Procrastinet

Hold the F*cking Phone

I know I just - JUST - introduced my dozen of readers to Blognigger, but god damned if he hasn't gone and outdone himself so thoroughly that it required another whole post to do it justice.

The [Park Slope] Declaration of Co-Dependence.

Nothing less than a sweeping set of rules that will allow all residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, to get along without anybody being an unconscionable douchebag about it. Stop everything you're doing and go read it.

A sample:

Article I: Sidewalk Behavior

I.a.1 - Parents with strollers shall not occupy more than 66% of the width of a given sidewalk's walking area, except for periods of less than ten seconds when passing jutting storefront artifacts such as elongated entranceways, outdoor eating areas, or subway stations.

I.a.2 - As mothers, especially new mothers, are often hormonal masses of cluelessness, fathers will be responsible for a family's compliance with article I.a.1. Childless Individuals are urged to take special note of these characteristics of a mother's mindstate, and to factor this understanding into their reactions to violations of Article 1.a.1; a mother's failure to make room for you on the sidewalk does not derive from her arrogance, though it may easily be mistaken for such; said failure is merely motivated by obliviousness due to lack of sleep, individual freedom, and the chemical demand of continual and exclusive focus on her children.

I.a.3 - In cases where Article I.a.1. is violated, Childless Individuals are requested to keep a sense of propriety and a sense of humor regarding the violation. It is recommended that a victim of this violation simply blurt "careful!," "'scuse me!," or even "Article 1!" - but should attempt to refrain from getting bent outta fuckin shape: There is no reason to shoot the mother a psychotic Billy Corgan look, act like a self-important fuckin douche bag, or invoke hatred and negativity as if someone just flew a 747 into your office building. At the end of the day, is getting where you're going 30 seconds earlier really worth all that? Don't worry - I guarantee you'll still get home in time to watch the new episode of The Cunt - and if you don't you should have Tivo'ed it; either way it will be on In-Demand in a couple of days at most.

If this Declaration can be read and honored by every resident of our neighborhood maybe finally the international press can pick some other damn neighborhood to love/hate on.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Blognigger

If you've been wondering how it came to be that "believ-datshit" entered my vocabulary, I'll let you know the culprit: Blognigger.

One commenter summed it up: "Park Slope's own The Onion, but funnier and more racist!" Social satirist of the first degree, BN (who has also secured the url TheBlogThatMustNotBeNamed.com in case you're shy about using his given) exploded onto the snark scene a couple weeks back when Gawker picked up his typically scathing take on The Real World Brooklyn.

But what really gets me is his dead-on critique and celebration and desecration of Park Slope. The quote that hooked me for life: "my rage disorder barely allowed me to survive the closing of Red Hot Sczechuan last month, which was like the fucking closing of CHINESE FOOD ITESELF."

Which, if you live south of 9th, is OMFG SO TOTALLY TRUE.

Then came "The Nanny Diarrhees," a note perfect evisceration of Park Slope Parenthood (which he also defends against all haters in the brilliant "Nobody Calls My Mom a Slut But Me").

On a self described mission to "just keep getting more and more honest with each other until either we rid the world of communism or somebody passes out," BN has outdone himself today, ripping the veil off of the behavior of men towards hot women.

Especially on the F train, during the morning commute.

And, having spent 9:04am through 9:27am inclusive this morning trying desperately not to stare directly at the exposed boobs of the very short, very attractive young lady who was PRACTICALLY STANDING ON MY TOES FOR THE WHOLE RIDE, I'm feeling his pain when he says:

What do you think, Park Slopers? "What a bunch of sexist, misogynist bullshit." Is that it? NO; Bullshit YOU! Then why did God and Jesus and Darwin give me these fucking chemicals in my head then, Park Slopers, that cause me to sweat and ache to obtain the succulent fruit of the female form???

Do you have any fucking idea what it's like in this prison - having to walk around all day in Manhattan looking at shit like this (esp Union Square / Chelsea Market / Soho) - and having to not only keep from throwing these women down wells and reading them the Lotion/Basket Riot Act of 1992, but also having to PRETEND to be tasteful and indifferent regarding their sick, sick bounty?

Preach, Brother Ni--

Yeah, I'm not there yet.

I also failed the Blognigger Transcendence of Political Correctness Test this weekend at a barbecue: I was asking a buddy if he had discovered Blognigger yet. He - like you do - laughed and said "no what's that?" I was explaining, and the hostess walked by. "What is this?" she asked.

Problem was, in the meantime an attractive young black lady, who I had met only minutes earlier, had wandered over and was standing on the other side of me. I would have to repeat the blog's name in her presence and earshot.

Dozens of years of liberal inculcation washed over me in an instant, and I am ashamed to say that I pretended I didn't hear the question.

Sigh. Help me, Blognigger, you're my only hope.

