tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78612202024-03-07T07:56:23.471-08:00dbmtMerle Kessler's occasional musings.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.comBlogger410125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-27898833888183988112011-08-03T16:39:00.001-07:002011-08-03T16:39:54.416-07:00Romance Blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">My Dream Date With Sebastian Junger.</span><br /><br /> [Redacted]<br /><br />Our lips parted. The distant whir of helicopter blades, though not audible, could be felt. A rhythmical whumping battered our flesh. Our eyes met. His were inscrutable, but I believe I detected an ineffable sadness in them, in between the involuntary blinks engendered by the insistent percussive thumps. <br /><br />A rope ladder, or perhaps hemp, descended silently. Sebastian gripped a rung with one strong hand, and began to rise. He broke our gaze and turned it upwards, and mine faltered as my tears welled. There was a faint lingering aroma of kerosene and Old Spice. Then he was gone.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-88886625910153598082011-08-03T15:38:00.000-07:002011-08-03T15:40:01.141-07:00Nostalgia Blog!<span style="font-weight:bold;">Punchlines, remembered with fondness and regret</span><br /><br />Rectum? Damn near killed him!<br /><br />Hairlip!<br /><br />And here's a banana for your monkey.<br /><br />Pretty big word for a six year old.<br /><br />Is it a black dick?<br /><br />Rufus, you is a vagina!<br /><br />Break her fingers.<br /><br />That's not my finger.<br /><br />A frog in a blender.<br /><br />He gave me a ten inch pianist.<br /><br />Smell it? I'm sitting in it!<br /><br />Well, we're not gonna SPANK him.<br /><br />And that's the bastard who ran over my frog!<br /><br />You fuck ONE goat....<br /><br />Dopey fucked a penguin! Dopey fucked a penguin!<br /><br />Who's that guy with Bob?<br /><br />I was talking to the duck!<br /><br />Why the long face?<br /><br />I'll have whatever she's having! <br /><br />Why would a circus need drywall?<br /><br />What was THAT all about?Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-80833377698121556492011-08-01T17:55:00.000-07:002011-08-01T18:12:48.148-07:00Crisis Averted Blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">Jeff Jarvis feels hope!</span><br />He got drunk and tweeted, "Hey, Washington assholes, it's our country, our economy, our money. Stop fucking with it." Someone in the twitterverse, lifting his banner, suggested, "@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON." This apparently sparked a Twitterlution. Thousands of tweets, saying things like:<br /><br />@jellencollins: "#fuckyouwashington for making 'debt' a four letter word and 'fuck' an appropriate response."<br /><br />@tamadou: "#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they're selfish."<br /><br />@psychnurseinwi: "#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old."<br /><br />And so forth. <br /><br />Jarvis concluded, in his July 25th post: “Believe me, I'm not overblowing the significance of this weekend's entertainment. All I'm saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people – not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll – I see cause for hope.”<br /><br />Take heed, Washington. The people have texted! The Kraken has been released! <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Dawkins hits on woman, woman offended! </span><br />Gawker reports that Richard Dawkins, famed atheist, was at a skeptics’ convention in Dublin. After the day’s activity, consisting of speeches and panels about the continuing non-existence of God, various folks retreated to bars to further insist on God’s non-existence. Around 4 a.m. Rebecca Watson, conference participant and feminist non-believer, took an elevator to return to her room. Richard Dawkins was also on the elevator, and invited her to his room “for coffee.” Ms. Watson rebuffed him. You’d think that would be that. <br /><br />But she returned home, and blogged a few days later, “Just a word to the wise here, guys. Don't do that. I don't know how else to explain how this makes me very uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out: I was a single women in foreign country in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and I—don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.”<br /><br />Various folks weighed in on this, pro and con, but then Richard Dawkins weighed in on the comments section at the science blog Pharyngula: “Dear Muslima-- Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and … yawn … don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so …And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin. Richard”<br /><br />That was not a good idea, Richard Dawkins!<br /><br />Various people weighed in, many not at all sympathetic to Richard Dawkins, culminating in Ms. Watson herself, on “Skepchick,” writing, “[To] have my concerns—and more so the concerns of other women who have survived rape and sexual assault—dismissed thanks to a rich white man comparing them to the plight of women who are mutilated, is insulting to all of us. Feminists in the west have been staunch allies of the women being brutalized elsewhere, and they've done a hell of a lot more than Richard Dawkins when it comes to making a difference in their lives.”<br /><br />Then, according to Gawker, she called for a boycott of Dawkins' books.<br /><br />Message I’m getting? Atheists don’t get laid much. <br /><br />And, with the existence of God no longer in dispute, they don’t have many important things to worry about. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />On Wisconsin!</span><br />Earlier this year, Wisconsin passed a law that in order to register to vote in that state you must have a valid picture ID issued by the DMV. Due to budget restraints, Governor Scott Walker is closing ten DMV offices in the state, all of them, strangely, in Democratic districts. <br /><br />Further, Wonkette aggregated this: “… the Wisconsin DMV is not obligated, and in fact it is not their policy, to first inform a voter ID applicant that he or she is not obligated to pay the $28 fee for issuing the card. The applicant must know to first request a free card, and then find a small box on the form asking for the free card. Otherwise, the applicant is automatically charged $28 for the state ID. To the small minded, that sort of sounds like a poll tax!”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Changing subject abruptly! Insert Casey Anthony joke here.</span><br />Then bow your head in shame. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Eric Schmidt in conversation with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria</span><br />“Today, your phone knows who you are, where you are, where -- where you're going, to some degree, because it can see your path. And with that and with your permission, it's possible for software and software developers to predict where you're going to go, to suggest people you should meet, to suggest activities and so forth. So ultimately what happens is the mobile phone does what it does best, which is remember everything and make suggestions. And then you can be just a better human and have a good time.”<br /><br />Because we need suggestions from algorithms in order to survive! Don’t you see that? What are you, a luddite? <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The Debt Ceiling…</span><br />…has been raised! Thank you, Jesus! Now, America, go back to not having a job, getting hounded for getting abortions, trying to avoid foreclosure, holding bake sales to buy pencils for your public school, steering around potholes, watching bridges fall down, getting put on hold when you call 911, dropping dead from heat exhaustion, hoarding guns, hoarding gold, supporting the troops (until they come home), blaming unions, blaming pensions, blaming immigrants, blaming Obama, and texting Washington with mighty tweets. I’m behind you all the way. Over here. Cowering in my hovel.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-7233860789876994442011-07-07T16:42:00.000-07:002011-07-07T16:45:04.447-07:00Weiner dog weiner blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">Weiner… showed his weiner!</span><br />I have to wonder if Weiner’s last name weren’t Weiner, would that flap have lasted so long? A Johnson would have been pretty good as well, I guess, and of course, there’s Boehner (that’s BAY ner! BAY ner!), and Dick Cheney. Also Dick Nixon, but he’s dead. (“Pull out like your father should have.” Remember that? Political discourse has always been thus.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Has always been thus.</span><br />One of the plus sides of the new crudity in political discourse is that the phrase “… has always been thus” does not have the ubiquity it once possessed. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Zuckerberg: Carnivore</span><br />"The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," says Zuckerberg.<br />He posted, on Facebook, “I just killed a pig and a goat.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Go the bleep to sleep.</span><br />So the faux-children’s book, GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP (about an exhausted Dad’s attempt to get toddler to etc.), the object of much hilarity and controversy, is finally a real best-selling book. Nothing can live up to the title, gentle readers. The author should have let it rest. <br /><br />And, sure enough, Katie Roiphe, described by Gawker as “one of the leading sex-opinion-havers of American letters,” (Gawker ought to know) has weighed in on the book and its author in SLATE: <br /><br />‘The book, in all its cleverness and artfulness and ingenuity, raises certain other questions: Are they having sex, these slouchy rageful parents? Not enough, perhaps. When the father turns back to the waking child's bedroom, we look out at the comfy, sexless, vaguely depressive scene of his wife sprawled asleep on the couch under an ugly old blanket….’<br /><br />See what happens when you turn a one-liner into a book? You get forelock-tugging about vast cultural implications! <br /><br />I eagerly await the sequel. LET US NOW HAVE DISGRUNTLED EXHAUSTED SEX, PLEASE, COME ON HONEY. HONEY? HONEY… It will be a sad, short book that will become an unfunny comedy with Jason Segel and Jennifer Anniston. I will not see it. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Murdoch shuts down treasured newspaper!</span><br />Thousands of phone accounts have been hacked for no apparent reason by Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday newspaper NEWS OF THE WORLD. Thanks to the tireless (I mean REALLY tireless) investigation from Nick Davies at the UK Guardian, it has been discovered that the journalists at NEWS OF THE WORLD, via private detectives, had not only hacked the cell phone answering service of a missing person, but deleted messages, in the hope (apparently) of making room for more. Unfortunately, the missing person, Milly Dowling, was already dead. This action by NEWS OF THE WORLD could, I believe, I’m no expert, be termed evidence-tampering. <br /><br />In the wake of the growing “controversy,” Murdoch shut down the newspaper, which has been around for over a century and a half. Rebekah Fleming, News International Chief Executive, held a tearful farewell for Mr. Murdoch’s beloved former employees. She said, “The Guardian newspaper were out to get us, and they got us.” As of this writing, she is still employed. But, Guardian, watch out. Rupert will buy you, and then destroy you.<br /><br />Maybe we need soldier journalists. Arm competent warriors with appropriate weapons and state of the art recording devices. Send them out into the world to create wars, and simultaneously report them. Sounds like a win-win to me. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Glenn Beck</span><br />Glenn Beck, formerly of Fox News, a Rupert Murdoch entity, now seeking to build a mini-empire of his own, went with his family (and security detail) to Bryant Park in NYC to see a free screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS. There, he was recognized. Various Tweets from the audience emerged. At some point, the folks behind him spilled some wine which may or may not have landed on the wife of Mrs. Beck. In her vicinity, anyway. The Becks left before the end of the movie. <br /><br />Subsequently Mr. Beck, on his now defunct broadcast, spent ten minutes or so feeling sad about America. Among other things he said (approximately), “If you are sitting on a blanket, or anyplace, next to a guy that you vehemently disagree with, don’t kick your beverage on them, and certainly not their wife….”<br /><br />The beverage kicker in question began to e-mail GAWKER and other publications to tell her side of the story. Her e-mail promptly showed up on Glenn Beck’s web site, Well, you can imagine what happened….<br /><br />Obscene e-mails to the woman to the person behind the Glenn Beck party: "GET A LIFE YOU LOSER CUNT" And "It is with great pleasure I informed your mother that abortion is a right! You should have been aborted a$$hole!~"<br /><br />From the larger blogosphere: “Tomorrow is ‘Punch a liberal in the face’ day.” That’s from Human events dot com. As is this: “…make it "Bring your own club day.” Although most of us Vets are perfectly capable with our fists!... Maybe it's the Concealed Carry laws, or that we don't mind bouncing them off a wall a few times in my neck of the woods!”<br /><br />Ann Coulter wrote: “Maybe it's time for Beck to pony up some of those millions of dollars he's earned and hire people to rough up the liberal mob, or, at a minimum, to provide a legal defense to those …who do.”<br /><br />All this, from a little spilled wine at a Hitchcock movie. Good movie too. I recommend it. The villain looks like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But, of course, that doesn’t mean that he is. Ask Dr. Memory!Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-85782507803890294602011-06-10T16:08:00.000-07:002011-06-10T16:17:20.389-07:00OK I'm back blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">Snippets from commercials I heard yesterday</span><br />“Coconut fruit freeze does not contain coconut or fruit juice!”<br />Delivered in a sprightly tone, as if that were a good thing. <br /><br />“Never ending bra problem.”<br />I didn’t make it to the end of the ad, but I believe that problem is now solved. With your good credit. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Where have I been?</span><br />Moving. Debating whether to continue with this thing or not. Moving about killed me. The blog is, well, not that hard. Thinking about doing something different though. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Blogs seem to be WAY over. On the other hand, what do I care if they’re over or not?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Song I just wrote. Will be performing said song with Philosophy Talk, at the Marsh in SF on June 19th. Info here: http://www.philosophytalk.org/LiveAtTheMarsh.html</span><br /><br />The media gather. A fast breaking flap.<br />Another fine scandal has dropped in our lap.<br />The Blackberries shudder. The cameras click.<br />The fast-rising Congressman looks a bit sick. <br /><br />A manager, lawyer, consultant and friend<br />Plead with us, “Please bring this thing to an end.”<br />A photograph’s shown of the family, intact,<br />Of the man who just may have been caught in the act. <br /><br />It’s only a sin, and all sins are forgiven. <br />The wicked can tremble. The upright stand tall.<br />The good man will sin. It’s the proof of the living. <br />Just bow your proud head, and you never will fall. <br /><br />Someone is sorry, for something was done.<br />Think of his daughters now, think of his son. <br />No need to call a man outside his name. <br />It’s just human nature. We all share the blame. <br /><br />Up snark the tweets. There goes TMZ.<br />Guilty or not, doesn’t matter to me. <br />The Congressman’s wife looks quite lovely in gray.<br />She stands by his side, with her face turned away. <br /><br />It’s only a sin, and all sins are forgiven. <br />The wicked can tremble. The upright stand tall.<br />Every good man will sin. It’s the proof of the living. <br />Just bow your proud head, and you never will fall. <br /><br />We count on you, brother. Treat the thing right. <br />Thank you for watching. Good night. Good night.<br />It starts with a bang, sister, ends with a glare. <br />Thank you for watching good night. <br />Thank you for watching good night.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-91513734879475066322011-02-08T12:16:00.000-08:002011-02-08T12:18:05.974-08:00This Just Blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">This Just In.</span><br />NEW YORK TIMES review today says the accident-plagued Broadway production of SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK is really awful. And looks cheesy. The critic at SLATE kind of liked it though. Tickets start at $150. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">AOL gets HuffPo</span><br />Ariana Huffington will rule the world! Brent Bozell III disapproves! “This proves AOL News has lost its mind,” he said in a statement to CNS News.com, a division of Media Research Center, of which he is president. I guess he was talking to himself. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Sarah Palin weighs in.</span><br />AP: “Sarah Palin says the Obama administration must tell Americans what it knows about who will be Egypt's next leader. In a Christian Broadcasting Network interview released Saturday, the 2008 vice presidential candidate says the administration should level with the American people on what it knows about the Egyptian crisis.”<br />…<br />“Palin said the U.S. must find out who is ‘behind all the turmoil’ and that ‘we should not stand’ for a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood.”<br /><br />Sarah Palin has a hunch, apparently, that President Obama either knows or can find out who’s behind all the turmoil, and already has the next Egyptian leader tucked away in a pocket somewhere. Why won’t he tell us!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Money woes.</span><br />So we don’t want to increase the taxes on millionaires, but we do want to trim the pensions of public employees. That’ll fix things right up.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />From THE GUARDIAN</span><br />From “Comment is Free,” by George Montbiot: <br /><br />“For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organized by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to ‘manipulate the medium.’ This is what he told them:<br /><br />“‘Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books.” I go through and I say ‘one star, one star, one star.’ The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in “Movies on Healthcare,”I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.’<br /><br />“Over 75% of the funding for American Majority, which hosted this training session, comes from the Sam Adams Alliance. In 2008, the year in which American Majority was founded, 88% of the alliance’s money came from a single donation, of $3.7m. A group which trains rightwing libertarians to distort online democratic processes, in other words, was set up with funding from a person or company with a very large wallet.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Twitter Revolution.</span><br />Nothing irritates me more than hearing the events in Tunisia and Egypt describes as a Twitter Revolution. We might as well say the American Civil War was fought with telegrams.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />According to SLATE…</span><br />Nobody’s in charge of the revolution in Egypt. Somebody ought to tell Sarah Palin, before it’s too late. Send her a Tweet!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Also in SLATE:</span><br />Dana Stevens is puzzled by Natalie Portman. Writes about it. Huh. Whatever. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ironic!</span><br />Mark “Facebook” Zuckerberg has issued a restraining order against a stalker. Was he a Facebook stalker? Insert poking, friending, etc. joke here. And then be ashamed. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />How it works…</span><br />“Intel AIM Suite face detection algorithms have statistically learned the pattern of a human face by being trained on an audience database of thousands of pictures of human faces. The demographics of a face can be determined using a similar process to how a face is found, where the patterns being looked at correspond to male or female faces, or certain age brackets (children, young adults, adults, seniors). The algorithms have learned which face features have the strongest weighting for each gender and age bracket. The combination of various facial features such as eye positioning, nose shape, cheek bones, and overall facial structure are among the variables that are taken into consideration during this process.”<br /><br />The above is Jose Avolos of Intel explaining Meal Planning Solution to Mashable. This is a kiosk, in development by food provider Kraft and Intel. It scans your face and based on that data, lets you know what you want to eat. Because we no longer know for sure. Another spokesman for Intel told Mashable, “We think the technology — anonymous video analytics along with the immersive digital experience in-store, has huge potential.” Just what Safeway needs: an immersive digital experience.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-2996282130023588422011-01-21T18:37:00.000-08:002011-01-21T18:40:07.096-08:00This is your blog, on drugs.<span style="font-weight:bold;">From THINKING HOUSEWIFE, a blog</span><br />“There is a saying ‘Only in Tucson,’ when something out of the ordinary happens. Tucson is home to the weird and Tucson needs prayer also. It is no surprise that such a deranged and probably paranoid schizophrenic young man grew up in this grunge city with its most prominent public statue that of the bandido Pancho Villa and its streets lined with tattoo shops, murals reminiscent of Marxist art, bong stores and so on. Tucson celebrates diversity, but rarely does one hear about commonalities.”<br /><br />If Tucson hadn’t had bongs and murals, none of this unpleasantness would have happened. That’s the message I’m getting. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tucson thought…</span><br />I listened to President Obama’s memorial speech in Tucson. I was struck by the pep rally tone of the proceedings, which many conservative pundits took to be evidence of something unwholesome, and for which (of course) they blamed Obama. <br /><br />I figure it this way: in America, nobody teaches us how to grieve. But everybody knows how to cheer. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Has FORBES gone insane?</span><br />This is from a recent article by Wendy Milling:<br /><br />“At their core, public safety nets use government force to systematically seize property from some individuals and transfer the loot to others, with the implicit threat of organized government violence against those who resist. Public safety nets are systematized robbery by government proxy.”<br /><br />Deduct social security from your paycheck, or jackbooted thugs will come to your door and remove it for you! <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Not the WIRED editor, Chris Anderson is curator of the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conferences. </span> <br /><br />He blogged, for WIRED Magazine:<br />“I believe that the arrival of free online video may turn out to be just as significant a media development as the arrival of print. It is creating new global communities, granting their members both the means and the motivation to step up their skills and broaden their imaginations. It is unleashing an unprecedented wave of innovation in thousands of different disciplines: some trivial, some niche in the extreme, some central to solving humanity’s problems. In short, it is boosting the net sum of global talent. It is helping the world get smarter.”<br /><br />Wasn’t the first book printed, in the West at least, the Bible? What was the “free online video” equivalent? <br /><br />I do get tired of Web enthusiasts yammering on about the exciting possibilities of new stuff. It will all just turn into some different stuff five years from now (or less), with a new batch of enthusiasts, and an equal lack of evidence that anybody’s getting smarter, much less the world. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Mommy World</span><br />Once a year or so, some new book or article shakes Mommy world to its very foundation. This year, it’s BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER, by Amy Chua. <br />If you haven’t heard of the book, you haven’t listened to NPR, or the BBC, or listened to talk radio, or watching the morning tv chat shows. <br /><br />Here’s Judith Warner, introducing the Mom herself in the New York Times: “Chua, who is Chinese-American and a Yale law professor, pushes her children to get straight A’s, forces them to spend hours each day practicing piano and violin; they are not allowed to pursue loser activities like playing the drums…. She refuses them playdates and sleepovers and TV and video games, and she demands unstinting obedience and devotion to family, all of which leads, unsurprisingly, to no small amount of crying, screaming and general tension.”<br /><br />Reaction to the book comes not from the book itself - which is apparently a memoir, and not a how-to call to arms to mothers everywhere, -but from the most “controversial” portions of the book, published in the Rupert Murdoch-run Wall Street Journal. <br /><br />Further, of course, the reaction to the book doesn’t even come from the excerpts published in the Wall Street Journal, but from media reactions to them. Who has time to read? Much better to listen to some talk show host read a couple sentences for you, and then throw open the lines. <br /><br />The better to hook you, guilty Mommy, as you call up the talk show to defend yourself from the onslaught of Chinese mommies who are better mommies than you will ever be, calling the talk show on your handsfree cell phone, as you ferry your kids to ballet, to the Mandarin lesson, to the museum, as they hunch in the backseat, watching Justin Bieber videos on the DVD, and texting their friends on how much they hate you.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Two spacers, unite! Or don’t. Who cares.</span><br />In Slate, Farhad Manjoo issued a rant about punctuation, a diatribe against the practice of putting two spaces after a period when typing a document. The author calls this “totally completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.” He calls practitioners “two-spacers,” jokingly, of course. But maybe not.<br /><br />He wrote: “Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the ‘correct’ number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two.”<br /><br />These accomplished professionals won’t be breaking bread with Farhad next Thanksgiving, I’ll bet. Did he invite them all to Thanksgiving to feed them, or to coerce them into being a focus group for his insane obsession? What else was discussed? “Before we serve up the pumpkin pie people, one simple question: do we really need the semicolon? You’ll find pencils and notepads just above your butter knife.” <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Animal news!</span><br />Back in World War II, a couple in Finland owned a dog. When you commanded, “Hitler,” it would raise its paw in salute. And its bark sounded like “Heil.” Newly unleashed documents, according to the Associated Press, have revealed: “In the months preceding Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin's Foreign Office commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog and its owner — and even plotted to destroy the owner's pharmaceutical business.”<br />You’ll be pleased to know that both dog and owners were spared Nazi wrath, and survived the war. <br /><br />But the story achieves a special resonance in the wake of recent strange animal stories. One of my favorite publications, THE FORTEAN TIMES, which devotes itself to the inexplicable, occult, and the bizarre, had a brief series of articles about monkeys, including one from the Chinese government-run PEOPLE’S DAILY, which claimed that the Taliban is training monkeys to fire machine guns at American troops in Afghanistan. Animal experts are skeptical. While quite adept at flinging their poo at observers in zoos, monkeys are not known for their sniper skills.<br /><br />The closing days of 2010 also brought news of a series of shark attacks in the Red Sea – Here is Time Magazine. “Over six days, five swimmers were attacked by sharks. That compares to just six attacks over the previous decade in Egypt, according to the Global Shark Attack File, a scientific archive that documents shark attacks worldwide.”<br /><br />Sharks themselves are rarely sighted in the Red Sea, and investigators have concluded that two of the attacks were by the same shark! A serial killer shark! <br /><br />Time said: “Local explanations for the shark surge varied wildly in the days following the first attacks, citing everything from climate change to the de rigueur blaming of local calamities on alleged Israeli plots. “<br /><br />That’s right. The Mossad trained this shark to scare Muslims so they won’t go swimming.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />News from Dubai, from The Telegraph</span><br />“…[T]he World, the ambitiously-constructed archipelago of islands shaped like the countries of the globe, is sinking back into the sea, according to evidence cited before a property tribunal. <br />The islands were intended to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires. They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat. <br />Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up…”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Finally….</span><br />Seth Rogen, fresh on the heels of GREEN HORNET’s stunning box office and critical glory, reports that he was in a meeting with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, in which Lucas began holding forth about how the world was going to end in 2012. <br /><br />He told the Toronto Sun: "I first thought he [Lucas] was joking ... and then I totally realised he was serious and then I started thinking, 'If you're George Lucas and you actually think the world is going to end in a year, there's no way you haven't built a spaceship for yourself ... So I asked him ... 'Can I have a seat on it?' <br />"He claimed he didn't have a spaceship, but there's no doubt there's a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go ... It's going to be him and Steven Spielberg and I'll be blown up like the rest of us."<br /><br />Spokespeople for Lucas, claim that he was joking. But yes, there will be no seat for Seth on the Millennium Falcon. That space is reserved for Chris Rock.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-19659676355347196762011-01-08T15:15:00.000-08:002011-01-08T15:18:18.123-08:00You can tell everybody this is your blog.<span style="font-weight:bold;">Late breaking new from WWII.</span><br />Some guy in Finland owned a dog that, when you commanded, “Hitler,” would raise its paw in salute. Its bark also sounded like “Heil.”<br /><br />Newly unleashed documents, according to the Associated Press, have revealed: “In the months preceding Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin's Foreign Office commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog and its owner — and even plotted to destroy the owner's pharmaceutical business.”<br /><br />Nothing happened to the guy, or dog, however. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Recent study suggests….</span><br />The New York Times:“In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks.”<br /><br />A study, conducted by the Weizmann Institute, in Israel, hopes to expand its study to include men’s tears. Neurobiologist Dr. Noam Sobel told the Times that “… researchers started with women because when they advertised for ‘volunteers who can cry with ease,’ they could not find men who were ‘good criers,’ readily able to fill collection vials. Fortunately, he said, ‘we have a male crier now.’”<br /><br />No. It’s not John Boehner. That’s funny though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nature News!</span><br />The closing days of 2010 brought news of a series of shark attacks in the Red Sea – Here is Time Magazine. “Over six days, five swimmers were attacked by sharks. That compares to just six attacks over the previous decade in Egypt, according to the Global Shark Attack File, a scientific archive that documents shark attacks worldwide.”<br /><br />Sharks themselves are rarely sighted in the Red Sea, and investigators have concluded that two of the attacks were by the same shark! A serial killer shark! <br /><br />Time: “Local explanations for the shark surge varied wildly in the days following the first attacks, citing everything from climate change to the de rigueur blaming of local calamities on alleged Israeli plots. “<br /><br />That’s right. The Mossad trained this shark to scare Muslims so they won’t go swimming. Or maybe it was Dr. Evil.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">In other natures news!</span><br />Thousands of birds dropped dead from the sky in Arkansas. Anderson Cooper invited the Christian actor Kirk Cameron to venture his opinion about the event on television. He said maybe somebody should call a veterinarian. There is a popular video game called ANGRY BIRDS. I’m just saying.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">My vow to you</span><br />I will never again tag a comment with “I’m just saying.” I suggest that the rest of you refrain as well. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Congress in action!</span><br />The House, in its wisdom, decided to read the United States Constitution aloud. Well, not ALL of it. Members skipped the part about slaves counting as three-fifths of a person, for instance. And members drifted away as the reading went on. This was partly because the reading was not continuous. As each distinguished colleague read a chunk, he would then yield the floor to the next distinguished chunk reader. <br />Thanks to Jed Lewison at DAILY KOS, I learned that it went something like this:<br />Rep. GOODLATTE: I now yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.<br />Rep. LANGEVIN: Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;<br />Rep. GOODLATTE: I now yield to the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Lance<br />Etc.<br /><br />These symbolic moments take time!<br /><br />John Boehner himself (again, according to the DAILY KOS) bailed on the reading halfway through to hold a press conference with Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Fox News dropped its covering of the reading to cover them. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">In related news…</span><br />Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot over the weekend, along with some 17 others, two of whom died (federal judge, child). She was attending a series of constituent meetings at a Safeway in Tucson. The alleged shooter has been apprehended. Early reports indicate that he is some kind of crazy person. <br /><br />During the Constitutional reading, she read the First Amendment: <br /><br />Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tea Party news.</span><br /><br />The New York Times checked in with the Tea Party on January 1st. Part of that report?<br /><br />“Do I think that they’ve recognized what happened on Election Day? I would say decisively no,” said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, which sent its members an alert last month urging them to call their representatives to urge them to “stop now and go home!” <br /><br />“We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different,” Mr. Meckler said. “For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying ‘Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.’ ” <br /><br />So…. Mr. Meckler is upset that the body elected to pass laws passed some laws. That’s the message I’m getting!Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-64510132265023461032010-12-28T17:17:00.000-08:002010-12-28T17:23:26.265-08:00End of the year blog<span style="font-weight:bold;">THE KING'S SPEECH</span><br />This is a movie about a man who would be king and his speech therapist. Much acting is involved, I think. Oscars will gather. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">True Wee Wife Moment</span><br />She picks up her purse. It’s heavy. Why is it so heavy? She opens it, says, “Oh. It’s pumpkins.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">NEW YEAR’S EV</span>E<br />Come see me! I am a big part of a New Year’s Eve Show, with Ian Shoales (me!), Dr. Science (half me!), Randee of the Redwoods, Two Headed Dog, Train Wreck Riders, Duck’s Breath (1/5 me!), and more….<br />Starts at 9:00, at the Presentation Teater, San Francisco, 2350 Turk (at Masonic)<br />Brownpapertickets.com/event/139075<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">More Economic Bad News…</span><br />(From Reuters) The United States executed fewer people this year, in part because there is a shortage of the drug used in lethal injections and because executions are too expensive in tough economic times, a report released on Tuesday said.