more stuff?

All apologies for the generally atrocious state of the 'ol blog these days. I'm mos def trying to post more frequently, but sometimes... well, we all falter from time to time.

Anyway, what's been most neglected is the musicalia on the sidebar o'er yonder. To that end, please see the updated "playlist" section and please enjoy the new tracks in the BlogRadio. As always, should anything tickle yer earhole, lemme know and I'll throw a CD at you. Well, most likely I'll gently hand it to you, as throwing it at you would be rather rude, and may even damage the disc. So, updated "What is this shit?" post to follow.

Canadyriana

So, I don't know about you guys, but to me, the biggest story this week was that a real live terrorist organization won a majority in a parlimentary election in the the most combustible part of the world. The ramifications for this in terms of... well, everything, are enormous. These guys have carried out numerous suicide bombings over the last decade, killing hundreds of pepole, and every major western government considers them a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, the man you voted for president, Al Gore, watches movies and delivers a powerful address about... Canada. WTF?

"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests."

Canada: It's all about the oil, man!!!

Also:

"Hopefully that will not happen thanks to the minority victory," Gore said of Canada's involvement in Kyoto.

Ok, what? How can a minority win a victory? I mean, I know he thought he won the election with a minority vote, but surely someone explained to him how it works by now?

Even more, if Gore calls this Canadian guy "ultra-conservative," I wonder what phrase he'd use to describe Hamas leaders?

Why should he be?

He's already allowed himself to be bought off by one of the world's most ruthless dictators, and subsequently ridiculed. He's a cat, all right. Although, that's not precisely the word I'd use. *

Brokeback Top Gun

Something special for Rochester, combining two of his no doubt favorite movies of all time. I can't quit you, Iceman.

I mean, I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, but that volleyball scene in Top Gun is one of the gayest things I've ever seen.

The Colbert Retort

This guy obviously had an agenda to get this out before he went into the interview. Much like the Daily Show, Colbert would no doubt say that he makes fun of everybody. But that's not exactly true, is it?

What bothers me the most about The Daily Show (I haven't seen The Colbert Report yet) is I think typified in this bit by Colbert:

What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press "liberal," they call the press "biased," not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it's hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there's any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it's like the existence of another authority.

Now, I get that this is just his opinion or whatever, and though I certainly disagree with his premise, that's not what bothers me here. What bothers me is the inherent arrogance and condescension in this quote. He discounts even the possibility that those that don't agree with him could be right. No, those that disagree with him are borderline fascists, bent on crushing all manner of dissent in America. That just betrays an intellectual laziness. The people that complain most loudly about press bias are often those who complain just as loudly that the government has too much authority. Colbert has obviously not run across this viewpoint, sometimes known as LIBERTARIANISM. Or maybe he just forgot to mention it.

Jon Stewart, Howard Dean, John Kerry, MoveOn.org, and many other mainstream Democrats have this problem, too. Not only are you wrong: you're also obviously irredemiably ignorant, supportive of an authoritarian government, and stupidly resistant to the good that your elite betters in gov't and the mainstream media can do for you. To me, that shows that he and other liberals are unwilling to even concede the legitimacy of a contrasting viewpoint, and instead choose to harp about how smart they are, and that it's the ignorant populace that is too stupid to understand their brilliant ideas.

Looking around the political blogosphere, I am amazed, every day, at how capable seemingly every-day people are at dissecting political and news events. They kick the New York Times' ass. It's not even a contest in terms of skeptical analysis of events. The people that follow the press and its coverage most closely are the ones who are most convinced of the press' bias. (Not to mention the academic studies that prove it.) To see Colbert out there denying bias, and then likening those that document (or even believe) it to goose-steppers is appaling and unforgivably ignorant.

It's happened remarkably quickly, but it seems that he's quickly becoming what he's so adept at satirizing.


Or maybe I'm overreacting.