Introducing: DreadWhimsy!

Crackerjack playwright, walking good hair day and long time friend of Procrastinet Ross Maxwell has started a blog called DreadWhimsy. He captions pictures with his characteristic fractured, funny, often deeply depressing narratives. To wit:

From the introduction, entitled "What is DreadWhimsy, pray tell?":

DreadWhimsy is the deadpan comedy of the absurdly foreboding. It's the street clown caught in a terrorist attack screaming "Jesus Christ! Somebody DO something!" It's walking in on your cat chopping vegetables with a sharp knife in your kitchen in the middle of the night. It's the unwholesome stare from a red-headed child in a passing station wagon. It's whatever fills you with apprehension while involuntarily making you laugh.

It shouldn't be funny. But it is funny. And you're wrong for laughing. But I forgive you. But not really.

Enjoy.

The Prostate Song

It has become a tradition at the Youngblood Sunday Brunch to open the festivities with a song by our very own Matt Schatz. Matt is renowned for his exquisite comic rhymes and his aw-shucks performance style.

EST Board member Ken Mandel became a big fan over the course of several brunches (falling in love with the lyrics "My family went agnostic 'cause/The world was full of swastikas"), so when he received a troubling diagnosis he came to Matt to co-write a song to help him deal with it.

Many Stuf...

In the comments of the lolcats post below, Procrastimom wrote:

God, it's depressing to be dealing with a nearly 94 year old on one hand and becoming aware on the other hand of being in some alternative universe from large parts of the rest of the world because, apparently, of being OLD. Sigh.

To which perj responded:

how about "I'z takin' geritol. Iz not so gret..."

To which Procrastimom responded:

Many stuf not so gret...

So I have used LolCat Buildr to make a brand new lolcat just for Procrastimom (image "Sad Cat" courtesy of Joseph Levy at pbase):

UPDATE:

Procrastimom has turned out to be a natural source of lolanimals. From the comments:

Laugh Out Loud Cats

I have something to talk about which is incredibly awesome. However, it is incredibly awesome partly because of the context into which it falls, which I suspect some of my faithful Procrastinet readers may be unfamiliar with (hi mom!). So let me backtrack a little:

There's this meme on the internet (in this case more appropriately called "teh intarwebs") called "LOLCATS," also known as "Cat Macros," also known as "Kitteh" or "kittah." Basically, it started in various online forums where users would take cute pictures of cats and put funny slogans on them, using a pidgin english made up of misspellings and faux-"l33t" hacker-speak.

To catch up on LOLCATS you can check out I Can Has Cheezburger (a reference to an early/classic lolcat picture).

One of the sub-memes is "invisible ______," like the below:

Then the lolcats meme spawned sub-memes, like the "lolrus." That's this guy:

Then further sub-memes, like the lolpresidents:

So then, to bring us up to the point of this post, a cartoonist named Apelad (Adam Koford) came up with the "true historical origins" of the lolcats, a comic strip by his grandfather called the "Laugh-Out-Loud Cats."

Not many people know this, but my great grandfather Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford, was also a cartoonist... From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. The strip was entitled "the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats" and featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip.

The whole Laugh-Out-Loud Cats thing is a mock-hoax, or "foax" if you will - which didn't stop a bunch of internet snotheads from being all like "duh this is OBVIOUSLY fake" - which is funny, of course, because of COURSE it's obviously fake, that's the damn joke in the first place. With the avid help of Boing Boing, Apelad has now created 40+ panels for the "historic" cartoon, viewable (and I highly recommend it) here.

Then - and this is where we start to get seriously awesome - Apelad started offering original pen-and-ink panels of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats for sale on his website - for a mere $20 each. I jumped on this immediately, and ordered one. I requested via email that it be along the lines of "nooo they be stealin' my ________" because the Gore one was my favorite of the lolpresidents.

First came the setup, on Apelad's blog a few days later:

One week later, this arrived in my mailbox:

Much happiness - it's great to see something come to life online and then to actually have the thing itself in person.

I was hooked, and ordered another one a few days later. This time I requested something along the "Iz not so gret, aktuly" sub-meme:

Yesterday, I received this from Apelad:

w00t! Both original panels are now framed and proudly displayed.

Wonder of wonders, to complete their geek provenance, Xeni posted the "Bucket" frame on BoingBoing:

Awesome.

OH, Long Johnson...

I almost never, ever say this. But seriously: LOL.

"Oh my dog. Oh Long John. Oh Long Johnson. Oh Don Piano. Why I Eyes Ya. All the Live Long Day."

Ms. Pac Man Live!

I know the chick who plays the red ghost in this. And I will admit to having heaved an inward sigh when she was all "Ooh! Ooh! Look at this YouTube video I was in!"

But I gotta say: it's pretty danged funny. A simple idea, very well executed.

