Friday Fucking Five

1. Funki Porcini - Wicked, Cruel Nasty and Bad, from Hed Phone Sex. Similar style pre-Private Press DJ Shadow. Incidentally, I think I just gained enough xp to level up in the Music Nerd(Douchebag) prestige class.

2. The Magnetic Fields - Yeah! Oh Yeah!, from Fuck Only Knows. I don't really like it. It's like the relationship that you think is ok but then you realize that your desire to smash faces with rocks persists without any break for feeling happy. This aspect will be covered in the Geek Dating Guide under the chapter titled Red Flags.

3. Johnny Cash - The Rebel, Johnny Yuma from a greatest hits album. I like it. It reminds me that I still want to bike across the country, gnashing my teeth at this gilded cage.

4. Canasta - The Things You Don't See, from We Were Set Up. I still like them despite the fact that they are forever tied to a woman who hurt me. Oh well, tits is tits, ya know?

5. The Lovely Sparrows - Chemicals Change, from the vagaries of my travels and travails across this vast continent called Internet. Makes me want to stand around drinking Shiner Bock and nodding my head, clapping occassionally when a song ends.

6. Andrew Bird - Heretics, from Armchair Apocrypha. One of the few people that can easily sound more pretentious than I without trying but has actually accomplished something so at least he earned it.

7. Hard-Fi - Living for the Weekend, from Stars of CCTV. British Radio Rock. I know one of the hallmarks of floppy hipsterdom to bitch about how fucking pretentious everyone else is while ignoring your own chunderloafing, but is that worse than constantly bitching about how pretentious you are on your own blog?

8. Wild Sweet Orange - House of Regret(m), from the wilderness of fuck all. I guess they're interesting but they sound too much like the belong on the Garden State Soundtrack for me to enjoy an album's worth.

9. Iggy Pop - Repo Man, from the Repo Man soundtrack. Look at me! I am wallowing in a pit of pathetic self-loathing. I am the dork with both the Garden State and Repo Man soundtrack on my computer and above this I am 'bagging on the former. I am approaching a transhumanist singularity of pretentious yuppie hipsterism.

10. The Vandals - (Illa Zilla) Lady Killer, from Stage Diving to the Oldies. I still owe fulsome a copy of this awesome album of bands that would probably all get together to kick the shit and teeth out of me. Fear would probably knife me in the side and leave me bleeding out in a dumpster. Incidentally, I once referenced Fear in a discussion with a philosophy professor about Francis Bacon and then I found out that professor was a punker in his youth. I am sorta surprised he didn't kick me teeth out on a regular basis but he did regularly dispatch my shoddy analysis of the great minds in front of the entire class of lazy undergrads. I certainly deserved both.

11. Prof Longhair - Big Chief, from Rare Funk Vol 5-Afro Funk. I think I got this from Fluxblog. Lily Allen sampled it on Knock Em Out. I should investigate the rest of these volumes while picking up Battlestar Galactica season 3 this weekend. Fuck off, I like it.

Me and Other People

Despite being a generally nice guy and someone that enjoys both a fine turn of phrase and leg, I really get tired of other people at times. I just get sick and fucking tired of being around other people. It doesn't help that my apartment is such a mess right now that it is no longer the sanctuary I need it to be. I'll have to work on that tonight.

I don't want to be needed but I need to be wanted.

My Recent Absess

I've been getting minor bloody noses every night since Sunday. It's just like high school. That hotel's atmosphere was way too dry for my delicate mucus membrane. It was like the Gobi Desert. Isn't a gobi at species of fish, too? I think it is. Anyway, I am going back to the cave for today.

My Recent Absence

Sorryfolks, I have been out of the blogorama for the last week with a conference. The conference was all about how to maintain a blog and keep it updated. I'll report more next week.

The Debates Rage On

12. Truth

Wikipedia's entry for "truth" should be applauded for its cleanliness and concision; it touches on schools of thought like constructivist theory and philosophers like Kant, then directs users to those respective pages. But the battle behind the scenes is much uglier, running through 12 archived pages with subject headings that range from "truth in jurisprudence" and "the semantic theory" to "Oi! You SIMPLIFY!!!!!" and "Please Kill Me Now!" The behind-the-scenes discussion captures Wikipedia's tendency to collapse into autobiography. "When you trace out all availible information from science and experiences," Jiohdi says, beginning a long take on a personal approach to truth, "they all trace back to one core understanding, namely, that everything perceived is generated by the perceiver and is thus not a completely reliable guide to reality nor truths about reality." "These," Rick Norwood responds, "are beliefs discovered by most people in their sophomore year."

Too bad The Great Orange One's page didn't make it to the list. That cobag can't even get decent ratings with the Onion.

I AGREE ENTIRELY

FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It�s Alyson Hannigan

Holy Shit Part the Nth

Wow.

I impressed myself with that one.

DAMN.

Now That is Irony

I wonder how a person changes from a "crusading" attorney general to a prostitute-hiring governor?

Is that similar to the thing that happens to most people that get an MBA and a website? You know, where they suddenly become 'libertarian' or whatever they call neo-cons these days.

Dude! Check Out This Sweet Blackwater Video Game!

Is anyone else just a little bit disturbed by how close to the bone they are cutting it with Army of Two? These commercials are every gun nut's dream. Maybe I have just reached my limit. I have yet to install Call of Duty 4 because I have only recently acquired my new computer and also because it does not feature the Wehrmacht and Nazis. There is a difference for me between re-enacting World War II battles and realistic scenarios of the current or near future global war.

Plus, skull masks? Come on. It just screams "kill anyone you want, it won't matter nobody can see your face." Without a face, we have no conscience.

Steven Spielberg vs Uwe Boll: 147-1

May 23rd is going to be one interesting day. I hereby pledge that I will see both movies on opening weekend, in the same night if possible.

I would love to see Uwe Boll and Steven Spielberg in a cage match. I wonder if Stevie has the Eye of the Jew.

Thanks Kathleen, I would say I owe you one, but instead I will allow you to claim that you won one of the snap battles in which I trounced you.

Gary Gygax Achieves Ascendance to Seven Heavens from Material Plane

Gary Gygax, whom you all better know, died yesterday in Lake Geneva. I was lucky enough to meet the guy who inspired basically every role-playing game out there when I was in college. He was nice and totally cool with all of the fanboys and fangirls at the local convention. I was online last night in one of the many fantasy worlds descended from gary Gygax's imagination and a lot of kids didn't even recognize his name. I felt sorry for those kids. I am not going to bore you with tales of how many systems and versions of D&D I have played and currently own, but I will tell you about this totally bitchin' cavalier/monk multiclass character concept I had: an absinthe addicted Don Quixote with paranoid schizophrenia and a specialization in Tai Chi to combat his dementia. Awesome, huh?

Order of the Stick and Penny Arcade both have nice tributes up.

More Captioned Candidates for Your Bemusement

Even More Stupid Captions!

The Secret Project That I Have Been Hiding is Now Revealed

...to be dumb jokes about Presidential candidates, current and former:

Who Unplugged the Internet?

Work has been relaxing since the internet connection went kerblooie on Monday morning. I have gotten caught up on lots of filing and even solved a tricky problem involving mysterious and reproducing printer drivers on the network.

My new computer arrived while I was home for lunch today. It's totally badass. Supreme Commander is going to be SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET.

World Tour 2008: The Genius Ages Like a Fine Wine or Scotch...or Cheese

So, Bossy is doing her roadtrip and I am totally stealing her idea. If you want me to swing by your city and show you precisely how I roll*, then clear off the couch, clean out the bong, wash out the funnel, and put the pizza in the oven cuz I am going on a frigging world tour again!

The last one involved a brief stay in London**, Vienna, Bratislava, Poprad, and the High Tetras. If you want me to visit your town, let me know. The list so far includes Bahston, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

* Off the curb and into the gutter?
** Heathrow doesn't count, you pretentious jerk.
*** Who the fuck let this asshole in?
**** I am crashing your chundernozzling cobag-slurp fest.
***** Piss off, ass face!
****** Oooo, now I'm scared, I'll be back, comuffin.

UPDATE: Unless people buy me tickets, this world tour is sticking to the continental countries. If I get to three countries, I will probably be on the run from the authorities. And Anton Chigurh.

HORK!

Should soymilk be this lumpy? I grew up in the shadow of UHT milk and know that sometimes lumps are okay, but this is a little ridiculous. It tastes fine but has the consistency of flu-snot.