"unrated" not equal to "more boobs"

When extra nudity does pop up on DVD, it's not the kind of stuff that was too erotic for the big screen. Rather than introduce new boobs, unrated DVDs typically further the audience's understanding of boobs with which they're already acquainted. The added material is a stray frame here or there that doesn't add much carnal knowledge—these were boobs that were cut for time or dullness.

Thus, we arrive at the great unrated DVD paradox: The uncensored version is often less raunchy than the cut you see in theaters. ... The 40-Year-Old Virgin has a similar decline in its skin-to-screentime ratio. With its preposterous 17 minutes of new footage, the unrated Virgin is the Titanic of lowbrow comedies—a couple of stray nipples wedged into hour upon hour of clothed dialogue.

Apparently, though, this website lists pretty much every boob in recent cinema history. For example, say I was... uh, "curious" about "Brokeback Mountain." The site helpfully tells me:

Lureen and Jack passionately kiss and then get into the backseat of a car where they continue. She asks if she's going to fast, and he jokingly replies that fast or slow, he likes the direction she's going. She then removes her top (we see her in her bra that shows cleavage) and then removes that, allowing full views of her bare breasts as she's on top of him.

Which, all right. Lookin' good. However, it also tells me:

Jack's pants are then undone and he turns with his rear toward Ennis who pulls down Jack's pants (we briefly see the side of his bare butt). Ennis then undoes his own pants, spits on his fingers (for lubricant) and then puts his hand down toward his crotch (we don't see the actual act).

So, maybe I'll just stay home and watch "Wedding Crashers" again. Sheesh.

a social statement

Most cars and trucks don't achieve the gas mileage they advertise, according to Consumer Reports. But hybrids do a far worse job than conventional vehicles in meeting their Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy ratings, especially in city driving.

Hybrids, which typically claim to get 32 to 60 miles per gallon, ended up delivering an average of 19 miles per gallon less than their EPA ratings under real-world driving conditions (which reflect more stop-and-go traffic and Americans' penchant for heavy accelerating) according to a Consumer Reports investigation in October 2005.

For example, a 2004 Toyota Prius got 35 miles per gallon in city driving, off 42 percent from its EPA rating of 60 mpg. The 2003 Honda Civic averaged 26 mpg, off 46 percent from its advertised 48 mpg. And the Ford Escape small sport utility vehicle managed 22 mpg, falling 33 percent short of its 33 mpg rating.

...

HYBRIDS ARE ALSO failing to pay for themselves in gas savings. A study by the car-buying website Edmunds.com calculates gasoline would have to cost $5.60 a gallon over five years for a Ford Escape hybrid to break even with the costs of driving a non-hybrid vehicle. The break-even number was $9.60 a gallon for a Honda Civic hybrid.

Hybrid automakers and their supporters have their defenses. They quibble with how some studies are done. They point out that even with their fuel economy shortcomings, hybrids achieve the best gas mileage in three of five vehicle categories rated by Consumer Reports. Hybrids are still far lower-polluting than diesels. Their sales are growing fast, even though they make up a small 1 percent of America's annual sales of 17 million vehicles.

Then there's the ultimate defense: They are just like conventional cars because drivers buy them for many reasons other than fuel savings and cost. There's the "prestige of owning such a vehicle," says Dave Hermance, an executive engineer for environmental engineering at Toyota, the leading seller of hybrids. After all, many vehicle purchases are emotional decisions, he says.

SO, HYBRIDS have become the environmental equivalent of driving an Escalade or Mustang. Who cares if they deliver on their promises as long as they make a social statement?

Taxpayers should. The federal government subsidizes hybrid fashion statements with tax breaks that benefit the rich. The average household income of a Civic hybrid owner ranges between $65,000 to $85,000 a year; it's more than $100,000 for the owner of an Accord. The median income of a Toyota Prius owner is $92,000; for a Highlander SUV owner $121,000; and for a luxury Lexus SUV owner it's over $200,000. *

Mini Cooper

Firstable, they're getting this whole Kaitlin thing totally wrong. She's not supposed to be normal and (fairly) well-adjusted. She's not supposed to be "amazing." That whole episode was totally leading up to her being preggers. Wha'happen? At least they scored huge by referencing the fact that she loved a hairless pony. My favorite OC line ever? Julie, to Jimmy: "China? Has alopecia?"

