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June 30, 2005
Apres Moi, Le Deluge
We had a little excitement around here yesterday that you don't usually see in a suburban/urban area... a monsoon-like rainstorm hit, dropping nearly three inches of rain on Westchester County and causing some flash flooding.
This is not the weather you want hitting on the first day you're driving your new car. However, our office parking lot is on elevated enough ground that we didn't appear to have any problems... by the time I drove home, I had little trouble with water and more trouble with backed up traffic. However, the photo below was taken just a mile or two from my co-op. I think I'm glad I was working and not driving during the worst of it.
Posted by Christopher at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
Die, Comment Spamming Scum
Whoever you are, you'd better hope I never figure out who or where you are. If I do, the best thing that happens to you is my lawyer gets involved. Otherwise, it'll be my softball bat that gets involved.
On your skull.
Yes kids, a chickenspit little coward with a very small penis has taken to comment spamming my blog... about every third day I have to delete about 40 spam comments advertising gambling sites or viagra... and of course those sites don't have a "contact us" feature that would allow a displeased victim to respond, opt out, or threaten. Banning IP addresses doesn't seem to work; I think they're riding on IPs that aren't theirs anyway, and though I have nearly 100 banned addresses so far, it doesn't seem to stop our minisculely endowed hacker.
If anyone's got a recommended solution, I am all ears. I do have the function on this site to require registration and for me to approve all comments before they're posted... but that seems highly draconian, and wholly inconvenient for both you and me (since most people seem to comment during the day... meaning that I'd have to be approving comments from the office -- something I'd rather not do).
But I am sick of spam for viagra, online pharmacies, and online casinos filling up my comment pages. So unless someone's got a better solution, I may have to do this registration thing. Unless of course I find this little punk first, in which case he'd better hope my lawyer gets to him before I do.
Posted by Christopher at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)June 26, 2005
And the winner is...
How to turn a birthday weekend grumpy: have to spend it dealing with car salesmen and preparing to spend a lot of money on something that will be worth half what you paid the second you drive it off the lot.
How to turn a grumpy birthday weekend into a good one: find a good car that you weren't expecting to even look at, one that's priced lower than you intended to spend, and then talk and negotiate your way into a ridiculous deal that leaves you shaking your head and going, "How did I just talk my way into only paying 'X' for this car?"
Just-tits Is Served
The Freedom Boobie is back!
Yes kids, three and a half years after Attorney General and director of the Republican morality police John AssHat (I mean, Ashcroft) ordered it covered in the name of "decency," the exposed breast of the statue "Spirit of Justice" in the Justice Department's Great Hall has burned her bra and is once again hanging free for the world to see.
(By the way, I don't know about you, but I find the photo of Ashcroft that accompanies this story to be hysterical -- gotta love a prude making fondling-style hand gestures under a foot-wide hooter.)
This story also proves a point I think is important to note, especially by my female readers: Exposed breasts are symbols of fairness and freedom. I think it would show solidarity and patriotism if all of you were to let the Hooters Of Justice fly free like the flag this coming holiday weekend. You love America, don't you?
(Female readers should feel more than free to share photos of themselves demonstrating their support for America in such fashion with me at thechroniccurmudgeon@hotmail.com.)
Posted by Christopher at 09:59 PM | Comments (5)Class War Declared
Hell has officially frozen over.
There's been a controversial Supreme Court decision, and not only do I agree (vehemently) with the conservative minority opinion, but with conservative commentators like Glenn Reynolds. (I know, start looking for the four horsemen.)
The Court decided 5-4 that people's homes can be seized not just for eminent domain for the greater public good, but for private development that may generate greater tax revenue. The case stemmed from a case in New London, Connecticut, where a private developer wants to rip down a working class neighborhood in order to build a riverfront hotel, health club and office complexes.
The decision means that cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue. You read that right; the rich can now seize the homes of the working class, in order to build projects that none of the working class can afford to live, work or play in. The rich can now take the homes of the poor in order to build further playgrounds for the rich.
Amazingly, the five jackassed idiots who've effectively declared class war on the working class in this country aren't the usual conservative suspects. The five jackassed classist idiots were the court's lefties: Ginsberg, Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, and Stevens.
I can't begin to write the fury this decision elicits in me. This is for all intents and purposes a return to feudalism. The wealthy have been given greater right to land than the poor -- and if the rich want something the poor have purchased... too bad, Joe Six Pack, because Chaz Limousine Liberal now has the trump. If you're a worker who saves and buys his low-end row house or buys into a working class neighborhood, it must feel so comforting to know that even though you bought your home, made the payments, built equity, and lived your life there... it's not yours; it still can belong to some rich puck at the drop of his well-heeled hat.
Malcolm X once was asked if he predicted a civil war in this country; the questioner obviously expected Malcolm to invoke some sort of race war. Malcolm answered instead that while he did indeed expect that there could be a civil war one day, he believed instead that it would likely be a class war, with the poor of all races rising up against the wealthy. Decisions like this week's make such an uprising all the more justifiable. And those five "justices" ought to be the first five people whose homes are seized to make way for a strip mall.
Posted by Christopher at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)Bizarre Love Triangle
I really shouldn't think this story is funny, but I do. Down in Atlanta, the Hightower Manor senior citizens home was rocked last week by a scandal worthy of a bad paperback. This may have been the pilot episode for "Desperate Grandmas."
78 year old great-grandmother Lena Driskell shot and killed her 85 year old former boyfriend Herman Winslow at the senior home on June 10, angry that Herman had moved on to another sexy senior.
"I did it, and I'd do it again!" Lena Driskell yelled to officers who arrived at the home June 10, according to testimony. Police said she was wearing a bathrobe and slippers and waving an antique handgun with her finger still on the trigger.
God, that's funny. I mean, really funny. Especially when you look at her photo with the article and picture her doing it. I can hear it now... "I won't be ignored, Herman!" "What??" "I said, I won't be ignored, Herman!"
After the nasty breakup with Winslow, Driskell kept showing up uninvited at his apartment in Hightower Manor, the complex for seniors where they lived, Detective D.B. Mathis said. A security guard tried to calm her down, but Driskell drew out her gun, pressed it to Winslow's head and fired as many as four times, Mathis said.
Couldn't she just have put a rabbit in a pot like normal psycho women?
Posted by Christopher at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)The Case For Retroactive Abortion
Not only is Karl Rove a subhuman piece of donkey dung unworthy of the title "American" and deserving of a slow and painful death at the hands of fire ants and scorpions, he's a liar and phony hypocrite too.
First of all, even reporting on Rove's asinine, insulting, criminally simplistic, inaccurate and anti-American comments sort of dignifies them. And since dignity is not a concept Rove will ever grasp, I hate to even hand him that much. But no anti-American slimeball like Rove can be allowed to go unanswered.
Rove's contention that Democrats were hesitant to defend the nation against the terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11 is 1) wholly false, as evidenced by the unanimous bipartisan support for Bush in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and votes to authorize military action in Afghanistan; and 2) revealing of the cowardly fallacy of the Bush administration's criminal treason in Iraq... Bush swore to protect the nation against all enemies foreign and domestic, but when our nation was attacked, Bush let the attackers go in order to fight a family vendetta and Halliburton-profit motivated phony war in Iraq.