UPDATE: No, the soymilk should not be that lumpy. I had some on Sunday night after shaking the carton and then, about 30 seconds later, felt like redecorating my bathroom. I spent the rest of the evening feeling awful. The strange part of this ordeal was that the drink tasted fine. This will teach me to buy two cartons at once.

Wang Free Friday? A Dream Deferred No Longer

I was reminded of my supreme awesomeness while reading Fart Party (long story but I enjoy pretty much any web comic that contains dumb jokes by smart people) and decided to kinda phone in this post with a link to evidence of my supreme bossness.

So yeah, I'm resting on my laurels, but they are some pretty fat laurels, indeed.

The Washington Moment

People may talk about the Hollywood moment being rather existential in a way like realizing you just snorted coke off the same tits that Johnny Depp did in that one movie where he wore a fat suit and snorted coke off some tits, or realizing that you are watching some bums that live in the dumpster behind the Warner lot act out a scene from Space Jam but they are really the voice actors from Space Jam. I have heard a few people describe their "I've arrived-DC style" moments and they usually run like this:

"So I was desperate for a bathroom and this meeting just won't fucking end. Like I give a shit about farm subsidies when I've got a turtle head sprouting. I am just glad it was a conference call, so I could mute my microphone when I needed to let one rip. Anyway, so the meeting call ends and I scoot out of the office, doing that funky walk you do when you really have to clench like your pants' life depends on it. I get to the bathroom and it's full. All of these fucking douchebags in blue shirts and khaki pants are standing around the urinals like it's a goddam fencing competition and I can see that all three stalls are occupado. No foot tapping allowed, though. HAHA! So finally two representatives, they were wearing dark blue suits so probably Reps or something, get out of the far two stalls and I bolt for the first one. I clean off the seat and struggle with the little paper ring thingy that is supposed to protect you from the Chilean Buttslug or whatever and sit down. I am slowly relaxing and about to expel some serious waste when someone comes stomping into the bathroom and runs into the empty stall next to mine. He had nice wingtips on and did not bother with the paper donut. He was in such a hurry that he wasn't even bothering to hold his pants off the floor. I could see the tag on the pants, Armani, bro, and they are probably soaking up water and piss off the floor and the dude just lets one rip. I mean, I have had a chile relleno with green chili salsa with horchata and all that awesome stuff go right through me before, but this was the foulest, most unholy, ripping-the-fabric-of-space-time shitting that I have never heard before. It was like that scene in Not Another Teen Movie, except real and right next door. This poor fucker must have eaten the whole cow. I can see his feet shaking with each burst of explosive fecal expulsion. Needless to say, when the smell hit me, I got all dizzy and reeled like I had been hit in the face with a hammer. Fucking nasty. I clenched up mid-shit, it was so bad. It was hideous. I had to concentrate to squeeze out the remainder. By the time I finished, diarrhea dude next was done as well. So I am washing my hands and then I look up at the guy and it's KARL FUCKING ROVE. HAHA!"

That probably could have been a shorter example.

I have had my own Washington Moments like the time Donald Rumsfeld's motorcade forced me off the road or the time some puke got me fired from my night job. These two events are both definitively DC in their provenance but a recent event has topped them, Federally speaking: I invited a woman to have an extravagant dinner with me and a lawyer working for the Senate Ethics Committee has said that it would violate Congressional Ethics Rules if she were to accept the offer.

I was just cockblocked by the Senate Ethics Committee. How can you possibly get more Washington than that? I could take the libertarian perspective and feign indignance at the interruption of my free enterprise, but I am enjoying the hilarity of the government's response to my apparently fearsome wang.

UPDATE 11:02 AM: I hereby declare that "I got cockblocked by the Senate Ethics Committee" is my phrase and I will put it on a shirt and you can buy it from me. In other words, dibs and no stealing.

UPDATE 4:48 PM: The Federal Government may not bow to terrorists but it will grant my demands. The Chief Counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee has granted approval to my date to accept my offer of dinner. ALL FEAR THE MIGHTY WANG. MY WANG HAS BEATEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, TRULY IT IS EPIC. Incidentally, I may now have an unfortunately unfounded level of regard for myself. I still plan on selling t-shirts, but they may now feature something about my wang's victory, possibly pictorial in nature.

Coffee Question

While making the office a pot of coffee this morning, I remembered something from my childhood. I was using both nozzles on the water cooler to fill the carafe. I had never thought about it before but assumed that it was faster than if I had only used one nozzle. I asked myself, "is this only a happy delusion or does the pot fill faster?" One of my brothers had once told me that using two straws in the same drink will not allow me to drink it any faster. I think I was around six or seven and believed everything they told me. Don't ask me about asparagus.

Is this true? I don't know. I haven't had my coffee yet.

In unrelated news, this is irritating.

The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.

I do have every confidence that this program will result in the largest brain melting yet experienced by government officials. Screaming Fist will look like a walk in the park after Project Reynard. I forsee agents wandering the halls of power, unshaven, unwashed, unsane, and constantly muttering "lol lulz wtf omgwtfbbqpwnd pwndpwndpwnd" until finally put down by the very institution that created them. Maybe added a caffeinated corn and milk solid to my coffee was not the best idea this morning. It isn't Tuesday.

In somewhat related news, I bought some books last week: Dark Heresy, 1984, and Brave New World. There is a further level of relation within all three that I found amusing. Some might even say it was subversively amusing.

UPDATE: The asparagus thing is unrelated to pee pee. I'll detail it tomorrow.

As Close to an Official Apology as You'll Get

I missed Razor. I was all set to enjoy it and then forgot that it was that week when it was.

Running of the Moose?

If they had been moose, or meese or whatevs, the streets would have run red with the blood of the perhaps less than innocent.

The Computer Whisperer

Given: Computers are rational beings.
Given: Humans are irrational beings.

Therefore: ...

I have no idea why I am able to solve some problems and not others. I also have no idea why my solution "Let's right-click it and see what happens" works so often.

Doing My Homework

I fucked up my homework assignment for last Wednesday's editing class. I forgot about it over the long weekend and left it to try and do on the bus to class. We had been assigned an Aviation Magazine (or some such title) article to proofread at the lowest level of authority. This level of authority means that we query the author instead of researching and making changes and identify errors in spelling and grammar. We were advised to look for the really big mistakes more than the smaller mistakes, but the smaller mistakes are important as well.

In the second paragraph, the article said that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were used in Vietnam. I thought this sounded bogus, so I circled it to be queried.¹ I continued reading and scanning but only got to the end of the first page before I had to stop as the train had filled up and I had to fight to get off at my stop.

After being chided by the instructor for not completing the assignment, I felt like an ass. I was saved, sort of, when the instructor learned that most of the class had slacked on this assignment as well and gave us another week to work on it. I glanced at the article during the class break after our proofreading marks quiz and spotted the big mistake she had kept trying to get us to notice: the article has no conclusion.² The article cruises on discussing the merits, flaws, uses, and designs of UAVs but ends without a conclusion two paragraphs after starting a new topic in the UAV discussion. This article was not a draft, it was a final copy that was printed. Somebody got righteously shafted for this one.

1 Having just searched "UAVs used in Vietnam", I am surprised to say that I was wrong about that one. You learn something new every day.
2 I am still not sure whether I like editing and proofreading because it is a whole career that will be spent telling people how wrong they are or because it is a vital role in crafting pieces of art like Motherless Brooklyn or 1984, both of which I happen to reading now.³
3 I am also reading From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain. Fun stuff.

I Like It

I was doing some actual work on Amazon and found these. I cracked up a little.

A Serious Case of the Funnies

I have some funny stories to relate at some point in the coming, supposedly unbusy weekend. I have the feeling that I have forgotten something that I said I would do this weekend.

Our Top Stories for the Six O'Clock News Hour:
The Funny Story About the Pittsburgh Greyhound Station JAG Officer, the Genius, and the Old Man Who Dated a Hermaphrodite.
The Funny Story About the Cute Girl on the Greyhound Bus Who Hit on the Genius Because She Wanted to Cheat on Her Lying Husband with As Many Men as Possible in One Weekend, Or Why I Started Turning Down Offers of Sex.
The Funny Story About the Thing I Did One Time That I Can't Quite Remember at the Moment.
A Celebrity Dream Cameo That Also Heavily Featured Zombies That I only Half Remembered.
Stories of Guitar Hero.
Another One About a Thing.
A Celebrity Dream Cameo Featuring Me and The Narrator From E! True Hollywood Stories.
A Story About the Patriarchy and How It Affects My Penis, Or A Not-So Funny Story About Going to the Doctor's Office.

