The 2008 Republican Convention.

Rather than deal with the messiness of primaries and the like, the Republican party today announced the convention in 2008 would commence with a hunting expedition led by VP Dick Cheney. Party leaders thought this was a more expedient way of choosing the next Republican candidate.

(IT’S A JOKE, PEOPLE!)

Oh, get a fuc**ng life already!

About 50,000 people, many chanting “Hang those who insulted the prophet,” rallied Sunday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The protesters burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of President Bush with a stick and chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Musharraf.” Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf welcomed Bush to Pakistan on Saturday.

Cartoons, they’re demonstrating over fuc**ng cartoons!

Too bad they couldn’t get behind ending hunger, illness, or poverty the way they can get behind these demonstrations. What an absolute fuc**-ng waste of time and energy.



50,000 people!

Think about all the time and energy and effort spent in organizing and getting all these people to show up just to burn flags and yell and scream. You think if you could get 50,000 people together like that you’d do it to make the world a better place and to ease some suffering on the planet. What morons, find something better to do with your time.



Thing is, them burning the flag and everything, like who gives a flying f**k. Waste your money, buy more flags, make us rich! Idiots, come up with something new. I am morally outraged they have burned our flag! (NOT!) Like that hasn’t been done in the Muslim world before. Oh, the humanity! The best part is when one of these dopes gets over zealous and sets themselves on fire too.

Oh no, Mister Bill!

Wow, Sunday night already! Where did the weekend go?!

Well, to start your week off right (if you’re reading this on a Monday morning) here’s a little something called What if the Fantastic Four got real jobs?

Fractured fairy tales.

Another take on Red Riding Hood, enter the world of Black XXX-Mas if you dare. (borderline NSFW - play it wearing headphones)

A musical interlude.

I came across this in my wanderings. I found I iliked it quite a bit:

Cherry Blossom Girl by Air.

or if you prefer you can watch the interesting video of the song here.

WARNING!

Click on the following link only when you find yourself incredibly frustrated at your job. It will bring you immediate relief and provide much humor and joy. So far, anyone I have shown this link to has not been able to contain their laughter. I bring you the interactive world of the Whack Your Boss game. Move your mouse over the various items in the office and click on them when they change color. This is the virtual answer to “Going Postal.”

Friday cat blogging.

I one up everyone doing cat blogging by providing you all with a link to the Daily Kitten. I am somewhat embarassed I find the daily kitten so fascinating and imagine I will be visiting it daily - Look! Kitttteeeyyyyyy! (there is only one person in the entire world who will understand the reference).

Lazy Sunday.

You know you’re getting old when...

So, what does the weekend become - precious days off spent just trying to recharge the batteries more than anything else. Also, looking around and trying to figure out what things I can get done in the gaps of the week, those that absolutely positively need doing and the ones which would make life nicer and move it along in the right direction if they were done.

I had hoped to get to the NY Comiccon this weekend and take some nifty pictures of the event but, as fate would have it the fire marshals intervened and the event planners did a piss poor job so after a certain point on Saturday people just weren’t getting into the damn thing. Going to a Comic convention is one step short of just totally embracing geekdom but, this was supposed to be a fairly big event with a lot of good panels with industry pros which caught my eye more than anything else.

Long gone are the days of wandering around a convention thinking about what to buy, more it is about seeing just how I can finagle my way into getting some work published and making some good connections.

The night shift thing is wearing me out.

I mean the work is actually pretty good but, even with the limited amount of hours I put in I find myself mostly exhausted.

Like last weekend this weekend was marked by a big cooking extravaganza. Last week it was this pork and bean soup thing (pork in the form of Kilbasa and Chorizo), it came out pretty good and served as a meal for a couple of days. This weekend it was finally getting around to making a big batch of sausage and peppers to take to work as I promised I would. Sounds easy but the only way you get the things to taste really good is by cooking them for hours and hours over very low heat and allowing the flavor to permeate the meat. We’ll see later this week if my efforts were appreciated or not.

Frankly, I’ve just been plum tuckered out these past two weeks. I’m waiting for nicer weather to come and trying to figure out what I would like to do with the summer. So, in lieu of talking about mosques being destroyed and the resultant frenzy, or the death of an actor or two or even just the general stupidity that pops up in the news on a fairly regular basis, I just find myself enjoying each and every bit of quiet there is.

You never call, you never write.

Becoming enmeshed once again in the workaday world, I find one of the first things to fall by the wayside is regularly contributing to the blog (unfortunately). I view work as a necessary evil, it’s specter is akin to a trip to the dentist’s office, you have to go and it will probably be painful but the outcome is to your benefit.

I can’t and shouldn’t complain as the people I’m working with are nice enough. I’m working a night shift which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages in that the overall experience of the workday is a quieter one. All the people who would normally get on your nerves are long gone by the time the night shift shows up and if they are still in attendance, they’re just to tuckered out by the length of the day to cause any significant trouble.