Yes, I do truly believe George W. Bush and his administration are guilty of treason for the gutless and derelict act of attacking Iraq instead of smiting the attacking enemy from the face of the planet. He swore to defend the nation; he abdicated that responsibility for a private war. He's a treasoner, and you should look at the Constitution for the suggested penalty for treason.
But Rove's utter hypocrisy revealed itself further when he criticized Sen. Dick Durbin's use of Nazi connotations and language in describing the conditions at Guantanamo Bay. Rove whined and erupted in faux outrage over the language, saying that Durbin's use of "Nazi" 'shows you what liberals are all about.'
Rove must have forgotten about his ideological partner, Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who only a month ago used the same terms and connotations in describing not Democrats' treatment of prisoners, but simply their procedural tactics to stall Republican strong-arming in the Senate. Santorum's remarks, captured in the Congressional Record, equated Democrats' filibuster tactics to "the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying: I'm in Paris, how dare you invade me, how dare you bomb my city. It's mine."
Furthermore, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, when discussing the stem cell research debate, said "We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science. As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."
Where was Karl Rove when two Republican senators were using Nazi allusions to make their point? Did those statements tell us what conservatives were really all about, Karl? Well? Did they? It can't be a revelation when one party does it, but perfectly okay when yours does, now can it Karl?
Of course, the gutless White House is defending its slimeball puppeteer. But whether or not the White House has the decency to defend half of America against cowardly slander by one of its own, make no mistake: Karl Rove is a hypocritical disgrace, and he should resign or be fired.
Posted by Christopher at 10:51 AM | Comments (2)June 22, 2005
The Greatest Story In The History Of Anything
There's nothing better than a story that's half surreal, half idiotic marketing people.
Tonight... a publicity stunt goes horrifically wrong... pedestrians, bike messengers and hapless flacks run for cover ... WHEN POPSICLES ATTACK!
No, you're not watching a scene from Jackass; it's not an out-take from Ghostbusters 2 either. What you're seeing here, kids, is a giant melting Snapple popsicle, sliming the streets of Manhattan.
Seems Snapple has a new frozen icy pop treat. And some genius in their PR department thought, "we could get great publicity for the new product if we made the world's biggest frozen treat and set it up in the middle of Union Square!" Of course, it never occured to them that if they did it on June 21 -- the FIRST DAY OF FREAKING SUMMER -- the stupid thing might melt before it got upright. (Don't you hate when that happens? But you know what, baby... it happens to every frozen treat company. Nothing to be ashamed of.)
The result of this pea-brained scheme was an ejaculation of sticky pink melted Snapple Pops all over Union Square. A woman pedestrian sprained her ankle. Bike messengers skidded and wiped out. The FDNY had to be called in to hose the streets down. Apparently, the ingredients for these pops include ginseng and zinc.
"What was unsettling was that the fluid just kept coming," Stuart Claxton of the Guinness Book of World Records told the Daily News. "It was quite a lot of fluid."
Must... bite... lip... can't... make... easy... joke!
I kept looking for Venkman, Egon, Ray , Sigourney Weaver, and Vigo. Next thing you know, they were going to walk the Statue Of Liberty across the harbor to dance in this sludge. Video of this ridiculous episode of "When Brainless Marketing People Attack" is available here.
Posted by Christopher at 11:10 PM | Comments (2)Women in Sports
I saw two news articles today about women in sports. One made me simply shake my head at the stupidity of men. The other made me shake my head in awe (for about the millionth time).
First of all, the stupidity... Formula 1 racing chief Bernie Ecclestone (henceforth to be named Weenie HeadofStone) made a stupid, neanderthalic comment about women in racing after Danica Patrick finished 4th in the Indy 500. And just to make sure she didn't think he'd been misquoted, he called her and repeated the slur over the phone.
"You know, I've got one of these wonderful ideas that women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances,"
What the freaking hell?
First of all, go to the article; HeadOfStone looks like a cross between Andy Warhol and a sun-dried tomato. No grown man who looks like that any time other than at a Halloween party can be taken seriously. But "domestic appliances?" Somehow I think it'd be fitting if he had to spend eternity with Ann Coulter shrieking in his Warholesque ear. What a freaking cave man.
The other story about women in sports that I noticed is that the long and storied career of Brandi Chastain appears to be over, at least on the US national team. Beyond scoring the most significant goal in US women's soccer history, Chastain was one of the "Fab Five" of women's soccer in this country who played in three Olympics, won two world championships, and furthered interest in women's soccer in this country.
And not for nothing, but there was that whole sports bra moment... and I react to it the same way now as I did then: holy shit, look at the biceps and abs on that woman -- she is cut!
Best of luck to you, Brandi - and thanks for a great career.
Posted by Christopher at 09:30 PM | Comments (2)Remember This?
You'd never know it by listening to Bush or any Republican, but there's actually another war going on -- this one actually against forces that really did attack the United States and actually do represent a threat. Unfortunately, that war is also facing its challenges -- though I'd wager that had Bush not lied to the American people just to settle a family score, and actually done his duty as president by defending the nation from threat, things would be much different.
As it stands, the Washington Post ran a very interesting article today about how the war on the ground in Afghanistan against the Taliban is going. After reading it, I found myself really liking and respecting the batallion commander profiled in the story, Lt. Col. Mark Stammer -- and after reading about what they face every day, I found myself wishing that we'd had a real president four years ago who would have finished the Afghanistan war and decisively wiped out the Taliban.
Instead, we had a traitorous coward who let go those who'd attacked the US and killed 3000 Americans, just so he could pursue a personal vendetta in Iraq.
Posted by Christopher at 09:06 PM | Comments (1)DeLay DeLoser
Pete over at A Perfectly Cromulent Blog did a fantastic job today of skewering the latest stupid thing to come out of Tom DeLay's mouth. In a nutshell, DeLay employed his usual whiny tactic of crying about the media... asked about how poorly things seem to be going in Iraq and whether the Bush White House needs an exit strategy, DeLay complained about the media rather than answering the question, saying "You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston is violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways."
I can't do a better job than Pete did of deconstructing this; Pete sorted through the day's Houston Chronicle headlines and compared them to Iraq... and it's damn funny. But what I will do is point out that in his statement DeLay proved the fallacy of his own primary argument; every time he gets in trouble (or really any time the news is not spun in a pro-conservative fashion), he whines about the biased media.
Well Tom, if you're to be believed, then all the media does in Houston is print bad news. Now, no one will ever argue that Houston is a hotbed of liberalism -- they elect DeLay every term instead of putting the SOB in jail where he belongs, after all. So if the media in conservative Houston reports the worst of what happens, wouldn't that prove that the media always reports on bad news? (After all, good things or the average ordinary every day event aren't "news," they're just ordinary -- to be "news," it has to be out of the ordinary.) And wouldn't that mean that, rather than reflecting some nefarious liberal bias, the media's coverage of Iraq is simply reflective of the fact that bad things are news, and nothing happening is not news? That the media isn't biased so much as simply doing its job?