Incidentally, I went to the Doctor's office to start the ball rolling on having some guy I've never met before grab my balls and possibly stick something up my bum. Some firefighters on TV told me that it was pretty important to have some random person check out your prostate. Physicals are fucking weird, man. That's not all I have to say about that. Any time an M.D. says the word "syphilis" around me, I am going to flinch, even if it is in the sentence, "While we're screening you for everything else, let's toss in a syphilis screen as well." Now, I have no reason to be alarmed about any STD or STI because I am a careful dude like that, but while I have insurance, I figured I would take advantage of it and because I thought I didn't have enough to get neurotic about and thought I would throw in some scary fucking tests. There's a couple of jokes in there and some genuine nail-chewing.

Narp

I have seen this movie and all I can say about it is that I was laughing so hard that I could not summarize the plot. I think it went something like this:

There's this woman and her robot and they run around and do some shit and then run around some other place and then the get captured but then they get away and then the Colossus of Rhodes attacks them on a beach and she's wearing this space bikini for the whole movie but never gets naked and then David Hasselhoff shows up with a Lightsabers and the floating head from Zardoz but it's a mask and he shoots lasers from his eyes and then the movie ends. It might have been in Italian. I was sober. Honest.

This interview with the writer-director is a fascinating look at the story of Star Crash. For certain, um, expansive definitions of fascinating.

In a more personal note, I am sorry but there will be no Totall Tarantula Tuesday today as I am not free to tap into that well at present.

It's Frigging True

I can't leave work for one long weekend without everything going to shit. The frigging DSL modem went offline due to a brownout or blackout and the network drive also decided to behave rather naughtily as well. I am not amused. My desk is a mess, I've got reports due in an hour, shit's all fucked, and my hair is just not right today.

I did get to check out that Cal State/Stanford marching band Nintendo thingy and that was cool.

In other news about things that only exist because we allow them to, Faye and Sven totally did it and I called that shit a long time ago. Like six months ago or something.

The Cookie Monster interview on NPR's In Character Blog is worth every glorious second.

I'm a Peaceful Man, But When Angered

I am quite a threat to those under four feet tall:

I can take out 28 five year olds before they drag me down with their small hands and bitey teeth.

Update 2/17/08: I saw this thing on Nikkos' site and I was bored and thought it was vaguely amusing. I did not have to deal with any dating site advertising to take it. Sorry about that. I would never knowingly endorse a dating site, I think they are incredibly lame.

I'll Take Ferris Bueller For 800, Alex

This is all such utter crap. There is no excuse for either of the -isms.

Who's in the Kitchen With Genius?

I knew I had to cook something because Hallmark tells me so and because I said I would a few days ago. Unfortunately, I left the pork chops in the freezer this morning and had only three year old couscous and leftover curry in my fridge. I had no ideas for a meal and little time, but for some reason I had a hankering for wienerschnitzel. Veal is expensive, so I grabbed a pork loin roast that was less than ten dollars, flour, eggs, some salad fixings, and some frozen green beans.

I made the salad, threw the beans in some water to boil, and was flattening the chops I had sliced off the roast when she arrived. I mixed two eggs with a little soy milk because the knowing without knowing part of my brain said I should and I was pretty much operating entirely on that bizarre portion of my grey matter's unspoken and rarely heard advice. I think it may be the snake part of my brain and I don't think I am a parselmouth. If anything, I'm the spider whisperer.

I digress. I soaked the flattened pork slabs in the egg mixture and dropped them in the flour and spice mix. I made sure they were thickly coated and tossed the slabs in the hot olive oil. I cooked three schnitzels and then mixed the flour with the eggs and made a schnitzel-pancake. Pretty frigging good for a guy with no recipe and no prior experience cooking this.

The only odd thing about the night was the question, "Were you trying to make a dinner with my three favorite foods?" I have no idea what she was talking about, I wanted a schnitzel and some green beans. I was also desperate for a salad after three nights of curry and four days of bananas and honey on whole wheat bread. I hate bananas.

So yeah, the Tom Petty Was Right sign is hanging right next to the Homeric Ideal tabard.

Hallmark Continues to Annoy Me

I despise Valentine's Day and have since Kindergarten, but this shit is hilarious.

And Now For Something Less Political Than Yesterday

Also, with disapointingly less pornography. Let's all talk about computers and how they can drive a person mad, both the angry kind and the new jacket kind. My computer started working randomly on Monday night. The circumstances under which it died were odd enough but this is just damn peculiar. The day it died, I had booted it up, checked my email, and logged onto World of Warcraft. Two minutes later, it seized in mid-flight and would not respond to keyboard commands or reboot. I turned it off with the hard switch on the back, waited a few minutes, and tried to boot it. It would get about 2 seconds into the sequence after I hit the power button and then stall out. I blew out the dust and tried again.

After conversations with friends, I suspected that the power source might have died and the hard drives didn't have enough juice to spin up. When I tried again, they hummed like they were spinning and had the right kind of vibrations, so no dice on that idea. I then figured that it was good and broke and it was probably the chip and just left it to sit and not-think about what it did. Over the next week, I tried once or twice to get it to work, to no avail.

This past Monday night, I tried again and it booted up fine and has worked for the last two days. One of the Brothers of Indeterminate Number thinks I may have had a bit of dust that caused a jump between two capacitors or resistors, possibly even a mis-aligned samoflange, causing the computer to stop startup. By not turning it on for five days, I let the power drain out of the electro-flimflam and the sparking-wangdoodle and the computer was able to boot properly gain. This sounds more like magic then the way computers usually behave. I suspect witchcraft and I now who to blame.

Emu Party Still Strong in the Congressional Chambers

First, the Democratic Party:
Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Feingold (D-WI), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Yea

And now the First National Party for the Preservation of Emuteurotomy:
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Carper (D-DE), Nay
Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
Conrad (D-ND), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Nay
Kohl (D-WI), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lieberman (ID-CT), Nay
Lincoln (D-AR), Nay
McCaskill (D-MO), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Nay
Nelson (D-NE), Nay
Pryor (D-AR), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay
Salazar (D-CO), Nay
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Webb (D-VA), Nay

Thanks a lot.
Feingold gets it right, again.
Posting style totally stolen from fish.

Still Not Enough Room For All The Porn

Scientists continue to lag behind in pornography storage capacity. In fact, leading UN scientists estimate that given the rate of porn production and current storage techniques, the world stands to lose an estimated 45 minutes of vintage pornographic 8mm and 16mm film by the year 2012.

"If we don't act now and take drastic steps to digitize those remaining 6 or 7 home videos from 1967, we could lose them forever," says Dr. Hugh Johnson, Chief Erotica Archivist of the Library of Congress, in an address at the AVN Awards. "As I'm sure we're all aware, the types of film used in the 60s and 70s becomes very brittle with age and must be handled delicately, rather like breast implants. The longer we wait, the likelihood increases that we will never be able to again enjoy those blurry and grainy images of hairy people humping on a shag carpet in a finished basement in Moosehead Neck, Wisconsin. We must secure funding to preserve all of our great nation's wonderful fucking history."

Dr. Johnson received the largest standing ovation at the entire conference.

Sources Say: You're Wrong, Genuis

According to a source on the Hill: "You're wrong. I checked with someone who checked with someone working with the Senate Finance Committee[!!!] and they said that the stimulus check will not be taxable. Democrats are better at this then Republicans." [Emphasis mine cuz, wow]

So, my earlier post about this topic was wrong. I received that information from an H&R Block person when I was inquiring about the cost per tax return. I'll be more thorough with my facts in the future and I'll file on my own this year, thanks!

Incidentally and totally unrelated to any stimulus plan that may or may not ever reach my wallet, I dropped a wad on a new home computer and then my old one started working last night. It's a frigging conspiracy, I tell ya! The graphic rendering on the new one is going to melt my face with dual 8500s.

I Got Kucinich and Obama

Who will you get? I know someone who got Huckabee. That's what being Catholic does fo ya.

Economic Stimulus? I am Unsurprisingly Not Stimulated

However, that may be due to my ricockulously tight leather hotpants.

