Al Gore vs Bender

First youtube add to the blog. Enjoy.


Via Roxanne.

Good - but horrifying - news

Posted by Raznor

Flag-burning amendment loses by one vote. ONE FUCKING VOTE!! What the fuck is WRONG with the Senate anyway?

How in the name of all that's good and holy...

Posted by Ross

...could Dianne Feinstein support an anti-flag burning amendment?!?

The Lake House

Posted by Ross

Sweet...merciful...lord...

You know which literary character would have really enjoyed this film? Dunbar from Catch-22. Dunbar, you see, was terrified of death. And because of this, he was only happy when he was miserable because when he was miserable he perceived time as going very slowly... unlike when one is happy and having a good time and it's all over way too soon.

SPOILERS

I'm not saying "Lake House" isn't a well-made movie. There is plenty of love and skill and heart. And David Auburn is a fine writer.

All I'm saying is every excruciating second of this film was a keen sort of agony.

I wonder if the reason the film offers up Jane Austen's Persuasion (Bullock's character's favoritest book) as a sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink this story shares similarities with some classic literature you've heard of but never read was a way to deflect knee-jerk criticisms like the following:

The story could've been told in 30 minutes.

"The Lake House," sadly, clocks in at 105 minutes. The sweet embrace of death has never seemed so far away.

And the whole grand infinitum of the space-time continuum as explored in this film just seemed muddled, at best. Like Keanu stands her up for this date because he's been hit by a bus but then at the end she figures out that he was gonna die, so she writes him a note telling him that the Lybians are going to shoot him in the parking lot and... wait, which movie was I watching again?

While we're on the topic of the grand infinitum of the space-time continuum, isn't it just incredibly ironic that both protagonists happen to be well-educated, mannered, wealthy, and, of course, look like Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, respectively? And it's all so that the audience doesn't recoil when we see them making out at the end. Or maybe it's because the whole point of the movie is that these two people fell in love because they both loved this same lake house. And maybe people who love a place like this are genetically pre-determined to have movie star good looks and money in the bank.

Oh yeah, and another thing that annoyed me about the film is that back in his time, Keanu Reeves has this super-hot lady friend and she and him are about to get it on in his pick-up truck when the damn chess-playing (!) mangy dog cock blocks him by running away at the most inopportune moment. It's like, yeah, the reason the dog runs away is to further the plot and all that, but couldn't she have waited like seven more minutes?

It's Friday, It's Random, It's Ten

Posted by Raznor

Hooray! Friday Random 10 time! So let's get started:

1.) "High Times" - Sean Croughlan (from To: Elliott/ From:Portland)
2.) "Purple Rain" - Prince
3.) "Folsom Prison Blues" - Johnny Cash
4.) "Oh Well, OK" - Max Vague (From the Other Elliott Smith tribute album)
5.) "Karate Schnitzel" - Tenacious D (Not a song per se, but what the hell. It's a track)
6.) "Fight Fire" - The Golliwogs
7.) "Cocoon" - The Decemberists
8.) "The Road I'm On" - 3 Doors Down
9.) "Teresa Prelude" - Citizen Cope (a minute long instrumental to lead into the song Teresa. That's what random gets you)
10.) "I'm So Ronery" - Kim Jong Il (From Team America)

NSA Wiretap Uncovers Hollywood Terrorist Plot

Posted by Ross

In a turn of events the Bush administration is touting as a feather in the cap for the beleaguered National Security Agency and its domestic spying program, an intercepted e-mail featuring a long-planned terrorist plot has been uncovered.

The details of the plot, code named “Northern Jihad,” involve multiple assassinations of public figures as well as a coordinated biological and nuclear assault on US soil.

The e-mail, sent by a man identified as Rupert E. Grimsley of Los Angeles, first alarmed officials when they read its subject line: “THIS ONE’S GOING OUT WITH A BANG, BABY!!!”

“Standard protocol indicates we thoroughly examine the contents of any e-mail whose subject line has been written in all caps,” said national security advisor Stephen Hadley. “More alarming was the fact that there were not one, not two, but THREE exclamation points, to say nothing of the unspecified explosive nature of the e-mail’s contents, as promised in the text.”

Grimsley, a struggling screenwriter with a few B-movie to his credit, including “Vampire Mollusks” and “Killer Brain People,” was apprehended by federal officials in a midnight raid of his Silverlake studio apartment.

Horacio Escobar, Grimsley’s attorney, insists the whole thing is a misunderstanding. “The subject line of the e-mail was indeed referencing a terrorist plot… in a screenplay… written by my client… the title of which is “Northen Jihad,” Escobar told reporters at a press conference held earlier today.

