Batshit Crazy

Bristol Palin's baby daddy

2008-09-02T18:27:00.008-04:00

Just for the record, I think that dragging children into presidential campaigns is absolutely wrong, not because of some moral abstraction regarding the sanctity of your kids, but just because it's rather pointless. I mean my parents are atrocious at being parents and have the totally fucked up kids to prove it, but are excellent at things like running large companies and getting people to like them, and would make great vice presidents. In fact, McCain really ought to have picked my dad, they see eye to eye on a whole truckload.

But, the New York Post (aka "the rag of record") does not share my compunction, and has reproduced in part the MySpace page of one Levi Johnston:

On his MySpace page, Johnston boasts, "I'm a f - - -in' redneck" who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.
"But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess."
"Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass," he added.
He also claims to be "in a relationship," but states, "I don't want kids."

I mean that's just great. "'Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass,' he added" is a sentence that needs to be used far more often in newspapers. I mean "newspapers".

Confidential to Fox News: please note that my usage of the term "baby [parent]" is not entirely correct as Bristol and Levi are reportedly still involved and plan to wed, but it is an improvement over using it to refer to one's actual current spouse. Thank you.

Film on YouTube

2008-09-02T15:01:00.003-04:00

One of the common criticisms about this whole Web 2.0 user-generated content whatnot is that there is so much crap generated by the unwashed masses that no one will be able to tell what is good or not. Leaving aside the fact that there are plenty of stars forged in the fires of YouTube (many currently featured in that Weezer video), there is also the point that YouTube is simply a distribution channel, albeit one with very few obstacles to entry.

So if you'd made a film about exactly how staggeringly incompetent US decisions made after the fall of Baghdad contributed in no small part to this seething quagmire of a civil war called Iraq we've got going on now, and you'd seen the other fifteen excellent recent movies about Iraq crash and burn in brick-and-mortar theaters (even the crappy ones with tons of famous people failed, and I am pretty sure that Brett is the only person not specifically involved with the making of the film "Grace Is Gone" nor at Sundance 2007 to have seen it), maybe you would realize that getting as many people to see your documentary as possible is what you were going for all along. (Also, its run on YouTube just happens to end on November 5th, which sounds kinda close to some other date that is familiar for some reason.)

So maybe Magnolia Pictures that bought your critically acclaimed movie (Washington Post's number 1 film of 2007!) and planned to distribute it, but so far had only managed to put it in 2 theaters and release the DVD, thought: why not put the fucker up on YouTube so people can see it for free with no ads in the film, and just have a banner ad up top that (presumably) represents some sort of sponsorship from Netflix and Amazon so we can actually recoup some of our expenses?

I think it's a brilliant plan, that I hope more films released by actual studios could follow. A lot of talk has gone 'round about the demise of the major studio indie division, but really, what does it cost you to put something on YouTube? Work out a deal with Netflix, include their ad on your page, and accomplish the goals of 1) having people see the movie and 2) making money off the movie with little to no effort whatsoever. Why is that hard? Like, if this absolutely ridiculous animated baby rap piece of shit advertising some bullshit online cute baby contest can get almost seven hundred thousand views (!), maybe a picture about a war that has dramatically affected the lives of millions and millions of people could get a handful of hits.

Actually, I just scanned some of the comments, and never mind. Back to DVDs, never to be seen by anyone, you brilliant relevant filmmakers you!

forkinass4 says:
why is this video an hour long? WTF MAN!! That aint right! (votes zero)

RNC

2008-09-02T14:21:00.004-04:00

In the spirit of the Republicans taking a day off their convention to go make sure Hurricane Gustav didn't entirely obliterate their chances this November, I will also take a break from mentioning anything about the specific fourth dimensional aspects of exactly how much Bush cares about black people [Hint: not determined solely by when hurricanes are about to hit] and simply inquire: What the fuck is Cindy McCain wearing?

Is it, like, the color of the silty, flooding Mississippi? With a collar that can be used as a flotation device?