Everyone make sure that you record the stimulus check as income when you are filing your taxes in 2009. What? You didn't know that you had to report it? Oh, yes you do. They get you coming and going. Especially on the phone while complaining about your treatment in Gitmo.

Addendum: The H&R Block employee who informed me of this may have been incorrect. I'll do some research and update.

Video Response to Cap'n Trollypants

Bring it, chump.

With a great many thanks to Robola and Pants Crew.

WEstern Thought Wednesday: Changing Realities

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Lt.Gen. Hayden is being pretty clear in this statement. He is saying that waterboarding is bad and considered torture, unless you really need the information and then reality distorts and waterboarding can no longer be regarded torture until reality undistorts.

Of course, if you are a group of individuals that like to sit together in your gym shorts smoking fine Midwestern hash while singing songs and pontificating on the nature of laws and legalities and how a can we really define a country by some line on a map that isn't there when you actually go to the border and pick up coke from that dude on the other side of the invisible line that only really separates our minds, man, then you might come up with this sort of defense. It depends what the meaning of is is. I mean, well, you know what I mean, right? I mean, like, come on, bro. How can we be breaking the law if we don't agree on what the law says? You say waterboarding is torture and I say it isn't. Let's just agree to disagree and go get ripped to the tits, broseph!

Or let's not. We see the same shitty excuse on parade against the global consensus of scientists on climate change. The Bush administration's behavior is killing what's left of our democracy. They have decided time and again that they do not need the Constitution of the United States to govern their actions. Every single time anyone has acted to limit the rampantly unethical and illegal actions of this insane Executive, they have countered with nothing more than a legal-speak version of "No. NONONONONONONONO!" This does not set a dangerous precedent for the next president, this destroys our government. I am not only worried about Bush being able to wiretap every phone in the country, I am worried about Obama or Clinton or McCain or Romney or the 46th through 52nd presidents doing the same thing. I am worried about every following president making signing statements that nullify every law passed. I am worried about a Congress that refuses to stop this nonsense. I am worried about a Judiciary that presides over the erosion of the constitutional checks and balances. I am worried about our future as a country.

Either the Best or Absolute Worst

I am drawn to say that this is sublime. Or subliminal.

Lots of Differences

I am still torn about the primaries. On the one hand, our political system needs massive reform since non-swing states don't matter in Federal elections and our voting machines are as likely to work as they are not and on the other hand...well actually, it is hard to get past that first hand. However, there are lots of people out there that don't have two hands on which to judge a candidate because they were maimed by land mines, cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance that have been tossed around willy-nilly by irresponsible nations.

This isn't an issue that really affects Americans because we have not had the distinct displeasure of hosting a modern war on our continent. We don't have to worry about losing a limb when we go camping or having the car explode when taking the scenic route. I am sure that Senator Clinton has some reason for voting the way she did, but I don't know if I care to listen to it. Votes like these seem simple to us, but we aren't the Senators. We just vote for them in the hopes that they represent us. As a citizen without a vote or a Senator, I hope that all Senators act in the interests of all citizens.
The Amendment
International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Pooter Broken Again

/sigh

For Your Approval: The Federal Budget

In the words of one Hill staffer who shall remain anonymous, "It's bullshit."

One Last Aravosis Post

I am surprised Aravosis isn't pissing and moaning about the Senate Finance Committee stimulus plan. I mean, holy shit dude, they're like totally only giving you $500 dollars if you make under $75,000 a year instead of the $600 of the House plan. Dude, like OMG, that's totally taking money out of your pocket! You should totally get all huffy and throw a fit on your blog about it, Aravosis.

Also, freak cobag drops eight inch log. That post displays a complete and utterly irrevocable lack of understanding of both global climate change and global warming.

Make sure you change the post title every five minutes to prevent other sites from linking to yours, even though you have more ads on Americablog that Vanity Fair. Speaking of vanity...

Author's Note: Getting "all huffy" has nothing to do with Aravosis' gay status, even if he claims that means that he can call people sexist insults, The Genius only thinks of Aravosis as a cobag.

There and Bake Again and The Lord of the Confections

As I have made abundantly and belligerently clear, I made some fucking amazing, fandangtastic, scrumbumdiddlyumptious cookies for the Holiday Bake-Off 2007 cookie contest.

I secured tins for these mightily addicting concoctions of absolute sweetness, one each per judging location. I carefully wrapped my cookies, if such a meager word can be used in the description of my creations, in layers of wax paper so that they would travel securely and arrive uncrumbed. I sealed the tins with packing tape, so that they would not dry out and stalefy while in angel's flight to their sweet princes and princesses of judgery.

I made one critical error in this process. I took them to a store with which I have a somewhat troubled history. One of the brothers of indeterminate number was a former employee of this shipping and packing establishment. This may have had something to do with the events that happened next.

I paid for a detailed packing job with involving bubble wrap and a box to convey my cookies, if such an ordinary word can be used in the description of my creations. The unfortunate events happened after I paid a high price for security and shipping and left the store. Somehow, a "miscommunication" and a "misunderstanding" lead my tins of cookies to be wrapped in a paper bag, labeled, and shipped. This faulty, insufficient, and EXPENSIVE label tore off during shipment. The packages were sent back to the store whence they came and I was notified over the Christianic Holy Weekend of Saturnalia of this "MISTAKE".

"OMG!"
"WTF!"
I exclaimed with a clamor!
How could this be? I prepared with such rigor!

On the day I arrived in the store to inquire after the packages I had hoped would be enshrined on the judges' mantles, I met two employees. Two employees who were having a lovely day eating my cookies, if such an insignificant word can be used in the description of my creations. THEY WERE EATING MY FUCKING COOKIES. They were eating my fucking cookies. They were eating the cookies over which I had slaved and slaved. They were eating the carefully written messages of hope! They were eating my good tidings! They were eating my in jokes! They were eating my cobagz! They were eating my fucking cookies!

I retained a leash upon my temper and did not succumb to the temptation to burn the building to the ground and salt the earth upon which it stood. I asked them why they had opened my pakcage and begun eating the contents. They said that they had found them on the counter and thought the tins were gifts for having to work the day after the holy day. I called the manager and she flew down with a dash. We exchanged unpleasantries and harsh words. I am ashamed to admit that at one point I implied physical violence after she admitted that she might have had something to do with the faulty packing job. An offhand comment to a new employee resulted in the completely worthless paper bag packing job.

In the end, I was refunded the money that I spent on the packing ($60). The manager gave me a song and dance about the shipping fees and how the store was not a franchise, it was a corporate location and she could not offer refunds for the shipping in this situation. She also said that since I had not insured the packages that she was not liable for her employees eating them. I was apoplectic with rage and told her to, "eat a steaming pile of dogshit" and gave her a suggestion as to where she could find some. Then I left.*

I was enraged!
I was infuriated!
I left the store in a huff,
I let loose a mighty bellow!

I was sad!
I was mad!
I wanted to run in the buff,
I was indeed not mellow!

The truly disappointing part was that my cookies will never be tasted by judges and declared without doubt the winners for all time, all universes, and all realities. I was able to bring some to my other brother's, of indeterminate number, house for consumption by his family and my aunt. They all thought they were amazing and extremely impressed. My brother's mother in law, a grandmother, asked if I had used beer in the recipe, but if I had she didn't mind because they were excellent. My aunt, another grandmother, also said that these cookies were wonderful and was surprised that I had produced a cookie, if such a boring word can be used in the description of my creations, of such quality.

Since both of these women are grandmothers and since everyone agrees that grandma made the best cookies, I feel safe in declaring myself the Winner In Absentia of the Holiday Bake-Off 2007.

Sure, I Sound Informed and Smart

...and with a smile like mine, people really want to believe me. I could probably act the part of a talking head quite well. Could I live with myself if that were my life? Could I endure the knowledge that it was the confidence in my voice and the sincerity in my eyes that changed minds and won converts and not the strength of my arguments?

I doubt it. I feel bad enough that I just won a water cooler conversation with both traits and a smidgen of recent campaign news. I wouldn't mind being persuasive and influential, but I object to the manner by which I might achieve both.

Music Post Coming, Seriously Guys, I Mean It This Time

I am unusually swamped at work and trying to do more with my evenings than get fatter and acquire more pieces of my Tier 4 gear. I am exercising regularly again which is nice and actually trying to amke dinner of some sort, instead of just buying ready made shit all the time.

