Blogsgiving

Black Friday

Missed it again! I was going to play the Steely Dan song in honor, but I couldn’t find it. Anybody die in an early bird shopping spree? Or are we all still survivors in the desperate battle we call capitalism? I sure hope so.

Thanksgiving

Spent half the day flat on my back, thanks to a wretched cold that struck out of nowhere. The Wee Bride cooked everything, bless her heart, even bringing me turkey, cranberries, stuffing, squash, and cranberries on my couch of pain. Great meal! Well done!

Then she too went down. Spent the evening watching DVR-ed PERRY MASON re-runs, and Black Friday was spent with James Bond.

She is sleeping on the couch as I write this, poor dear, in a Nyquil-induced slumber, as a Lifetime mini-series rolls on, unwatched. It’s about a very bad husband, I’m betting.

Folks

My parents are very very old, and moving very very slow. I went to visit them on Wednesday. We went out to eat at one of my favorite places in Woodland, a diner nestled in back of the bowling alley, which is always full of old folks and laborers having an after-work dinner. It took us about a half hour to walk into the place, and another half hour to walk out.

On the way to see my folks, I listened to TALK OF THE NATION for a while. The topic seemed to be whether President Obama had lost or misplaced his charisma. “The hell…?” I pondered.

Maggie Gallagher wrote a column on Wednesday that I never finished reading….

“I've been thinking a lot lately about thankfulness. Many people do not know this about me, but I used to be a libertarian….”

But did she have charisma?

David Freeman

I found a book among the many books the Child Bride and I have: US GRANT IN THE CITY, by David Freeman. It’s pretty good, in the old school new journalism mode, published in 1971. I went on-line to see if I could find out more about the guy. Apparently he moved to Hollywood, and has written several Hollywood novels, which I must track down. He may also be THE David Freeman, who is kind of a superstar in the ever-growing “How to be a successful screenwriter” crash course world. But I think that’s probably a different David Freeman. Anyway, I found this by my guy, which amused me.

“A few years ago I was sent a script…. It felt familiar in a way I couldn't quite pin down. Somewhere in the second act I realized that I had already rewritten this thing. Apparently, my rewrite had been junked. The producer who hired me had been replaced. The new guy didn't know about my version and sent me the same script I had worked on. I certainly remembered my version; what was hazy was the original, now once again in my hands. I was tempted to wait a few months and then deliver the rejected script that was surely somewhere in my files. I didn't have the nerve for that and in fact told the guy about it as I passed on the deal. He told me to keep my mouth shut about the whole thing. Then he hung up on me.”

Monopoly: The Movie

Ridley Scott is said to be developing this property. “The hell…?” I ponder. If ever a game lacks charisma, Monopoly is surely that game.

Beck Palin Ticket?

Sarah Palin, who is inexplicably fascinating to many people, recently said in an interview (she has a book out, have you heard?) that she wouldn’t rule out Glenn Beck as a running mate in 2012. She told Fox and Friends, “He’s a hoot!”

On his own program, Beck responded, in that artless way he has that has endeared him to millions:

“I don’t think things are hoots. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word ‘hoot.’ …. No, no I’m just saying — Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She’d be yapping or something, and I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.’”

“The hell…?” I ponder.

Mourning the loss of my charisma, I now return to my reading, as my Poor Other dozes on. I’m reading THE THIRD REICH IN POWER, by Richard Evans. It’s very good, and very creepy. We have much to be thankful for.

Oh, before I go…

Last week, Unspeakable Bride and I watched half of EXPELLED! This is the Ben Stein-hosted “documentary” about how evolutionists are censoring proponents of intelligent design. I would suggest that proponents of intelligent design aren’t being censored so much as ignored, as much as humanly possible. The ID argument, as I understand it, goes like this: certain features of the universe are best explained as being created by an intelligent cause, not by natural selection.

Oh, and it’s not GOD intelligent designers are talking about… well, maybe it is, maybe not. It could all just be “irreducible complexity.” Or aliens.