If DeLay had his way, you would never hear about a single bomb, a single firefight, a single death in Iraq. DeLay routinely engages in a sinister version of "Life Is Beautiful." Too bad for him that we're not stupid enough to fall for it.
Posted by Christopher at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)June 19, 2005
Blog Stew: Summer Seafood Stew
This week's recipe and catch-all title features the only stew recipe I could find with the word "summer" in the title: Summer Seafood Stew.
1. Katie Holmes Gets Engaged To Psychotic Cult Leader. At one time, Katie Holmes was on my famous top 21 list... until Erika, who went to college in the town where Dawson's Creek was filmed, informed me that Katie was often seen around town with cigarettes hanging out of her mouth. If she ever had a chance of getting back on that list, it's gone now -- after the news this week that's she's gotten engaged to that brainwashed psychotic cult freak, Tom Cruise.
You know, Defamer had it right when they called this development an "unholy partnership." Partnership is right - if you believe that Tom's sleeping with her, then you'll believe I'm sleeping with her. Look, kids: Tommy's grown himself a beard! But the real question now is how soon it is before we find Katie in purple Nikes in Guyana at Cruisetown with a cup of Kool-Aid in one hand and Dianetics in the other.
2. Bush to City: Drop Dead. It was one of the most famous New York tabloid headlines ever; in 1975, when President Ford told the city of New York that the federal government would not help the city deal with its fiscal crisis, the New York Daily News characterized Ford's response with typical New York bluntness. 30 years later, another US president is giving the city a similar cold shoulder. Only this time, it's far more shameful.
George W. Bush has based his entire presidency on the swaggering image of himself standing at the ruins of the World Trade Center with the rescue workers. And of course, New York City was good enough to drape himself in during last year's Republican convention. But apparently, Bush looks at New York in Kennedyesque fashion: ask just what New York can do for you, not what you can do for New York.
The president and party that wrap themselves in the flag -- and would have a photo of the WTC at every press conference if they could -- have stripped rescue workers of $125 million in funding to cover their medical bills and provide other relief.
This is the kind of person George W. Bush is, and the kind of people Republicans are: they cynically exploit the tragedies that happen to our nation in patriotic-er-than thou fashion... but when you look behind the image, there's nothing there but an ice-cold, Machiavellian heart.
3. Sex, Drugs, and Rachmaninov: Frankly, classical music usually puts me to sleep. Who knew it could be so steamy?
Former New York Philharmonic oboe player Blair Tindall has blown the, uh, whistle (huh huh,heh heh huh) on the seedy underbelly of the classical music world - claiming in a new tell-all book that she earned most of her jobs not by playing a mean oboe, but perhaps a different kind of flute.
Tindall claims that sex played a decisive role in her musical career. She says she was simultaneously involved with three leading New York oboists -- two married -- who gave her work in their orchestras. One had a maxim: "The section that lays together plays together."
She describes leaping naked into a hotel pool with a leading member of a touring Andrew Lloyd Webber production who subsequently made love to her in his hotel suite as "exuberantly" as he performed music. He then lit a postcoital cigarette and offered her a job on Lloyd Webber's new Aspects of Love in New York. "Why, I thought, did I bother with an answering machine?" Tindall writes. "Between XXX and my former oboist boyfriends, I got hired for most of my gigs in bed."
What? Someone trading sexual favors for chairs in the orchestra pit? Horrors! Being the intrepid reporter I am, I wanted to see the source of these scandalous allegations. So I did a Google search for Ms. Tindall. And after finding her, all I can say is that maybe I should have been an orchestra director.
4. Lost In Translation. I was watching one of the basic cable stations the other night -- maybe it was Spike? -- and saw Pulp Fiction on TV. I tried watching it. It was a mistake.
Don't get me wrong - I think it's an outstanding film. But the script is based on George Carlin's seven words you can't say on television. (For the record, while I usually find cavalier vulgarity to be unncessary and a crutch for the writer, I think Tarantino did it brilliantly in this work.) And since you have to cut those words out of broadcasts, you lose 1/3 of the dialogue and much of the character development.
And while "little sucker" is a decent syllabic match and does rhyme with one of the script's most common phrases, it's just not the same to hear Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Whitfield shouting, "English, little sucker, do you speak it?" There are some movies that are just aren't supposed to be on regular TV, and this is one of them. Watching Pulp Fiction without the vulgarity is like watching golf on TV.
5. Locked Out. Is there any moment that invokes more finality than the moment you get your key back? Whatever's been said before then, whatever has happened, no matter how over things look, there's always a "maybe" or "you never know" left... until they put that key back in your hand. Then you know that there's not going to be anymore coming home to find them there unexpectedly, or any of those late night, "just let yourself in when you get here" phone calls. When you get your key back, it's the definitive statement that you're each moving on, and there's not going to be any going back.
We returned keys this weekend; I'm single again. It's not a bad thing - it's very amicable, in fact, and it's probably best since we've been trying to stop for a few weeks now, only to have one or the other break down a few days later with the famous "I know what we said, but could you come over tonight?" phone call. Yes, I know that all this means is that she has to buzz the door now, or I just have to ring her doorbell... but I don't think it will be that way. And so it goes.
6. Random Musings. I hate the Black Eyed Peas, mostly because the damn song they do on that Best Buy commercial gets in your head and won't freaking go away. "Louder!" Grrr.
-- iTunes flexes its muscle: Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" was a hit more than a year ago. It peaked on the pop charts at #21 last summer, and faded off. Then a week ago, McGraw's music finally became available on iTunes... and this week, "Live Like You Were Dying" has re-entered the pop charts at #29. A year old song goes online, and a week later is back on the charts? Don't tell me iTunes and online downloads haven't changed music forever.
-- God help me, but after seeing her TV Guide cover this week, Kelly Ripa is crawling dangerously close to my top 21 list. I am a sick man and am in desperate need of help.
Posted by Christopher at 10:02 AM | Comments (4)Happy Father's Day
I had the chance to visit with my dad last weekend (odd timing, since this is Father's Day weekend, but the chance came up and I took it). And despite the fact that he felt the need to remind me about once per inning that the Cubs were beating the Red Sox both Friday and Saturday, I enjoyed seeing him and hanging out with him. So happy Father's Day, Dad.
And happy Father's Day to Doc & Tim and the rest of my friends who're celebrating today.
Posted by Christopher at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)June 18, 2005
It's Schiavo-Clock Somewhere
She's been gone in body for 10 weeks, and gone in mind for 15 years, but conservatives still can't let Terri Schiavo die.
First of all, something I negelected to consider when the autopsy results came out, but as Nico points out over at ThinkProgress, Bill Frist appears to be about as incompetent a doctor as he is a Senator. Remember all that video footage back in March, when Dr. Frist apparently manifested the incredible ability to diagnose a patient without actually seeing her in person?
"I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."