All I have time to say right now is: go see Super Furry Animals if you get a chance. Make the chance to go see them.

So Now I Owe the Uncanny Canadian

He told me that I could not miss Holy Fuck, The Fiery Furnaces and Super Furry Animals. I feel like I have found something not at all hidden from me but I desperately missing nonetheless. I guess it's kinda like love, except I'm not able to feel that because of all the cold, dead tentacles.

Different Financial Situations in the District of Columbia

I make 41,000 dollars on the button, not counting my benefits which I have no idea how to calculate. We'll make a liberal assessment of my benefits and set them at 6,000, including the two courses my employer has payed for me to take. Maybe very liberal.

My debts: 5,700 in credit cards that all came from stupid shit I bought a while ago or plane tickets to weddings that I didn't pay off as fast as I should.

My monthly payments:
Cable/internet: $70
Cell phone: $95 (really need to cancel that bullshit Data Plan)
Auto/Renters Insurance: $38 ten months of the year
Electricity: $20 a month (compact flourescents and smart usage)
Rent: $850 for a 427 sq. ft. efficiency in the District (rent control means $875 on March 1st)

Taxes:
I dunno, maybe 30 or 35% of gross pay? Something like that. Unlike some fluffy cobagz, I don't mind paying my taxes because I understand what taxes allow. A lot of that I don't like, but that is why I try to change government without breaking the law.

School Debt:
Haven't been to grad school.

Basically, if you want to pay less than Aravosis and all his "friends" pay to live in the District, you can do it easily. I get the feeling that he lives rather high on the hog, since he claims somewhere around $1200 a month for rent/mortgage but since he keeps renaming or deleting the posts, we can't really ever know the truth. We also have a hard time determining the truth since he keeps breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces so as to make it invisible. All I'm saying is that I am fucking terrible with money (Evidence: have yet to file a tax return for, um, 2004) and if I were earning 75,000 dollars, I would have no debt and be considering either grad school or a trip to Europe or Tibet, while also saving for a house.

Maybe you just suck at life, Aravosis, as badly as you suck at taking valid criticism?

Your Friend is an Idiot but You're a Cobag, Aravosis

In DC, well, again, keep checking out those studios. And another friend has a 900 sq ft condo, and paid more for it than another friend's parents paid for their 6000 sq ft house.

That is a perfect example of something I have said for years, condos are overpriced. I could buy a house in Takoma Park for the prices morons pay for condos. If you really want to buy a condo, wait a bit. Keep saving your money. There are so many condos being finished in DC ever month and all of them are overpriced. Bid under. Like a hundred grand under and you'll likely still get an agent to accept a bid. There are buildings all over town with empty units.

Disecting your statement, I wonder if we can compare those two examples and locate any Emuteuronomy Particles. Your friend bought a 900 square foot condo and paid more than another friend's parents paid for a house TRIPLE the size of the one my parent's owned in Chevy Chase. I'm gonna call bullshit on this one as it reeks of emu and I can clearly see fluffy down all over it. First, appeals to your "friend" are shitty arguments. Second, there is no way your other "friend's parents" bought a 6000 square foot house for less inside the city limits of any city on the East Coast, except maybe waterfront property in New Orleans. A quick search using Our Internet Overlord for "6,000 square foot house for sale in Maryland" and another for "900 square foot condominium in DC" shows that you are so fucking wrong, it must hurt to be you. Unless your "friend" paid way over market and your "friend's parents" are living in Butt Fuck Egypt, there is no way that statement is true. And if that is the case, then your argument was made in poor faith as you are comparing two entirely different real estate markets.

As for the rest of your post, Aravosis, I am formally submitting a reclassification proposal the Board for Emu Identification, Oversight, Theory, Classification and Husbandry to have you relabeled a fluffy cobag. You have used the tools of the right-wing bloggers once too many times, Aravosis. Do not ask for whom the emu squawks, you squawk so that all may hear your squawking and know the sound of the former liberal consumed by selfishness and pride.

Friday Embarassing Music List to the Nth: January 25th

N. Madeleine Peyroux - Don't Cry Baby (everything to do with the Chucklette)
N+1. Johnny Cash - I'm Leaving Now (nothing to do with the Chucklette)
N+2. The Shins - Fighting in a Sack (not a reference to sweaters or the boli stuffing them)
N+3. Campo - En Mi/Soledad (from Bajofondo Tango Club, unlike other posers, I can actually tango the dress right off you, even you Billy Pilgrim)
N+4. Timo Maas - Eclipse (from Music for the Maases, a DJ set that I got because I liked his song with Kelis)
N+5. Glen Hansard - Leave (from the Once soundtrack, enough said)
N+6. Silver Jews - Honk If You're Lonely (from American Water, that album is nice for sober nights or less than sober nights)
N+7. Joan As Police Woman - Eternal Flame (um, what? Where did this come from?)
N+8. The Fiery Furnaces - Waiting to Know You (from the 930 Club show I missed in 2006 via Fluxblog, I am not missing their show this Sunday with Super Furry Animals!)
N+9. Ben Kweller - Lollipop (nice enough)
N+10. The Flaming Lips - Feeling Yourself Disintegrate (the spider bite song may annoy the Uncanny Canadian, but I still like the album)
N+11. Concrete Blonde - The Sky is a Poisonous Garden (I hope the next song makes up for this one)
N+12. Camera Obscura - Suspended from Class (phew!)
N+13. The Cherry Tempo - In Hindsight I Know (nice enough, I suppose I should check them out more)
N+14. Golden Smog - Shooting Star (from the Clerks soundtrack...we were all classless teenagers, once)
N+15. Guided By Voices - Buzzard and Dreadful Crows (live and not really that interesting)
N+16. Sontiago - Track 5 (Lady-rapping from Maine. Pretty good!)
N+17. DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like Pt. 3 (William Hurt says it best)
N+18. Of Montreal - Vegan in Furs (I keep meaning to get the album with Bizarre Celebrations on it)
N+19. Caribou - After Hours (from Andorra)
N+20. Animal Collective - Bees (appropriately odd)

Full Frito, Now in Paperback and an Advance Warning

I could be wrong, but isn't that Smokedog on the cover?

Start saving people, this motorcycle is going on my birthday required-gift list. You failed last year, don't fail me again. Failure makes me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I take it out on your porcelain.

I Found Pictures of Pinko Punko's Tattoos

Pinko makes his allegiance known when lifting weights in his front lawn. I think he might have gone a little overboard with this one, though. Kinda tacky.

On a more serious note, this tattoo offends both my musical and editorial sensibilities. Is that Labatt's new pizza flavored micro-brew?

Check out the rest at, frequently unsafe for work, Horrible Tattoos.

UPDATE: Jenny found this and I like it.

Review of Cloverfield

(This will be reposted at Reviews N Stuff should that site return.)

Cloverfield is what it is and what is is a monster movie told from the perspective of the most annoying, trustafarian New Yorkers you will ever want to see crushed by tons of falling building or eaten by bizarre tentacled monsters from beyond your imagination. It was not nearly as annoying as the trailers make it seem, but it was extremely shaky, so if you get nauseous, bring your dramamine. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and found almost all of it entertaining and startling.

Despite having a fun time and enjoying the movie, I found all of the characters except the camera man and the Zooey-Deschanel lookalike, Lizzy Caplan, to be extremely irritating. Rob was perfectly scruffy groomed and looked like he was maybe 25 and living in a million dollar apartment that was the epitome of trashy-chic. The fact that a man so self-absorbed would run headlong into danger for a woman he had mistreated was harder to believe than a giant monster from across the eighth dimension attacking New York. The only character I felt any connection with was Hud, the cameraman. He seemed like a basically nice guy that had been friends with Rob and Rob's brother since childhood and had been corrupted only slightly with their conceit. His identity was entirely wrapped around Rob and his motivation was well established. Rob's was less well established and it hurt the plot.

Speaking of the plot, I thought the basic human element of the story was weak. Summary without spoilers: Monster attacks city. Chaos ensues. Yuppie seeks to rescue girl he didn't call for weeks after sleeping with her. Rocks fall. People die. This rescue-the-babe plotline was the weakest part of the movie. I think the characters would have been far less annoying if they had just been running for their lives. As it is, it felt a lot like a first-person shooter videogame where you are unable to loot any guns and get blasting. The monster dictated a lot of the heroes' travel routes by savaging New York and the movie would have been better without the silly love motivation.