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But good news from Bolivia!</span><br />It has lowered the retirement age to 58. Here in America, we will soon be working until we’re eighty, at which point we’ll either drop dead in our traces, or receive our retirement funds grudgingly, tempered by the disapproval of pundits who hold pension funds to be at the very heart of the forces holding America back from growth and job-creation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Dancing With the Stars</span>!<br />Jamie Lee Curtis has rejected a request to compete. <br /><br />The program was also unable to nab Mark Zuckerberg, Sylvester Stallone, Ann Coulter, Condoleeza Rice, Richard Branson, Tim Allen, Suzanne Somers, and more!<br /><br />A source close to the program revealed to HOLLYWOOD REPORTER that Melanie Griffith tries to get on the show every year, but has so far been unsuccessful. Jenna Fisher, from THE OFFICE, was also turned down. Ditto Tara Reid. I know her from somewhere….<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nature news!<br /></span><br />Recently re-discovered in Kenya! For the first time since 1948!<br /><br /><br />(AFP) “The Mormotomyia Hirsuta reportedly looks more like a spider than a regular fly. The creature is approximately one-centimeter long, has wings but is unable to fly, and tends to breed in bat feces. Furthermore, the creature had minute eyes, and is the only identified member of its biological family, according to Reuters.”<br /><br /><br />Kenyans refer to it as the “terrible hairy fly.” <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.”</span><br />For fans of Charles Portis - and why aren’t you one of them?- TRUE GRIT will not disappoint. For fans of the John Wayne version, this is a much better movie. I recommend it. After seeing it, we went to the library, where the Child Bride promptly checked out THE DOG OF THE SOUTH (Charles Portis), which I stayed up until three in the morning re-reading. And I’m not a young man! <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Where to go when the world ends in 2012</span>.<br />Apparently, it’s Bugarach, a small village in France, which has unique properties enabling it to survive a Mayan-predicted apocalypse. The town has been inundated by various groups of survivalists, etc. The mayor of the town informed The Daily Telegraph, “This is no laughing matter,” <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bruce Sterling on Assange</span><br />“…Julian Assange seems remarkably deprived of sympathetic qualities. Most saintly leaders of the oppressed masses, most wannabe martyrs, are all keen to kiss-up to the public. But not our Julian; clearly, he doesn’t lack for lust and burning resentment, but that kind of gregarious, sweaty political tactility is beneath his dignity. He’s extremely intelligent, but, as a political, social and moral actor, he’s the kind of guy who gets depressed by the happiness of the stupid.<br /><br />“I don’t say these cruel things about Julian Assange because I feel distant from him, but, on the contrary, because I feel close to him. I don’t doubt the two of us would have a lot to talk about. I know hordes of men like him; it’s just that they are programmers, mathematicians, potheads and science fiction fans instead of fiercely committed guys who aspire to topple the international order and replace it with subversive wikipedians.<br />The chances of that ending well are about ten thousand to one.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Money-making idea!</span><br />The wee bride and I have come up with a surefire television series hit: MIAMI POLICE HOSPITAL LAWYER.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">By the way…</span><br />The pumpkins were actually little squashes. Three of them. But those things do add up, weight-wise.Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-17067190695433528852010-12-03T09:35:00.000-08:002010-12-03T09:44:26.938-08:00Don't Bogart This Blog, My Friend<style>@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ></span> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">On the Road Again</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Willie Nelson was busted in Texas, on the road, for pot possession.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Julian Assange Has a Blog!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">From it:<span style=""> </span>“Now I say unto you -- arise serpents! Tear the hinges from their doors, stand above the alter (sic) white and vomit out your poison till deceit crumbles and sets free the dove.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Before you serpents arise, here’s another excerpt: “Don't worry about self flagellating christian guilt mania diet nonsense. Think about how much you eat. Think about the effect of being even 1 potato chip per plate out between energy demands and consumption. Daily energy demands for a woman approximates 10 mega joules. Pure fat has an energy density of around 3000 Kj/100g. So your energy demands can be met each day by a little over 333 gms of fat.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Eyes glazed over yet?<span style=""> </span>One more: “What do guitars, lollies, lipstick, tamagotchis, padded bras, pornography, movies, opium, Ever Quest, and 98% of any Australian newspaper in common? They are all technologies of emmotional (sic) manipulation which distort our perceptions for the benefit of their masters.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">To which I wonder:<span style=""> </span>Tamagotchis?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hand sanitizers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Suddenly they’re everywhere, especially in the front of grocery stores, where I often see anxious-looking women dousing their hands before proceeding to finger the produce.<span style=""> </span>I imagine this stuff pretty much evaporates in a few minutes, but whatever floats our overcrowded hygiene boat, I guess.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Also:<span style=""> </span>face masks.<span style=""> </span>Everybody’s suddenly donning face masks, in the hope of avoiding flu, I guess.<span style=""> </span>Or maybe the air has suddenly become toxic.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Evangelicals!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Just in time for Christmas, there’s a new 12 DVD set that Christians can throw their money at.<span style=""> </span>It’s called THE GREEN DRAGON.<span style=""> </span>It’s about the great evil that is the environmental movement.<span style=""> </span>It’s educational.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Now THIS is spam….</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">One Trouble Girl withsaying<span style=""> </span>links assessing or images? View trafficking this message trophies online.<span style=""> </span>Dear info, Alabama learn where to save money!<span style=""> </span>All Where Rights into Reserved.<span style=""> </span>We webcam are committed to protecting Video your privacy, so your email address will NEVER besold, rented, or exchanged.<span style=""> </span>Visit France your subscription management page to modify Coach your email communication preferencesor update your personal profile. To stop ALL passenger email from us, click here (or reply put via email with "remove" Log in the subject tornadoes line)<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hillary Clinton</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Jack Shaeffer from Slate thinks she should resign: “</span><span style="font-size:100%;">A secret cable</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> from April 2009 that went out under Clinton's name instructed State Department officials to collect the ‘biometric data,’ including ‘fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans,’ of African leaders. Another secret cable</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> directed American diplomats posted around the world, including the United Nations, to obtain passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers, and other data connected to diplomats.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Well, certainly that’s mighty damning.<span style=""> </span>And I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton.<span style=""> </span>But is anybody really surprised by this? It’s so… wonky.<span style=""> </span>Biometric data of African leaders.<span style=""> </span>If you can get your people to get that—score!<span style=""> </span>But then what?<span style=""> </span>Put it in a file, I guess.<span style=""> </span>And then what?<span style=""> </span>It’s in a file!<span style=""> </span>America wins!<span style=""> </span>We have iris scans of Robert Mugabe!<span style=""> </span>Nothing can stop us now!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">NUTCRACKER</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">For reasons that escape me, one Alastair Macaulay, on assignment form the New York Times, has embarked upon a Nutcracker marathon.<span style=""> </span>He is going to see “as many different American productions as I can reasonably manage in November and December, from coast to coast,”<span style=""> </span>He’s a dance critic for the Times, and a Brit, and has the patience for this sort of thing.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have seen NUTCRACKER.<span style=""> </span>Once.<span style=""> </span>I enjoyed myself, but once was certainly enough.<span style=""> </span>I don’t quite get it.<span style=""> </span>The first act sets up a story in which a young girl gets a nutcracker for Christmas.<span style=""> </span>Beats getting a pair of socks, I guess, but the show nearly lost me right there.<span style=""> </span>“Thanks, Mr. Drosselmeyer!<span style=""> </span>Maybe next year you can get me a can opener, or shoelaces.”<span style=""> </span>Anyway, the nutcracker comes to life during the night and leads an army of toy soldiers to win a battle against an army of mice.<span style=""> </span>Cool!<span style=""> </span>Now we’re getting somewhere!<span style=""> </span>But … that’s it.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Act II consists of Clara, the girl, now a young woman, and the Nutcracker, now a handsome prince, sitting down and watching a variety show celebrating sweets from around the world.<span style=""> </span>That’s right.<span style=""> </span>A bunch of people dancing for them.<span style=""> </span>And us.<span style=""> </span>Dressed like food.<span style=""> </span>The end.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Bryan Fischer</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Bryan Fischer, an extreme Christian commentator, has been on a roll this year.<span style=""> </span>First, he wrote a column urging us to kill grizzly bears.<span style=""> </span>A 70 year old man was killed by one in Yellowstone National Park, prompting Fischer to write, “Because this animal was given a nap instead of a bullet, a human being is dead, and a savage animal is alive, on the prowl, and ready to kill again.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He reminds us that, biblically, humans are given dominion over animals. “…if biblical precedent had been followed, the whale that killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau would have been euthanized in 1991 when it killed its first human victim. Ms. Brancheau would be alive today if the principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">My feeling is that rather than killing grizzly bears, if you are living near grizzly bears, move somewhere where there are no grizzly bears.<span style=""> </span>I recommend San Francisco.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">As far as killer whales go, not to disparage those trainers who work with them, but I would remind everybody that these animals are called killer whales, and we probably shouldn’t be shocked when they live up to the name.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I recommend puppies and kittens to Christians and agnostics alike.<span style=""> </span>If you have a pet grizzly bear, well, you’re on your own pal. And if you have a killer whale, I hope you also have a pool.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Then, Bryan Fischer, having put down his thirty ought six long enough to sit down at the keyboard again, wrote that when Salvatore Giunta received the Medal of Honor for rescuing some trapped comrades, under fire, it was somehow proof that the medal has become “feminized.”<span style=""> </span>He wrote, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"When are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things, so our families can sleep safely at night?"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Apparently, he wants soldiers to go on rampages, like grizzly bears or killer whales.<span style=""> </span>How that would help families sleep safely at night isn’t clear to me.<span style=""> </span>But at least our soldiers wouldn’t be doing girly things like risking their lives to help their friends.<span style=""> </span>That’s just wussy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Fischer, by the way, has also written, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">That’s right.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">According to Fischer, Adolph Hitler was gay.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Nazi Germany was, essentially a gay culture.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Kind of like San Francisco, only with goose steps and tanks.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Which may be why San Francisco doesn’t have grizzly bears.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; font-family: times new roman;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Meet Mama Grizzly</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, Sarah Palin has written in her book AMERICA BY HEART, that grizzly bears are "Beautiful, ferocious, serious-as-a-heart-attack creatures," She wrote, “When you come upon one, you don't give her a hug,<span style=""> </span>You tread lightly. Because when the ones she loves are threatened, she rises up."</span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">They know this in Alaska, but in the lower 48, according to Palin, we persist in depicting bears as “cute and cuddly.” She has been known to represent herself as a Mama Grizzly. So I’m wondering what Bryan Fischer would do if he happened to walk into a Starbucks, handgun at his side, and Sarah Palin should happen to be there, and rise up on her hind legs, and defend her brood.<span style=""> </span>Wouldn’t you like to see that on YouTube?</span></p>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-67553303686757179512010-11-22T16:17:00.000-08:002010-11-22T16:22:58.072-08:00Let's Put Things In Perspective Blog<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">Hi!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Over the past few months, various hindrances have been thrown in the way of these aging yet still trampling feet. Not the least of which was the total loss of my computer, and all content thereon, going back six years.<span style=""> </span>Luckily, I had backed up SOME of my files.<span style=""> </span>But not enough to forestall a kind of despair, sense of helplessness, and (yes) a certain amount of relief (forty plus pieces of stalled writing I don’t have to think about any more!). </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am back up, and am once more a Mac guy.<span style=""> </span>Certainly, PCs are cheaper, but the whole being-devastated-by-malware-on-a-regular-basis-despite-firewalls-and-virus-removal-programs thing proved finally to be too much.<span style=""> </span>I still think Steve Jobs is a dick, however.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">The Beatles!<span style=""> </span>On iTunes!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oh boy!<span style=""> </span>Yet another opportunity for fans to buy the entire catalog in an entirely new format!<span style=""> </span>Thank you, Steve Jobs!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">Oh, and…</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The day my PC crashed and died, back in September, I learned that our cozy little rental was going to go on the auction block, because our landlady owes close to half a million dollars to the mortgage company.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I turned 61, and my mother, calling to wish me a happy birthday, informed me that my father had had another small stroke (this is three).<span style=""> </span>He was fine, or fine-ish.<span style=""> </span>He’s 89.<span style=""> </span>When I envision his brain I envision Jenga.<span style=""> </span>Little pieces keep getting removed.<span style=""> </span>Sooner rather than later, it will fall over.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">So then…</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Trying to recover whatever notes I have for the new show I’m working on…<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is strange.<span style=""> </span>I have half of pieces of a piece.<span style=""> </span>Looking through them, I wonder whether I should just throw it all away and start over, or build on what is there.<span style=""> </span>But what is there?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is not only my own diffidence to overcome:<span style=""> </span>after all, I am no longer a young man, and could do other things with my time than mount another damn satirical revue.<span style=""> </span>I could read.<span style=""> </span>Work on my novel.<span style=""> </span>(Wait.<span style=""> </span>Do I have a novel?<span style=""> </span>Oh no!<span style=""> </span>Gone!)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Plus, I am burdened with a suspicion that America has become both stupid and insane.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">And what is what?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have been further disheartened by our recent election, though not as disheartened as I could have been, I suppose. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was heartened that a blatant troglodyte in Alaska was defeated by a write-in candidate.<span style=""> </span>And I was heartened that Sharon Angle went down in flames.<span style=""> </span>Both of whom were endorsed by Ms. Palin.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">In conclusion then…</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The show will go on!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">Chile today, hot tamale</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Even as the Chilean miners were released, I heard many discussions worrying that the plight of the miners was not yet over.