery of the Limbaughs and Becks is a trait we once derided in the old socialist Left. Well boys, take a look in the mirror. It is us now.