Where does that get you, scientifically? “We can’t explain it because it’s inexplicable! So just stop it! Surrender, biology! Or teach the controversry!”

I didn’t make it to the second half, but I gather that it shows that Darwinism was responsible for Hitler. Who knew?

Lest we forget, here is what Judge Jones said re: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which was all about this ID versus evolution business.

“…ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard.”

…

“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”

In Blog We Trust

In Blog We Trust

At the memorial for the victims of the Fort Hood Massacre, President Obama spoke. About that, SLATE's John Dickerson, wrote, “President Obama's speech at Fort Hood, Texas, was a small masterpiece—less than 15 minutes—in part because it was so modest. The president had great material and he knew not to get in its way.”

It’s hard for me to put a finger on what I find vaguely appalling about this paragraph. Maybe it’s the idea that everything in this world now is up for review. Not to ponder upon, bow our heads to, laugh at, weep over, or even ignore. But review.

“The president had great material,” he wrote, “and he knew not to get in its way,” as if the President was a comic looking to wow some frat boys at the Chuckle Factory. As if we, instead of citizens honoring fallen dead, are critics sitting with our arms folded, saying, “Come on, Mr. President, show me what you got! You’d better have great material, or we’ll only give you three stars out of five.”

The great material, lest we forget, was thirteen dead people, who are no doubt grateful that our president did not offer B material over their fallen bones.

A sudden memory…

A producer once told me, as part of a cast assembled for a television sketch comedy pilot that failed, “Forget about acting. Go for the laughs.”

In other Muslim news…

CSM: ”Irish priest Father Michael Sinnott, who had been kidnapped by militants in the Philippines, was released Wednesday night to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which handed him to the Filipino government as a goodwill gesture.”

Of course in America a MILF would never ever let you go.

Sean apologizes!

Sean Hannity: "Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, he was right. Now on his program last night, he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct, we screwed up. we aired some video of a rally in September along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So, Mr. Stewart, you were right. We apologize….”

Sean apologizes! Sort of!

“…But by the way, we wanna thank you and all your writers for watching."

The footage, by the way, showed a much larger crowd from the previous rally than that which attended the referenced rally.

Computing reinvented!

Daniel Lyons in NEWSWEEK, talking about a tablet computer currently (allegedly) in development by Apple:

“Now imagine a larger form factor, with a screen big enough to hold multiple panes of information. It has no lag time and lasts many hours on a battery charge. Here, then, is your new morning newspaper, with videos next to stories and the ability to customize the panes to deliver what you want and leave out what you don't. This device is also your TV, your stereo, and probably your telephone too.”

Call me a luddite, but doesn’t that sound like a lot of work for the user? What if your phone rings while you’re watching TV? What if the video embedded in your “newspaper” causes the text to crash?

Lyons writes: “In 10 years the print newspapers we have today will seem as quaint and primitive as those old Uncle Miltie shows. Heck, the Internet we have today will seem quaint and primitive too.”

In the future, will we still use the word “heck?”

Does God hate us? Or rather will He hate us, and come back in time as a Sub-Atomic Particle, to show us that there are in fact Some Things Man Was Not Meant To Know?

Theoretical physicists Danish Holger Nielsen, and Japanese Masao Ninomiya, have theorized that the Higgs Boson, the theoretical particle and building block of life - which it is hoped that the Large Hadron Collider will discover - may be coming back through time to stop the collider before it can make one.

That’s their explanation for the technical glitches that have delayed the LHCs’ mission to recreate the moments after the Big Bang.

Whole Grain Blog

Scott Baio Tweets!

“Wife calls Obama a ‘Shitfuck’ and I believe she’s right.”

This innocuous posting on Scott Baio’s Twitter/Whatever inspired a bunch of leftie responses, leading Baio to block people from his account, and eventually to his appearing on television with Glenn Beck, where they had the following exchange:

BAIO: … But and somebody said on the Twitter, why am I going against the grain in terms of my beliefs. And I said, I thought I was the grain. I thought the things that I believed in were the things that this country stood for. And there's very few things that I truly believe in and --

GLENN: Hang on just a wait a minute. I've got to go back to that. Why would you go against the grain on what you believe in?