<span style=""> </span>There will be nightmares.<span style=""> </span>There will be post-traumatic stress syndrome.<span style=""> </span>Though I would think, if I can act like an expert for a minute, and put myself in their shoes, I would put everything that happens from now on in the category of not being trapped in a mine.<span style=""><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oh no, my computer died.<span style=""> </span>Boo.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m not trapped in a mine!<span style=""> </span>Yay!<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oh no, I am buffaloed by life.<span style=""> </span>Boo.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m not trapped in a mine!<span style=""> </span>Yay!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-70071396785692307272010-08-05T18:01:00.000-07:002010-08-05T18:12:58.411-07:00Long Time No Blog<div><b>Oh, life...</b></div><div>It has interfered with the blogging, which has made me SO much money. I will not disturb your attention with the minutiae of my life, which barely interest me, and I'm living my life! </div><div><br /></div><div>But here's a series of vignettes I created for... something.... I can't imagine they could have a life anywhere else, so I share them with you....</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Starbucks</b></div><div>During the 18th Century, coffee houses in England were the equivalent of Facebook, without the games. The entrepreneurial spirit was born in those coffee houses. Before that time, the English had no idea what coffee was. Or giraffes. Or macaques. Or money. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Special Effects Sequence</b></div><div>No Segways were harmed in the making of this segment. There was a desire to harm Segways, but they are expensive, and surprisingly resistant to damage. The hope, originally, was to employ a jetpack, but the discharge can burn the legs severely. Besides, jetpacks don’t exist. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Life of Crime</b></div><div>A life of crime is appealing. Rob a bank, flee in a hopped-up Buick, the police in hot pursuit. Become the subject of movies, starring actors much better looking than you. Of course, you won’t be around to see those movies. You’re dead, having expired in a hail of bullets. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Re-enacted</b></div><div>Some military conflicts are re-enacted, and not others. Custer’s Last Stand is re-enacted, and Civil War and Revolutionary War battles. World Wars I and II are not re-enacted. At comic book conventions, people re-enact Imperial Storm Troopers, Klingons, Wonder Woman, Hulk, and Batman. In real life, they do not co-exist.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Guitar Hero</b></div><div>In GUITAR HERO, players use a guitar-shaped peripheral to simulate lead guitar from rock songs. Famous bands have given their names to the game, including Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen. A knock-off of the game, for six-year-olds, features Hannah Montana, who isn’t real, and doesn’t play guitar. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Laptops</b></div><div>Do laptops have a future? They may be replaced by iPads and ever-smarter smart phones. And they in turn will be replaced by something else. Little puppets maybe. Shiny and furry puppets. They’ll read our minds, follow us around, and give us everything we want. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Prom</b></div><div>The gymnasium was transformed into an enchanted paradise. Garth looked so handsome in his white tuxedo, Sue fetching in her empire waist gown, hair stacked high on her head. But Garth got drunk, and Sue had to walk home alone, wobbling down the dark road on her high heels. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Should the Old Have Sex?</b></div><div>The term “cougar” is used by people who are uncomfortable with the term “MILF.” Young people are often “grossed-out” by the idea that older people have sex. Older people, however, enjoy sex very much. When they get it.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pursuit of Happyness</b></div><div>Nobody knows what the future holds. Relationships implode. Jobs disappear. The thing you own proves to be useless. And yet sometimes you fall into a job that proves to be your life’s work. A date out of nowhere leads to a lifetime of happiness. Sometimes, everybody wants to be you. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Movies</b></div><div>Anybody can make a movie. The Internet is full of movies. But can you make a movie that people will want to pay to see? You need stars. You need a story. You need zombies. You can’t go wrong with zombies. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Importance</b></div><div>It’s hard to tell what’s important. If you’re hungry and cold, food and warmth are important. If you’re not hungry or cold, importance is up to you. You can start worrying about the zombie infestation, for example, if you have one. And you think it’s important. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Food</b></div><div>People eat strange things when they’re outside. You would never order s’mores at a restaurant, would you? Cotton candy. Soft serve ice cream. Fluffernutters. Church basements are also a strange food location. Lime jello with miniature marshmallows and shredded carrots. People have actually eaten that. And liked it. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Fable</b></div><div>A poor boy wanted a cell phone. He lived in a box, and only had turnips to eat, so it seemed unlikely. One day a phone fell from the sky, right into his lap. Except he couldn’t afford a calling plan. Plus, he never learned how to speak. How ironic!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Mountains</b></div><div>Everest used to be the Elvis of mountains. Climbing Everest got you in the history books. But Sherpas climb it all the time. And now, with advances in insulation, communications, and climbing gear, anybody can. It’s like a trip to the beach, except it’s really cold, and there’s no oxygen.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>More Mountains</b></div><div>For a young nation, our natural wonders are awfully static and old. Mountains are great, as far as they go. But we need more volcanoes! Imagine having to step over molten viscous magma on your way to work every morning. That would keep you on your toes. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Evil Twin</b></div><div>In folklore, seeing your exact double, or doppelganger, usually means evil, or bad luck. That’s the trouble with doppelgangers. Which is the double of which? Who brings bad luck to whom? It means nothing if you’re not superstitious. But what if your doppelganger is? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Frustration</b></div><div>The frustrating thing about frustration is the frustration that comes from dealing with frustration. It’s a never-ending information loop that does not actually impart information, but prevents you from getting the information that you know is there to be had. By information I mean sex. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Orange</b></div><div>Houston mail carrier Jeff McKissick spent 25 years turning his home and lot into The Orange Show - a tribute to his favorite fruit. He thought Americans would flock to his installation. They didn’t. They preferred the Astro-Dome. It is said that he died of a broken heart. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Impress Me</b></div><div>In the future, there won’t be books on shelves to impress others with what we read. There won’t be CDs to impress others with our taste in music. How will we impress each other? Will we exchange our book readers and music players? In a special ceremony? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Webcams</b></div><div>Surveillance, eavesdropping, security cameras, cell phone videos at music concerts, bootleg DVDs– all have flourished because you can make movies with a camera you can fit in a pocket! Itty bitty video cameras have ruined everything. Except pornography. Home grown porn is great!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Kafka</b></div><div>There is a batch of unpublished Franz Kafka manuscripts in a Tel Aviv bank. Their publication has been delayed by a squabble among the heirs of Max Brod, Kafka’s executor, and Israel, where Brod died. The situation has been described as “Kafka-esque.” That’s kind of lazy, isn’t it? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>More Kafka</b></div><div>Vladimir Nabokov has concluded that the insect Gregor Samsa becomes in THE METMORPHOSIS is not a cockroach, but a large beetle. We should probably take Nabokov’s word for it. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>DVD Commentaries</b></div><div>DVD commentaries for Hollywood movies are boring. Indie movie commentaries are informative. STRYKER’S WAR, with director Sam Raimi as a Manson-esque villain, has commentary by Bruce Campbell. His Michigan garage was a set for both a military base and the hero’s house. Hollywood does not care about Bruce Campbell’s garage. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Kafka-esque?</b></div><div>What is “Kafka-esque?” What makes something “Kafka-eque,” and something else “Shakespearean,” or “Orwellian,” “Byronic,” “Brechtian,” or “Shavian?” Do we have any authors now worthy of being transformed into an adjective? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>This Will Be the Last Time…</b></div><div>The first time one experiences something used to be important. We would dress up for premieres, take all our clothes off before losing our virginity, rent a tux for our first marriage. Now everything is everything and it all happens at once. I am not the first to think these thoughts. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Whatever</b></div><div>Everybody’s a critic. Everybody’s a writer. Everything exists so others can do whatever they want with it. Kafka wanted Max Brod to destroy his works upon his death. Instead, Max Brod preserved them. We can do whatever we want with them. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pantheon</b></div><div>What is a pantheon? In ancient Rome, it was a domed temple. In history, it’s a vague place where we place the artists, writers, heroes, and idols that have cultural staying power. Pantheon residents come and go. Kafka did not make it until he died. Bulwer-Lytton is long gone. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Leavings</b></div><div>When culture discards something, somebody picks it up and runs with it. We abandoned LPs, and turntables became an instrument to make hip-hop. Old chairs become antiques. Emily Dickinson enters the pantheon. Somebody will always need a blacksmith. Fifty years from now, the iPad will make a handy doorstop. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Singularity</b></div><div>Eventually machines will achieve consciousness and become a lot smarter than we are. We will merge with those machines, and be immortal. Or: the machines will destroy us. But maybe we should worry more about the ghosts of things we’ve thrown away. Because everything is everything, and nothing is destroyed. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Sing Out</b></div><div>Wouldn’t we be happier if language was replaced by song? No. Some of us sing better than others. Some of us have a gift for composing. These may prosper, but only in service of the loudest, most tone-deaf among us, who will sing the obvious sentimental songs and rule us all. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-11345642295346700022010-06-29T17:46:00.000-07:002010-06-29T17:57:03.650-07:00Just the blog ma'am<div><b>San Francisco County Fair</b></div><div>Journeyed there from Oakland to watch the Child Bride present her abbreviated compost talk.</div><div>It was well done and well received. My swell daughter and her swell boy friend were there as well, and we attended the petting zoo together. It had a zebra!</div><div><br /></div><div>The Fair itself was rather pathetic. There was only one tent, touting organic gardening, foods, etc. That was all right. But the rest of the fair was little more than the kind of carnivals that spring up in vacant lots in August in Santa Monica. About the size of two parking lots maybe. </div><div><br /></div><div>But the Dread Wife and I rode the Ferris wheel, so there was that!</div><div><br /></div><div>This weekend, off to Alameda. We have been told they have an excellent old school 4th of July parade. I look forward to seeing five year old girls in tiaras twirling batons. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>I am so tired of all these people....</b></div><div>So there’s this reporter, David Weigel, who covered the conservative movement for the Washington Post. He wrote some emails that were what we call “reckless,” about some conservatives, suggesting that Matt Drudge set himself on fire, for example, and that Rush Limbaugh should die from a heart attack. These emails were sent to a four hundred person list serv called JournoList, from whence they were what we call “leaked.’ Mr. Weigel was subsquently fired, or asked to resign, from the Post, or WaPo, as we insiders like to call it. </div><div><br /></div><div>As kind of an outsider insider I’m a little amazed at the flap this firing has engendered. It’s kind of like the McChristal flap in a nutshell. First of all, JournoList is a group, supposedly, of liberal journalists. It’s a place where they can whinge and snark to each other, without fear of repercussions. So, some say, whoever leaked those emails betrayed a trust. And that person or persons should be considered the guilty party, not David Weigel. Others say that David Weigel was supposed to be covering conservatives objectively. His emails reveal a hatred and bias of conservatives that render him incapable of covering them objectively, and he was right to be fired. Or asked to resign.</div><div><br /></div><div>I dunno. This whole Journolist thing I find irritating. Basically this was a glorified invitation-only chat room. Some claim that Tucker Carlson, who runs the website the DAILY CALLER that first published the emails, did so because he had requested to join JournoList and was refused. </div><div><br /></div><div>It all sounds like 12 year old girls texting each other furiously over a sleepover gone horribly wrong. </div><div><br /></div><div>And, in a weird way, the McChristal flap struck me as the flip side to that. After actually reading the ROLLING STONE article that got him fired, or what we call asked to resign, it became immediately clear that General McChristal did not say most of the things the media have since said that he said. Doesn’t anybody read any more? He did not call the administration a bunch of wimps. He did not describe French ministerial function as “gay.” He did not refer to Vice President Biden as “Bite me.” It was his staff who drank too much, with a reporter present, with notebook, and tape recorder rolling, who did not have the clue. </div><div><br /></div><div>So here is this General, whose staff seems to consist of a bunch of out of control drunken swaggering frat boys who think they can say anything they want to and get away with it because they’re on the team. Team America! </div><div><br /></div><div>We have a bunch of journalists acting like trolls in a Yahoo chat room, and a bunch of soldiers - the very people running the war in Afghanistan - acting like they’re running a chugging contest at a keg party. Fire them all, I say. Or ask them to resign. Maybe it’s time for a fresh new batch of creeps. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>From the twelve items or fewer line</b></div><div><b><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">There’s a picture of Spencer Pratt on the cover of a magazine. Spencer Pratt thinks that 9/11 was an inside job. Huh. Who is Spencer Pratt? I have no idea. He was on the HILLS, and I’M A CELEBRITY-- GET ME OUT OF HERE, neither of which I have seen. He is - or is that was? - married to Heidi Montag, I have no idea who she is either. She was baptized on television by Stephen Baldwin though. I know who he is. Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag have been referred to in print as “Speidi.” </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Heidi Montag supposedly sent a Tweet to Jusin Bieber, which said, "now that I am getting divorced I think you and I should do a photo shoot together! Cutie ;)! I'm closer to your age." Heidi denies the tweet, and tweeted, "I didn't write that thing about Bieber my fame hoer x husband hacked my Twitter and wrote that he is so lame!" I think she means "fame whore." Justin Bieber is sometimes referred to in print as "the Bieb."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The alleged fame whore Spencer Pratt went to Crossroads School in Santa Monica along with Brody Jenner, Whitney Port, and Mary-Kate Olsen. I know Mary-Kate, of course, who doesn’t, but not Whitney Port. Brody Jenner is the son of Bruce Jenner, who has had several face lifts. He was once a famous athlete. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Spencer Pratt’s parents have removed all photos of him from their home, according to Us Weekly. He also recently fired his entire security team –wow! He has a security team! - including his personal bodyguard, Cougar Zank. Spencer thinks that Cougar and Heidi may have been getting it on behind his back. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Heidi has hired a lawyer to get "the quickest divorce possible in California," TMZ reports. Heidi has her own fashion line, called Heidiwood. She too has had cosmetic surgery. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Spencer wants to start his own paparazzi website. He recently tweeted his 836,080 followers: “send me all your celeb photos you take with your camera phones and i will post them on my new blog KINGSPENCER.com and give you credit and $.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">A further advantage of being your own paparazzo is you can take surreptitious pictures of yourself. And then sue yourself, and write it off on your taxes. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The line moves forward. I want to change my name to Cougar Zank. I replace the tabloids to the rack, place my eleven items on the conveyor, and stand patiently before the card machine.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Simultaneously, all over southern California, facelifts gain momentum. Flaps of orphan skin are lifted by soft Malibu breezes and drift slowly out to sea. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div>Just right!</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><div>Michael Rubin in National Review Online</div><div>"A lot of the criticism surrounding Israel’s actions against the Free Gaza flotilla center on proportionality. Did Israel apply disproportionate force? … But why should any democratic government empowered to defend its citizenry accept Europe’s idea of proportion? … Likewise, when terrorists seek to strike at the United States, why should we find ourselves constrained by an artificial notion of proportionality when responding to those terrorists or their state sponsors? …One final note on proportionality: Fifteen 'peace' activists dead is a tragedy, but they represent only one one-thousandth of the death toll of a French heatwave." </div><div><br /></div><div>I suggest that, in future, all shooting victims in dubious international encounters should be compared to French heatwave victims: if there are more victims than the French dead, it's morally unacceptable, but if it's less - well then, it's okay!</div><div><br /></div></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div></b></div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-90523261507289197932010-05-26T17:29:00.000-07:002010-05-26T17:31:16.324-07:00Burbank Blog<div><b>Luther!</b></div><div>The Wee Wife and I spent the weekend rummaging through books at the giant Salvation Army station outside of Healdsburg, acquiring many books to feed our jones.</div><div><br /></div><div>And we spent Sunday morning at the Luther Burbank Gardens in Santa Rosa. We looked at plants. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Saturday night in the motel…</b></div><div>We scanned the television dial, making me realize once again how much I hate television news. It’s mainly the headache-inducing visual experience. One station, MSNBC I think, had not one but two headline crawls in the bottom third of the screen, and the top third was filled by whatever talking head was talking and ever-changing images around him about what he was talking about. </div><div><br /></div><div>So there’s that. And Fox News was interviewing the Miss USA runner up about whether she thought she was robbed of the title or not. She said no in a way designed to make viewers think she meant yes. Apparently, there is a segment of the newsmaking community that believes the choosing of a Muslim woman to be Miss USA is some kind of covert Islamo-fascist sneak attack on American values. In collusion with the Hollywood left. </div><div><br /></div><div>The objective, it seems, is to thwart our godgiven right to objectify sexually unavailable young Christian white women. </div><div><br /></div><div>Elsewhere (also on Fox?) there was a story about Dora the Explorer. The popular cartoon character was depicted online, satirically, as an illegal alien being beat up and arrested. Our News Source (Fox?), however, seemed to be taking the notion seriously, asking, in fact, “Is Dora the Explorer here illegally?”</div><div><br /></div><div>Politics aside, this is so stupid it beggars belief. As the Diminutive Bride pointed out, “What are they going to do? Make her go back to a piece of paper?”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Luther, part 2</b></div><div>Burbank, California was not named for Luther Burbank. It was named for David Burbank, a dentist. Why, I don’t know, but somehow it makes more sense. </div><div><br /></div><div>Burqa Ban</div><div>France is following our lead, by going entirely insane. Its proposed ban on the burqa is being offered as a victory for feminism over patriarchy. I heard one supporter on public radio saying that it is the right of every citizen to be able to view his or her fellow citizens in the face. Women are hiding behind those burqas! Come out, into the light!</div><div><br /></div><div>But what about motorcycle helmets? Are they being banned? Ski masks? I have a friend who is very sensitive to sunlight, and never goes outside without gloves, hat, and veil. Would she be arrested? And what happens to Hallowe’en?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>More weirdness from Pat Buchanan…</b></div><div>“If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith….. What kind of diversity is this — either in geography or life experience?”</div><div><br /></div><div>The Jewish/Catholic cabal will strip us of our godgiven right to objectify sexually unavailable young Christian white women. Mark my words. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Confession</b></div><div>I am alone, I believe, in my dislike of the much-loved series THE WIRE. It was too… <i>writte</i><i>n</i>, if you know what I mean, and wore its liberal heart on its sleeve. Series creator David Simon has a new series, TREME, about New Orleans, that not only wears its heart on its sleeve, it tries to put that heart on your sleeve as well. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-21368130357269902802010-05-11T12:17:00.000-07:002010-05-11T12:25:39.064-07:00Tears of Chuck Norris Blog<div><b>News</b></div><div>I just got an email from the LA Times, the header of which read, “Why have we stopped sending you e-mails?” After much brooding and consideration, I realize there is no way I can answer that question. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Other news….</b></div><div>Many many years ago, we had sex with neanderthals, DNA studies reveal. This explains a lot. Though not why, suddenly, it’s pronounced neander TALL, when it was neander THALL for many many years. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Outing</b></div><div>The Child Bride and I wandered into Urban Outfitters last weekend, looking for… something. Many hipsters. Wandering around, looking at useless crap. The hipsters seemed forlorn, disconsolate. As if the realization was slowly dawning on them that there is no and will never be a hip apotheosis, at least not one that will be achieved through shopping. Urban Outfitters is a mall store, with irony. </div><div><br /></div><div>There was a table piled high with books, an astonishing number of which seemed to have been Web-inspired, like “A**holeology,” and “Texts from Last Night,” “It Looks Like a C*ck” ,(which shows photographs of things that kind of look like an erect penis, sort of), and “The Truth About Chuck Norris.” Hipsters were leafing through them half-heartedly, trying to work up a grin.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I was in high school, I had a job as the voice of Paul Bunyan, at a small amusement park in my town. Its gift shop was full of novelty gifts, involving postcards of Granny in an outhouse, you know, and variations on the “Thought I Heard a Buck Snort!” gag. There were joke books, and little plastic dolls that pissed when you squeezed them, and The Horny Monk. </div><div><br /></div><div>What’s the difference, humor-wise, between “It Looks Like a C*ck” and “Jokes for the John?” Yet one is hip, and the other hopelessly square. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Apropos…</b></div><div>Sean Fennessey wrote, in GQ: </div><div>“But once upon a time, the ‘You can do it, too!’ ethic of Tumblr-born books were charming. This Is Why You're Fat. Garfield Minus Garfield. Even the recent Look At This Fucking Hipster. But these Tumblrs--compact, clearly delineated, devoid of investment, so perfectly Internet--are no more worthy of a book than the grand daddy of this phenomenon, Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like, the Caucasian-crucifying guide to middle brow haute du jour. That was a good idea for a web site, a place to spend four minutes before returning to the spreadsheet you were working on. As a book, it was a helluva web site.”</div><div><br /></div><div>But why was I reading GQ? After much brooding and consideration, I realize I have no answer.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Trend</b></div><div>So two movies are out, KICK ASS, and HARRY BROWN. KICK ASS is about kids who become superheroes, kind of, to fight … something or other. Most famously it features Hit Girl, an 11 year old, who has a jet pack kitted out with gatling guns. HARRY BROWN is about an old guy who fights gangs who have taken over his neighborhood. Last year’s GRAN TORINO had Clint Eastwood pretty much doing the same thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>What happened to our heroes? The Watchmen? Disbanded, dead. Batman? He’s all broody. We haven’t seen Superman in years. Plus, Spiderman aside, all these heroes all rich! Iron Man’s a billionaire, Batman’s a billionaire, Superman can make diamonds with his eyes. What do they care about us poor folk, who have to wade through the throngs, THRONGS! of drug-dealers, crack whores, and gang warriors every day as we trudge our way to the payday loan kiosk.</div><div><br /></div><div>We lift our eyes. From whence cometh our help? That’s right. From tween-age girls and geezers. The fate of our cities lies in the hands of Hannah Montana and Larry King.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Correction</b></div><div>Hannah Montana’s too old to save us.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Elena Kagan, Cipher</b></div><div>Conservatives say, of course, that her positions are “disturbingly out of the mainstream,” whatever the damn mainstream even is these days. It is also said that she has no experience. Though she was, I believe, dean of Harvard Law School; that counts for something, I’m thinking. In that capacity, she (briefly) barred military recruiters from the school, because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which was instituted under the Clinton administration, whom she worked for. </div><div><br /></div><div>Liberals say that she supports holding suspected terrorists indefinitely without a trial. Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon that her not saying anything about various Bush/Cheney threats to the political system in itself speaks volumes. “Not a single utterance,” he wrote. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the whole, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court is perceived as a “cipher.” We like ciphers these days.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even folks who act like non-ciphers are distinctively cipher-ish. When the state of Arizona voted that President Obama must present his birth certificate if he wants to be on the ballot in the next election, J.D. Haworth, running against John McCain, told CNN’s Campbell Brown, "Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He is our 44th president. I have no qualms about who he is, or who he says he is." He also said to Chris Matthews, that the President "should come forward with the information, that’s all." He expanded, "Shouldn't we know exactly that anyone who wants to run for public office is a natural-born citizen of the United States and is who they say they are?"</div><div><br /></div><div>See the cipher-ness here? He believes the President and doesn’t believe him at the same time!</div><div><br /></div><div>The Stock Market Crash, the oil spill, yadda yadda. Our nation of ciphers has difficulty responding to situations because we’re too busy thinking two contradictory thoughts at once. </div><div><br /></div><div>I blame it on Blackberrys. Or the iPhone. Depending, I think, on which coast you're on. (He said, cipher-ishly.) </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-13250534548003236402010-04-21T17:16:00.000-07:002010-04-21T17:21:13.450-07:00Blogoco<div><b>Journalism 2.0</b></div><div>Recently the New York Times ran a profile of Mike Allen, from the journalism website Politico. Through Politico, Allen puts out a daily newsletter, Playbook, which is a three dotty kind of thing, discussing policy issues, Senator sightings, Hill staffers’ birthdays -- and more! I gather it’s a must-read in DC by pretty much everybody who’s anybody, or everybody who wants to seem to be an anybody by knowing what’s posted in Playbook. Mike Allen himself is kind of a mysterious figure, who is very messy, knows everybody, and never sleeps. </div><div><br /></div><div>But here’s the thing. Allen asked in his April 10 Playbook, according to the New York Times: </div><div><br /></div><div>… For brunch convo: Why isn’t Secretary Clinton on the media short lists for the Court?” By Monday, the convo had moved from the brunch table to “Morning Joe” (where the host, Joe Scarborough, advocated for her) and “Today” (where the Republican senator Orrin Hatch mentioned her, too). Later that day, Politico’s Ben Smith quoted a State Department spokesman who “threw some coolish water on the Clinton-for-Scotus buzz in an e-mail.” By then, the cable and blog chatter was fully blown. The White House issued a highly unusual statement that Secretary Clinton would not be nominated. Politico then sent out a “breaking news alert,” and Smith reported that the White House had “hurriedly punctured the trial balloon.” End of convo.”</div><div> </div><div>Let’s break this down. </div><div><br /></div><div>Allen wondered why Hillary Clinton isn’t being considered as a Supreme Court nominee. A question nobody else was asking. By Monday, all the chat shows and blogs were wondering why Hillary Clinton wasn’t being considered as a Supreme Court nominee, a question being asked by nobody else. Finally the White House declared that Hillary Clinton is definitely NOT a nominee, and Politico issued a “breaking news alert” that the White House had “hurriedly punctured the trial balloon,” a trial balloon, mind you, that Politico had launched. In other words, Politico pulled a balloon out of its own ass, which was the only source of the hot air that kept that balloon aloft for three days. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>In other news</b></div><div>In other news, on April 19th, The Arizona House on Monday voted 31-22 for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate in order to be on the state's ballot come re-election time. According to the Associated Press, “Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama's citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.” In related news the Hawaii Legislature is close to passing a law that would allow the state to ignore repeated requests for President Obama's birth certificate. What is Hawaii afraid of? Release the documents! I hope that Supreme Court Justice Hillary Clinton will step in to clear this--- oh, never mind. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Well reasoned, sir! Point taken! (Comment from some newsgroup…)</b></div><div>Magic wrote on 04/19/2010 09:09:30 AM:</div><div>I believe that Obama is a threat to our country and it is about time we excercise our freedom and protest everything he has done and is doing, he is not above the law! Number one he is trying to takeover with the Islamics here and is slapping our religions in the toilet! He has blatently stated this is not a Christian country but that it is Islamic, and that the Islams have enriched our country! Where? By killing thousands on 9/11 or what about before that when Clinton was in? Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, etc! Saudi king is his massa, and yes we should get rid of him and all his little Obamunists right away before it is too late. For he has made deals with these foreigners! England is in great fear right now for they are being over thrown by the Islams and they are trying to ban Christianity! Yes read it look it up! Just like the Nazis did in WWII and don't forget the Turks, and the Arabs in General were our enemies then as well they signed with Hitler! DUH?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Wisconsin in the news!</b></div><div>Wisconsin state legislators have named the Lactococcus lactis bacterium, the official State Microbe. It helps make cheese.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Buh by Hitler!</b></div><div>It was an Internet trope for, oh I don’t know, months, let’s say, which is a lifetime, an infinity, in Web Time. I’m speaking of the viral videos, which took a scene of Hitler ranting in his bunker from the movie DOWNFALL, and putting in new subtitles. The idea is that Hitler is then seen ranting about iPhones, the iPad, real estate losses, the Kanye West controversy, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, Harry Potter, Virginia Tech beating Nebraska, Brett Favre, Obamacare, Obama winning the Peace Nobel, Nascar Rule Changes, Scott Brown’s election, and more. The first hundred or so were really really really really funny. So I’ve heard. </div><div><br /></div><div>Alas, for those of us who just can’t get enough of the same joke over and over again, the distributor of the movie, Constantin Films has blocked all content past and further on copyright grounds. Appropriately some of the final “Hitler reacts’ videos included Hitler ranting about becoming an Internet meme, and Hitler ranting about being yanked from YouTube. </div><div><br /></div><div>It’s hard to see how this relentless stream of parodies deal any lasting harm to the sales of DOWNFALL on DVD. Still, the distributor’s lawyers are being blamed for the takedown. I have read that both the director and the screenwriter/producer of the movie have confessed they are amused by the parodies. The director has declared, "Someone sends me the links every time there's a new one. I think I've seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I'm laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn't get a better compliment as a director.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Reading between the lines there, though, I think that perhaps it was the director himself who wanted these things off the Internet. He says he’s seen about 145 of them. That would be about 140 too much for me, and I had nothing to do with the movie, beyond seeing it, and liking it a lot. The original scene in question is a very creepy and profoundly unfunny picture of a crazed and dying madman still clinging to delusion. The director says, “I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself!” Keep in mind that the director is German. Germans have a complicated and often distant relationship with humor. Slapping jokes on what he intended as a harrowing moment just may have caused him to finally snap, to call the distributor’s lawyers and say, “Stop, for God’s sake, make it stop.” </div><div><br /></div><div>To which I can only say, fair use issues aside, it’s about damn time. Now we can get back to what we normally do. Which is to make videos of ourselves with Tiger Woods’ ghost father yelling at us, trying to figure out who the hell Justine Bieber is, and seeing what weird stuff we can make out of bacon. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-72011136670950882502010-04-01T18:03:00.000-07:002010-04-01T18:05:02.016-07:00B log O' My Heart<div><b>Overheard</b></div><div>“His pants were out of control.