Well now... how do we reconcile this incredibly prescient diagnosis with the medical, physical fact that Terri Schiavo was blind? It would seem that Frist is guilty of malpractice in either one or the other of his two chosen professions.
But the larger issue, one that frankly disgusts me and I think shows the entire world exactly what conservatives are all about, is that even when presented with indisputable medical fact, Jeb Bush and the Christian Taliban can't seem to let this one go. Proven wrong, they are incapable of admitting it -- and so are even more desperately clutching at further straws.
After medical fact eliminated his sole argument on this case and made him look stupid, Jeb Bush has apparently decided once again that he knows better than 15 years of judges and court decisions, and has for all intents and purposes called for a criminal investigation of Michael Schiavo (despite the fact that not once in all these years has a single person who's seen the evidence concluded that Michael Schiavo abused his wife).
Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.
This is just disgusting. There are fewer things more pathetic in this world than seeing people who were categorically and undeniably proven wrong still refusing to admit it or accept it. And by trying to raise the specter -- falsely and disingenuously -- of abuse against Michael Schiavo, Jeb Bush and his supporters have shown us all what pathetic, desperate, mean-spirited, and unfeeling people they really are. As the Palm Beach Post put it in an editorial today,
In the Terri Schiavo case, the Bushes and other Republicans showed contempt for the Constitution, the courts and science, all of which is depressingly normal behavior. They still won't admit that they were wrong. They won't admit even that they miscalculated. They are ignoring reality.
Posted by Christopher at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)June 17, 2005
Proof That The 70s Should Be Deleted From The Karmic TiVo
Many very bad things came out of the 1970s: Watergate, Three Mile Island, Jonestown, the 8-track tape, Foghat, polyester, and the Starland Vocal Band, just to name a few. But when those last two -- bad clothes and bad music -- are combined... that's when then 70s went from being simply an awkward, ungainly and embarassing time (kind of like junior high) to being a crime against humanity.
Courtesy of "Hey Suburbia" (and via Boing Boing), check out the egregious violations of decency committed against the world in the name of musical presence. Yes kids, it's... "Bands That Dress Alike."
My personal favorite among these has to be the Gert Jonnys. That album cover looks like the official photo from the Pedophiles Anonymous 1974 annual DisneyWorld retreat.
Speaking of things that came from the 1970s... happy birthday, Jill.
Posted by Christopher at 05:30 AM | Comments (12)June 16, 2005
No Cents At All
I hate pennies.
I suppose it's unusual to be set off on a grumpy rant by a tiny piece of copper. But I suspect that I'm hardly alone in disdaining the most useless element of America's financial scene this side of that 9/10 of a cent they use in gas prices. (And don't even get me started on that conspiracy.)
In a nutshell, pennies suck. There's simply no reason for them. 10 billion pennies are minted every year. For what? When was the last time a penny bought anything? Anything? A candy bar? A piece of gum? A favor from a crack whore? Anything? The government prints and mints money so that we can use it, right -- that whole funky exchange of goods and services thing someone tried to teach us about back in third grade. Well, if no one can use a coin to actually buy anything, then what's the point of minting it?
As near as I can tell, pennies exist for only two reasons. The first is so that retailers can play mind games with buyers about the true cost of an item. "No sir, it's not $100... it's $99.99!... Oh! Well in that case, it's not as expensive as I thought, I'll take it." There's a psychological barrier about nines and going up in price from three digits to four, or four to five, or what have you. Were there no pennies, retailers would not be able to use that barrier to sucker us into buying stuff we don't need.
The second, equally nefarious reason pennies are made is to create a market for the companies that make the little blue plastic "take a penny, leave a penny" bins. Without the US Treasury's continued minting, the whole take-a-penny-bin industry would enter free fall, putting thousands of automated factory machines out of work.
Believe it or not, the US Treasury claims that pennies are profitable. "Each penny costs .81 of a cent to make, but the United States Mint collects one cent for it. The profit goes to help fund the operation of the United States Mint and to help pay the public debt."
Okay, first of all, the last time anyone looked, that extra 19/100 of a cent here and there just wasn't doing a whole lot of good in paying off the public debt, which as of Wednesday was closing in on $8 trillion dollars. I mean, if we're all that concerned with knocking down some of that debt, couldn't we find a more efficient method of payment than 19/100 of a cent at a time? This is kind of like someone who makes $10 minimum payments on a $2000 credit card balance, pays $28 in interest that month, and then claims to be paying down his credit cards. (Actually, were the metaphor extended all the way out, the person here would actually use the credit card to pay to print out the $10 bill he was using to make that minimum payment, thus increasing his overall balance by printing the money with which to pay it off.)
However, it's good to know that every morning when I'm in the company cafeteria and buying my French Roast or Colombian Supremo, and I drop those three useless pennies into the little blue take-a-penny bin (made by automated machines in a factory somewhere that I am helping to keep employed), I'm actually doing my civic duty by contributing 57/100 of one cent toward paying the country out of insolvency. At that rate, I can have us paid down in about 3,582 millenia, give or take a couple of months.
Don't say I never did anything for you.
Posted by Christopher at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)June 15, 2005
CSI: Pinellas
The autopsy results came back today for Terri Schiavo. And guess what? The results prove what every informed medical opinion had been saying all along: Terri Schiavo was brain dead, and there was nothing anyone could have done to revive her. That's the same conclusion, of course, that the courts repeatedly found, time and time again -- despite the best efforts of religious zealots and fundamentalists to deny science and reality.
"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain," [the coroner] said. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
You'd think that a definitive scientific fact such as this would finally get the zealots to let the poor woman rest in peace. Unfortunately, her parents -- probably prodded by others -- continue to deny reality. They're considering other legal options, according to their attorney. Of course these are the same people who insisted that Terri Schiavo was following their eyes and balloons and was watching them; the autopsy proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Terri was in fact blind.
But since when has reality been a barrier for religious conservatives? And of course, the zealot-in-chief is leading the charge.
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that the autopsy results did not change the president’s position on her case.
Yep, you heard it straight from the White House, ladies and gentlemen. This president still believes that calling a special session of Congress and railroading through legislation designed to forcibly keep alive a woman whose brain has been scientifically proven to have atrophied away and who was definitively blind and could not be following motions with her eyes... was still the right thing to do. Even knowing that science and observation proved that she had massive brain damage and couldn't see, Bush still thinks that stuffing the government's nose in the family's personal affairs was a good plan.
God bless America, indeed. If I were in charge, I'd make Terri's parents issue a formal, public, strictly worded apology to Michael Schiavo -- and to the citizens of Florida -- for wasting his time, and I'd make them repay every penny of his legal costs.
Posted by Christopher at 11:50 PM | Comments (1)June 13, 2005
Free To Beat It Again
Apparently, in California it's okay to touch little boys.
Yes, for the second time in a decade, the citizen jurors and court system of the state of California provided us with a ridiculous verdict in which an obvious criminal was set free to walk the streets again. And for the second time in a decade, the jurors had no other choice due to the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof being on the prosecution. Reasonable doubt having been raised, the jury had no other choice.