Disadvantage in you find yourself constantly adjusting. Your sleep clock is never really quite what it should be. Some days are day days which stretch long into the night and others are just periods you pass through, sleeping throughout most of the daylight hours trying to readjust your body clock.

One night last week, I got stuck at work pretty late.

There’s this optimum window of time when I want to leave work. After 4:30 in the morning the rush hour actually begins and you have a lot of truck traffic and early commuter traffic on the road which makes the whole experience a bit more stressful than it needs to be. But, get out anytime after 2am and before 4am and your in the golden zone where there are very, very few cars out on the road and the trip home is a breeze. The ride home can take a very satisfying 35 to 40 minutes at that time of night, giving me a sense of what the world is like for people who have more reasonable commutes. I can do 35 to 40 minutes, it’s those hour and a half each way commutes that get to me. Three hours added on to the average work day make for a hellish experience.

Funny thing is, in recent years a few friends have taken the plunge and moved quite far out into the ’burbs. It’s been somewhat ironic to hear their moaning after the fact about the length of the commute and how onerous it makes the day. Ah, I think to myself, join the club as I’ve been doing it for much, much longer.

Anyway, one night last week I was on my way home and got caught in one of those drive home limbo experiences:



Yes, an hour and a half on the FDR. Just parked, not moving forward, not moving backward, just sitting there. If I had a ball I could have played a game of catch with my fellow motorists. Next to me was a cab with a fare in it. I watched as the meter went from just over $11 to over $25 by the time the traffic began to move again.

There was some kind of serious accident - 8 cars involved - up around 116th Street. So, they just closed the highway until everything was squared away. Just imagine working until 6 or 6:30 and then getting stuck on the road until 8, and still not being home!

It really wasn’t that bad though, I mean I could have been in the accident, instead of merely waiting for traffic to clear.

Finally!

Days late cat blogging:



Anna, roughing it. More new photos up on Flickr.

Rich white men.

Here’s a story for you...

Gary Sheffield is out in the woods with a group of friends during baseball’s off-season. They’re out having a good time, just a lazy day, doing some hunting. Somewhere along the way - Gary shoots one of the people out in the woods with him. It’s an accident but, the man he shoots winds up being hospitalized and subsequently having a heart attack. Later on, details come to light that one of the party was a medic and tried treating the injured man at the scene. Further, while the wounded man was given prompt medical attention and subsequently bought to a hospital, there was a delay in reporting the incident to the local law enforcement authorities.

Okay, so at this point do you think there would be cries about having an investigation?

Even if the guy who was shot claimed it was an accident. I have to imagine, Sheffield would be crucified in the press. There would be questions about the validity of his story and inference that he abused his position as a famous athelete to escape repercussions stemming from the incident. Further, I would imagine Sheffield more than likely would be facing the prospct of some jail time in his future as a result of either his actions with the firearm or his failure to report the incident promptly to the local authorities.

I’m only using Gary Sheffield to illustrate a point in this instance - mainly because he has gotten a rep as a bit of a surly guy in the media. The fact that he is black and is a professional athelete are also part of the reason I’m using him as an example.

You see, fat, rich, white men are held to a different standard in this country.

Our VP, Dick Cheney shot someone!

The way they’ve kept Cheney in hiding over the last few years, I wasn’t even sure if the guy could come out into the light of day without bursting into a pillar of flame a la some Anne Rice character. Not only did he shoot somebody, the guy he shot is in the hospital, had a heart attack and there was a delay in reporting the incident?! Cheney is trying to downplay the whole thing and the administration is responding in a testy and combative manner when reporters ask questions about what happened.

Now, I don’t know if Cheney is trying to wrestle the title of ‘Evil Dick’ away from our departed former president of the late 60’s, early 70’s but, clearly there is some skewed attitude being displayed in response to the whole event. I didn’t even think they allowed these guys to play with guns while they were in office! I mean, they have access to all kinds of nuclear weapons, tanks, aircraft carriers, fighter jets and the like. Don’t you think that would be enough for their macho joneses?

Besides, isn’t the only reason we have a VP around is in case something happens to the main guy? Why would you let the guy out there in the woods with guns? Hasn’t this guy had a bunch of heart attacks already? The government was so afraid of OSB zeroing in on Cheney they had the guy in lockdown and now he’s out in the woods with guns?!

Beyond the stupidity and lapse in judgement there is of Cheney being out in the woods hunting, the fact he’s out there shooting the other people in his hunting party shows incredibly poor judgement. So, I ask you, think Cheney should slide on this one? Are they making a big deal out of nothing? Or, is it just another example of the growing disconnect between the White House and the nation? Is it emblematic of how the current administration feels they are somehow above the standards the rest of us are held to?

You make the call.

One more reason.