Divorced Kids

2008-08-28T18:43:00.003-04:00

Nope, not kids of divorce, divorced children: This 8 year old girl in Saudi Arabia was somehow or other married to a 50 year old guy in secret, arranged by her father, and now her mother is filing for divorce on her behalf. Because she doesn't know she's married, and also because she's eight. Now I understand that lots of people have arranged marriages, and often they are arranged while they are still children, but don't they usually wait until they're at least like thirteen, or, you know, have pubic hair, before they actually get married? At least this one is still living with her parents, unlike this other girl they mention:

In April another eight-year-old girl won a divorce after fleeing from her husband, aged 28, and arriving in the main court in the capital Sana'a.

They don't mention exactly how an eight year old managed to run away and make it all the way to the capital, in Yemen, but that's some accomplished kid. I bet she'll make someone very happy, when she's ready to be a wife. At twelve.

Condom Ringtone

2008-08-26T23:19:00.002-04:00

Neat idea: in India, where there are still a lot of stigmas around condoms, sexual education and their 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the BBC World Services Trust has started a new campaign trying to make condoms more acceptable. So far they've included a contest to answer a riddle to get people to talk about condoms, have a spiffy parrot mascot, and awesomely, a ringtone with a professional singer chanting "Condom" over and over. There's an ad showing the ringtone here, plus you can hear or download the ringtone here. It's pretty great!

Gender Identity

2008-07-31T14:38:00.002-04:00

Confused? Just examine your browsing history! This dude has set up a way to analyze what sites you've visited, compare their male-to-female ratio, and therefore decide whether you are male or female. The ratios are pretty interesting, people's comments seem to imply that they think there's judgement involved, and are confusing actually being male or female with gender stereotypes (why does my college make me feminine??) but it's just a breakdown -- girls are more likely to use financial sites and buy plane tickets and check out the ACLU than boys, for whatever reason. But boy oh boy is The Pirate Bay male! Incidentally, Google is just slightly more used by women whereas YouTube is exactly even. Given that there are more women than men in the world, but I think there are more men on the Internet -- well, I don't actually know what any of it means (nor where he's getting the ratios from) but it is interesting.

Oddly enough, my FireFox self is overwhelmingly female, while my IE self is overwhelmingly male. I didn't realize I was breaking it down like that. I guess I'll go check out this weekend's Hall of Fame football game on FireFox, then. Go Redskins!

Why this woman can't handle Monica Corcoran

2008-07-22T16:04:00.011-04:00

Why women can't handle 'Dark Knight'

Hey, Christopher Nolan.
Ever drink a gallon of Diet Coke and sit for two hours with your legs crossed? Oh and then -- just when it seems like Gotham is safe and credits will roll -- suffer through another 32 minutes of clenching your nether region muscles?

Clearly, the director of "The Dark Knight" and the auteurs behind other interminable fan boy action movies such as "Iron Man" (126 minutes) don't know that a woman's
bladder is about the size of a salted cocktail peanut. Men have bladders that are walnut-sized. And those very gals, after silently praying that the Joker will die or Batman will retire or everyone will just perish en masse and the movie will end, tend to be seated in the centers of theater rows.

Hey, Monica Corcoran.

Don't drink a fucking gallon of Diet Coke before you go to see a two and a half hour movie. Also, don't sit in the center (why do we "tend" to sit there, exactly?). Also, do you honestly have to pee every two hours? How do you sleep? Also, don't tell people how to make their art based on your limitations. Also, salted cocktail peanut?

But it struck me that maybe fan boys are finally getting their revenge on women who mocked them for their comic collections and Spiderman Underoos. Is this comic craze in movies just another Hollywood conspiracy against women? (But "Sex and the City" clocked in at 2 hours and 28 minutes, you protest. Yes, and many women chose to dash off when their least favorite lady hit the screen. Not to mention the fact that it was directed by a man.)