Other reviewers have said that that they felt that the monster seemed like it was conveniently after the characters. It did pretty much turn up everywhere they went, but it is important to remember that the group was heading toward the monster as it stomped all over midtown Manhatten. There are a few incidents that are just too damned coincidental for me to dismiss. It sorta felt like the monster was coming to New York because it got the e-vite to Rob's going away party and was just horribly clumsy as it attempted to chase Rob down to give him a big hug. And had the worst case of lice you have ever seen.

At this point, you might think I didn't like Cloverfield. I really did enjoy it. The extras were pitch perfect and the shots of the monster were stunning. This is the only movie I have seen that did not irritate me with the stupid shaky-cam. I am not prone to getting sick from this, even though I can get carsick quite easily. The shaky-camis used in a lot of TV shows and movies in which it is totally unnecessary. Cloverfield is the exact opposite. Hud is shooting the events because he thinks that people will want to know what happened and also because he sure doesn't seem to know what to do with himself without it.

The atmosphere of a city under attack from a giant thing is perfect. There were times when it looks a lot like the footage from 9/11 and this may be hard to deal with for some people. The papers blowing down from shredded office buildings and flaming debris everywhere was impressive. Every second of the movie felt genuine, except for the emoting and the obsessive monster attacks on our main characters. I felt submersed in the story, despite the occasional bounce on skeptic meter (the tunnel scene knocked me completely out of my suspended disbelief because it was ripped straight out of The Descent).

I recommend it to all monster movie fans with strong stomachs. If you are the kind of moron who must have everything explained to you in every movie, then you aren't going to enjoy it. If you don't like richer-than-thou yuppies, you will enjoy it.

Errors in Logic, Additional Pantload Edition

"As much as it may shock some, I'm not the first person to set the record straight. Maybe those authors didn't penetrate the public debate because they tend to write books titled "Illiberal Policymaking and Culture Formation, the Anglo-American Experience, 1912-2007." If I'd followed their example, no one would be buying my book, reading it or discussing it. And, you can be sure, I wouldn't have been invited on to "The Daily Show" to get smacked around for 20 minutes."

Jonah, you didn't get smacked around for twenty minutes on A Daily Show because you wrote a brave and thoroughly researched historical treatise that blows wide the conspiracy of neo-classical, liberal-inspired, free-market fascism or however the fuck you choose to rebrand progressive politics. You were verbally beat down because you wrote a steaming pile of soggy garbage that flies merrily on your own gaseous emissions and completely in the face of the facts. Your entire book is a longer version of the playground "I know you are but what am I" defense. You redefine liberal more times in your book and that interview than Michael Jackson has redefined his nose.

If you had performed due diligence and written a piece of historical analysis with sources and citations worth the paper they were printed on, you would have written a very different book indeed. I suspect that you also would have been treatd very differently by Jon Stewart. However, you chose instead to rely on conjecture, assertions and Harry Turtledove's alternative historical fiction. This would be fine were you writing a piece of fanfiction, but your book remains a sad and pathetic attempt at rebranding your political adversaries.

P.S. Your claim that many critics of your book have no authority or insufficient credentials to discredit your book is patently false. You have received no advanced degrees and are not fit to include yourself in the ranks of any scholarly cadres.

Tarantula Tuesday: Brief Post on Science Fiction

I really enjoy science fiction, as a genre and a guiding principle. I don't know what that means either as my brain functions have been compromised by what I hope is a simple ear infection and not one of the sandworms from Ceti Alpha Five. I don't need anyone planting simple suggestions in my brain and then letting me die off because I am only a tanshirt in my mind and in reality we all know that I am probably the reddist of redshirts. If you've ever played paintball with me, you'd know exactly what I mean. If you weren't raised by a family of volcanic rocks, you'd know exactly what I mean and I mean that I don't know where I'm going with this at all.

I will continue to let this post grow later in the day. For now, I forgot where I was in the stream and have lost sight of the banks and I think it's salt water which is impeding my analysis of the chapter and verse of my head. I think I just got back on track but I must leave you anyway. I have a meeting to attend which should be pretty outstanding and if I had a video camera, it would be the highest viewed youtuber minutes after being posted. I think I am expected to talk about something, which is nice since something is a topic about which I can blather on all the live long fucking day.

The thing about caffeine is that it frees you of something you may not want in you, like all other drugs. This one just happens to be legal although if the authorities knew what I was doing with it, they probably would ban it. I say that because Lenny Bruce had a point, as do many other fucking nut job right wingers, making yourself think that someone is after you vindicates those feelings of paranoia and self-importance that totally irrelevant and unimportant people feel to make themselves feel better about their totally anonymous and hopeless lives. Like when I was talking to some people in my first freshman year about how they just frigging knew that the FBI was keeping tabs on them¹ because of their involvement in the BXXXX Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. I wasn't really talking, I was listening and trying to figure out how I could politely leave that boring conversation without resorting to shooting them in the communicator with a laser rifle or something. Eventually I just walked away from them, but later I learned to fling poop at people and they never bothered me again. What's good for the alpha male and all that. As someone who has actually received a variety of levels government clearances, I have no authority to tell people that the FBI cares about them. It's a fucking science fiction club, not Boy Scout Troop U-238.² But these were the sort of people who thought the X-Files was the nightly news, so I guess everyone deserves their daydreams. I think I would throw myself off a bridge if I learned that I had lost the capacity to daydream.

That's basically all a role-playing game is, a collective day dream. Some people get together to watch sports, some people get together to talk sports, and some people get together to kidnap a rival corporation's agent, interrogate said agent in a situation involving moral ambiguities³, and then use the gathered information to steal a shuttle and destroy a transport ship of the previously mentioned corporation.

Despite the fact that society is currently undergoing the longest length of time⁴ without a new episode of Star Trek, this does not mean that we are completely bereft of science fiction. It does mean that the lazy geeks among us are left only with World of Warcraft, the H4LOEZ, EVE online, Surpreme Commander, Mass Effect, Bioshock, endless DVDs, new movies every month that kinda suck and are kinda cool, but that is basically the problem. It isn't that there isn't any new science fiction or that there isn't any easy to get good science fiction, it's that we're all fucking lazy. Role playing games are not easy to coordinate in my life. I am ready to go whenever, but other people in my group have wives, children, cars, orchids, dogs, overtime, taxes, and I have the World of Warcraft which consumes a set amount of time. While it may be fun, the last few weeks I have logged on, I have done exactly the same fucking thing. I do the same couple of quests to get fucking imaginary money to spend on imaginary fucking shit.⁵ I can pretty much only play on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the odd Sunday morning or Friday, but I can only afford to play the game anymore. I rationalize staying at home because I don't have any money to go out on Friday night. So help me Butterscotch Buddha, if the National Gallery of Art were open on a Friday night, I would go down there and stare at a different painting every Friday for hours on end until I could do nothing but write about it. I don't know if you would want to read that or even if I would, but I think that would be amazing. Maybe I'll do that this Saturday and maybe I'll sprout wings and leave this silent planet.⁶

Does it matter if Hollywood can't make a decent scifi movie to save the industry and genre? Do we really need science fiction on television? Are we so bereft of imagination that we can not survive without some other person's idea of what the 24th century will be? Are we capable of surviving without Gil Gerard's Awesomely Hairy Chest? If not, I volunteer to be the next to assume the mantle of Buck Rogers. I have all the credentials necessary: cheesy lines, humorously mild chauvanism, full chest of hair, wavy do, thumbs.

There are plenty of decent authors out there and even more less then decent. I, myself and me continue to not write my screenplays while I sit around notwriting dozens of books. Hell, if you want to get all interesting, you can get some friends together and waste some alien rebel scum with a pulse cannon in a game of Battlelords of the 23rd Century. Or perhaps an implosion field cannon-thingy. If you want to know what war will look like in the future, this is it, despite the fact that war never changes.⁷

There's also Spycraft for those that like their science fiction with a different flavor. Basically, if you don't like the science fiction that is being created by other folks for your easy consumption, make some yourself. That's the best way to cook anyway, toss the recipe into the shredder and throw random ingredients together until you have something that hopefully doesn't make you sick and tastes better than ramen. Also, don't bother reading EW, they wouldn't know decent science fiction if it walked up and sucked out their brains.

