Bill Maher is a Funny Guy
Posted by Ross

This is from today's LA Times:

"Look at John Bolton -- if you can. Now, I don't know if this man has human-relationship issues, but I do know two things: One, his hair's not speaking to his mustache. And two, the Republicans actually like the idea of our most sensitive diplomat being a rage-a-holic. Asking this man to represent us at the United Nations is like asking R. Kelly to chaperon the Miss Teen USA pageant."

Update (by Raznor): added link.

Someone in the White House has been getting plenty of hot man-sex
Posted by Raznor

And good for him.

Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.
Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One—which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.

On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.

In March, 2003, Guckert left the White House twice on days he had never checked in with the Secret Service. Over the next 22 months, Guckert failed to check out with the Service on fourteen days. On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one. On one of these days, no briefing was held; on another, he checked in twice but failed to check out.

Via Tom Tomorrow, who's right on in saying

[A]s someone said somewhere, if Gannon were a drug dealer or an embezzler getting this kind of access, it would be news. Don't let the right wing noise machine convince you that his specific alleged criminal activity should be politely overlooked. There's something going on here, and if this exact set of circumstances had occurred eight years ago, a special prosecutor would already have been preparing the case for impeachment. And the news media would have been camping out on G/G's doorstep 24/7.

But who is Guckert seeing? I don't want to speculate too much, but I'd look at the guy with the apparent bald man fetish. Just sayin'. (Link courtesy of Atrios)

The Midnight Rambler
Posted by Ross

Hey there, world. Haven't posted for a while. Was visiting the family back in AZ this past week and before that working furiously on finishing a first draft of a script that turned out to be 190 pages. In case you didn't know, 190 pages is pretty long for a script. I was in that kind of euphoria one feels after finishing something like a 190 page script and ended up sending it to an agent along with another more reasonably-lengthed 120 page script. I think the new script needs more work, though. They always do.

Dude, I'm getting married in like 4 months. I'm 28. Sometimes I feel like I've got it all together, then other times I feel like I'm barely squeaking by. It's probably a bit of both. Just careening through time and space at this break-neck pace, and terrified of being wasted.

For years I thought that death was my biggest fear. And there are many aspects of death that certainly scare me, like dying in a nuclear holocaust or getting cancer or murdered or something.

I've had both grandmas die within weeks of each other earlier this year, so for the first time in my life, I've really been confronted with death. And also get a grasp of how long I've really got. Unless they invent those pills Vonnegut's always going on about, where they prevent you from aging... I just hope they get invented before I've stopped being handsome.

So I'm going to die. And it'll likely be before the year 2150, though with modern medicine, you never know...

And what's keeping me up this night is the fear of being wasted. Notice I don't say "wasting away," but rather "being" wasted, as if I am being wielded by a force beyond my control. Or, rather, being ignored by a force that controls my destiny.

Or maybe I should just go to bed.

No. Fucking. Way.
Posted by Raznor

In case you haven't looked at a calendar lately, you'll note that it's late April. Right now, here in Flagstaff, it's snowing. It's fucking snowing.

Damn.

YET MORE EARTH-SHATTERING WISDOM FROM THE (NOT-TOO DISTANT) PAST - AKA SOME SOUND ADVICE FOR 'OL BENEDICT XVI

Posted by the bekka

"Despite the many glimmers of truth that 1989 brought to us, the same year was seen out in Germany with an unexpected, and unsettling, event. In numerous Catholic churches, the bells were rung for fifteen minutes to proclaim to the faithful that abortion was a sin. In the midst of the euphoria at the tearing down of the Berlin wall and the growing consciousness among young people, we were thrown back into the Middle Ages - an era in which much of what we know today was as yet undiscovered, and which, anyway, had little interest in enlightmenent. Church bells have never been rung to proclaim the mistreatment of children sinful. They weren't rung as Hitler organized the mass deportation of Jews throughout Europe, or as Stalin presided over the extermination of millions. And they didn't ring as Ceausescu terrorized his nation, using its children as apprentice "Securitate" men, who would later open fire on real children. But now they did ring, for a full fifteen minutes, so that even more unwanted and later tortured children could be born into the world!

"In disbelief, one asks oneself: Is it possible that the people behind such actions really are so clueless? Do they not know that no less than one hundred percent of all seriously abused children are unwanted? Do they not know what that can lead to? Do they not know that mistreatment is a parent's way of taking revenge on the children they never wanted? Shouldn't the authorities do everything in their power, in the light of this information, to see to it that the only children who are born are wanted, planned for, and loved? If they did, then we could put an end to the creation and continuation of evil in our world. To force the role of a mother on a woman who does not wish to be a mother is an offense not just against her, but against the whole human community, because the child she brings into the world is likely to take criminal revenge for its birth, as do the many (mis)leaders threatening our lives. All wars we ever had were the deeds of once unwanted, heinously mistreated children.