Seriously, what? I chose to not see that piece of shit at all, and I "chose to dash off" out of the English Patient (running time: 162 min) for a completely different reason: it was a terrible movie. And maybe, just maybe, it is possible that the main reason behind the running time of freakin' Batman is not a personal attack on you and your tiny bladdered female friends? I mean, maybe they just hate midgets. Did you think of that? Hmm?

Zack Snyder, director of upcoming geek boy extravaganza "Watchmen," has told the New York Times: "The main picture is nearing three hours long, and I know I have a fight on my hands just with that."
Um, more like a "flight" on your hands at 124 minutes, when a dozen chicks run for the aisles. How about an intermission for the geek girls?

How about if you mess with "Watchmen", I will stab you in your salted-cocktail-peanut-sized bladder with my "geek girl" knife?

Gosh, I am grumpy today. It must be that time of the month, huh Monica? Let's go to the little girls' room together and talk about it. I am assuming your piece is supposed to be a joke, or satire, or funny, or something? But I don't really get it. It's funny how chicks have little bladders? And they don't really like comic book movies, or at least not more than Diet Coke? Where's the funny? I guess I have a little brain, too!

ETA: I just saw Dark Knight yesterday and I didn't have to pee once, so fuck you!

Q&A

2008-07-22T14:59:00.007-04:00

Q: Which telecom, singled out by the NYT piece exposing Bush's illegal wiretapping in the first place for handing over customers' data in a way that might not be, shall we say, consistent with the American way, has spent tons and tons of money trying (and succeeding) to guarantee their immunity from prosecution, aimed at both the current Republican administration and Democratic Congress, as well as potential future officeholders (even though campaign finance laws prevent corporations from donating to campaigns)?

They don't say anything about sponsoring conventions!

Commemorative Prostitutes

2008-07-14T12:23:00.004-04:00

For a much classier remembrance, I take you to Amsterdam, where they have put this statue of a hooker in the Red Light District to "show respect to the millions of people around the world who earn their money in prostitution" (according to the sculptor, Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute):

Hilariously (for me, anyway), Ms. Majoor was "physically assaulted by an elderly lady who apparently was not happy to have the statue close to her home. The woman was taken into police custody, and released after the unveiling had taken place."

This violent elderly lady apparently has no problem with the actual prostitutes working near her home, just the statue of one. Here's a shot of the square the statue is going in:

See all them red lights? THERE BE HOOKERS. Chill out, feisty old lady.

We Will Never Forget

2008-07-14T12:03:00.003-04:00

First of all, as commemorative attack slogans go, this one kind of sucks. Pearl Harbor at least gets "a date which will live in infamy", whereas for September 11th all we have is the fucking date. The Holocaust gets "Never again", which is a little more proactive than just not forgetting (and also used to excellent effect in last week's "Weeds" -- grandfather, Jew and all-around fuck-up played by Albert Brooks tells his grandson that genocide must Never Happen Again. When precocious grandson Shane informs him that in fact it has happened several times since the Holocaust, in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, etc, he gets the very accurate response: "No, to Jews. It must never happen again to Jews.")

Anyway, to aid with the not forgetting, have a $20 silver plated bill:

With the (theoretical) Freedom Tower on the front and 1+2 WTC on the back, PLUS, as their ad on TV breathlessly informed me, it is the First Time Ever that a bill has used two separate numbers to add up to the denomination -- 9+11=20. It's just so, um, special.

This is brought to you by the National Collector's Mint, the same company that was already slapped for selling coins advertised "as having been minted from silver recovered from a bank vault "in the heart of ground zero"", when in fact they were just silver plated, and stating that they are the "first legally authorized government" coins, when the government in question is not, as one might assume, the US government, but is in fact "the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States possession with no authority to coin its own currency."

One More FISA Story

2008-07-14T11:54:00.003-04:00

I read this tidy summary of the FISA bill passed last week, not thinking much of it, until I noticed the byline -- this story about how the telecoms would not be punished, and Bush has managed to legalize his completely illegal wiretapping over the past seven years, was written by Eric Lichtblau, one of the two guys that won a Pulitzer uncovering it all for the NYT in the first place.

