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December 25, 2008
Here's to a slight reduction in terrorist funding.
as a G.M. plant in Janesville, Wis., became one of three to close."
How fitting that the send-off for an SUV factory in Wisconsin would look very much like a Hezbollah demonstration in Beirut.
I feel for the plight of the laid-off workers, but I won't miss these idiot machines on the roads and freeways. Is we learning yet?
Even a federal bailout could not save three of the last remaining plants in the United States still making sport utility vehicles.Reeling from its financial problems and a collapsing S.U.V. market, General Motors on Tuesday closed its factories in this city and in Moraine, Ohio, marking the passing of an era when big S.U.V.’s ruled the road. The moves followed the shutdown last Friday of Chrysler’s factory in Newark, Del., which produced full-size S.U.V.’s.
"Nearly the End of the Line for S.U.V.’s" (NY Times)
December 23, 2008
Words fail.
Florence Ellen Knorp Bates, 1930-2008.
December 17, 2008
Mauler in training.
Check back in a year or so, and that leg will be completely detached.
December 13, 2008
Eclectic, unctuous emetics in Temecula.
of his own performance. Children are quickly removed from the
audience when this occurs.
Few have the skills to hate on the mediocracy quite like The American Caliban:
We all know that there are two types of Christmas music in the U.S. One is the usually religious but musically acceptable set of Old Carols. Almost all of them talk a lot about God or use noninclusive phrases like "born is the king of Israel." However, the music is old and good.The second type is the pop music about Christmas written in the second half of the twentieth century. It's sometimes sentimental, occasionally romantic, rarely theological, and full of the kind of plastic whimsy one sees in Disney films. Little drummer boys and cotton candy snowmen come out of fucking nowhere and the kids are all eating and the grownups are all having snuggly winter sex. The music itself is uniformly emetic.
The management at Starbucks has chosen to play all of the modern pop Christmas music as performed by the following classes of musician: whiney Garrison Keillor country folk artists; breathy little indie girls; assholes with mandolins; safely dead old black guys; that guy from that one old movie; and Paul McCartney. I could almost swear I heard Bright Eyes doing "Frosty the Snowman" and Arlo Guthrie belting out "Let It Snow." And I'm way serious about the mandolin guys. They are major assholes.
"My Christmas Adventure in Temecula" (substitute at livejournal)
On fairness as a pointless obsession.
Gail Collins, my new favorite political pundit at the NY Times, on the disingenuous posturing over who should get the treats, and who shouldn't:
...a plan to bail out the auto industry went down the drain Thursday night. It was a stopgap measure, not necessarily the best bill in the world — although it did pass my own personal quality-control test, which is to find out what Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama thinks and go the other way.But its defeat doesn’t bode well for our prospects in coming up with a sensible response to the current economic unpleasantness. And the debate had an unnerving number of complaints about who was getting more than whom.
“We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out,” said Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina...
The really hard lifting still lies ahead, and we cannot possibly do it if we’re going to dwell too much on the fairness thing. It’s just too easy for lawmakers to dodge the tough vote by reminding their constituents that somebody else is getting more breaks than they are.
Which somebody always is. If Senator DeMint’s constituents are going to riot over a bailout for the auto industry, they’ll wind up being met by tool-and-die makers waving torches and yelling about soybean subsidies. If the lawmakers from Alabama say their constituents do not want their tax money going to bail out Michigan, the people in Michigan are going to say that they never really enjoyed paying more taxes to the federal government than their state received in aid, while Alabama got a return of $1.61 on the dollar. And anytime a representative from the Great Plains opens his mouth, the people from New York are going to point out that while every state gets the same number of senators, there are more people waiting for a subway in Brooklyn in rush hour than inhabit all of Wyoming.
We can really get tiresome on the subject. You don’t want to go there.
"The Dreaded Fairness Doctrine" (Gail Collins, NY Times)
December 11, 2008
Another reason to socialize.
In September of 1992, a film-school colleague and I set out to the high desert with a miniscule crew and four non-actor friends to shoot a commercial for Rhino Records. None of us had ever made a commercial before, but my hot girlfriend had arranged us a chance to get paid (barely) to do what we loved, and the result would allegedly appear at the beginning of Rhino's home video releases.
Little did those four friends realize that for the next sixteen-plus years (and counting), they'd get phone calls from friends and family who'd just seen them say strange things on the TV screen before Plan 9 From Outer Space came on. They've also been known to get recognized in public.
And little did I realize that all that time would go by before I would again see Rhonda Jones, whose hypnotic incantation of Rhino's 800 number has lured uncounted late-night drunks to order Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in the Special Collector's Edition DVD box set. Rhonda looks great (I should have snapped a photo last night, where is my mind?), and it occurred to me that it just might be time to re-gather the original actors and shoot a 17th Anniversary version of the spot; it seems like the Rhino thing to do.
Here's the original, "An Ode To Rhino":
December 9, 2008
You fucking tool II.
...ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, "unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], shit, I'll just send myself, you know what I'm saying." ROD BLAGOJEVICH later stated, "I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I'm saying. And if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself. Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the Senate seat "is a fucking valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing"...ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him." ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put "[Senate Candidate 4]" in the Senate "before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don't get anything."
Let's just NOTE HERE that it's generally a BAD THING when you keep reading your name in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. It's probably also best to not be one of the people [Described elliptically in brackets].
(Part 1 of the "You fucking tool" series featured former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.)
December 5, 2008
People looking good while enjoying life.
The writing isn't great, but the pictures are worth it: Sorry I Missed Your Party trolls Flickr so you don't have to.
Scroll back a few pages and you'll find an entry referencing Koko the gorilla's reputed non-gender-discriminating nipple fetish (the party connection is there, though tenuous). I'll have to ask my sister if that ever came up during her internship at the Gorilla Foundation in the '80s. It's a nest of scholarship, this InterTubes of ours.
Via Antler International.
December 2, 2008
Our own li'l Taliban, hard at work.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (I'd never heard of them before either) points out this swell PowerPoint presentation that combines Rick Warren's insert-"purpose"-here mall evangelism with good old-fashioned nutty historical revisionism (Charles Darwin was a Soviet agent?) to produce a truly creepy program of theistic indoctrination.
Bonus points for:
1. The fact that it's presented by Air Force chaplain Capt. Christian Biscotti (this pastry I DO NOT WANT)
2. The slide that asks potential converts: "Are you ready for your first tool?"
Points subtracted for the fact that Chaplain Biscotti's graphic design sucks rubber donkey cart tires.
"Creationism: The Latest In Military Suicide Prevention" (talk2action.org)
Via Substitute.
Failing to plan is succeeding to amuse.
All hail the FAIL.