A Little Dose of Happy

Since this YouTube video has over 5 MILLION views (wtfbbq!), I'm clearly late to the party. However, k8 pointed this out to Max and the Procrastiwife last night, and now I'm hooked.

"Where the Hell is Matt?":

This guy is just a pure doubleshot of happiness.

Little Boy (Working) Blue

Uh-oh. Max has learned some new words. An exchange Sunday morning:

Me: Hey buddy! I'm off tomorrow, and we're going to spend all day together! We can go to the Tea Lounge, maybe to the zoo...

Max: Are we gonna see the COW?

Me: Sure, we can see the cow.

Max: What's the cow's name?

Me: You know. What is it?

Max: Agatha. (Pause) Are we going to see the f**king SHEEP?

Me: ... [blink] [blink] ... um...

Don't work blue, kid, you'll never work the big rooms...

Pining for the Fjords

From KG comes a HuffPo gem, re-casting the debate over Iraq strategy as the Dead Parrot Sketch from Monty Python.

A snip:

Swing Voter: Look - I know a dead policy when I see one. And I'm looking at one right now.

George W. Bush: No... no! It's not dead. It's being re-thought. Remarkable military we have don't we? Wonderful courage!

Swing Voter: Their courage don't enter into it. The policy is stone dead.

Read the whole thing here.

Merry Xmas - D*** In a Box

For the those who have yet to be infected by this viral: Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake have a present for you.

A Little Inside Pool

For those who aren't breathlessly following the GOP's Foley meltdown, this will make little sense.

Periodically, I check in on The Corner at The National Review, when I'm wondering how the Right is talking amongst themselves about a certain political issue. Their stuff is often well-written and thoughtful, even when I find it dangerously wrong-headed.

When Rep. Tom Reynold's Chief of Staff, who was also Mark Foley's ex-Chief of Staff and either "resigned" or "was fired" today (depending on where you look), said that he had alerted "the highest levels" of the House Republican leadership to Rep. Foley's questionable behavior with male pages two years ago, and when said revelation made it into a CNN "Breaking News" email, I cruised to The Corner to see how they were taking it.

John Podhoretz's post at 4:40pm would have made me spit my milk out my nose, had I been drinking any at the time:

(Quoted in full because it's too short to excerpt)

Memo to Self [John Podhoretz]

If I ever hire Kirk Fordham, DON'T FIRE KIRK FORDHAM.

Dick F***ing Cheney

Oh boy does this make with the funny:

Do NOT listen to this at work with the sound on, unless you're in a very, very tolerant office.

[hat tip: boingboing, natch]

LOLLERCOPTER!

I defy you to watch this YouTube video of TICKLE ME EXTREME ELMO in action and not laugh. DEFY YOU.

Apparently, this is the Cabbage Patch kid of '06 - sold out through Christmas, say the rumors? But... but... but I want one!

(Hat tip to Gizmodo for the video and the ridiculous term "Lollercopter!")

I AM KILLING THE AMERICAN THEATER

It's easy to bemoan the current state of the American Theater - dwindling revenue, spiralling production costs, derivative material and ever-smaller relevance to culture at large. Many fingers have been pointed at many possible contributing factors to this downturn. But Michael Feingold has finally figured out the real problem:

Me.

The Village Voice today fires the final fusillade at our poor critically-derided production of Not All Korean Girls Can Fly in the EST Marathon, and this one places the blame squarely and contemptuously at my feet:

It's Fox's ill luck that her play is tainted by coming after the bill's opener, Lloyd Suh's Not All Korean Girls Can Fly, a lame lump of would-be satire, or something, that suggests an extremely pedantic ethnic-studies lecturer trying to parody Joe Orton. Though it makes little sense, Suh's script probably isn't as bad as RJ Tolan's dreadful production—all screaming and ineptitude—makes it seem. That Tolan is the artistic director of Youngblood, EST's emerging-playwrights group, makes the shrill relentlessness even more dismaying: All the vampire musicals on Broadway couldn't drain young blood away from the theater faster than this. One can't blame the actors: Both Cindy Cheung and Jonathan Tindle, who do the bulk of the screaming as, respectively, a frantic Korean American mother and a surgery-crazed doctor, give evidence in the few quiet moments Tolan allows them of the ability to do better in saner directorial hands.

As Graeme points out, "It's true. You've single-handedly destroyed the American theatre with a 20-minute one-act play. Imagine what you could do with a full-length."

I guess this means no Obie...

The Colbert Smackdown

Everyone may already have seen this, or heard about it. But since, as the liberal blogosphere is pointing out, this is getting an almost total media blackout in the mainstream press, I figured I'd do my part to spread the word.

Steven Colbert was the keynote at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and he scathing. Gasp-inducingly, wickedly, fearlessly scathing.