That doesn't mean Jackson the Freak is innocent; far from it. It just means that the jury could not vote to convict under the letter of the law. Presented with a case only slightly less obvious than the O.J. Simpson case, the D.A.'s office screwed things up to the point that "not guilty" was the only real option the jury had. I'm not sure what the qualifications are to become a D.A. in the Golden State, but I think my cat's probably met them.
Just like ten years ago, the state's case was undermined by unsympathetic elements in the prosecution, and it cost them a guilty verdict. In 1995 with the O.J. case, the truth was likely that the police tried to frame a guilty murderer. In 2005, the truth is likely that Michael Jackson molested a con woman's son. Both times, a man who to any unbiased eye seems guilty instead walked free. Both times, it was the right verdict thanks to horrendous prosecution.
If I ever think about breaking the law, I'm going to move to California first.
Posted by Christopher at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
The public started turning on George W. Bush's made-up version of the Iraq war shortly after he declared "Mission Accomplished" two years and 1,565 American lives ago. A recent Gallup Poll finds opposition to Bush's war higher than it has ever been.
But let's face it: since when have George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or any of the neocons given a damn about anything the American people think? The only time Bush and company should start worrying would be if the neocons in Congress started turning on him.
Start worrying, W.
Bush's lies and fabrications are catching up to him; even prominent neocons who have backed him en masse, without question, and with 100% obedience to this point have begun to turn on him, openly questioning his war.
[Representative Walter] Jones, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said "primarily the neoconservatives" in the administration were to blame for flawed war planning.
"The reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there," he said.
Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican:
"We can't come back to America and have our people being convinced that the Iraqi troops are prepared to take over, when they're not," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.
You've lied too many times, George. Now you're even losing the neocons. Get ready for your impeachment hearings, you treasonous son of a bitch.
June 12, 2005
Terminally Ill Toyota
We didn't have much of a spring here in the New York area; it was cool and wet for much of the last couple of months. All of a sudden in the last week, Mother Nature decided to run a fever, and summer kicked in all at once. For most of the last week, it's been in the upper 80s to lower 90s, and with that lovely sticky humidity that has you looking for a towel after being outside for one minute. I mention this because the sudden shift in temperature after a prolonged cool spell... well, that's the reason why I didn't figure out until this week that my air conditioner no longer works. Which wasn't the best timing, all things considered.
Whenever I can help it, I try to take my car -- a 1999 Toyota Camry -- to my parents' mechanic in Delaware for maintenance. For one thing, I trust the guy a lot more than the mechanics at the Toyota dealership up here, who always seem to find more that "absolutely has to be done" to my car than what I brought it in for. Secondly, taking the car to "slower lower Delaware" usually saves me at least half the cost of what I'd pay here in New York. This weekend, since we were at my parents' anyway, I took the car to the shop there to check the A/C. Unfortunately, the compressor is shot -- and even down there, it would cost me about $1000 to fix it (which means they'd probably charge me between $1500 and $2200 up here).
Now, I just spent $2000 on this car in March to fix the blower and the water pump and a few other things. I've liked this car; I've had it for six years, I've taken it all over the place up and down the Atlantic seaboard to the tune of 131,500 miles. And until the last year or so, the only money I really ever had to spend on it was routine maintenance. But no matter how good a car is, if you put that many miles on it in six years, it's going to start breaking down -- and this one has. At some point, there's a law of diminishing returns on repair costs. I think I've reached that point with this car. Sadly, I've decided it's time to retire this Camry -- which was my first "new" car and is easily the nicest car I'd owned to date.
In the next month or six weeks, while I manage without A/C for a summer, I'm going to be looking at buying a new car. At first, I was thinking about splurging and buying myself a BMW... sort of as a "you made it" reward to myself for this new job and for surviving the unpleasantness of last year with my sanity largely intact. I can afford it, so why not... right, Chris?
But the more I thought about it, the less intelligent that idea sounded. I'm just not a car guy; put me in something that gets me smoothly from A to B and won't break down on me every third week, and I'm generally a happy guy. Mostly I prefer spending money on other things. So what I started realizing was that I was really thinking about the BMW for the "looks" factor -- I wanted to buy the car so that people would see me in a BMW. How snobby is that? (And how not like me!)
So after a short flirtation with Beamer-dom, I've come to my senses; I don't need the performance sedan or the luxury status symbol. I'll find a way to reward myself that I'll genuinely get more out of, like Red Sox season tix next year maybe (if I can get them), or a vacation to Europe or something (I know someone will like that idea a lot more than baseball tickets). Which leaves me back at the mid-level sedans... maybe another Camry, or a Honda Accord, or a Hyundai Sonata, or something like that.
I won't buy an SUV... not only do those things guzzle gas and pollute, but it's not like I have the kids to justify having a larger vehicle like that. So SUV's are out. I suppose I could get a sportscar -- I admit, I'd kind of dig having one now that I can get one -- but it would probably scream mid-life crisis, and again I am not enough of a car guy to really appreciate what I had anyway. So does anyone have any recommendations for mid-level cars that they've found both comfortable and easy to maintain?
Posted by Christopher at 11:12 PM | Comments (14)The Kids Are All Right
I couldn't help but notice all the headlines about how the Army is finding it so difficult to meet its recruiting goals each month. And I remember back to the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the Taliban hid Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the US engaged in what in my mind was the first ethically unassailable war fought in my lifetime (born 1968). The military had so many people coming in and volunteering to serve, they couldn't process them fast enough. Pat Tillman was a prominent example, but across our country, young people less famous but no less patriotic answered the call to defend our nation.
Fast forward to 2005, after four consecutive years of lies from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the rest of Halliburton's lackeys. After a majority of the American people now realize that we're actually less safe thanks to Dubya's reckless and irresponsible war, started under deliberately deceptive pretenses. After years of a war George W. Bush lied to start, "fixing" intelligence in order to set up his lies and get the war that he wanted. After years of crimes against the American people that are deserving of impeachment. (And by the way, if you are a Republican who supported impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about a blow job, and you aren't screaming right now for George W. Bush's impeachment for lying about reasons to start a war, then you are nothing but a hypocrite and an accesory to the crime.)
I think a big reason that the Army's having troubles getting volunteers is simply this: After four years of lies from this criminal administration, young people have come to see through Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the treasoners. America's young people will gladly fight for our country, and would die if necessary in its defense. But they are increasingly coming to the conclusion that George W. Bush's lies aren't worth dying for.
Posted by Christopher at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)Blog Stew: Cheddar Beer Soup
This weekend was hot, sticky, and sweaty... and this time I was actually talking about the weather. In honor of the 90 degrees and humid weather that's gripped the northeast for most of the last seven days, this weekend's blog stew is a hot and sticky recipe: cheddar beer soup. And with that, away we go into this weekend's blog stew.
1. Candidates For Excruciating Death. I just spent the last hour deleting an epidemic of comment spam from my blog. Not that it was all that difficult, but by the same token I had to block more than 40 IP addresses while making the effort.