For, as it turns out, absolutely nothing:

"The vote came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil liberties. The final outcome in Congress, which opponents of the surveillance measure had conceded for weeks, seemed almost anticlimactic in contrast."

Thanks anyway, dude, hope you enjoyed the Pulitzer.

Arty Porn

2008-07-14T11:40:00.003-04:00

This "magazine" WLTF (Would Like To Fuck, um, obviously?) is kind of pretty, in a full frontal nudity sort of way (really, really NSFW, unless your boss likes dick). Interesting meditations on desire, and while some of the photographs are just whatever (and a lot of repetition, especially in Issue 0), there are some really cool shots.

And speaking of pornography, it seems a lot of you are spending your rebate checks on it:

"Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his 'stimulus package,' but we'll take it," said Jillian Fox of LSGmodels, a site monitored by AIMRCo.

Insert stimulus "package" joke.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

2008-07-13T16:57:00.002-04:00

Coming back Sept. 18th!

If you missed previous episodes, you can always watch them on Hulu. Highly recommended.

Yikes!

2008-07-09T14:12:00.000-04:00

Capital News says: "It is now against the law to smoke in any New York State university or college dormitory. Governor Paterson signed legislation Tuesday prohibiting smoking in the housing facilities of all SUNY and private schools in the state."

Boy, that would have really fucked up 504, huh?

Marriage Protection Amendment

2008-07-09T13:19:00.003-04:00

Purely hilarious that this is being reintroduced with 1/5 of its sponsors being Larry Craig and David Vitter. Protect marriage from two men marrying, but no need to worry about whores and gay bathroom sex. Marriage can handle all that just fine!

Muppets and Liberty!

2008-07-09T13:05:00.002-04:00

Again, thanks to PFAW, I can point you to the Muppets, Big Bird and (obviously) Martin Sheen reenacting the fucking Continental Congress. Cause what else are you doing with your day, really?

Fox News Breezes By New Low

2008-07-09T12:42:00.008-04:00

Media Matters has a comparison of the actual photos of two NYT journalists -- editor Steven Reddicliffe and reporter Jacques Steinberg -- and the apparently ridiculously photoshopped versions that aired on a Fox and Friends segment calling them "Attack Dogs" (in response to an article Steinberg published about Fox News' falling ratings). Later in the segment they put Steinberg's head on a poodle's body, so I guess we are meant to know that all the images here are fake, but this seemed a little less clear:

The NYT's David Carr, who writes about media in the Business section, had a whole article on Fox News where he responded to Media Matter's piece, saying:

"The accompanying photographs were heavily altered, although the audience was probably none the wiser. Mr. Reddicliffe looked like the wicked witch after a hard night of drinking, but it was the photo of Mr. Steinberg that stopped traffic when it appeared on the Web at Media Matters side by side with his actual photo. In a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda, his ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened and enlarged in a way that made him look more like Fagin than the guy I work with. (Mr. Steinberg told me that as a working reporter who covers Fox News, he was not in a position to comment. A spokeswoman said the executive in charge of “Fox and Friends” is on vacation and not available for comment but added that altering photos for humorous effect is a common practice on cable news stations.)"

Very classy.

It's Hard Out There For a Douchebag

2008-07-09T12:04:00.005-04:00

So courtesy of People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch, I saw this: the American Family Association's OneNewsNow site, which is, I guess, the part of the news you would want to read if you were a conservative Christian and didn't particularly want to know about anything else, apparently replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual" in all the articles it "reprints" from the AP. Including articles where Gay is someone's last name. Like Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay:

Homosexual barely averts major flop! Awesome.