I know many of my readers don't actually click the links I post, so I'll excerpt big chunks of the transcript. For those that want to read the whole thing, there's a good transcript here.

Read 'em and weep:

Wow. Wow, what an honor. The White House correspondents' dinner. To actually sit here, at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what? I'm a pretty sound sleeper -- that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he really not here tonight? Dammit. The one guy who could have helped.

[snip]

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

So, Mr. President, please, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass -- it's important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash. Okay, look, folks, my point is that I don't believe this is a low point in this presidency. I believe it is just a lull before a comeback.

I mean, it's like the movie "Rocky." All right. The president in this case is Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed is -- everything else in the world. It's the tenth round. He's bloodied. His corner man, Mick, who in this case I guess would be the vice president, he's yelling, "Cut me, Dick, cut me!," and every time he falls everyone says, "Stay down! Stay down!" Does he stay down? No. Like Rocky, he gets back up, and in the end he -- actually, he loses in the first movie.

OK. Doesn't matter. The point is it is the heart-warming story of a man who was repeatedly punched in the face. So don't pay attention to the approval ratings that say 68% of Americans disapprove of the job this man is doing. I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68% approve of the job he's not doing? Think about it. I haven't.

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

[snip]

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will. As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!

Now, it's not all bad guys out there. Some are heroes: Christopher Buckley, Jeff Sacks, Ken Burns, Bob Schieffer. They've all been on my show. By the way, Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to be on my show. I was just as shocked as everyone here is, I promise you. How's Tuesday for you? I've got Frank Rich, but we can bump him. And I mean bump him. I know a guy. Say the word.

See who we've got here tonight. General Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They still support Rumsfeld. Right, you guys aren't retired yet, right? Right, they still support Rumsfeld.

Big hat tip to Frederick at DailyKos, who cleaned up and edited this transcript and posted it as the definitive version. There are also copies available around the web (youtube, etc.) if you want to go looking.

Colbert provided the country with an invaluable service this weekend. I'm willing to bet this was as much truth and dissent as the President has heard in his entire term.

According to Editor & Publisher (through Crooks & Liars), he was unamused.

Calvinism

Perennial P'net fave Defective Yeti posted that image today, in a comic flourish roundly misunderstood by his usually tack-sharp commentariat. Nothing kills a simple joke like having to explain it.

Speaking of simple jokes, one commentor on that post linked to an "interview" with a now-grown-up Calvin. An excerpt:

Calvin, I have to lead off with a question that I used to debate with my friends. When no one else was around, was Hobbes real? Or was he just a figment of your imagination?

That's the big question, isn't it? I think that calling him a figment of my imagination is an understatement. I've since learned that Hobbes was a symptom of my battle with schizophrenia, which unfortunately went untreated until I was in my teens. I manage the condition now with medication.

It's a great read - a simple joke executed impeccably. Check out the rest here.

Knock Knock - Who's There - NINJA!

John Moe, a Seattle radio host and writer who is also a FoDY (Friend of Defective Yeti), has a blog called - delightfully - Monkey Disaster. On it, he frequently writes transcipts of conversations with his children. They're always terrific - a perfect distillation of the cognitive randomness of youth.

But this time, "Charlie (age 5)" has outdone himself. The aptly titled post "Jokes Written by Charlie (Age 5) That Indicate Either a Lack of Understanding About What Jokes Are, or an Absolute Mastery of the Medium" lays out a string of totally dada knock-knock jokes. A sample:

Knock knock
Who's there?
Ninja
Ninja who?
Ninja I'm fighting crime I'm gonna fight the computer for lunch

Knock knock
Who's there?
Dinosaur
Dinosaur who?
I'm gonna charge through your door cause I'm a triceratops.

Knock knock
Who's there?
Dinosaur
Dinosaur who?
Chomp

Read the rest. I also recommend the post immediately preceding it, wherein Charlie debunks the myth of Imagination.

ZORK

If you played Zork (or the other InfoCom text-based games) as a kid, this will make you laugh and laugh and then cry a bit and then laugh.

If you didn't, hopefully it will make you laugh anyway. You'll get the point, if not the subtler bits.

Matthew Baldwin at Defective Yeti presents: the Bush presidency as a text-based adventure game.

Jesus, That's a Poor Choice of Words

The New York Times has an article today (reg. req'd) which breathlessly reports that Mel Gibson is making a holocaust miniseries for ABC (they admit, grudgingly, that it's not known whether he's all that involved personally, but his company is maybe kind going to be working on it).

Down at the bottom, we get an unfortunate quote from ABC's Senior VP for TV Movies, Quinn Taylor. Mr. Taylor shows us what happens when you live so immersed in entertainment speak that you forget words have *actual* meanings:

"If it happens to be produced by Mel's company, it doesn't mean he's going to be out there flogging it like he did 'Passion of the Christ,' " Mr. Taylor said.