I've been trying to think of the proper or appropriate punishment and torture for these lowest of all human life forms, comment spammers. I'm thinking that they should all meet the same fate as King Edward II of England.
On the night of October 11 (1327 AD) while lying in on a bed (the king) was suddenly seized and, while a great mattress... weighed him down and suffocated him, a plumber's iron, heated intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his secret parts so that it burned the inner portions beyond the intestines.
Of course, Edward was murdered for far less noble reasons. But I think the one thing we can learn from his tormenters is how to treat comment spammers.
2. Wonder If They'll Put It Next To The Monkey Exhibit? The Christian Taliban have found another front for their war on science and fact: zoos. Yep, thanks to a bunch of Christian right wing evangelicals, the Tulsa Zoo will now feature... a creationist exhibit -- despite public statements from prominent religious leaders that this was a bad idea.
And so once again, the evangelical Christian right wing has managed to force its views upon the rest of the public, at taxpayer expense. You know, when Tom Cruise does it for Scientology, the evangelicals call it cultism... but when fundamentalist Christians use public fora and pulpits to propogate their beliefs, they say it would be discriminatory to not allow it... at taxpayer expense.
What a gaggle of hypocritical idiots. For the real truth about Creationism, I suggest you read this.
3. Pink Floyd To Reuinte For Live 8. Not that I want to disparage an effort to help poor nations out of poverty or anything... but getting Pink Floyd to reunite for one of the Live 8 concerts on July 2 is another example, to me, about how Bob Geldof has lost it. Pink Floyd? I mean, I love The Wall, and they were great in their day... which was when I was like 6.
Look at the lineup Geldof has put together for the London concert: Paul McCartney, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Madonna, R.E.M., Sting, Annie Lennox... half the lineup hasn't had a hit since the first LiveAid. Now I suppose if you're into classic rock, that's okay... but if you're trying to raise the profile of the issue of third world debt with the young people of today, don't you think you could have avoided going for Geriatrock and roll?
4. Shore dining. For those of you on the east coast, if you happen to be on the Delaware shore and are looking for casual dining, but want to avoid the craziness of Dewey Beach or the bustle of Rehoboth Beach, you might consider The Lighthouse in Lewes -- which is just north of the resort towns, right on the tip of Cape Henlopen where the Delaware River Bay reaches the Atlantic Ocean. We had dinner there Saturday night, and it's an inexpensive, quieter alternative to the resort areas in Rehoboth and Dewey.
Posted by Christopher at 07:37 PM | Comments (8)June 07, 2005
I've Been Tagged
Jillian over at The Snarky Cat “tagged” me for a meme… and damn it to hell, I can't resist these stupid things. Jillian, I'll get you back… someday, I shall get you back! In the meantime, here's my answers.
Three names you go by:
Christopher, Chris, Topher (that one's a stretch and you've got to give me mighty good reasons to let you call me that, but from a select few it's okay)
Three screen names you've had:
Mudge, Xtopher, Heat (don't ask)
Three physical things you like about yourself:
1. My eyes (hazel to green, depending on my mood)
2. My laugh -- is that physical? When I get a giggle fit, whoever's in the room with me will invariably get caught in it, it's contagious.
3. I dunno... arms, I guess? These are silly questions.
Three physical things you don't like about yourself:
1. I have a well-earned, somewhat shrinking but still way too prodigious beer belly.
2. I have tree trunk legs even when I'm fit and in shape (catchers end up building up thighs and low centers of gravity, and it sticks with you long after you stop playing baseball).
3. My thinning hair; I have that annoying male pattern baldness thing starting to kick in on the top of my head, and I think it's just a matter of time before my follicles say uncle.
Three parts of your heritage:
Lithuanian, German, Dutch. (But I am a true American mutt in the finest sense of the word, there's like a half dozen more floating around in my blood somewhere.)
Three things you are wearing right now:
Ralph Lauren pinstriped suit; Hugo Boss dress shirt, Jerry Garcia tie
Three favorite bands: (if Jillian didn’t have to stick to three, then I don‘t either.)
Stevie Ray Vaughan, U2, Jimmy Buffett, Solomon Burke, Johnny Cash, Guns-N-Roses, George Strait, Blake Shelton, Buddy Guy, The Ramones, Brad Paisley, Albert King, Albert Collins, Green Day, Rage Against The Machine, Toby Keith (I hate his persona and politics, but god help me I like his songs), The White Stripes
Three favorite songs:(again… Jillian gave herself like 48 of them, so I gave myself the same amount.)
Always The Last To Know (Del Amitri), Amarillo By Morning (George Strait), Bark At The Moon (Ozzy Osbourne), Basket Case (Green Day), Bat Out Of Hell (Meatloaf), Beautiful Girl (INXS), Beer For My Horses (Toby Keith and Willie Nelson), Black (Pearl Jam), Born Under A Bad Sign (Albert King), Bother (Stone Sour), Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day), Break Down Here (Julie Roberts), Celebrity (Brad Paisley), Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes (Jimmy Buffett), Click Click Boom (Saliva), Couldn't Stand The Weather (Stevie Ray Vaughan), C.R.E.A.M. (Wu-Tang Clan),18 And Life (Skid Row), Elevation (U2), Everybody's Got a Cousin in Miami (Jimmy Buffett), Fire And Rain (James Taylor), Galveston (Glen Campbell), Heart Shaped Box (Nirvana), H.W.C. (Liz Phair), It Makes No Difference (Solomon Burke), It's 5:00 Somewhere (Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett), Life By The Drop (Stevie Ray Vaughan), Life Without You (Stevie Ray Vaughan), Lot Of Leavin' Left To Do (Dierks Bentley), Mack The Knife (Bobby Darin), Master Of Puppets (Metallica), Mercy Mercy Me (Marvin Gaye), On Broadway (George Benson), Open Season... Is Closed (HepCat), Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (The Temptations), Peace Sells... (Megadeth), Ride (The Vines), Rock Superstar (Cypress Hill), She Talks To Angels (Black Crowes), Superstition (Stevie Ray Vaughan), Surrender (Cheap Trick), Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns-N-Roses), The Impression That I Get (Mighty Mighty Bosstones), Vertigo (U2), Video Killed The Radio Star (The Buggles), What Was I Thinkin' (Dierks Bentley), When The Sun Goes Down (Kenny Chesney and Uncle Cracker), Whiskey Girl (Toby Keith)
Three things you want in a relationship:
1. Sense of humor - she's gotta be able to laugh at herself, at me, at life, and to not take any of the above seriously.
2. Honesty/trust
3. A wild side. 'Nuff said.
Three things about the preferred sex that appeal to you:
1. Eyes. A woman with beautiful eyes can get me to do just about anything.
2. In the immortal words of Cosmo Kramer, "I'm the Ass Man!" Of all the traditional physical attributes that men check out on women, a good derriere is far and away the thing that makes my knees buckle and gets me to make that drooling sound Homer Simpson makes when he sees a donut.
3. Brains. You can only deal with an empty head for so long, no matter how great the body attached to it is - and I love the challenge and stimulation (no pun intended) of a smart woman's mind.