Secondively, please be nice to Taylor Townsend. Ok, I get it. She can be a bit overzealous. But she's crazy hot and seems like a nice enough girl. She just wants to have friends. Although why she'd want to be friends with someone like Marissa "Drive my sister home for me, slave" Cooper is beyond me. Get out while you can, Johnny.

Also, Ryan's a pretty beefy guy. I'll bet he doesn't really eat the short stack of pancakes.

when disaster strikes

Ok, it's time to set the fucking record straight. I've had just about enough of Angry Hippie's nonsensical rants, distortions of the truth, and cheat-beating mysogonistic falsifications.

On the night in question, yes, Truck and I did lose some games. Nobody disputes that fact. But here's how it went down: Truck and I handily beat AH and Turbo 2 games out of 3, which the entire Western world agrees is the default when beginning a tournament of bar games. When we won that set, AH and Turbo, their manhood no doubt shamed, absolutely begged Truck and I for more games. At this point, Truck and I were reluctant to continue. Not because we were basking in our victory, but because the party was running out of steam, and we all wanted to go home. AH and Turbo insisted on playing one more game, which Truck and I won. Again, AH and Turbo begged for more. They proceeded to win the last 2 games. At no point (until the last game was concluded) was the notion advanced that these subsequent games were somehow a continuation of the original best of 3 series. Truck may have summed up this situation most elegantly:

Let's get something straight. Turbo and Angry Hippy lost the best 2 out of 3 tournament. Because their pussies hurt so much, Matty and Firetruck decided to play on for a best 3 of 5 tournament. Therefore, it is 1 to 1 crackhead.

Indeed. Further, AH himself admitted this:

Now if we were talking about two matches, we would be discussing the fact that they won the first 2 of 3 and we won the second 2 of 3.

Which, since there was no a priori discussion of tournament boundaries after the conclusion of the initial, universall accepted best of 3 match, there can be no insistence that subsequent games were some sort of "continuation" that AH and Turbo "allowed" to happen. Therefore, the series stands, even by the most generous of definitions, at 1-1 (3 games won and lost by each team).

More recently, Truck and I did lose to AH and his wife. But Truck had just quit smoking and was off her game. So that shit don't count.

Scenes from the modern office

Ok, so like many of you, it's time for my annual performance review at work. There are so many ridiculous aspects to this process that I could fill up several posts. For example, employees do not "get reviewed" in the sense that our bosses tell us what we did well and what needs improvement. Instead, the employee writes his own evaluation, which is then combined by one's boss with up to three other evaluations from secondary sources, usually people who supervised you on other projects. The final, combined evaluation circulates through up to eight layers of management before it is returned to you for final review. Promotions are then discussed by the higher-ups, and all is finally said and done usually around the end of May. Honestly, it's a 6 month process. By this time, however, we are hard at work on our mid-year review.
Anyway. I just wanted to point out that at my company, we don't refer to the process as "review." We call it "performance management." And the software we use to facilitate the process is called the "performance management system" (aka PMS). So, while we're going through the process, we are often "working with PMS." PMS plays a huge role in the process. Documents are created by PMS. Sometimes we need help with our PMS, or are surprised by something PMS has done.

I don't know. I thought it was funny.

Come on, Al

Seriously, dude. You're acting like nobody's paying attention to your nonsensical rants.

Do it, Knight Rider

The part where he does the crazy dance after eating the raw fish is the best. And he flies?!?!? Best video ever!

Very droll

Via DataWhat:

This girls posts funny shit her boyfriend said. It's not as lame as it sounds. Example:

Coors Light.

"If you gave me a car made of diamonds and blowjobs all day I still wouldn't drink that beer."

What do you think of that, AH?

Population: You.

While E was playing Civilization 4 I decided to go to the store. He asked if I would bring him back something, I said no, and he said:

"And I was just going to name this city I conquered after you. I guess I'll have to call it Bitchburg."

ha.