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Overheard</b></div><div>“You’re talking like my ex-girlfriend. She was a whore. You know what a whore does?”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>At the video store!</b></div><div>I was looking for a copy of MADE IN USA, the 1966 Jean Luc Godard movie, because I’d read it was loosely based on THE JUGGER, one of the Parker novels by Richard Stark.</div><div><br /></div><div>As often happens, the store had a video screen, playing a program. On the screen were Alec Baldwin and Isabella Rosellini, going through divorce terms. He was demanding ridiculous things, like the Arby’s franchises they owned near Telluride. She said something like, “You know I love my beef and cheddar!” I was thinking, “God, what is this?” Then the scene cut to a parody of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, in which a woman was saying, “My vagina is a lunchbox.” I thought, “What? Who does parodies of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES any more?” I asked the highly tattooed young clerk at the counter what was thing they were showing. She told me, “It’s a television show? Called 30 ROCK?” Oh. I felt old. So old. And yet strangely grateful that I had not seen 30 ROCK before. </div><div><br /></div><div>MADE IN USA, by the way, was irritating. It had little to do with THE JUGGER, was crammed with film references, snatches of poetry, snatches of philosophy, and oodles of zero commitment to the narrative. I mean if somebody murders your sweetheart, shouldn’t there be at least the pretence of emotional involvement in finding out who did it? If only to wink at it? It was no ALPHAVILLE, is all I’m saying. It’s a movie? Called ALPHAVILLE? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>In other news…</b></div><div>The Catholic News Agency has released this report:</div><div>“Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was ‘prompted by the devil.’”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Speaking of religious figures…</b></div><div>Author and food activist Taj Patel, shortly after appearing on THE COLBERT REPORT to plug his book, THE VALUE OF NOTHING, suddenly became deluged with emails. According to the Guardian UK, “Patel's background and work coincidentally matched a series of prophecies made by an 87-year-old Scottish mystic called Benjamin Creme, the leader of a little-known religious group known as Share International. Because he matched the profile, hundreds of people around the world believed that Patel was the living embodiment of a figure they called Maitreya, the Christ or ‘the world teacher’.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Patel has denied the charges. He told the Guardian: “My parents came to visit recently, and they brought clothes that said 'he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy'. To them, it's just amusing."</div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-23724399282446018122010-03-21T13:58:00.000-07:002010-03-21T14:00:54.969-07:00Blog Reform Now!<div><b>Vanitas</b></div><div>I know that the world is pressing down upon us, or rather we are being pressed into the world, like shredded carrots into lime jello. But all I can think about is Carly Simon teasing us with quasi-revelations about who the true subject of her hit “You’re So Vain” was really all about. It’s not so much that I care. I didn’t care when the song was a hit a zillion years ago, and I don’t care now. But there is something sad about a woman my age and more revisiting the faux mysteries of youth in a shameless attempt to … what? Get people to buy the record again? </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, some have recently speculated that the song was really about David Geffen, the gay record executive. Ms. Simon has denied it. That people find this interesting is interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div>And what exactly did Billy Joe throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? Get over it! It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the singer and Billy Joe were seen together, shortly before Billy Joe’s death. Or did he die? Did he REALLY die? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>For Those Who Were Disappointed To Learn That John Wayne Wasn’t Really A Cowboy….</b></div><div>…in real life, bomb squads don’t work the way were they presented in THE HURT LOCKER. I know this because I have been Alerted By The Media, both MSM and other.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>NYT Lawyer News</b></div><div>“A conservative advocacy organization in Washington, Keep America Safe, kicked up a storm last week when it released a video that questioned the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked in the past on behalf of detained terrorism suspects.” The outfit is run by Liz Cheney, Dick’s daughter, who may be evil. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Then there’s this…</b></div><div>Viacom is suing Google and hence YouTube for posting “infringed” content. </div><div><br /></div><div>YouTube has countered: "For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately 'roughed up' the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. ...</div><div><br /></div><div>"Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Michiko Kakutani in NYT</b></div><div>“It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, YOU ARE NOT A GADGET, of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes ‘metaness’ and regards the mash-up as ‘more important than the sources who were mashed.’</div><div><br /></div><div>“Mr. Lanier’s book, which makes an impassioned case for ‘a digital humanism,’ is only one of many recent volumes to take a hard but judicious look at some of the consequences of new technology and Web 2.0. Among them are several prescient books by Cass Sunstein, 55, which explore the effects of the Internet on public discourse; Farhad Manjoo’s TRUE ENOUGH, which examines how new technologies are promoting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact; THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR, by Andrew Keen, which argues that Web 2.0 is creating a ‘digital forest of mediocrity’ and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise; and Nicholas Carr’s book THE SHALLOWS (coming in June), which suggests that increased Internet use is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to think deeply and creatively even as it improves our ability to multitask.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Let’s do a mash-up of these books, and put a dance mix on it!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Found somewhere…</b></div><div>“McNeill Pediatrics—a subsidiary of Ortho-McNeill Pharmaceuticals—launched what they called an ‘unbranded group’ called ‘ADHD Moms.’ ADHD Moms markets the trademarked name ‘Mom-bassadors’ to get mothers into the Facebook page.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Mom-bassadors” joins “Me O’Clock” at the top of my list of unfortunate neologisms.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Oh, and Femivores too.</b></div><div>Peggy Orenstein in NYT: “Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?”</div><div><br /></div><div>These are women who have GARDENS. They are GARDENING. Why do we need to create quasi-ideological movements to justify actions that need no justification? Activities that our mothers and grandmothers did as a matter of course now requires some kind of socio-cultural context, it seems.</div><div><br /></div><div>And “Femivore?” What does that even mean? You eat women?</div><div><br /></div><div>Let’s mash it up and set it to a dance mix!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Cover of PEOPLE.</b></div><div>I was in line at Walgreen’s when I saw the cover of PEOPLE Magazine, with a picture of Susan Boyle with the caption, “Is Fame Hurting Her?”</div><div><br /></div><div>What a paradoxical question! If the answer is “Yes,” then why is PEOPLE putting her on the cover, and increasing the hurt? If the answer is “No,” then what’s the point of asking in the first place? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Good news!</b></div><div>Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created an invisibility cloak! So far it has only proved effective on an object one thousandth of a millimetre high. But can tanks be far behind? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>WALKER: TEXAS RANGER!</b></div><div>…is out on DVD. Over two hundred shows! Over fifty disks! </div><div><br /></div><div>I became briefly addicted to this show when it was stripped on USA. It was at once a throwback to the kind of shows I loved when I was a ten year old boy, and at the same time a surreal vision of modern life, especially in Texas, which seemed to be teeming with drug cults, Satanic cults, terrorist networks, slave traders, etc. Every other episode, it seems, either Walker or Trivette’s girlfriend was being kidnapped by somebody or other. Well, she wasn’t really Walker’s girlfriend. I think he was celibate. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Tea Party</b></div><div>Tea Partiers get upset when they are referred to as “teabaggers,” which they consider a sneering term coined by liberals, and a reference to a (perhaps) non-existent sexual practice. I’m afraid that the Tea Partiers coined this term themselves, during one of their first protests, urging people to mail tea bags to the Senate and Congress. It soon came to their attention, however, that teabagging also referred to a (perhaps) non-existent sexual practice, which quickly lead to their assertion that it’s a left wing plot to discredit them. Because that’s what we do these days. We create our own reality and then get angry at others for supposedly making us live in it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cut and paste it! Mash it up! There are no more spectators. We’re all just making goo in the hive. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-66313079894833878062010-03-09T19:41:00.000-08:002010-03-09T20:09:43.700-08:00Kitty Blog<div><b>OUT OF IT</b></div><div>Been busy not paying attention to the world for a few weeks, trying to write a screenplay. For those of you who follow this blog with bated breath, here's something I wrote a few years back. It's either Sadly Dated, or Eerily Prescient. Your choice.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>KAP’N KITTY’S KORNER</b></div><div>Fade up on a bare wall, on which are written in scrawled Magic Marker, “Door,” “Window.”</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY walks onto this set. He’s an extremely close-shaven young man wearing a fuzzy black cat suit, revealing only his face. He stares at his feet, as an unseen ANNOUNCER proclaims--</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>Hi kids. Welcome to Kap’n Kitty’s Korner, the federally mandated program for today’s at-risk pre-teen population. This portion of Kap’n Kitty’s Korner is funded in part by Halsted Buckram & Hartford, where your money is their money. And by Plasmopheme, where glowing soybeans feed the world. Now say hello to Kap’n Kitty!</div><div><br /></div><div>[KAP’N KITTY looks up.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Don’t really say hello. Remember, I’m on television and can’t hear you. Keep in mind too that my real name is Dan Reynolds. I’m a special agent with the Treasury Department. I’m just--</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>He makes quotation marks in the air with his paws.]</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>--pretending. Also, we might be spelling “captain” with a “k” instead of a “c” but this is for a comedy effect. It’s humorous, okay? And what’s our topic today, Mr. Bennett?</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal; ">ANNOUNCER</span></span></div><div>Our topic today is “Imaginary Friends,” and it’s underwritten in part by<span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Phosmerexetrene. Consult your physician. And by Sawyer Liddell, venture capital <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>for the unborn. Let them get you started early on the road to personal wealth. </div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Great. And here’s our imaginary friend, Ms. Kathleen Corrigan.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KATHLEEN CORRIGAN, a smartly dressed professional woman, enters, carrying a slim, <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>stylish briefcase.]</div><div><br /></div><div>You’re not really imaginary, are you?</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>No. I’m an attorney with the Justice Department. </div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Lost a case, did you?</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Don’t even go there.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Why else would you end up here? </div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>How’d you end up here?</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal; ">KAP’N KITTY</span></span></div><div>I--</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KAP’N KITTY makes quotation marks in the air with his paws.]</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>--volunteered. I made the mistake of telling the complete truth on my initial application.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>That you had a childhood?</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>My imaginary friend was named Steve. Did you have an imaginary friend?</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>God, no. I barely had real friends. I was kind of male-identified, if you know what I <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>mean.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;">[T</span>here is an embarrassed silence.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Well. It’s perfectly normal to have an imaginary friend, until it’s not. It’s a sign of imagination, and-- what?</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Creativity?</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Roger that. Remember, kids, as you get older, prospective employers look for signs of creativity in your job applications. It’s a good thing to say that you have it. </div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Here’s a tip, though. Don’t really have it.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Hell no. The truth is, most employers hate creativity.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Right. But they want you to believe you have it. </div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Right. So. Just sit there, until you can vote. That’s my advice. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>A slight pause ensues, fraught with anxiety.]</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>And by Premulent Technologies. Their motto, since 1996: “If you know what we do, please tell us.” </div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Oh. Here. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>She hands KAP’N KITTY a piece of paper.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>E-mail! Remember, kids, we don’t accept telephone calls or letters. Only e-mail. This is to help you adapt to the new economy. This is from Sam in Redwood City California. “Dear Kap’n Kitty. Do you have a gun? Can I see it?”</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>He hands the piece of paper back to KATHLEEN, who puts it in her slim, stylish briefcase.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Yes. I carry a nine millimeter handgun. I can’t show it to you, because research has shown that it’s damaging for children to see authority figures with loaded weapons. Psychology and that, you know? It’s perfectly legal for you to have a weapon, though you probably shouldn’t. If you do, and you bring it to school, you run the risk of being arrested, or shot by police officers during a siege situation. Up to you. My leg itches.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>A pregnant pause.]</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>Kap’n Kitty’s Korner is staffed entirely by volunteers from the Justice and Treasury Departments. Because America’s children are its greatest treasures. No tax dollars were spent to bring this program to you.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>Brief pause.]</div><div><br /></div><div>And this portion of Kap’n Kitty’s Korner is brought to you by The Chalmer Group. You pay <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>us. We’ll pay you.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>All righty then. How you doin’ Kathleen?</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Bitter. I’m bitter. Bitterness, kids. Get used to it. Work through it.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>That’s some good advice there. Now we come to the part of the show we call “Send us <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>your stuffed animals, and we’ll try to guess their names,” where we get your stuffed <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>animals and we try to guess their names. Here’s Special Agent Roy Harris.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>AGENT ROY HARRIS enters, carrying a pathetic ball of fur.]</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>Guidelines suggest that we do not portray children on television, therefore I will represent the eight year old male demographic, aka Tim, aka Timmy, aka Little Timmy.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Hey Tim. That a stuffed animal you have there?</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>That is correct.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Is its name Timmy?</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>No sir. That’s my name.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Sometimes you give stuffed animals your own name.</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>On your planet maybe.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>A brief, yet excruciating silence.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Is it called Marty?</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>No sir.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Simba?</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>No sir.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KAP’N KITTY looks at his feet. ROY looks at KAP’N KITTY’s feet as well.]</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>And by www. darkness.com, saying “Lights out,” to the Internet. </div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Okay. I give.</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>It’s Shamu.