To regularly read Nat Hentoff’s column:

<James Madison, the principal architect of the Bill of Rights, warned: “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment in our liberties.” Because of the continually expanding surveillance technology available to the government, no administration in our history has been engaged in more pervasive “experiments” on our liberties than Bush’s regime.

The increasing prevalence of computers, electronic commerce and other factors in our society are combining to erode personal privacy quicker than people would care to recognize. We may in fact, be witnessing the most insipid and devious attack on freedom ever bought to us, all under the guise of convenience.

And then... you decided to... break wwwwiiiiiiinnnnddddd.



Years ago there was this class offfered in the New School catalog which caught my interest. It was a series of lectures with famous actors and directors and I thought it might be interesting to check out. So, for two semesters, I spent my Monday nights running down to the twelfth street auditorium of the New School and listening to the life histories of people like Stanley Donen, Carol Burnett and Jessica Lange.

More often than not they were very entertaining evenings. I never would have known who Stanley Donen was, had I not went to these lectures. However, along the line the course changed in scope. It went from lectures with people who had long histories in entertainment, to more of a spectacle. It became about capturing the flavor of the moment.

There was a swarmy, groveling quality to the series’ host but, it was worth tolerating if only to capture a glimpse into the lives and minds of some very creative people. When the focus moved to the most recent name in the news, it became less interesting and my focus quickly shifted elsewhere.

This past weekend though I had the opportunity to catch Dave Chapelle’s appearance on the show. It captured, once more, something that had been lost over the ensuing years. Chapelle proved to be a thoughtful, intriguing man full of great depth and humor. If you haven’t seen Chapelle’s appearance, I highly recommend it. Chapelle was disarmingly honest and forthright about his views on success, his comedy and our country. It is further proof Chapelle inherents the mantle of Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor for today’s times.

Cheney’s hunting skills as a metaphor.

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old hunting companion during a weekend quail hunting trip after the man went to retrieve a bird and Cheney failed to spot him.

Harry Whittington, an Austin attorney, was in stable condition late Sunday in the intensive care unit at a Corpus Christi hospital, where he was flown after the shooting late Saturday afternoon at the Armstrong Ranch.

Proving once again how forces beyond our ken have a wicked sense of humor. News of VP Cheney’s hunting accident over the weekend as the current VP injured a fellow hunter in a case of friendly fire (easily besting Dan Quayle in the foolish VP tricks department).

The incident could be viewed as an ironic metaphor for the current adminstrations’ worldview don’t you think?

Cheney shows the same level of deftness in hunting as the administration does in their approach to foreign policy which is scattershot at best, doing as much harm as good.

Sometimes, companies feel like just throttling people.

I haven’t jumped on the NetFlix bandwagon, although I have been sorely tempted. I did find this article interesting though and if you’re a Net Flix user you’ll want to check it out.

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva’s home in Warren, Mich. — down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company’s automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

The same Netflix formula also shoves Villanueva to the back of the line for the most-wanted DVDs, so the service can send those popular flicks to new subscribers and infrequent renters.

The little-known practice, called “throttling” by critics, means Netflix customers who pay the same price for the same service are often treated differently, depending on their rental patterns.

Bleeeechhh!

Sorry, I really do hate snow - photos to come.

Friday funnies.

I’ve been really enjoying some of the stuff that’s up on Google video lately. Yes, the world is going to hell in a pushcart, people are rioting over cartoons, there are terrorists everywhere, civil liberties are disappearing faster than Britney’s career but, there should always be time for laughter. So, in that spirit I bring to you the following:

A dramatic new take on the Back to the Future trilogy, titled Brokeback to the Future!

An cover version of a Kanye West hit the gives new meaning to the freshman fifteen.

A Mastercard commercial that really is priceless!

The car ad that should be running before screenings of Munich.

Another argument for birth control.

And finally, proof that you shouldn’t f*ck with old people.

The tit grab redux.

A few weeks back I posted quite a bit about the TGHRTW. I am somewhat impatient sometimes with some of the arguments offered up although I again reiterate my distaste for bad behavior. I came across this spec commercial though on the Google video site and I was curious. There’s an obvious appeal to men but, I was curious if in fact any women found it cute or entertaining... or just downright sexist. Comments are invited.

Look at the video here.

The MOL is high!

The Muslim Offense Level and you, click on the image below to find out more (scroll down too while you’re at it).

HIGH
Meaning - We are extremely offended by a particular individual or country
Non-Muslim response - That individual or country must apologize
Consequence of non-compliance - Individual; Fatwa, assassination, or both. Country; Boycott (unless you export things the Saudi Royal Family are consumers of), and Saudi newspapers write a long string of boring and repetitive articles that you will never read but will drive Saudi readers to distraction.

Kitty fun.

Came across these two videos on Google and thought I would share them with all the cat lovers out there:

This one is an actual commercial (and a pretty funny one at that).

This looks like it came off of AFV.