I can only hope that David M. Halbfinger, by-lined on the piece, got a good chuckle as he wrote that down...

Just a Little Guy

No this is NOT about Max, though that was Lisa's oft-repeated refrain from his babyhood ("OHmyGODhe'sJUSTALITTLEGUY!")

This is a website that posts pictures of baby animals. With attitude. Posts them with attitude, that is, not baby animals with attitude. Here:

I included this not just for the picture, but for the commentary. The one without the other wouldn't be genius. The one with the other? This is why the web was invented.

Go check out more justalittleguy

[This comes via "nobody," a frequent commentor at PolenBlog]

Our Life Has Been Comicked!

MrsLawbot, the new webmistress of Roaming Reviews, pointed us in the direction of the comic "Stone Soup." I have to say, I was pretty spooked: first, check out this post from a couple days ago again...

And then read this.

According to MrsLawbot, the little big-headed blonde kid's name is Max.

Suffice it to say, I'll be reading Stone Soup from now on...

The PolenBlog Goes Meta

The PolenBlog is the blog of the Polenberg "Twins," so named because at some point long ago a friend of Twin A's had trouble telling them apart, I believe. They are named in defiance of chronology, as Twin C is the oldest and Twin D is the youngest, unless I have them confused which is entirely possible - the only one other than C that I've really met is A, who at the time was called "Scrod."

Anyway, Twin C is away for a week on a double-super-secret tv shoot that he can't talk about because of NDAs (as in "Non Disclosure Agreement," not NWA, the dudes who sang "Straight Outta Compton," although Twin C did introduce me to them, as he was into gangsta rap remarkably early for a skinny jew from Poughkeepsie). While he's away, the other Twins are wreaking havoc.

Twin B posts fairly seldom, and when he does it's usually brief and discursive. He outdoes himself with "when the C is away the B shal play."

[Polenberg Glossary: "PSB" refers to Twin C's girlfriend, and stands for "Princess Sugar Britches."]

Twin A manages the site but posts less than C, who writes pretty much every day in bitch-about-my-job/talk-about-my-life fashion. A spends a lot of time making electronic things go beep in an arty and/or party kind of way, apparently. But C's absence has inspired him to massive flights of metafictional fancy, as he writes his version of Twin C's Adventures.

A sample from Part I of his epic:

Twin C stepped onto the ship. His pants were long and khaki, and his cuffs got slightly wet with the condensation on the deck. A swarthy man in a polo shirt with a coporate logo looked him in the eye. The parrot on his shoulder spread its wings, which were adorned with the same logo. “Welcome to MegaConComCruise Corporate Enterprises,” the pirate drawled. “Skkkraw!”, skkrawed the parrot. “Here, have a free MegaConComCruise pegleg.” The pirate handed the pegleg to Twin C.

Boy, Twin C thought. I am sure glad I dressed business casual.

And from Part II:

Suddenly he knew what to do. He grabbed the bacon, and shoved it into the cheezy grits. “Noooo! Our Hegelian nature will cause us to explode!”, they screamed in unison. And BOOM! A massive matter-antimatter style explosion ensued.

Now all they need is a post from the elusive Twin D (there's talk of a Twin E but apparently he was eaten by wolves).

Those Overzealous Turks

For would-be Turkish suicide bombers, even death is not a refuge from justice:

He was dead and they shot him anyway. Now that's thorough.

(From yahoo news - Reuters)

UPDATE: Joking aside, now that I've read the actual article, I can report that the scene was actually pretty brutal.

Police grabbed him after he apparently set off a detonator but failed to explode his main device. He escaped into the street where police shot him first in the leg and then in the head, the witnesses said.

I have to say: I'm a liberal and all? But if a guy's trying to blow himself up on a public street, yes, please, Officer, shoot him right in the head. Yes, even if you already got him in the leg. I'm totally fine with that. No problems here.

Triple-Distilled Super-Pure Funny

I think this may be it: the best single frame of a comic. The Platonic ideal of comic-frame-ness.

From, of course, Get Your War On.

Filler

Via Screenhead, an online comic strip called "Filler." Screenhead's Dong Resin says it reminds him of early Bloom County, and he's not far off - but a Bloom County that takes place in- and post-college, rather than elementary school.

Enjoy. This is the "post-college" stuff, starting January 2004. Just awesome.

The Random Creativity of Craigslist

Craigslist is an amazing beast. First of all, it's free, with no advertising. I'm not at all sure how that's possible. It seems almost communist.

Second of all, you get the lowest and highest of human nature - though certainly more of the lowest. Free? Anonymous? Sign up every sleazebag sociopath with a mouse.

