Sun-Mar 28 2004
Dept. of Overheard Dumb Statements
"You're so well read...because you read so much"
Damn, and here I was licking the pages.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk
NEW YORK (AFP) - One of the most talked about films of recent years,
Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Curly," depicts Jerome "Curly"
Howard's final 12 hours on earth and, by Gibson's own admission,
includes several hours' worth of extremely graphic and violent images
of Curly being repeatedly slapped, poked in the eye, conked on the
head, and other forms of torture at the hands of fellow Stooges, Moe
and Larry.
Industry insiders have predicted an opening week take of up to 30
million dollars. Those figures are all the more extraordinary given
that just one year ago Gibson was struggling to find a distributor for
a film that boasts no big-name stars and dialogue lifted entirely from
1930s Columbia two-reelers. And, in what appears to be an omen, the
lead actor was struck by a pie during filming.
Controversy has focused on charges, mostly levelled by Shemp fan clubs
and strongly denied by Gibson, that the movie somehow blames Shemp for
Curly's death and will fuel anti-Shemp sentiment.
Link
Via Incoming Signals
Sat-Mar 27 2004
Much needed useless information
The Excitement Machine pointed me to a Salon article that explains just
WTF is up with those singing furry blobs in the Quiznos ads.
According to Trey Hall, the chief marketing officer, Quiznos gets loads of mail on these ads. He says it breaks into three categories: 1) "What are these creatures?"; 2) "You gotta be kidding"; and 3) "This is genius advertising!" Since that's pretty much the breakdown in my mailbag, too, I'll take these one by one.
What are these creatures? As I say, they're called spongmonkeys. I don't know why and neither did Hall. In your mail to me, you've called them: gerbils with birth defects; Mr. Potato Rats; drug-addled, castrato hamsters; and "hell lemurs" (which, while catchy, is not really accurate, as the lemur body type is far more ectomorphic). Whatever they are, they're clearly Photoshopped, and if pressed I would say the base element is a pygmy marmoset.
Fri-Mar 26 2004
Release the Lawyers!
It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.
Link
Via Fark
Mon-Mar 22 2004
Sun-Mar 21 2004
Coincidence?
Apropos of my last post, here is the The Contrabass Compendium.
Check out the Great Bass Rackett, otherwise known
as the sausage bassoon. I bet you shouldn't say "sausage bassoon" over the airwaves.
via Anita Rowland's Home Page
Sat-Mar 20 2004
Big
Consider the contrabass saxophone: 7 feet tall and very rare. Only about 30 of them
have been built and only 6 are in use today.
Link
Via Apothecary's Drawer Weblog
Tue-Mar 16 2004
Who said what when
This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.
Link
Via Metafilter
I know who I'm afraid of
Month after month they were interrogated, for 12 hours or more at a time, by American security agencies and, repeatedly, by MI5 - in all, they say, they endured 200 sessions each. But when they re-emerged to freedom on Wednesday after two final days of questioning at Paddington Green police station, every apparent shred of evidence had melted away. Iqbal, Rasul and Ahmed, together with the other early arrivals at Guantanamo, had been described by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as 'the hardest of the hard core', lethal terrorists 'involved in an effort to kill thousands of Americans'. Even last week the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was claiming America had been justified in holding them.
Yet despite the denial of legal rights or due process, the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have been forced to accept what the three men said all along - that they were never members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda or any other militant group. The Americans had justified their detention by claiming they were 'enemy combatants', but they were never armed and did not fight.
'They formally told us we were going home last Sunday [several weeks after this news was relayed to the media],' Rasul said. 'We had a final meeting with the FBI, and they tried to get us to sign a piece of paper which said something like I was admitting I'd had links with terrorism, and that if I ever did anything like this again the US could arrest me.' Like the other two detainees freed last week, Tarek Dergoul and Jamal al-Harith, they refused.