BAIO: No, no. They felt that what I believed was against the grain.

GLENN: Yeah, but what difference does the grain make if you believe in something?

BAIO: Well, I don't know. And my argument was I thought I was the grain.

GLENN: You are.

BAIO: I thought the way that I thought in terms of politics and country

GLENN: Yeah.

BAIO: Were things that I grew up with. I believe in the military. I believe in people doing for themselves, which is what I was taught as a boy. You provide for yourself; don't look for anybody. I believe in keeping what you make, or most of it. And I believe in killing bad guys.

GLENN: See, that's the problem. That is the grain of America. But too many people see dismiss those, depending on what their party says they're for. The parties mean nothing. The candidates mean nothing. It's the grain. And if the candidate is for the grain, then okay, that's my guy.

Scott Baio is famous for being Chachi, and if you don’t know who that is you’re not alone. I don’t know what this “grain” business is all about. But if we could find that grain, and remove it from the horse’s hoof, maybe we could get the crops in on time, and save some money on veterinarian bills. That’s all I’m saying.

Good Writin’ from Frank Rich

“If Heene’s balloon was empty, so were the toxic financial instruments, inflated by the thin air of unsupported debt, that cratered the economy he inhabits.”

See, the toxic financial instruments, like Heene’s balloon, were empty. That is, there was no child being borne aloft by the toxic financial instruments.

Ted Rall demands it!

MR OBAMA: RESIGN NOW

And yet President Obama remains President. Once again, the will of Ted Rall has been thwarted.

Brent Bozell III, on the job.

On "Family Guy," the lead character tells his son that he should be the "best leader of the household" he can. So the son pushes his rear end into his sister's face and flatulates, and then punches his mother in the face. On "American Dad," a female dentist saves the lead character from a shooting. When she approaches for a hug, he punches her in the face and takes her gun. See the "hilarious" pattern?

…

On "Family Guy," a joke about the "extensive divorce procedure required by 18th century society" is illustrated by the lead character shooting his daughter dead with a musket. On "American Dad," there's so-called comedy in suggesting lawn sprinklers are a deadly household hazard. In a cautionary film, two little girls are shown playing catch with a doll, when one girl trips and lands on the sprinkler, which pokes through her chest cavity. The sprinkler showers the house, lawn and the other little girl with blood.

I like the scare quotes around “hilarious.” It lets the reader know in no uncertain terms that Brent Bozell III himself does not consider this hilarious at all. His readers, apparently, are subject to misconstruing his subtle messages.

I am curious as to what, exactly, Brent Bozell III would consider hilarious. Does he ever guffaw? Has milk ever come out his nose? Somehow I think not.

Afghanistan

So there’s this election run off, based on the premise that the first election was rigged, but now the guy running against the guy who allegedly rigged the election has dropped out, leaving the allegedly corrupt guy the only guy in the running for President. Send more troops!

This Is It!

THIS IS IT, the documentary of Michael Jackson rehearsing for his THIS IS IT tour, only made $32.5 million in its first five days in the U.S. and Canada, but pulled in $68.5 million in around a hundred other countries. It pulled in $10.4 million in Japan, $7.4 million in Britain, followed by less successful openings in Germany, France, Australia, and China.

Perhaps because we did not attend in the required droves, Michael Jackson remains expired. His THIS IS IT tour, therefore, will not occur.

Bridezillas

The Dread Wife is watching her DVRed queue of BRIDEZILLAS, a “reality” show which depicts horrible women planning and executing their weddings. Most of them, for some reason, seem to be from Staten Island. The odd thing is that the show is generally accompanied by advertisements which show happy families enjoying fine products in bliss and harmony, neither of which are states ever to be enjoyed by bridezillas.

Microsoft/Family Guy news

The much-anticipated Microsoft-sponsored special program of FAMILY GUY has been cancelled. Apparently somebody at Microsoft actually sat down and watched the show. Or read Brent Bozell III. Who doesn't strike me as a Mac guy.