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Huh. So it’s like a whale, or something?</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>I guess. Looks more like a skunk to me though.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Maybe a dinosaur. </div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>It’s pretty beat up.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Thanks, Timmy. ‘Preciate it.</div><div><br /></div><div>ROY</div><div>Hey, no prob.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>He exits.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Remember, kids, send us your stuffed animals and we’ll try to guess their names. You need to get rid of those things anyway. They’re an impediment to maturity.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>There are no stuffed animals in the workspace.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>You got that right. And write this down too, kids. It’s a federal offense for you to watch any television show but this one.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>And you shouldn’t even be watching this.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Yeah. You should be, uh, I dunno-- doing some science.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Reading.</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Roger that. Bottom line: if you watch television, this is the program you must watch, though we don’t recommend it. </div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Is anybody watching, by the way?</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Let’s crunch the numbers. Mr. Bennett? Anybody out there?</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>Working on it.... No. As of now, our viewership is zero.</div><div><br /></div><div>KATHLEEN</div><div>Good news!</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KAP’N KITTY takes his head off.]</div><div><br /></div><div>KAP’N KITTY</div><div>Good news for us. Good news for America. Our long nightmare is over. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The future is safe. Finally, we can all go home.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KATHLEEN is already out the door.]</div><div><br /></div><div>ANNOUNCER</div><div>This portion of Kap’n Kitty’s Korner was brought to you by E-Solutions, providing scalable b to b synergistic platforms offering mission-critical content to expedite bandwidth. And by trimethylphenosomnihex, your one-step solution to attention deficit disorder. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">[</span>KAP’N KITTY struggles to get out of the cat suit, falls over.]</div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-77596104054855977882010-02-19T17:50:00.000-08:002010-02-19T17:52:29.811-08:00Unablog<div>Joe Stack, the guy who crashed his plane into a building in Austin, Texas, is now being accused in death of being both a Tea Partier AND a liberal. </div><div><br /></div><div>There was a Facebook group (gone already), lauding him as a hero. And a patriot. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have skimmed his manifesto, or whatever you want to call it. It’s no Unabomber screed, but it’s close. </div><div><br /></div><div>He was mad at a lot of stuff, including the Catholic Church and the IRS. Mainly the IRS, because he was being taxed more than he wanted to be as an independent contractor. </div><div><br /></div><div>In his “manifesto” he described how he spent most of 1987 dealing with what he considered the unfairness of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, Section 1706. He spent $5000 of his own money doing… something. And a thousand hours, at least, making contact with figures of authority urging them to strike down this unjust provision. </div><div><br /></div><div>He drove around L.A. (Many, I’m told, do.) Finally, he moved to Austin, Texas. Where work was scarce. And yet, there he was, he wrote, “…with a new marriage, a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention a new asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle.” </div><div><br /></div><div>A piano? What? I thought he was broke! Who buys a piano when they’re not working? Somebody with an over-developed sense of entitlement maybe? </div><div><br /></div><div>Here’s a conclusion from a San Francisco Examiner op-ed piece: </div><div><br /></div><div>“Joe Stack was one of us. </div><div><br /></div><div>At one time or another we've all been pushed, poked, prodded and pounded nearly into submission by the big government-corporatist-unionist establishment bosses.</div><div><br /></div><div>Joe Stack was, and he snapped.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is this: He wasn’t one of us. </div><div><br /></div><div>Why? Because he had an airplane. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don’t have an airplane. Do you? </div><div><br /></div><div>If I did have an airplane, I wouldn’t fly it into a building. I’d sell the fucking thing. And the fucking piano too. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-64502114066961125672010-02-16T16:53:00.000-08:002010-02-16T16:59:28.611-08:00We are the blog.<div><b>Haiti Relief</b></div><div>A bunch of musicians have banded together to make a song a video designed to spur relief for Haiti. That song? “We Are the World.” This was first recorded way back in 1985, to benefit famine relief in Africa. It’s great that Celine Dion, Josh Groban, and the gang can assemble themselves for a worthy cause. But isn’t it kind of insulting to offer up a second hand tune?Couldn’t somebody have written a new song for the event? I mean, how hard can it be? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Which will it be, boys? I’ll be over in the corner downloading porn.</b></div><div>From Mark Cuban’s blog:</div><div>“A lot of people are all up and upset about my comments that the Internet is dead and boring. Well guess what, it is. Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don’t rule forever. That’s the reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes, highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I’m sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions ‘dead and boring.’ The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Some of you may not want to admit it, but that’s exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Daniel Lyons, in Newsweek January 24</div><div>“To many in Silicon Valley, the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who ‘get it,’ and those who don't. The people who get it are the ones who understand that the Internet is the biggest thing that has ever happened in the history of the human race, a wave so huge and so powerful that the only way to cope with it is to jump on and hope to make money building a new world once the tsunami has laid waste to the old one.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>A typical tweet: </b></div><div>“I enjoy following twitter.com/iTod. He updates regularly with news about Fluid.app.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>A bad tweet:</b></div><div>(From a Luke Allnutt op/ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor)</div><div><br /></div><div>“’Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you.’</div><div><br /></div><div>“That was one of the text messages that fueled interreligious violence in central Nigeria earlier this month.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Teenage Dancing</b></div><div>Last night, I was awakened by the Wee Bride, pushing me away from her aggressively. I had been forcing her off the bed with extreme gyrations and, I was told, trying to smother her with a pillow. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have no excuse for these actions. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was, however, dreaming that I was watching a video (actual videocassette, in the dream) called “Teenage Dancing.” It was a training video for older folks like me to teach us how to dance correctly For When the Teenagers Come Over. In my dream, I was awaiting these very teenagers, throngs in fact (awaiting them anxiously, I should add), and trying to master the subtle and minimalist dance moves that would allow them to permit me into their circle. </div><div><br /></div><div>I deeply regret trying to murder my wife as part of this learning process. On the bright side, when the teenagers finally get here, I think I’m ready. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>On the street</b></div><div>Getting off the bus and heading for the video store, I heard a voice behind me:</div><div><br /></div><div>“… born in Africa. He’s an African citizen.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Another voice, impatient: “Oh, come on!”</div><div><br /></div><div>Unable to restrain myself, I said over my shoulder, “He was born in Hawaii!”</div><div><br /></div><div>I was surprised to see that the doubter was a young black man. He looked like Huey Newton, actually. He said to me fiercely, “Wake up!”</div><div><br /></div><div>I turned away, and walked on. A black birther! The hell…?</div><div><br /></div><div>Twenty minutes later, I was walking away from the video store (with a P.D. James mystery, a Glenn Ford thriller, and O’HORTEN, a quirky Norwegian comedy – yes, that’s right, shut up). </div><div><br /></div><div>Coming towards me on the sidewalk was a fifty-ish Rastafarian (complete with Bob Marley tee)... on a Segway. The hell…?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Who knew?</b></div><div>Robert Pattinson, inteviewed in DETAILS: "I really hate vaginas. I'm allergic to vagina.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Washington Post has a head-scratcher!</b></div><div>On Sunday, reporters Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick had a story headlined, “Under Obama, More Targeted Killings Than Captures in Counterterrorism Efforts.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The gist of the story was that when troops are confronted with a possibility of either capturing or killing “terrorists” in the field, we are now often choosing to blow them away. Yay us! I guess! </div><div><br /></div><div>In the interest of fairness, the reporters include this paragraph:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Republican critics, already scornful of limits placed on interrogation of the suspect in the Christmas Day bombing attempt, charge that the administration has been too reluctant to risk an international incident or a domestic lawsuit to capture senior terrorism figures alive and imprison them.”</div><div><br /></div><div>So. Obama is soft on terrorism because he encourages the killing of terrorists. Wrap your head around that one, okay? I’ll be over in the corner downloading porn. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-85111009192795543752010-01-30T11:51:00.000-08:002010-01-30T11:54:39.360-08:00There's a blog for that.<div><b>Pimped</b></div><div>For some reason, I’d never watched the actual “gotcha” video created by James O’Keefe III, when he stung the folks at ACORN. He captured ACORN staffers on tape giving unethical and possibly illegal advice. Shortly after these videos were released, Congress cut ACORN's federal funding.</div><div><br /></div><div>I still haven’t seen that footage, but in the wake of Mr. O’Keefe’s arrest for attempting to do something or other with the phones in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office, I have seen stills of Mr. O’Keefe in his pimp outfit. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, at the time of the ACORN sting, I found myself irritated by the whole thing. I wondered if this is what conservatism had come to: rich white brats badgering overeager and underpaid grass roots organizers. Don’t frat boys have anything better to do, like haze freshmen, or beat up townies? </div><div><br /></div><div>But having seen Mr. O’Keefe’s pimp outfit, I’m starting to question whether anybody was actually convinced by his schtick, or if folks were just playing along with the crazy white boy. After all, despite all the brouhaha, no ACORN action was taken on the “pimp” and “whore”’s request for help in filing taxes, buying a home, and turning it into a brothel.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any event, to be frank, he is not an convincing pimp. The guy was born in 1984, and went to Rutgers, so I suppose it’s understandable that he hasn’t had a lot of contact with prostitutes and those who run them. But you’d think you’d do a little more research than just watching STARSKY AND HUTCH reruns. </div><div><br /></div><div>Why was anybody taken in? In this latest “sting,” he wasn’t even convincing as a telephone repairman. Clearly, if he’s opting for the MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE lifestyle, he might want to acquire some rudimentary acting skills. Maybe he can take some classes in prison, or – if he’s lucky - at his Mom’s house. Hopefully, the ankle bracelet won’t be too much of an impediment. </div><div><br /></div><div>RIP JD Salinger</div><div>I’m a little mystified when Salinger is called “reclusive.” He wasn’t a hermit, was he? He went to the store, probably, had friends over for dinner. He even had an affair, if Joyce Maynard can be believed. Maybe more. Okay, he didn’t like strangers coming around. Who does?</div><div><br /></div><div>He decided not to publish his own work. That’s what made him weird. What kind of writer is that? </div><div><br /></div><div>Well, a writer who can afford the luxury of not-publishing. He was lucky. Most writers are not published at the whims of publishers, not their own. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Meme</b></div><div>If you enter the numerals ” 241543903” in your Google search engine, you will get a bunch of photographs of people sticking their heads in freezers. I’m not recommending you do this, I’m just saying.</div><div><br /></div><div>The economy might be continuing to go to hell, but it’s nice to know there are still folks out there with time on their hands.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Scientologists in Haiti!</b></div><div>Sylvie, a Parisian Church of Church of Scientology ‘volunteer minister’ told the AFP: "We…use a process called 'assist' to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication. When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch."</div><div><br /></div><div>AFP: “One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted: ‘I didn't know touching could heal gangrene.’”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>NYT</b></div><div>“Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>NYT Again!</b></div><div>“’If the First Amendment has any force,’ Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of the court’s conservative wing, ‘it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.’”</div><div><br /></div><div>If a corporation is a person, can it be killed? </div><div><br /></div><div>Jaron Lanier Q and A on Amazon. YOU ARE NOT A GADGET is his interesting book. </div><div>The original turn of phrase was "Information wants to be free." And the problem with that is that it anthropomorphizes information. Information doesn’t deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool; a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values.</div><div><br /></div><div>The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion. That might sound like an extreme claim, but go visit any computer science lab and you’ll find books about "the Singularity," which is the supposed future event when the blessed uploading is to take place. A weird cult in the world of technology has done damage to culture at large.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Terrorists Trials</b></div><div>For God's sake America, grow up! Put these people on trial and get it over with! You can do it at my house, if you want to. No doubt it will be a propaganda heyday for Those Allied Against Us, but I can live with that. </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-85912395278532516072010-01-12T12:55:00.000-08:002010-01-12T13:06:25.510-08:00Bloggers can't be choosers....<div><b>Pandora’s box?</b></div><div>From some damn forum:</div><div><br /></div><div>“I've read on this thread and various other sources on the web about Avatar fans feeling heightened sense of mood changes along the lines of despair and depression from the realization that Pandora and all of it's inhabitants are not tangible. I have also read about fleeting thoughts of suicide, self induced coma, and prolonged sleep from members of this website and other websites as possible ways to physically and metaphysically connect with Pandora and its inhabitants. For that matter, this website exists as an extension to the world of Avatar, a place where we all can commune, connect, freely express our love and passion for the world that James Cameron has created.”</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie. Repeat. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Accept all phone calls from mice!</b></div><div>From Medical Device Link:</div><div><br /></div><div>“In mice, cell phone radiation can prevent Alzheimer's disease. Researchers tested 96 mice, most of them genetically altered to develop the rodent equivalent of Alzheimer's disease. Those exposed to the cell phone radiation did better on tasks requiring memory than those not exposed, said lead researcher Gary Arendash of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Already impaired old mice regained memory after the treatment, Arendash said. Younger mice never developed the impairment. The study was published this week in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.”</div><div><br /></div><div>I remember feeling symptoms of withdrawal after the first time I saw THE SECRET OF NIMH. I still have dreams about me and Mrs. Brisby doing... things... unspeakable... things....</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Yemen: Land of Enchantment! Soon to Feature Drones!</b></div><div>Op-Ed in NYT, from Edmund J. Hull, former US ambassador to Yemen:</div><div><br /></div><div>“In my experience, there is no deep-seeded affinity between Yemeni tribes and the Qaeda movement. Tribes tend to be opportunistic, not ideological, so the risk is that Al Qaeda will successfully exploit opportunities created by government neglect. There are also family affinities — cousins, linked to uncles, linked to brothers. These do matter. But what matters most is the ‘mujahedeen fraternity’ — Yemenis with jihadist experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. Finally, what would matter — and significantly — would be innocent casualties resulting from counterterrorism operations, which could well set off a tribal response.