"It is the right to lived life that we must protect wherever and whenever it is threatened. And it should never be sacrificed to an abstract idea."

From Alice Miller's Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, Chapter 10 - "Protecting Life After Birth," in section 3 - "Giving Up Hypocrisy," published in 1990

SOME GOOD IDEAS HAVE BEEN AROUND A LOT LONGER THAN ONE MIGHT THINK

Posted by the Bekka

"Some time ago, after the Supreme Court decision on prayer in the public schools, a so-called patriotic women's organization - I forget which one - bitterly attacked the decision as antireligious. They were in favor of 'spiritual values,' they said, whereas the Supreme Court was destroying them.

"I am very much in favor of a clear separation of church and state, and my reaction was automatic: I disagreed with the women's organization. But then something happened that set me to thinking for many months. It dawned on me that I, too, was in favor of spiritual values and that, indeed, my researches and theoretical investigations had gone far toward demonstrating their reality. I had reacted in an automatic way against the whole statement by the organization, thereby implicitly accepting its erroneous definition and concept of spiritual values. In a word, I had allowed these intellectual primitives to capture a good word and to put their peculiar meaning to it, just as they had taken the fine word 'patriotic' and contaminated and destroyed it. I had let them redefine these words and had then accepted their definitions. And now I want to take them back. I want to demonstrate that spiritual values have naturalistic meaning, that they are not the exclusive possession of organized churches, that they do not need supernatural concepts to validate them, that they are well within the jurisdicion of a suitably enlarged science, and that, therefore, they are the general responsibility of all mankind. If all of this is so, then we shall have to reevalute the possible place of spiritual and moral values in education. For, if these values are not exclusively identified with churches, then teaching values in the schools need not breach the wall between church and state."

-Abraham Maslow, in Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, published in 1964.

Death to Capitalism! Fourteen dollars, please.
Posted by Raznor

You have to read the new This Modern World.

Why blogging is hard
Posted by Raznor

It's 'cause everytime I'm halfway through criticizing a piece of "news" like this I start to think, "wait a minute. There's not a chance in hell they're not joking." Then I see a little more evidence and start to realize that they are not, in fact, joking. Then I get depressed and drink lots of beer, and maybe read some VG Cats where at least I know they're joking.

Link via Atrios.

Some spam
Posted by Raznor

This was the subject line of a spam I received:

Reply: Jenifer Fucking on Paparazzi Pothos

I'll comment how I love it when spam has "reply" or "re:" in the subject line. It's like I sent my good friend Hubert B Spammer an e-mail and he's finally gotten back to replying to me. How nice. And I don't know what "Pothos" means. Maybe it's a misspelling of "pathos". Like the Paparazzi really felt that Jenifer's fucking connected to them in a deep, spiritual way. Good for them.

DeLay's Wu Room
Posted by Raznor

I think you'd have to have seen the last couple episodes of Deadwood to get it - but this post over at Jesus's General is quite hilarious.

Turning all our children into Hooligans and Whores
Posted by Raznor

Damn, this makes me wish I had Showtime. Oh well, I'll wait until it comes out on DVD.

Andrea Dworkin died
Posted by Raznor

Best post on her life I've found comes from Sheelzebub. Go read.

And taking directly from Sheelzebub's site:

Her partner and long-time friend John Stoltenberg said that donations in honor of Andrea Dworkin's life and work can be made to:

The Schlesinger Library
The Andrea Dworkin Fund
Radcliffe Institute
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-3600

or to the domestic-violence shelter or rape-crisis center of your choice.

Blogger burnout
Posted by Raznor

Man, it's been a while since I blogged. And there's so fucking much to blog about. DeLay's slow descent into madness, Powerline-was-completely-fucking-wrong-gate, Bush's bamboozlepalooza, conservatives attempting to intimidate the judiciary. But I've just been tired/busy/in-an-existential-funk. I promise I'll get out of it. Just keep readin'. Please?

Me as a South Park Character
Posted by Raznor

This is quite fun.



Via Ampersand.

The Midnight Rambler
Posted by Ross

I was so damn tired this afternoon, so of course now I'm wide awake. I'm working on a script that's so very close to being finished but I just can't work on it now.

Man, I'm just bending every fiber of willpower toward making it to that next level. It's time to step to the plate.