Escobar then read from a written statement given to him by Grimsley before he was transported to an undisclosed detention center in one of those Eastern European countries that don’t have such nit-picky laws about torture and stuff:

“It’s not even that ‘Northern Jihad’ needs to be its own film. It could just as easily be the premise for the next season of ‘24.’ Think about it, Jack Bauer is working the northern border patrol to clear his mind or something. Or if they already have the story for next season, this could be for the season after. I mean, they’ll definitely pick it up for another season as long as this next one doesn’t all of a sudden start to suck.”

Escobar concluded the conference by stating, “The script is really quite good.”

“It was not a good script, not even close,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “The climactic sequence involves a mid-air knife fight on hang gliders, for crying out loud. Ignoring the fact that this sequence breaks each and every physical law known to science, the whole thing unfolds with an entire battalion of soldiers just looking up and watching it happen. I kept thinking, why doesn’t somebody just shoot the bad guy? Hell, shoot the good guy too and spare me the misery of reading another excruciating page of this garbage.”

“Right before the hang gliding scene,” Escobar said, “the hero, Max Rocker, tells the soldiers to, quote, ‘Stand down, that’s an order! This is personal.’ And my client simply thought adding the hang gliding angle would make the scene more exciting.”

Grimsley, who, after interrogation will be transferred to a Gitmo dog cage to await his day in court, is also seeking an agent or manager. Just someone who believes in him, ya know?

Quick Thought on X-Men III

Posted by Raznor

Just saw it. Not as bad as I expected, not as good as I hoped. Overall it swam in glorious mediocrity.

I'd still like to see a fourth movie, with Apocalypse. And Gambit. How the hell can you taunt us with an X-men franchise and never introduce Apocalypse and Gambit?

Also, Brett Ratner shouldn't be allowed within 500 miles of the set. And should an executive decide to hire Michael Bay or Chris Columbus to do a fourth movie, then that executive will burn in hell for all eternity. Unforgivable, I say.

The long-awaited return of the bekka

Posted by the bekka

Once in a while...some original web videos are so funny...that a bleary-eyed full-time-working mft-student simply must procrastinate from reading a namby-pamby textbook long enough to share them with you - who it's all really about - the fans.

Watch, and enjoy.

Bush Completes The Set

Posted by Raznor

Hilarious post by Bob Harris:

American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.

By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.

While precisely which British soldiers are to live in which homes remains unclear, the signing statement is clear and unambiguous, according to a press release on the White House website. The statement, in Bush's handwriting, contains the complete text of the Third Amendment — "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law" — crossed out, with the words "Hey, Bigtime, we missed one! Bring on the redcoats!" and what appears to be a smiley face added underneath.

Go ahead, read the rest.

Gays as political firewood

Posted by Raznor

Good post over at Big Queer Blog entitled Throw some fags at it:

Personally, Big Mouth is most disappointed in sometime ally Arlen Specter. Considering that Mr. Specter himself admits the amendment will never pass, it seems like the usually free-thinking Senator has decided to play politics and throw his party a bone. Despite his opposition to the amendment, allowing the proposal to leave Committee and open discussion on the Senate floor guarantees that it will become an issue for the November 2006 elections. The disappointment just keeps on mounting and I'm convinced that in the current political climate that we can never consider an elected Republican official an ally; they will always be pandering political pandas. They will always throw queer people and their rights to the dogs the minute their careers are threatened.

The times they are a-changin'

Posted by Raznor

Over the past 3 years I have been on and off again working on creating a comic that would be entitled "Raznor, the Rabbit, and Eye". Now that I'm at a very unsure point in my life, I thought this is the time to try to self-publish it via this crazy thing called the "interweb" which apparently is quite big. The goal is to have the first one, tentatively titled "Metacomic" by the end of the month, hence updating my status from "unknown blogger" to "unknown cartoonist/blogger".

Stay tuned for updates.

Maybe Bush Isn't a Bigoted Asshole?

Posted by Raznor

Over at Crooks and Liars a good video of Cafferty talking about the Republicans' drive to try to ban same sex marriage again and asks the question "Is now the time for President Bush to be backing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?" Wayne of Lancaster, PA wrote in:

As a heterosexual who has been through two marriages and subsequent divorces, it is obvious to me that the President is just trying to protect homosexual couples from the heartbreak and financial turmoil I have experienced

It's like the closest Bush has come to being a compassionate conservative.