Link
Via also not found in nature
Mon-Mar 15 2004
X vs Y
Kerry/Bush blogs side by side
Via skippy dot net by way of Boing Boing
Fri-Mar 12 2004
WTF?
The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
Link
Via Talking Points Memo
Mon-Mar 08 2004
News Flash: High School still sucks
BELLEVUE (WA)-- Starting Monday, students are barred from wearing hats and hoods at Interlake High School, reinforcing a school prohibition against gang-related clothing.
The prohibition on headgear was announced to students Friday afternoon.
No gang incidents have occurred on the northeast Bellevue campus this year, but Assistant Principal Lynn Gill said Interlake is taking preventive measures to keep students focused on academics.
``There's stuff (about gangs) in the news, there's stuff in the community,'' Gill said. ``It's been an issue at other schools.''
I'm obviously a stone original gangsta, because I wear both hat and hood. Of course I belong to
the notorious Brotherhood of White Delivery Vans: We Are Everywhere. Why do we bother putting
people in jail when all we need to do is take away their hats and hoodies and presto-law abiding
citizen!
Link
Via Metafilter
Sat-Mar 06 2004
Fri-Mar 05 2004
Where's My Gay Apocalypse?
Where is my raging apocalypse? This is what I want to know. Where is the social meltdown? The moral depravity? I was promised an apocalypse, dammit. What am I supposed to do with all these tubs of margarine and confetti and kazoos?
...
I believe I have been misled. I was told repeatedly in extra-glowing terminology by multiple raging Bible-quoting drones that The Good Book expressly forbids gay marriage and gay sex, and to engage in either spells imminent doom and instant social bedlam and there are specific verses all about it.
Is this true? Are there actual verses decrying gay marriage? Are they anything like those other Biblical verses, about the rules and regulations surrounding marriage that are making the rounds on the Net right now? Real verses. Actual verses. Verses o' sanctimonious fun. Have you seen them?
Like this: "Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take multiple concubines in addition to his wife or wives." (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21).
Or maybe: "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be stoned to death." (Deut 22:13-21) Isn't that cute? Isn't quoting Bible verse fun? Ask your local pastor about that one.
Or how about: "If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law." (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10). Hey, it's right there, in the Bible. So it must be true.
...
Maybe Satan is taking his sweet time to marshal his leather-clad armies, watching as other U.S. cities get in on the gay-marriage act, listening as mayors and governors all chime in their support and say what's the big deal. Maybe Beelzebub is waiting for a big moment so as to really leverage the coming news flash, the special report, the sudden activation of the Emergency Broadcast System. Something like:
"This just in: Earthquakes rocked the globe today as giant fire-breathing bees of death swarmed the countryside, feasting on fat white heterosexual babies mostly from Texas and Colorado Springs and Utah and Idaho, as the institution of hetero marriage careened around the mad vortex of space-time like a savage drunken pinball high on black-tar heroin, just like the Christian Right predicted.
"Horrors bled into the streets, terrorists were spawned by the thousand, presidents openly lied so as to lead a nation into bloody violent unwinnable wars, thousands of Catholic priests sexually molested tens of thousands of children over a 50-year period without the slightest punishment, the environment teetered on the brink due to heartless government rollbacks as air quality and water quality and food sources were ravaged in the name of corporate profiteering, the economy crumbled like Jenna Bush after her 10th beer bong as hate and fear and bogus Orange Alerts ruled the land."
Oh wait. That was all before the gay-marriage thing. My bad.
Link
Via Metafilter
Here Comes the Science
Statement on Marriage and the Family from the American Anthropological Association
Arlington, Virginia; The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, the world's largest organization of anthropologists, the people who study culture, releases the following statement in response to President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization.
"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples."
Link
Via Follow Me Here
Mon-Mar 01 2004
Coup?
Billmon is all over the Aristide mess. Also here
I get a big kick out of Powell refering to Aristide as a "failed president". Oh, the irony.
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