Guess that's what's been disturbing the old slumber. And also, as much as I'm a fan of the new MVP Baseball, it's not quite at the point where it's autopilot mode where it can just soothe me when my attention span is short.

Am thinking about maybe getting off this damn computer and doing a little reading.

Pope Starting to Smell
Posted by Ross

Vatican City (From Associated Press) --

"The Pope is really starting to smell," mused Cardinal Garret Leahy.

"Must have something to do with the sad biological fact that he's just a pile of decomposing genetic material," countered Bishop Stephen de Lancie.

The Cardinal and Bishop were, at this point, in hour 72 of Pope John Paul II's death vigil, having already watched more than a million mourners and dignitaries pass through.

"I mean, President Bush barely even looked at him before crossing away and hailing a gelato cart," the Cardinal said.

"I thought this was going to be a sequel of his daddy's Japan visit," said the Bishop.

"Oh man, that would've been sooo hilarious, and were could've totally told everybody we were there!" the Cardinal said.

To which the Bishop replied, "Dead bodies kinda creep me out."

IT'S KINDA REASSURING

Posted by the bekka

It's kinda reassuring when you know your fiance is a super-huge baseball nut - who probably knows every darn player to play the game, or if not, close to it - and when I peek into the printer tray and what do I see? A picture of Babe Ruth on a vintage baseball card.

Maybe you just had to be there.

THE WRITING ON THE WAL-MART

Posted by the bekka

Get a clue, Wal-Mart. Your time is up and you know it. I mean, you are so malignant on so many levels: inhumane treatment of illegal alien workers, building on ancient burial grounds and in the shadow of ancient monuments, wiping out local businesses, relying on cheap foreign labor for your even cheaper products, selling firearms and artillery to minors, the list goes on.

So, if you're a business and you have these increasingly unsavory problems, what do you do? Try to fix it? Pay your workers decently? Give them healthcare? Apologize to the descendants of the people whose graves you bulldozed to build your stores?

No! Of course not! You never change your actual horrifying business practices - that's spineless liberal thinking.

What you do is launch a massive PR campaign to improve your consumer appeal! You've probably noticed the saccharine TV ads depicting how much everybody LOVES Wal-Mart: Blacks, Asians, Latinos, the elderly, Gen X-ers, 20-somethings, the Disabled, the Military, Veterans of the Military - everyone. Oh, except gays. Also, Wal-Mart will soon be hosting a media retreat to help promote the image that, in the words of CEO H. Lee Scott, "Wal-Mart is good for America."

Correction: Wal-Mart is good for your America.

Oy.

The Midnight Rambler...
MVP Baseball 2005: Uh-oh
Posted by Ross

I finally got it yesterday, the newest, greatest, most technologically advanced version of EA Sport's legendary MVP Baseball.

And you know what? It was only $30.

See, in the past, those games went for $50 but now that ESPN's selling its new games for $20, EA had to drop its price tag.

And the guy who was selling me the game tried to convince me that the ESPN game was amazing... which it probably is. I've seen the commercials, and the shameless advertising they do for it on Baseball Tonight.

But I'm true EA Sports through and through. This has something to do with the fact that the first great baseball video game I ever played was a Nintendo game called RBI Baseball. It was the first game I played that had real players (even though they all looked like pixilated sacks of potatoes).

RBI Baseball, was, of course, an EA Game. And since that time back, I guess, at the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s, I have played just about every EA Baseball incarnation, from RBI Baseball to Triple Play Baseball, all the way to MVP Baseball.

Think about that. A first-hand account of the evolution of the greatest baseball game of all-time (according to me, at least).

And holy crap, MVP 2005 is loaded. The games are way more involved, more realistic. You have to really use your head as you pitch, and making quality pitches is more difficult. The players are more realistic-looking, and even look remotely like the real thing. A long way indeed from those potato sacks.

And now here I am, unable to sleep at night, writing about the video game I'm likely going to start playing the minute I post this midnight rambling.

Night.

April Fool's Day Roundup
Posted by Raznor

Well, some funny stuff going on.

Over in the blogoverse, Jesse Taylor is waxing Glenn Reynolds-esque while Amanda Wolcotte worries how her independence hurts her chances of getting a man.

In the realm o' comics, Darby Conley and Bill Amend are apparently colluding, while Penny Arcade is one of the funniest I've ever seen.

And in the meanwhile, Homestar Runner has become a pay site. Hooray.

Update: Roxanne too. Man, when Jesse linked to this, I was completely fooled.

Update the Second: Patriot Boy too.