Marissa Cooper graduates!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I heart Taylor Townsend. Not only did she come through for our gang in the clutch, and defy her weird-boobed Type-A mom, but I just noticed that she's got those cute little elf ears that I love so much. Not as much as flowing blonde locks, but still quite a bit.
Lindsey, I know you loved the 90210 ref on Taylor's signage. But who among us doesn't love Julie Cooper-Nichol (Roberts?!??!)? Pork rinds. Honest to dog, OC, you crack me right up. And the return of Mini Cooper is eminent! Baby, I changed my mind. You change change the name of your car from Marissa to Kaitlin.

If you fall...

Actor Sean Penn added to the enthusiasm of the day by stressing that all of the nation's anti-war activism was taking hold and was starting to work—while admitting that the stress of living under the current administration was making it tough for him to quit smoking.

Truck, you can use this excuse, too. President Bush is responsible for you not being able to quit smoking.


As an aside, this is the lamest thing I've ever heard. Cowboy up, Spiccoli.

Nope. No connection at all...

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000.*

UW Alumni...

Guess which Wisconsin "restaurant" the author is talking about! Random. Man, could I go for one of those burgers right about now. The hangover that usually preceedes it, though? Yeah, not so much.

Bad idea

I think this is a really bad idea. Saying that Gore could be successful because he's comparable to Howard Dean seems to me to be really stupid. I mean, Dean didn't even win any primaries. MoveOn.org and internet funding was like, seriously overrated in the last campaign. Relying on "grassroots" Democrats and the "youth" vote to win is a huge mistake, one that's been demonstrated time and again in the last few elections. Take 2004, when the stakes couldn't have been higher, when I've never seen a higher level of engagement by people my age and younger, the big story was that the youth vote failed to show up, and handed the election to Bush. Are Democrats really willing to bet on this strategery again? Seems like a bad idea.

Furthermore, the last elections have been unkind to anti-war candidates. The country simply does not want a far-left candidate, which is what Gore has increasingly become. And is Gore even really credible as an anti-war candidate? I mean, sure, he's been vocal in his opposition since 2003. But he was vice president when Clinton signed into law the act which stated that regime change in Iraq was America's official policy; a policy which Bush continued. Would Gore not be then vulnerable to the same "I voted for it before I voted against it" attack that Kerry was?

And what does "antiwar hawk" mean, anyway? Again, Kerry tried to stake out a (let's be generous here and call it) "nuanced" position on the war, and he got hammered for it. "Antiwar hawk" seems just like the kind of wishy-washy, lawyer-y bullshit that Americans don't like.

I'm not attacking the guy's politics here, ok? I'm just saying that the Democrats have tried getting a guy like him elected before (not to mention trying to get this particular guy elected before), and it didn't work.

If the Democrats want to win elections, they can stake out a more responsible position on national security issues. Stop inviting Michael Moore to your conventions, and putting Jimmy Carter's ridiculously incompentent mug all over your shit. Start talking about real, measurable goals for success in Iraq. This entails actually stating said goals, not just saying that you need them. I'm looking at you, Joe Biden. Stop saying that America is the problem, and stop trying to cut the size and effectiveness of the military (*coughalgorecough*). I don't know of any wars that got started cos America's military was too big.

Snack attack, mothaf*****!!

The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia! Goddamned funny. Love the gunshots.

(link copped from Jay-Z)

modern drunkard

Only like 3 days too late, the NYT serves up a review of hangover cures.
Seems like the best bets are Gatorate or Propel, and coffee. But that ain't any fun. I prefer McGriddle sandwiches. Mmmm....ingenious pancakes....

So long, stink-year

The Onion compiles its annual Least Essential Albums list for 2005. Can anyone guess which album I do own, and which one I'd like to own?



Dude, I fucking LOVE IT when I hit "publish post" and blogger goes "There were errors." Well, obviously. It's like, "Well, mistakes were made. That's about all we know at this point." Lame.