Other things that will get me to look twice or raise an eyebrow or say, "Hmmm...": sundresses, longer hair (not down to the ass long, just shoulder length or just above the shoulders) a woman who drinks a beer every so often instead of wine or fruity drinks, ponytails, and for some reason I have never figured out I am a sucker for petite women -- instead of the 5'10" runway model, give me a 5'2" or 5'4" gymnast or ice skater type. A short girl gets me every time.
Three of your favorite hobbies:
Writing, music, baseball.
Three things you want to do really badly right now:
Get out of this suit and into casual clothes, finish this meme, go to sleep.
Three things that scare you:
Heights. Bridges. What conservatives want to do to this country.
Three of your everyday essentials:
Coffee. Newsgator. AOL IM.
Three careers you have considered/are considering:
Politician. Novelist. Restauranteur/business owner.
Three places you want to go on vacation:
St. Lucia. Tuscany. British Virgin Islands.
Three kids' names you like:
Jack, Chase, Noah. (m)
Sydney, Chloe, Cassidy. (f)
Three ways you are stereotypically a boy:
I love sports and can watch almost any sport on TV. I have a dirty mind and often share my thoughts whether it's appropriate or not. I don't go to the doctor unless I can't walk or there's blood coming from somewhere it shouldn't be.
Three ways you are stereotypically a girl:
I am a clothes horse. I like fruity alcohol drinks more than beer. I like cats.
Three celebrity crushes:
Jennifer Love Hewitt, Liz Phair, Diane Lane.
Three to tag:
I'm not gonna put that kind of pressure on anyone. Do it if you wish, don't do it if you don't.
June 04, 2005
Prom Night
Last week, while hanging with Doc, Tim, and families, we had the DirectTV music channel "Arena Rock" blasting on the home theater while we all sat outside. Arena Rock, for lack of a better description, allows you to channel your spandex and AquaNet days from the 80s; it's chock full of hair band anthems and those guilty pleasure power ballads. At one point, one of the cheesiest of these, Loverboy's "This Could Be The Night," began; I think we changed the channel to the Indy 500 before Mike Reno even started singing.
But I'd heard the opening notes, and that was enough. Because "This Could Be The Night" was the theme song to my senior prom.
By default, and especially if you were in high school in the 80s, prom songs have to be cheesy and embarrassing. Our prom song at Coon Rapids High School in Coon Rapids, Minnesota in 1986 not only fit this description, it defined the art form. However, I do absolutely love the mildly subversive accomplishment of a student council getting a song called "This Could Be The Night" to serve as the prom theme. I'm willing to bet that by about 3 am that night, the song might have shifted to "Feels Like The First Time" or "Oh What a Night" for at least half of my classmates.
I couldn't get the song out of my head this week -- which is a painful thing, having a cheesy-ass power ballad stuck in your mind. I went to iTunes and listened to the 30 second sample about a dozen times during the week, unable to make myself pull the trigger, before finally breaking down and buying it Thursday night. And after listening to it once -- okay, twice -- I can verify that 20 years later, it remains as cheesy and awful as it was in the winter of 1985-1986 when it came out.
But you don't get to choose the things that call up memories for you. (If I did, I would certainly have had a different song than "Sunglasses At Night" playing on the radio during a particularly significant 90 seconds when I was almost 17.) And so it's been this week that I have been thinking a lot about high school, and the path my life's taken in the 19 years since I graduated.
I don't have any wistful, what-if memories of my prom date that night or at any of the proms I went to (three of 'em). The thing I recall most vividly about my senior prom night was that we had dinner before the dance at a Japanese restaurant in the big city (Minneapolis), and the new-to-me cuisine most definitely did not sit well in my system. I spent a sizable part of my evening on one knee in a stall in the men's room at Minneapolis's International Market Square trying not to hurl on my tuxedo. Quite a prom night memory, huh? The only thing I lost that night was about five pounds.
But aside from flashbacks of public vomiting, I have been thinking a lot this week -- thanks to Loverboy, of all things -- about the kid I was then. So cocky and confident, so sure I knew everything, so able to charm teachers and other authority figures. I was the instigator who managed to never get caught -- and if I did, I could almost always talk my way out of it by turning on the charm.
It's funny how the world tempers you as you get older. I know now how much I didn't know then. I look back on the impenetrable sense of purpose and direction I had back then, and at once laugh at my naivete and envy my drive. Everything seemed so clear then; now I know that life is a series of best guesses.
When you're in high school, your somedays are always perfect. Your friends will always be your friends, and nothing will ever change that. You're going to love your someday job, which will pay you someday well. Your someday marriage always is happy and works out, and your someday kids are always well-behaved, smart, and happy. Your someday car is always sweet, your someday house is always bigger than the one you grew up in and located in a more upscale neighborhood, your someday vacations are always fun excursions to places you've only read about. When you're in high school, you don't question Someday. You just believe in it.
Of course, life doesn't work out that way. You lose touch with old friends; eventually even the Christmas cards stop being exchanged and those friends become memories you haven't refreshed in years. Your job is a job. Marriages fail. Kids, if and when they come, are a challenge. You drive what's practical, live where you can afford, vacation when you can. That's not a bad thing, it's just the reality that you're so blissfully ignorant of when you're 17 or 18 and wondering if the world is ready for you.
But every now and then, thanks to cheesy nostalgia music stations on sunny holiday weekends, you get a reminder of the innocence of your youth, and a reprieve from reality.
I just wish mine wasn't such a darn cheesy power ballad.
Posted by Christopher at 10:29 AM | Comments (4)Monkey Steals The Peach?
This is why I make it a policy never to mess with ninjas.
(Photo and story via Boing Boing)
Posted by Christopher at 10:18 AM | Comments (1)The Right Wing Gags on Deep Throat
In court terminology, a "gag order" is something a judge issues to prevent parties involved in a case from talking to the media about the details of said case. Extending the metaphor to the public discourse, the right wing of the blogosphere appears to be gagging on Deep Throat.
Conservative bloggers were extremely proud of themselves for exposing the forgeries in the CBS News National Guard documents and helping end Dan Rather's career. Instead of sloppy journalism, Mark Felt exposed corruption, obstruction of justice, and crimes against the American people originating in the Oval Office. So what do the right wing bloggers, who will tell you at the drop of a hat that they're for integrity and fairness, have to say about Deep Throat's role in the Watergate scandal?
Very little.
As the LA Times reports, the conservative bloggers' reaction to the revelation of Deep Throat can best be described as "muted."
Most bloggers confined themselves to a few rhetorical sniffs at the media for calling Felt a hero.
"Maybe it's a generational thing but this Deep Throat orgy, er, extravaganza is supremely uninteresting. The Washington Post's wall-to-wall treatment smacks of self love and journalistic hero-worship," wrote Gregory Scoblete, at his G-Scobe blog, billed as "heat and light from a dim bulb."
Ah, that wacky right wing. So predictable. No matter the circumstances, no matter what the situation, they'll whine about the media and blame it for their ills, part of their long-running and persistent campaign to find enemies in America and to demonize anyone who doesn't hold their beliefs or repeat their company line.