But on the "highest" tip, every once in a while a gem will turn up - something someone spent a great deal of creativity and skill writing, only to post anonymously. What strange closet cases these people are - doing such good work and then tossing it, randomly, out into the cyber void. Best case scenario, they get the thrill of a "Best of Craigslist" nod. Anonymously.

Not me, man. If I wrote something quirky, clever, and fun like this post, I'd have to make damn sure everybody knew it was me. This person went to the trouble of creating a distinctive, wry voice, an absurdist caricature with a nice light touch, and then dropped it like chum into the feeding frenzy - no hook, no line, nothing to tie the creation to the creator.

So I'll just pile on to this anonymous scribbler's conceptual accolades, and say "well done, whoever you are."

An excerpt:

I am a pretty strong guy. And I can tell that I am much stronger than a lot of you weak women out there. When I go to the gym, I look around at all the girls on the machines struggling to make 25 pounds bounce up and down on the cord as they lift, curl, press or whatever it is they just can't do as well as me.

There are guys there too, but I don't look at them of course because they are dudes.

I look at the weak women with their soft bodies and perfumed flesh. Sometimes I feel like walking over to them and offering to lift the weight for them. Why strain yourself. Let me lift that for you honey. Where? Up and down? I can do that. How many times? Why don't you sit down and rest while I lift it. Such a pretty girl, you sit and watch me.

I feel that if I were to do this, the girl would see that the weight room is a waste of her time in the first place. A better use of time might be to just learn to carry a 30 pound bag of rice in your arms while shopping or sauteeing something - so you won't just have to sit home napping when you have your first baby - you will be able to do stuff. I like girls who do stuff.

Anyhow, as for the gym, I would prefer if the girls only used the stairmaster. Because being strong like me, when I get tired from my long workout, I like to see some in-shape girl butts in tights bouncing up and down the stairmaster. Overall, it is better as well because your butt will help you attract guys like me and seduce me into bed with you. If your butt is nice enough, I might even marry you, or let you cook for me.

The title, by the way, is "I am stronger than most of you weak girls who cry."

Defamation of the Name of Cos

Over at TMN, Rob Eccles provides alternate episode summaries for the first season of The Cosby Show, assuming "Cliff Huxtable habitually drugged and subsequently fondled select bit players."

A sample:

Episode 1, “Pilot”
Sept. 20, 1984

Theo brings home a report card with four Ds. When Cliff and Clair are angry, he explains that he doesn’t plan on going to college anyway, so why should it matter? Cliff uses Monopoly money to teach his son about life’s economic hardships. Later, Denise brings her latest boyfriend over for dinner. During the meal, Cliff distracts the family by suddenly shouting and pointing toward the kitchen door. While their attention is diverted, he empties two small capsules into Denise’s beau’s beverage, stirring it with his finger. After dessert, Cliff asks the obviously woozy young man to help him clear the dishes, and the others retire to the living room. Moments later Denise enters the kitchen to find her disoriented boyfriend vomiting into the kitchen sink, his pants undone.

There are five episodes in total, and they get funnier as they go, as the drugging-and-subsequently-fondling incident gets more brazen each time.

Get My Agent on the Line

For some reason, after a 32-year disinclination to do so, my brain decided to up and start writing standup this morning.

My wife and I just renewed our vows. Yeah, we got married again. Thanks, yeah, but no, don't clap. It's a bit awkward. It was a shotgun thing. Our parents are so ashamed.

So now I've got to get a job. I used to have something really good, something stable, that I could count on. Yeah. I was in theatre. But like an idiot, I walked away from it. It was suffocating me. I needed something that fed my soul.

There are some jobs I just can't imagine ever doing. The cost of screwing them up is too high. Because you know you've got those mornings where your head's just not in it, right? You're still half asleep, you're just not thinking straight.

Like, I'm a legal secretary, and the other day I'm totally out of it, I look around and I'm faxing my paper towel, pouring coffee in my boss's plant and my dick's in the shredder. And I'm like "whoa, where the hell AM I?" you know.

But imagine you have a morning like that and you're an air traffic controller. And you're like "whoa, where the hell AM I?"

When I screw up at work most everybody forgets pretty quickly. Plane crashes people remember for a long time. They're like popes - give a name, a number, everybody knows who you're talking about.

No matter how bad I screw up at work, I'm pretty sure ten years from now some college kid on the other side of the country isn't going to be trying to figure out how old he was when it happened.

And then that other kid can chime in, the one who always has to top everybody, and he'd be like "Oh, youwannaknowabout the Johnson file? Yeah well my cousin's sister's ex-boyfriend's gym teacher's nephew totally died on that shit, man..."

Zank you, I'll be here all ze veek...

