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Showing posts from January, 2006

Media, Politics, and Agita

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"Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken First, let us lay the notion of a "Liberal Media" to rest once and for all. There have been books written on how the "liberal" media is a myth; I can destroy the myth in three paragraphs. To-wit: 1. When it was revealed many years ago that George H.W. Bush (the Republican president) had an extramarital affair with a diplomat, nary a word was mentioned in the mainstream media (MSM); certainly, the story did not "have legs" and wasn't pursued. When it was revealed not-so-many years ago that Bill Clinton (the Democrat president) had an extramarital affair with an intern, the story never left the lead spot of the network news nor the front pages of America's daily newspapers. 2. When it was revealed back in 1992 that, while in college, Bill Clinton had tried smoking marijuana (but never inhaled), the revel

Special Guest Villain: "Infinitely Pie"

I don't post very often here, as you probably know (that is, if you are a regular visitor and have cursed my name for not posting more often). I'm not slacking off. I just want to make sure that I have something clever to say before I say it. I know you don't want me writing on such topics as Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ("Why IS that stuff so darned cheap, anyway? And how can something that cheap taste so good?") or traffic ("Today, for the first time, I achieved a milestone. I actually got through that stop light on the corner before it turned red!"). Let's keep it funny, and somewhat inspired. So that's why I don't post very often. Inspiration is hard to come by. Fortunately, different things inspire different people. And although I might not be inspired on any given day, someone else may be. This week's BlogExplosion renter is " Infinitely Pie ", which is nothing if not extremely inspired. And out of the more than 13 bids

"Dude, What The F*** Is Wrong With German People?"

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By sheerest coincidence, I was thinking about a scene this morning from the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut . The kids are surfing on the Internet, and stumble across a German scheisse video. (Just think "poo" and Cartman's mom, and you'll have all the information you need.) As they scream in horror and quickly click away, one of the kids exclaims: "Dude, what the f*** is wrong with German people?" And then, this afternoon, I stumbled across this story , and asked myself the same question. A convicted German cannibal returned to court on Thursday for a retrial to determine if his killing and eating of a willing victim amounted to murder. Oooookay ... The bizarre case of sexual fetishism and gory details of the crime have transfixed the public in Germany and beyond, while legal experts have argued over the definition of murder. "Sexual fetishism "? Uh oh ... He has admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brande

Special Guest Villain: "Blogs Are For Wimps"

I'm getting pretty good at this BlogExplosion "Rent My Blog, Dammit" thing. Basically, you sell that little 122-by-91 pixel space over in the sidebar to another blog for a week. They pay you in traffic "credits". If you're a good "landlord", you'll do a bit more work to help promote their blog (such as, say, this blog entry you're reading right now). If you're a bad landlord, of course, you completely ignore your renter and devote your energy to recycling your chewed pencil stubs. I think I'm pretty good at this because none of my renters has received a "bad deal". Each one has gotten at least 23 unique click-throughs (meaning at least 23 different people have "clicked" on their blog thumbnail to read what they had to say) during their week. And I try to charge a fair price, which to me means you pay no more than three credits per unique click-through. (Some of these idjits charge -- and GET -- 500 credi

The Mother Of All Meme Posts

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Uh-oh ... looks like I've been tagged. (WAIT - DON'T GO YET!) I tend to avoid "memes" like the plague. I think it's supposed to be pronouced "meem", but as far as I'm concerned, you can pronounce it with two syllables, thusly: "Me! Me!" Memes are like chain letters. Someone, most likely fighting a drunken stupor and squinting at their monitor through a cloud of marijuana haze, thinks it would be a good idea to make the lives of other bloggers a living hell. So they write a meme, then "tag" four of their soon-to-be-former friends to fill in this thing, add their names to the bottom of the list, send ten dollars each to each of the people above them in the list, and send it to four of their soon-to-be-former friends. Or something like that. At least regular chain letters have the cojones to threaten you if you break the chain: "Pass this along within the next fifteen minutes to everyone in your e-mail list, or you will lose a

TEXAS FIGHT, DAMMIT!

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The Rose Bowl is over. (2) Texas 41 (1) USC 38 Vince Young, the Longhorns' MVP, outperformed both of Southern Cal's Heisman Trophy winners combined . After 35 long years, the University of Texas are college football's National Champions. HOOK 'EM HORNS!

Whistling In The Wind

(I wish to digress from the usual rollicking humor you'll find here to make a political statement -- for all the good it'll do -- so please bear with me. And, if you're like me, if it appears the blogger's political opinion differs from your own, you'll tend to surf away -- but let me ask you to bear with me until the end, because this statement is not what it first appears to be. Your comments are welcome, because if anyone has differing viewpoints on this, I'd sure like to hear them ...) Let's engage in a hypothetical experiment. Let us assume, for a moment, that first thing tomorrow morning, Osama bin Laden showed up at the entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone and said, "I don't want to be on the run any longer. You're going to get me eventually anyway, and I'm tired of living in caves. The humidity messes with my portable dialysis equipment and makes my beard all frizzy." And let's assume further that all of the Muslim militant

Special Guest Villain: "Seawave's Soliloquy"

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If you remember "Saturday Night Live" back in the '80s (when it was funny), you remember the segment "Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey". Mr. Handey had been doing way too much thinking on the toilet, and shared the results of his private meditations with us, with absurd results. There is really no relation between Mr. Handey's "Deep Thoughts" and those of my renter this week, Seawave (so, come to think of it, I really don't even know why I mentioned him). But if you read some of Seawave's blog, you'll find some "deep thoughts" that will really make you think. Check out just a couple of her posts, and you'll agree that Seawave is a loving, caring, deeply spiritual individual who isn't trying to push her belief system onto anybody else; she just wants everybody to be happy. And these days, we need an army of Seawaves to try to spread some non-sappy cheer and non-cynical love around. We will have to make do for now with ju