1 These days, however, if someone said it was the NSA, I'd just hang up.
2 That troop wins the Golden Matchstick every year for fastest fire lighting. Unfortunately, the last three jamboree areas were designated Superfund sites.
3 Everyone in the group looked at me when we learned we might have to interrogate the agent. I looked at Aristotle and he told me exactly what you think he told me. Not you, you're wrong, but you other people, you're right. I might have imagined this whole scenario, but that is the thing about RPGs. And caffeine.
4 This may or may not be true, I really don't care to verify it.
5 Cue Inevitable Backlash Music
6 Double reference to Christian Mythology on a Triple-Score Self-Deprecating Tile means I phail at life.
7 Turns out I know someone working on press sorta stuff on Fallout 3. I did a huge geekgasm when I found out. I won't break any confidence and neither will my friend, but I hope to view some content soon. I also retain hope that I will be able to waste some mutants on my lawn or cruise by my old video store and vaporize the ruins with a suped-up energy weapon.

Singing in the Brain

I wrote a post for Song of the Day. It's probably being sexed up by the Pinko love machine, but it remains hidden and unsexed by the greater public. Rather like a wang that might be mentioned all too often by other bloggers.

Been Said Before

But I'll say it again. If you aren't out there shoveling your walk and sections of sidewalks after the snow stops, you're a jerk. If you are sitting at home enjoying a nice cup of piping hot cider while your sidewalk turns into a sheet of ice, you're a cobag. You're also liable.

The people in my neighborhood really suck. I'm keeping my eye out for new housing as my lease ends on March 1. I like my apartment and some of my neighbors, but I think I would like more space, even if it meant more roommates. They will have to be spider-friendly roommates.

Library of Congress Has a Flickr Account

DCist used one of the Library of Congress' photographs as their photo of the day for today. This is a pretty damn neat idea and there are already more than 3000 photos online. I thought this picture of a woman inspecting widgets was pretty. The Library is a wonderful resource that I had never used until my current job. It is a lot like all the wonderful free museums that I rarely visit in town.

I did spend a lovely day yesterday strolling through the National Gallery of Art. I wish I had every Wednesday off to wander at my own pace and absorb centuries of art. The Edward Hopper show is great and leaving town soon, so check that out before it leaves.

I was also able to check a new-ish set of exhibits at the Air and Space Museum, which I thought was the Aaron Space Museum until I was twelve. The have a neat section devoted to the history of commercial flight. I got to ride in a simulator and turn do some barrel rolls and not throw up. Hanging upside-down and attempting to maintain a missile lock is damn hard.

Thanks for inviting me to enjoy the art with you, Social Security Administion. You know who you are.

X-Files Movie Still

As a devoted fan who dropped this series like a bad habit when it went off into the mushroom fantasy land, I am barely interested in this. Gillian Anderson still has my heart and I want it back. It's nice to see the agents exploring their wardrobes but unless this movie is really cool and features a beach scene, I doubt I'll care about what they're wearing.

Liveblogging A Daily Show Interview with Jonah "Pantload" Goldberg

Jonah: I iz a liar.
Jon Stewart: You're a cobag and actively hurting America.
Jonah: I iz a rhetorician.
Jon Stewart: Your kind killed Socrates, cobag.
Jonah: I iz kinda lazy.
Jon Stewart: Progressive does not mean racist.
Jonah: I iz a lying, lazy rhetorician who writed a stupid book that pays no attention to factz because I not like reading. Can I haz a cheezburger nao?
Jon Stewart: Shaking your hand is not an excusal of your rampant cobaggery.

And now I go back to not watching television in solidarity with the writers.

Addendum: I kinda wish I was working at a video store and Jonah Goldberg wandered in looking to rent some porn. Of course, his idea of porn is probably something like this, so...



"Free Market Classical Liberalism"...what the fuck? He is just sitting there saying, "Don't call me a fascist because I don't like being called a word that I don't know and won't look up."

You're Doing It Wrong

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull keeps sneaking little glances out for those who are looking. Here is a picture of Indy and folks looking at something marvelous, except for Shia Lebouf who is busy staring at Meganfoxatron. She is so hot, an afterimage of her leaning over Bumblebee's engine was burned into his retinas. And mine, for that matter. DAMN!

Ahem. Some of you might know that I studied anthropology in college, when I wasn't busy flunking computer science courses or scraping out passing grades in philosophy through sheer charm and wit, and I can safely say that this makes me some kind of expert in some forms of pottery. I am fairly certain, I will be checking my text books, that those are most definitely not Mayan or Aztec styles in those brass? gold? pots in that picture. The arch isn't bad and the alligators or whatever aren't too off either, but those urn-thingies are far too Greek. I'm sorry but you're going to have to fix that and reshoot the entire sequence, Spielberg.

Review of Juno

Well, I was going to post this on Reviews N Stuff, but that satellite of Well Rounded Nerds seems to have gone away for the time being. I'll repost this over there, once it comes back up.

I read somewhere on CHUD that Juno is the movie that Little Miss Sunshine really wanted to be. It's earnest, clever, funny and authentically emotional in the same way that LMS was but Ellen Page¹ pulls off something that everyone in LMS wasn't quite able to do, except maybe Allen Arkin. If LMS had come out this summer, it would have had Michael Cera in it, too. In case you've been living in Tora Bora and been too busy YouTubing yourself, Juno is a story about a stupendously hip high school girl who gets all with child.

The dialogue is snappy, slick, funny and trendy, almost too trendy. The first five minutes of the film worried me because everything the people were saying was a perfect example of cool for the Oughts. Listening to this was like watching The Breakfast Club for the first time again and thinking, "Damn, I don't think I'll ever be able to say any of this and I'm okay with that." I think Diablo Cody went to the same high school as Happy Harry Hard-On in Pump Up the Volume and has lived in every cool kid movie since. Or maybe she only ever hangs out with people who say "wizard" and "boss" ironically so often that they've gone from being ironic to being moronic. It's funny how one little phoneme can make all the difference.

Despite this grating early segment², Juno quickly moves into funny and emotional scenes that never stoop to hystrionics or cheap jokes. Juno's matter of fact style was a little odd and at times she seemed more like a 27 year-old hipster than a 17 year-old student but it worked anyway. The scenes with her family were foundation enough for this character that the rest of the movie felt genuine. I particularly enjoyed the transformation of Jennifer Garner's character.

J.K. Simmons was damn convincing in some ways but I was surprised that he wasn't angry at any point. Maybe that would have been a little too trope-y but the uber-understanding father is the new thing with which generations of writers are familiar. Maybe this is some sort of generational thing with fathers, one generation is permanently pissed, the next is absent, the following is supportive and then the next is cybergenic. Michael Cera was essentially window dressing except for a couple scenes but the movie isn't titled "Bleeker." Jason Bateman was just right.

I think movies like Juno both hit and miss when you watch them and think, "Shit, everyone is cool and supportive or loving and generally awesome that I would love to be a pregnant teenager in this world!" It is fun to watch and you don't feel pandered to but it's a little too much better than life could ever be. Maybe that's the point though. A scene featuring some couples auditioning for the baby would probably have sunk deep into cheap laugh territory and an angry dad scene would not have fit with the rest of that character's scenes.

If I had managed to get this posted back in December when I saw the movie, I'd be telling you to go see it before your cool friends tell you to go see it.

1 Honestly? I'm still frightened of Ellen Page after Hard Candy.

2 What the fuck is up with Rainn Wilson? Is he her friend or buddy or something? Who the fuck talks like that to some random teenagers at the corner store? I guess they were friends or something before but it makes no sense and you never see him again and feels like some producer was like "I COMMAND THAT YOU MAKE ME LAUGH MORE. BRING IN SOMEONE FROM THE OFFICE OR SOMETHING."

That Tears It

I can no longer live without seeing ItNotK:aDST. I am changing my plans and seeing this tonight at 7:10 at the Courthouse theater. I know that this means trekking into Virginia but nothing could impede my enjoyment of this movie. Will Sanderson, I wish I had even vaster internet fame because I would love to interview you about working with the Master. I don't want to interview the master himself because he knows how to box, not that any interview I would conduct with Mr. Sanderson would end in violence.

ADDED on Tuesday, Jan. 15th: I wish I had thought of this review style first. I did one of these for Red Dawn a while back, but don't want to look like a choad for self-linkage.

Musclehead: Still a Huge Dipshit.