Anyway, it seems they've fixed it now, as they have a history of responding to PFAW's items -- this piece shows how the AFA was redirecting links to their own site that came from PFAW's blog to a "Good Person Test" (Question: Are you a good person? Answer: No, and you're going to hell. Invariably. Seriously, take the test). Future links PFAW put up go through an anonymizer, but if you click on the older ones in that piece, instead of going to the test they now, hilariously, rick roll you. Who says the religious right doesn't have a sense of humor!

Plain old fuctional bra

2008-07-09T11:57:00.003-04:00

So maybe I talk about bras too much? But seriously, this story about a woman who was stranded on a mountain for three days and was saved by tossing her bra into a passing cable car so people knew where to look (after having given up) is not only full of that plucky indomitable human spirit, but also gave rise to some awesome headlines. My favorite?

Bra saves woman from twin peaks

FISA FISA yay yay yay!

2008-07-09T11:21:00.004-04:00

So, you know, complete dismissal of the Fourth Amendment, eviscerated Constitution, a President above the law, yada yada yada. The PAA is a train wreck and this new bill isn't much better, telecom immunity makes you wonder what the whole fucking point of "laws" is anyway, et c. You already know what I'm talking about, and presumably you think it sucks (if not, why do you hate America?) so here's a way to maybe help:

Brought to you from the guys responsible for Ron Paul's money bombs plus some bloggy types, they are trying to raise money to put pressure on Democratic Congress members who are up for reelection, to show that "going to the center" by voting against civil liberties can make you lose some of your unquestioned Democratic base, and maybe even your seat. Accountability, y'all! More than just a nice idea! Maybe!

Kinetic cell phone chargers

2008-06-26T12:19:00.004-04:00

Here's an idea that was long enough in coming -- a way to power your cell phone by dancing at your summer music festival of choice. It is not specified if the manufacturers would really prefer that you dance, or if you'll be allowed to charge your phone simply by waving your arms in the air like you just don't care, but either way I think it's pretty nifty. It apparently weighs the same as "a phone" and is the size of a deck of cards, and wraps around your arm:

Seems like putting it on your ankle and grabbing the energy from each step between the beer tent to the mosh pit to the bathroom and back again might be more efficient, but then people might think you had escaped your house arrest or something and you would no longer be cool. Or cooler, depending on the festival (Ozzfest loves the felon on the lam).

Rebate checks

2008-06-19T18:11:00.004-04:00

If you were planning on blowing your rebate check on coke and whores, may I suggest the Bunny Ranch? They are offering a 2-for-1 deal:

"According to Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof, "You bring your $600 check in, and we give you the $1,200 George Bush party--three girls and a bottle of champagne." "

Bring your own coke though, I guess. Though it's probably on sale somewhere back there.

Speaking of water bottles

2008-06-10T13:25:00.003-04:00

You can buy $40 bottles of water from Bling H2O -- they are made of frosted glass and encrusted with Swarovski crystals.

And, um, they're reusable! Though not so much practical for tossing in your bag and bringing along. But just think how cool you'll be!

We Can Solve It ads

2008-06-05T16:58:00.003-04:00

I kind of like these Unlikely Alliance ads:

You can watch more and suggest another unlikely alliance here, as well as sign up for the all-important updates.

I also just bought a nifty water bottle from SIGG brought to my attention by the good folks at stopglobalwarming.org -- stupid expensive for an aluminum bottle, but it is a good replacement for the plastic bottles that are always getting thrown out by the cleaning people at the office so I can't reuse them no matter how hard I fucking try. I don't even have drawers to hide them in anymore!

Anyway, the bottle simply states "I am not plastic", reminiscent of that "I'm not a plastic bag" tote that sold out like crazy and was also stupid expensive, but hey, people are excited about reusing stuff. Who knew! There's also a coffee cup, theoretically available now. So go on, people, consume so you can stop consuming so damn much!

The lighter side of total lack of respect for women

2008-06-05T15:57:00.002-04:00

This is pretty funny:

My favorite line: "I can't put my penis in your college degree/I can't shove my fist in your childhood dreams".

Also, stellar breakdancing.