We Are Eight of the Worst Blogs

Chickenhead.com has posted the Absolute Bottom 50 Blogs. Procrastinet finds 8 of them personally hurtful:

YoungFatherDrowningInDiapersWantsLife.com

PuttingMyLiberalArtsDegreeToSomeUse.com

GeorgeWBushMakesMeSoMadIStartedABlog.org

ElectronicManifestationOfMyStruggleToBeRelevant.com

TheSameKookyKrazyStuffEveryoneElseIsLinkingTo.com

PompousRuminationsOnMinutia.org

BlurryDigitalPhotosOfMyHomelyChildrenAndPets.org

ProcrastinatingOnMyBrilliantNovelAboutAGifted-WriterAndHisCrazyAdventuresChangingTheWorld-
FromDeepInsideTheUltraSignificantBlogosphere.com

Ouch, man. Cold.

Altoids Brings the Hurt, Dong Resin Brings the Funny

3:49 pm, and I'm thanking god that nobody walked by my desk just now because they'd have thought I was having some kind of epileptic moment. I'm rocked back in my chair, tears streaming down my face, shaking violently with a horrible rictus seizing my face.

This is because I was reading Dong Resin (longtime funnyblogger, now editor of Screenhead, a brilliant collection of things online that will make you go "hehhehheh" like a big stoner, from Nick Denton's burgeoning web empire-let), and more specifically his entry "dong resin vs. Altoids cinnamon chewing gum," and was laughing so hard I was hurting myself but trying not to make any noise while doing it.

I'm going to post a longer-than-usual excerpt here because I know many of you slackers don't click through to the original, and I don't want you to miss the funny:

Hey wow, look, gum packaged in a 19th century lookn' tin. It's even got a kind of Dickensian and windy bit of ad copy, just like all the shit used to. "The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong." The lack of punctuation really sells it to me. It's gum tablets, huh. In a tin. Not cardboard, but metal. That's hot. I buy a $1500 laptop and it arrives on my door in fucking damp cardboard, but the breath gum is showing up wearing a full suit of armor. Bitchn'. Must be some serious gum. It's also twice as expensive as the other gum, but it does come in that cool tin that makes me feel like Ishmael gearing up for the Pequod, so what the hell. I've got $2 to spend on gum. Thank god I stiffed that salvation army bullshit outside the store, or I'd never be able to buy this. Cool, okay, peel off the plastic.. plastic is kind of a downer, takes away from the antiquity deal. I'd sort of expect the odd piece to have gum weevils or whatever since stuff always used to show up with weevils in it before they discovered that weevils are allergic to plastic, but whatever. Okay. Little tablets. I'd better grab six or seven, I want to see what the fuss is about. I know it's supposed to be strong, but so's the coffee in Starbucks and that pussy-ass hot sauce with the dead guy wincing on the label, so there's probably a little wiggle room with regards to what's "strong", here. Fucking American public is all soft and fat these days, so even the gum wearing the metal plating should be no big deal to an espresso drinker like myself.

Oh god...

Gaaaaah! Gatha gatha tha! Gaaaaaaaaaaa!

Shit, did I say that out loud? Great, now people are looking at me. I can't feel anything below my nose. I think I'm drooling. Yep, all down the shirt. Shit. fucking gum. Jesus, is this strong. Tastes like straight-up whiskey. God, it's getting stronger as it breaks up. Gauh! Why? Why would they even make gum like this? Who the fuck is this for, cannibals?

And it keeps on from there, including my favorite single line, "Help me. Why am I stuffing more of this Satan into my mouth? Stop! I can't. I keep fucking doing it." Read the rest.

Dong Resin's Joint.

Facing the Challanges

I've been burned out on the political blogging, but some things are just impossible to leave alone.

Especially when they pretty much speak for themselves.

From Reuters:

President George W. Bush and Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolton (C) talk to conferees, above a misspelled sign, at the White House Conference on the Economy in Washington, December 16, 2004. The White House went all out to showcase the advantages of U.S. President George W. Bush's ambitious financial agenda this week, but in the end the 'challenges' proved too much. The word 'challenges' -- a main theme of a two-day White House economic conference that ended on Thursday -- was misspelled on a large television monitor that stood in front of Bush during a panel discussion.

The Alphabet According to Max

So Max is a big fan of letters. He started out with numbers - he mastered 8 first (pronounced "aichh"), then 2 ("c'hoo"), then lost interest in the whole linear thing and bounced over to the alphabet (though apparently he has gone back to add 3 - "tee" - to the repetoire).

He's also mad about crayons. This is his crayon game: hold two crayons at a time, scrawling on a pad of paper (or the cabinets, or the walls, or us), then hand them to us for a while, during which we are expected to draw; then loudly demand them back - usually just when we've started really enjoying drawing whatever we're drawing.

Lately we've been combining these passions - we'll write a letter and have him identify it. He's branched out from his original "E" and "A" to have firm(ish) mastery of all the letters in his name, plus some spares. He has adopted a unique pronounciation for most of them, and for the ones he doesn't know he either laughs at us, looks at us suspiciously as if convinced we've made them up just to throw him, or he'll substitute another word (mostly "cat").