He's still a cobag, but that is not new. Kevin McCullough makes it pretty clear in his oh-so-cleverly named post that he really just doesn't give a fuck about free expression or raising his own children:

"I hear the libertarian Ron Paul's answer already, "Government has no business censoring freedom of expression." Figures, he's a libertarian."

Don't want your kids playing Mass Effect? Don't buy them a $400 (or whatever an XBOX 360 costs these days) game system. I don't really find this to be a great argument against his pathetic whining that other people included an alien sex scenes in a video games (I wonder what he thought of Aliens VS Predator: Requiem?) but it ought to be said that no one is forcing him or his son to play this game. A point of information: according to our Constitution, Musclehead Moron, our government shall not abridge the freedom of speech. Figures, he's a radio host.

"With it's 'over the net' capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away."

Dude, check out 4chan. Rape-porn is already a click away and free. I personally find it fucking horrible and vile and would like to beat the jerk who rickrolled me on that one, but I still acknowledge that I clicked a link I felt to be suspect and will never go back there again. That does not mean that I want to destroy that site, but it does definitely mean that I would have a long talk with my hypothetical spawn should I find her/him looking at porn of any kind.

Another point that hides below the surface of his post is Kevin's complete disinterest in his son's life until he notices something he doesn't like. I think you spend too much time talking and not enough time listening, Kev-bo. Parenting is not just signing checks and buying shit.

"Yes there will be many snickers that I decided to bring this issue up in the Presidential cycle of 2008 but how refreshing would it be for a President to prove to the nation that his own manhood was not in question and put his pen and signature to a bill that dealt with such simulated sex excess in a way that was punitive to its creators to such a degree that they would never recover from it?"

I think Kevin is demanding that the candidates run around chili-whipping and cock-slapping Bioware employees until they submit to some sort of morality review board. I guess someone had to pick up Jeff Goldstein's slack.

UPDATE 1/17/07: Penny Arcade does it again. Tycho and Gabe make excellent points. I probably should stick to a policy of ignoring hacks and shills like McCullough, but I'm not famous like they are, so I'll keep bashing these idiots when I feel like it. Or when I stumble upon a deliciously stupid piece like this one.

And now for something almost exactly the same...

I have been waiting to buy some RiffTrax since hearing about it from dontEATnachos a while back. There are now quite a few available and I already own several of the movies for which there are tracks, so I am going to buy a couple after I figure out my finances for the month.

I was also just informed of a similar venture being run by Joel Hodgson, Cinematic Titanic. And now I must find room in my 'budget' for this, too.

I use scary quotes here because my financial life has nothing remotely similar to a budget, wherein a person decides how to spend their money in a careful and deliberated manner, and also because my financial situation is frigging scary to anyone with any experience with money. Even a 16 year old kid with a paper route and no expenses would be scared shitless by my operating budget.

Pinko's Musical Debut

Pitchfork would give this rap a rating of "Needs more Timberlake or Meh-thod Man."

Forgotten Post

I forgot why I opened a blank post. Oh well, let me list some of the developing stories Chuckles and Company is working on for the eleven o'clock broadcast:
Top Nine Albums of 2007 (really just a list of albums I bought since I only bought nine)
Review of Juno
Review of Aliens V Predator: Requiem
List of Movies a Person Should Watch (really just a reference list for someone)
Discussion of Uwe Boll (neither agent of the apocalypse or Ed Wood reincarnated but as a cinematic genius)
Review of In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Movie (Can't Frigging Wait)
The Return of Western Thought Wednesday (as demanded by a Girl Like Me and Unknown Fashion/Costume Designer Friend of the Genius)
Grand Opening of New Memberships for Friends of the Genius (at new 2008 rates!)

I Frigging Love Uwe Boll

The more I learn about him, the more I love him. I present a link dump that sumarizes all of the reasons I love Uwe Boll:
Something Awful: Behind the scenes on the Alone in the Dark scriptwriting process
CHUD Forums thread on In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Movie by Uwe Boll
International Trailer for same
Wired critics berated for trashing Postal
Wired article about Boll's bellicose beating of beraters

News Analysis: The You All Suck Edition

I was doing some research for work a couple weeks ago and saw this headline at Time, "Obama's Foreign Policy Problem."

That is pretty negative. A problem is bad, it weighs on you and interrupts your thinking, disturbs your calm. Look at the picture, Obama looks so concerned, pensive, and probably worried about his problem. A problem is something that takes you below the baseline and beating it only returns you to average. A challenge is different. A challenge is something that is overcome and you are a better person for taking it on. A challenge is something that you meet and defeat that maybe other people can't. Why wasn't the headline "Obama's Foreign Policy Challenge." Obama is going above the average citizen and accepting the challenging responsibilities of the presidency but the author went with problem instead of challenge. Go back and read the title as "Obama's Foreign Policy Challenge" and the picture looks resolute, thoughtful and ready for the responsibility.

The New York Times is saying that Hillary Clinton "escaped" something in New Hampshire. That is another negative word. Escaped sounds like she deserved to lose the primary and pulled some sort of stunt to whisk herself away from the jaws of just defeat. Furthermore, the entire headline makes it sound like she turned tail and ran shortly before total annihilation at the hands of her enemies. She won the primary. This kind of language is negative and minimizing of her accomplishment.

Emotional. Passionate. Two words with similar meanings but different connotations. One describes a person as ruled by feelings and is weaker for it. The other is a person full of life and eager to express important feelings. Which one did you see more often used to describe Hillary in the last week?
"Hillary emotional": 580,000 hits
"Hillary passionate": 358,000 hits

I continue my editorial classes this semester.

The Return of fulsome: What if destiny took a break from blogging?

fulsome may be back and he may sink back into the primeval whence he crawled, but it doesn't change the fact that I saw a show last night and wrote about it and think you care what I think about shit.

DO NOT WANT

Hayden Christiansen, or anyone else, to play Case.

Bad idea.

WANT

Bethesda Softworks hosted a junket for Fallout 3. Goddamn, I hope this game comes out and doesn't pull a Duke Nukem Forever. Even better? Fallout 3 takes place in DC. I can't wait to visit my neighborhoods, new and old, and blast some radioactive mutants off my various lawns.

Also, Gabe at Penny Arcade hosted a different kind of cookie contest and I think we should totally sue or something. That link is full of pictures that are totally not safe for work and I recommend we sue Penny Arcade for that, too.

Breaking News in the Holiday Cookie Bake-Off 2007 Conspiracy!

Eastern Judge Admits to Bribery! Scandal! Is the Western Judge similarly loose with morals and ethics? She has yet to deny these allegations and some might exclaim that it is irresponsible to toss accusations around the internets despite having solid proof of the perptrators, but The Genius knows that it would be irresponsible NOT to allege and accuses willy-nilly and hidey-ho!

You, loyal minions, must judge these judges guilty on your own recognizance and with what meager mental faculites you can muster.

Daily Reads

Despite being a WoW addicted cobag-son-of-a-bitch, I do find time to read. In the last three weeks, I have read Gun, With Occasional Music by Johnathan Lethem and Cauldron by Jack McDevitt. I thoroughly enjoyed them both and recommend them to the same crowd. I started She Climbed Across the Table by Lethem and have read almost all of McDevitt's books already, so he better get cracking on feeding my hard science fiction jones.

I heard only recently that Robert Jordan had died in September, so all of you who bet that he would kick it before finishing the Wheel of Time series won that round.

In other not-so-light reading, check out PAPERCUT by Michael Cho.

News Round Up: The Super Depressing Shit to Start Your Week

Georgia Rule: Your allegations of fraud do not concern me.

Smells Like 2003: Not enough war in the world as it is?

Blame the Victim: Taking Karl Rove's political advice, Mr. Musharraf?

This Is Not Filler

Or maybe it is. Butterscotch Buddha on his Marzipan Throne, I have got to stop poking around in my computer's guts.

I am developing a theory about my cookie entry in the 2007 Holiday Cookie Bake-Off. I don't know how or why they were "destroyed" in the delivery system, but I suspect foul play. I am not currently able to limit my suspects

In the meantime, Shannon posted one of these on her little bloggio and I find them amusing in an XKCD-ish way. Specifically, this one here. By the way, I finally hit 70. Fuck. I hate myself sometimes. More like all the time.

I know someone who would appreciate this one. And also this rather timely one.

Up and Running

I finally got my computer up and running. I will continue with the high-functioning autisticness and jackassery later tonight.