Meanwhile, the reaction that had me gagging the most came from G. Gordon Liddy -- he who did prison time for his role in Watergate.
Others from the Watergate era weighed in with similar criticisms. G. Gordon Liddy, the Nixon operative who led the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters that began the scandal, said Felt was obliged as a law enforcement officer to turn over evidence of wrongdoing to authorities, not to the media.
"What he did was wrong," Liddy said.
First of all, Gordon Liddy opining on right and wrong from anyone else is like Britney Spears chastising trailer park residents for their lack of class. But what Liddy seems only too quick to overlook is that the "authorities" were the ones who were guilty of the crimes in the first place. What, Felt was supposed to narc the criminals out to themselves?
It's nice to know that you can count on the right wing's old guard for just as much hypocrisy and disdain for our country as you get from today's neo-cons.
Posted by Christopher at 09:54 AM | Comments (4)Who Do They Want Fired Now?
A couple of weeks ago, during Bush and the conservatives' war on Newsweek and a free press, conservatives across blogtopia and in the right-wing dominated media were whining, crying, and throwing tantrums about Newsweek's alledgedly egregious errors and calling for someone at Newsweek to lose their job. They accused Newsweek of getting people killed, and chastised them for putting Americans in danger.
Now that the Pentagon has come out and confirmed desecration of the Quran and controversy continues to swirl about the treatment of the Guantanamo detainees, think we'll hear any of these same right wing whiners calling for someone in the Pentagon or White House to lose their job? Will any conservatives accuse the Pentagon of getting people killed? Will any of the Bush-controlled media chastise this administration for putting Americans in danger?
Naaah... of course not. Consistency or principle are too much to expect from a conservative.
UPDATE: What a shocker. The Bush White House is blaming this story on... that's right kids, everyone's favorite tired old right wing scapegoat... the media! Doesn't this pathetic and wholly bankrupt movement get tired of copping the same whine ad nauseum? Don't they realize they're so see-through and predictable that their tactic has become a bad parlor joke? Next thing you know, Bush and the Christian Taliban will be telling you that the media killed Christ!
June 02, 2005
Speak Of The Devil
My new job is going to involve some public speaking, both to small groups and larger ones, inside the company and out. Wednesday was the first such event; I had the last ten minutes of a 90 minute program for an audience of about 200 people inside the company -- my friends and peers.
I don't mind public speaking; I'm actually pretty good at it. I used to do it back in my politics days quite a bit, and I did the commencement address when I finished at Boston U back in grad school. It's just that I haven't done anything since commencement six years ago; I switched from giving the speeches to writing them for other people. So I'm way out of practice.
You know how they say that doctors are the worst patients? I think speechwriters are the worst speech critics.
I walked off the stage after my time was up, and matter of factly told a colleague sitting next to me, "Wow, I sucked." Never mind that most of my audience seems to have disagreed -- mine's been the only critical voice so far, there's been a lot of really positive feedback from people -- I was very unhappy as I got off the stage. Even after a day warm fuzzies from people who really liked it, I've still been replaying every mistake in my own head for the last 24 hours.
There's nothing like micromanaging your own performance to make you realize just what an asshat your clients must think you are when you're coaching and critiquing them.
Posted by Christopher at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)Adopt A Shelter Cat
Jillian over at The Snarky Cat is one of my sources for this story; as a member of the ASPCA, I would have written about it as well, but Jillian beat me to it. June is the ASPCA's Adopt A Shelter Cat Month. The purpose of this effort is to educate people about the wonderful cats and kittens available for adoption at shelters. Not only will you be giving a shelter cat a second chance at a good life, you’ll be gaining a lifelong companion who will bring many years of love and devotion to your family.
I don't often solicit for charities, but this one is one of the closest to my heart. (The ASCPA, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, The Caribbean Conservation Corporation,and the March of Dimes are my preferred charities, in case anyone actually cares or wonders.) I never used to be a cat person -- was an avowed dog guy. I didn't like cats. I didn't like hanging around girlfriends' cats.
Then five years ago, my then-girlfriend found the little fuzzball below in a gutter outside her home. She had a vet nurse him back to health, and then spent a week begging me to take him because her cat didn't want to share their apartment, and if she took him to a shelter they might put him to sleep. Grudgingly, I took the cat home, named him J.D. Salinger, and hoped she'd eventually take him back.
Five years later the girl is long gone, but the cat still remains. And if a would-be shelter cat can win me over and turn me into a cat person, there are thousands of cats in shelters across the country who could do the same for other people. So consider helping one of 'em out, won't you?
Force Out
I love baseball. I hate baseball fans.
I have long said that baseball's All-Star Game -- once the Midsummer Classic -- has degenerated to the point of ridiculousness, a game wholly unworthy of watching or even playing. No longer an all-star game, the wretched travesty visited upon the sport every summer has become little more than a high school homecoming king election -- merely a popularity contest.
The problem with the all star game is that the fans are allowed to vote, and the fans are, quite frankly, stupid as rocks. Most of them, anyway. 95% of the fans who vote for the all-star game think that fungo is something you get between your toes, turning two is something their child just did on his last birthday, and that the best thing about going to the game is the cute little animated tire race in between the 3rd and 4th innings.
How else to explain this year's voting? Nomar Garciaparra -- the former Red Sox shortstop now on the Chicago Cubs -- started 2005 n a horrific slump. In the season's first three weeks, Nomar hit a pathetic .157. Then his luck turned... he tore his groin muscle clear off the bone on April 20, and has not played since. He's been out for 43 of the 60 days of this season so far.
But guess what? Nomar is the fans' choice to be starting shortstop for the National League in the all-star game. Meanwhile, Colorado rookie Clint Barmes is leading all NL shortstops in runs scored, doubles, home runs and RBI. Barmes is a distant fifth in the voting, more than 50,000 votes behind Garciaparra.
That's only the most egregious example. Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee is having an MVP season, leading the NL in all the Triple Crown categories (average, home runs, RBI). No one has won the Triple Crown since 1967, but somehow Lee is second in balloting for first base, with leader Albert Pujols having more than twice Lee's votes. Mike Piazza, batting .249 and throwing out less than 10% of the runners who try to steal on him, is the fans' choice for starting catcher. Barry Bonds has not played one single inning in 2005, out with a knee injury -- yet 138,571 "fans" actually voted for him to be a 2005 starting outfielder. Those are 138,571 people so stupid they should be forcibly sterilized to prevent them from breeding.
Baseball fans are blatantly unqualified to choose all-stars. If the league wants to sanction a "Most Popular Players Game" for somewhere in the summer, they're welcome to do it and let the imbeciles vote their hometown heroes into the game. But save the all-star game for the league's best players each year -- and let the people with an actual informed opinion (the players, managers, and baseball writers) be the only ones allowed a vote. Until the vote is forcibly taken away from the fans, the all-star game will be nothing more than a progressively bigger joke every year.
Posted by Christopher at 07:55 PM | Comments (4)