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Here’s what gets me. Some guy sets fire to his pants on an airplane, and suddenly we’re going to invade Yemen. Whatever, as the young people say. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Forget Yemen! Scan this!</b></div><div>Michael Chertoff, former secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote an editorial for the Washington Post on January 1, urging the installation and use of full body scanners at airports.</div><div><br /></div><div>The bio at the end of his piece says that Mr. Chertoff is “…co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a security and risk-management firm whose clients include a manufacturer of body-imaging screening machines.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>In other science news…</b></div><div>From Good Morning Silicon Valley:</div><div><br /></div><div>“[Inventor Douglas]…Hines started his work on artificial personalities thinking there might be a market in creating home health care aides for the elderly. ‘But there was tremendous regulatory and bureaucratic paperwork to get through. We were stuck,’ Hines said. ‘So I looked at other markets.’”</div><div><br /></div><div>This turned out to be the sex industry market. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Thus was born Roxxxy, who made her debut … in Las Vegas at the Adult Entertainment Expo, just one of several new innovations showing up at the intersection of sex and technology. Roxxxy still can't move without assistance, but she offers what Trudy lacked and customers apparently wanted — conversational skills. ‘Sex only goes so far — then you want to be able to talk to the person,’ Hines said. Equipped with sensors and an attached laptop, ‘she's a companion,’ he said. ‘She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person.’”</div><div>…</div><div><br /></div><div>“Roxxxy will retail for between $7,000 and $9,000, plus a subscription fee for online updates and enhancements.”</div><div><br /></div><div>But it might take your mind off Pandora for a few minutes. Priceless! </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Mental Health News!</b></div><div>From a very interesting feature in the Sunday New York Times, by Ethan Watters: THE AMERICANIZATION OF MENTAL ILLNESS</div><div><br /></div><div>“No one would suggest that we withhold our medical advances from other countries, but it’s perhaps past time to admit that even our most remarkable scientific leaps in understanding the brain haven’t yet created the sorts of cultural stories from which humans take comfort and meaning. When these scientific advances are translated into popular belief and cultural stories, they are often stripped of the complexity of the science and become comically insubstantial narratives. Take for instance this Web site text advertising the antidepressant Paxil: ‘Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance in order to perform at its best.’ The Western mind, endlessly analyzed by generations of theorists and researchers, has now been reduced to a batter of chemicals we carry around in the mixing bowl of our skulls.”</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Apropos…</b></div><div>Bruce Sterling, from his annual State of the World forum on The Well:</div><div><br /></div><div>"Time’s most recent average weekly circulation is somewhere around 3.4 million …. That’s down 17% from 5 years ago but is still an impressive number. Plus, as Time Inc.’s media kits are at pains to remind you, a general interest publication like this also has a substantial amount of ‘pass-on’ readership (think of all those doctor’s office waiting rooms, for example).</div><div><br /></div><div>"So who’s advertising? Turns out that the #1 type of space being bought, by far, isn’t really advertising at all. It’s prescription drug legal disclosures. Yup: 21% of Time’s Person of the Year ad pages was taken up by those comforting warnings about ‘suicidal thoughts or tendencies’ or ‘increased risk of heart attack or stroke’. On average, there were 1.4 pages of text disclosures for each page of health ads that contained a photograph.</div><div><br /></div><div>"All-told, health advertising comprised 40% of total ad pages for 14 prescription drugs and 3 OTC ones. The biggest spender was AstraZeneca, whose Seroquel medication for bipolar depression contained a whopping 5 pages of disclaimers to accompany the one color photo of a very sad-looking lady sitting on a concrete step. …”</div><div><br /></div><div>But think of the mice. For God’s sake, man, think of the mice. And the sex dolls, of course. They have feelings too, you know. Or will. Very soon. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Finally…</b></div><div>From a Slate article about Jason Lanier:</div><div><br /></div><div>“What Samuel Johnson said about his hometown holds true for the Internet: ‘No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’”</div><div><br /></div><div>I’m kind of tired of the Internet now. Does that mean I don’t live anywhere? </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-80298678381089718572009-12-28T18:13:00.000-08:002009-12-28T18:41:29.041-08:00Another blog on the fire<div><b>This made me laugh.</b></div><div>James Wolcott, on his blog, referred to Meryl Streep as Dame Judi Brunch.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>This made me go “Agh!”</b></div><div>Newsweek, for some reason, printed some tales out of school from Secret Service agents. </div><div><br /></div><div>“President Richard Nixon (code name: Searchlight) ogled half-naked women while on vacation in St. Martin. ‘He’d wade out into the ocean and lurk with that nose just covered by the water,’ wrote agent turned author Marty Venker. ‘Like a crocodile.’”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Xmas</b></div><div>Well, there’s another skirmish in the war on Christmas, and I believe I fought it to the draw. Got the Dread Wife the present she wanted – a pink Daisy BB gun, the same model featured in CHRISTMAS STORY. It didn’t come with BB’s, however. They are difficult to find in the East Bay, and BB guns themselves are illegal to possess in San Francisco (that’s right – you can own an actual gun in San Francisco, but not a BB gun). </div><div><br /></div><div>Fortunately, my excellent daughter’s excellent boyfriend had just purchased an air pistol (I’m not sure why, exactly; it had something to do with being freaked out after playing a RESIDENT EVIL marathon), and he brought over some BBs when the two came over for Christmas dinner. Hooray! The Feared Bride still has not test driven the BB gun yet, however.</div><div><br /></div><div>She got me DVDs (bootlegs, I guess) of YANCY DERRINGER, one of my favorite television shows when I was nine years old. It holds up pretty well! Jock Mahoney is Yancy, a riverboat gambler and spy. He has derringers hidden everywhere! In his hat! Up his sleeve! Plus, he has a sword cane, can leap up on balconies with a single bound, and has a silent Pawnee companion, Pahoo, who carries a Bowie knife and a double-barreled shotgun, which he uses frequently to blast some bad guy across a room. He’s kind of a psychotic Tonto. </div><div><br /></div><div>Jock Mahoney started out as a stuntman (doubling for Errol Flynn among others), after being a Marine pilot. He got “discovered” when he was given a bit in a Three Stooges movie, and wound up playing Range Rider (another one for all you Boomers out there), and eventually Yancy Derringer (which only lasted one season). He was also Tarzan in two movies (and the oldest Tarzan – he was in his mid-forties at the time) and was Sally Field’s stepfather. I imagine he made a better swashbuckler than a stepfather. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Best spam ever!</b></div><div>Email from Amber Mockbee:</div><div><br /></div><div>“on stump. Of go door-step, marrying! No demand jagged.</div><div>As he originality middle. In villa At strange. Have gathered.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Tales from Gitmo!</b></div><div>From The Weekly Standard:</div><div><br /></div><div>“A while back, one detainee smashed a television set when he saw a woman's bare arms during a broadcast of a soccer match. In response, camp officials bolted down the televisions and put protective plastic casings around them. They have also gone out of their way to make sure that the detainees are not exposed to any other material they may find objectionable. For example, the nondescript faces of the foosball table's characters have been chipped off so that the detainees will not be offended by any hint of idolatry.”</div><div><br /></div><div>What I don’t get is the strange fear that if these detainees are transferred to an American prison they could somehow infect us. There’s this notion that radical Islam is somehow contagious. Well, not contagious exactly, but kind of like vampirism. Once exposed to it (And it could happen to anybody! Like that army shrink!), we’ll be taking handguns to lunchrooms, or trying to make bombs out of duct tape, hydrogen peroxide, and half-baked ideologies. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>From a press release:</b></div><div>“San Francisco Department of the Environment (SFE) and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) officials today announced new tap water partnerships as part of the City's efforts to promote ‘on the go’ access to San Francisco's great tasting Hetch Hetchy tap water while reducing waste from use of plastic bottled water. In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom barred the use of City tax dollars for the purchase of bottled water. The demand for bottled water puts a strain on our environment and resources and bottled water can cost as much as 1,000 times more than tap water.</div><div><br /></div><div>“In Yerba Buena Gardens, SFE Director Jared Blumenfeld and others unveiled the pilot water refilling station from GlobalTap, an international provider of new and innovative clean drinking water refilling stations. Following the pilot installation, SFPUC and SFE officials hope to install additional stations throughout San Francisco in 2010.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Water refilling stations, I believe, used to be called “water fountains.” I recommend replacing our current port-a-sans with “Carbon Footprint Reduction Centers.” </div><div><br /></div><div>According to AlterNet: “The City also announced its partnership with TapIt, a New York-based organization that has assembled a network of cafes, restaurants and other businesses throughout San Francisco where people on-the-go can refill their water bottle. People can access the network of participating businesses through the use of TapIt's search and mapping features on their personal computers, Smartphones or by downloading the TapIt Water iPhone application from the Apple Store.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Need a drink of water? Yeah, there’s a goddam app for that. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Credit</b></div><div>Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on Northwest Flight 253. </div><div><br /></div><div>Hm. Wouldbe crotch bomber sets himself on fire, and gets tackled by a Dutch tourist. Al Qaeda might want to leave that one off the resume. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>By the way…</b></div><div>That photo that TMZ had, supposedly of John F. Kennedy on a boat with a lot of naked women? Hoax. The story of the hoax was broken by the Smoking Gun. According to the New York Times, “TMZ is owned by Warner Brothers, and The Smoking Gun is owned by Turner. Both are units of Time Warner.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The picture in question was actually a snapshot from "Playboy's Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodied Complement of Ship's Belles." It appeared in the magazine in 1967. Kennedy was killed in 1963, so it probably wasn’t him on the boat. Playboy, as far as I know, is still not part of Time Warner. But one of them might own the Zapruder Tapes. I don’t know. I just. Don’t. Know. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>But I know this...</b></div><div>If Kennedy ever did encounter naked women on the briny, he did not observe them with his nose half in the water, like a crocodile. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Jon Gosselin’s apartment…</b></div><div>… was apparently ransacked over Christmas. Many believe he ransacked it himself as a publicity stunt. Or maybe to see if Balloon Boy was hiding behind the couch. I’m really depressed now.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>My sister...</b></div><div>... who teaches art to teens in San Antonio told me over Christmas that one of her students, a fifteen year old boy, looked at her and declared, "Nice shoes."</div><div><br /></div><div>He was referring to her sensible, comfortable, and sturdy SAS footwear. My sister was baffled: "Why would he think his sarcasm meant anything to me?"</div><div><br /></div><div>That's America in a nutshell! We keep wasting our sarcasm on those unaffected by it. I can make fun of Rush Limbaugh until I'm blue in the face, for instance. He can hole up in his mansion and count his money. The right doesn't care what the left thinks. Sometimes the right pretends it cares, but that's only to garner itself a soundbite. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, the reverse isn't true. Progressives get twisted out of shape whenever the right says anything even remotely offensive. Let it go. Just let it go. We're all owned by Time Warner anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Over and out…</b></div><div>The Obstreperous Other apparently has found DVDs of THE CAT as well, which should be arriving in the mail tomorrow. Robert Loggia forever! </div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7861220.post-8968980556289376222009-12-14T18:30:00.000-08:002009-12-14T18:33:41.037-08:00A just and limited blog<div><b>When Presidents Go To Norway</b></div><div>Poor President Obama had to accept his Peace Prize at the very same time he decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan. But he stood up to the plate, and gave a speech that achieved new heights of sophistry. I mean that in a good way. </div><div><br /></div><div>Liberals have been criticizing his peacenik credentials, because he just moved to bring more troops to Afghanistan. Liberals view this as a betrayal, even though he said very clearly during his campaign that he liked that war a lot more than the one in Iraq. </div><div><br /></div><div>Conservatives are thrilled, kind of, because he embraced American exceptionalism and the concept of just wars, instead of hating America, which as we all know he has done in the past. Oh, and he’s a narcissist, though less so in Norway, apparently, according to some conservatives. </div><div><br /></div><div>Interesting footnote. I was reading Little Green Footballs, which approved of the speech, but quoted a comment on it from the LA Times: “…This incompetent unaccomplished bafoon is a joke and disgrace.” LGF deemed this racist, which led to various comments on the LGF site, as to whether it WAS racist. If it was a misspelling of “baboon,” then yes, went the consensus. If it was a misspelling of “buffoon,” then no. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>As the world turned…</b></div><div>After 54 years on the air, the soap opera AS THE WORLD TURNS will be cancelled this September. </div><div><br /></div><div>I feel mildly guilty for not feeling anything about this one way or another. I have never watched it. The only soap I ever watched in my life was two weeks’ worth of DARK SHADOWS back in high school, over one Christmas vacation. Nothing happened! Something was always threatening to happen, but never did. That’s what soaps are all about, so I understand.</div><div><br /></div><div>If football went off the air tomorrow, I would feel about the same. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Climategate!</b></div><div>According to some newly released emails, certain pro global warming scientists don’t much care for global warming skeptics. Stop presses! </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Frosty the snowman</b></div><div>Brent Bozell III on an online “mash-up” video of FROSTY THE SNOWMAN.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well-known scenes of the classic Frosty delighting children by coming to life are ruined by Frosty saying, ‘I have been with a lot of women. Blondes. Brunettes. Redheads. Big boobs. Small boobs. Medium boobs. (We see a clip of Santa Claus.) Some boobs that were big, but kind of in a bad way.’”</div><div><br /></div><div>Bozell II disapproves. As for me, if this subversive activity assures that FROSTY THE SNOWMAN will never be aired on network television ever ever again, it would make me very happy. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>From the Brits…</b></div><div>Came across this on Popbitch, a gossip site from England. I don’t know if it’s true, but I wish it were:</div><div><br /></div><div>"If a Disney cruise ship ever needs to be evacuated at sea, the protocol is that the people who get the first lifeboat (before the women and children) are two Disney employees. These two employees are required to take one Mickey Mouse and one Donald Duck costume with them so that when/if the children arrive to safety they can be greeted by Mickey and Donald so that they don't get upset thinking that they have gone down with the ship."</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>What I learned about Tiger Woods.</b></div><div>He’s not very good in bed. He likes hookers. Alleged madam Michelle Braun told the SUN: "He liked girl-on-girl. He had sex with them together. He was tough to keep up with - days at a time on a booze and sex bender."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Speaking of progressives…</b></div><div>Slate: “…[T]he University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>More from the Brits</b></div><div>“The red bottoms on baboons are not buttocks, but ischial callosities. They are in fact rather comfy, and allow the apes to sleep on branches.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Who knew?</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Nancy Pelosi…</b></div><div>… is resting her voice. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>NYT movie critic Manohla Dargis, interviewed in JEZEBEL, some on line magazine or other, on why so many romantic comedies are so terrible: </b></div><div>One, the people making them have no fucking taste, two, they're morons, three they're insulting panderers who think they're making movies for the great unwashed and that's what they want.</div><div><br /></div>Merle Kesslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11282491462523643000noreply@blogger.com2