Here, then, is the Maxian alphabet:

A - ay
B - buhbuhbuh
C - cat!
D - dahdahdah
E - eeeh
F - efffffffffff! (the new favorite)
G - ... [blink, blink]
H - aishh
I - ... [blink, blink] ... cat
J - CAT!
K - cat?
L - ullll
M - hmmm
N - hnnn
O - oooo
P - ...heh heh
Q - oooo (until we point out the tail, then "kooo")
R - awl
S - heh heh
T - teeee! (lunging for the remote, as "tee" also means "tv")
U - cat
V - heh heh... cat
W - heh heh hee hee (crawls to puzzle stool and pulls out the "w")
X - ehchhs
Y - heh heh
Z - hee hee hee

I Hope They Sell Tickets

Peanuthead picks up the trifecta with 3 good tips in less than 24 hours.

From a Craiglist post:

Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m

Reply to: anon-47785163@craigslist.org
Date: 2004-11-03, 10:12PM EST

I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.

Seriously. Publish the time and place, whoever you are. We'll be there.

The New Maps

Wow. Within 11 minutes of each other, I received two things via email:

Number One

Number Two

Problem is, I'm not sure Canada would have us.

(Thanks to Peanuthead and KG)

For Those of You Who Are Leaving

Harper's, hilariously, has an actual guide to expatriation, for all of those who insisted that, with a Bush win, they would leave America.

The author lists several options, such as "The Caribbean," "Indian Reservations" and "The High Seas," and even starting your own Nation:

Micronations

The boldest approach is to start a nation of your own. Sadly, these days it is essentially impossible to buy an uninhabited island and declare it a sovereign nation: virtually every rock above the waterline is now under the jurisdiction of one principality or another. But efforts have been made to build nations on man-made structures or on reefs lying just below the waterline. Among the more successful of these is the famous Principality of Sealand, which was founded in 1967 on an abandoned military platform off the coast of Britain. The following year a British judge ruled that the principality lay outside the nation’s territorial waters. New citizenships in Sealand, however, are not being granted or sold at present.

A less fortunate attempt was made in 1972, when Michael Oliver, a Nevada businessman, built an island on a reef 260 miles southwest of Tonga. Hiring a dredger, he piled up sand and mud until he had enough landmass to declare independence for his “Republic of Minerva.” Unfortunately, the Republic of Minerva was soon invaded by a Tongan force, whose number is said to have included a work detail of prisoners, a brass band, and Tonga’s 350-pound king himself. The reef was later officially annexed by the kingdom.

Thanks to Peanuthead for the tip.

Dan Rather = Tonto

One of my fondest memories from the wee small hours of Nov. 2-3, 2000 (which were few and far between) was when Dan Rather started blithering.

Plus ca change:

2:07 am tonight: "And as far as Ohio? Hey! Kimosabe! We just don't know!

Getting Fuzzy

After leaving my existential maunderings on the state of electoral politics as the top story for over 48 hours, I figured I could stand to lighten the tone.

So I wanted to point out that if you're not reading Get Fuzzy, you could be.

I picked Get Fuzzy as one of the three comics to appear on my Yahoo homepage because... well... I like the perty pictures. Turns out the thing is a charm.

It's rarely laugh-out-loud funny, so give it a couple days. You need to have a decent grasp of the characters for it to do its thang. But it will reward patience with one of the most interesting, quirky comics currently going.

After all: who doesn't like seeing a bitter, acerbic cat being carried around in a Baby Bjorn to take an overweight dog to "Doga" (dog yoga). I, that's who. I don't not like it.

Here's the main page, updated daily.

Wonkette at the Top of Her Game

9:58PM: I am so bored.

10:00PM: "No child left behind is really a jobs act," says Bush. Of course. And Social Security is really a missile defense program. And Federal Highways funding? Actually a part of the Metric Conversion Office. And clean coal legislation helps you make soup.

10:05PM: Kerry. . . massive plan. . . relieving the pressure . . . mmmmm. . .

10:06PM: Bush: "The best way to get the troops home is to send them to Iraq." There's not even a joke to make about that.

Check out the rest of her sort-of-liveblog.

Sec'y of State Wins Cat Show

The winner of the 2004 New York Cat Show is:

Colin Powell.

No, really. A 2-year old Bombay (I guess that's a breed) named Colin Powell. Shown below being held by his owner, John Clark (who bears a terrifying resemblance to Janet Reno) in front of a picture of the cat's namesake.

Some things defy commentary.

Best... Debate Wrapup... Ever...

Fafnir summarizes the debate over at Fafblog.

A taste:

The two candidates' styles in the innovative town hall format are very different. John Kerry handles himself by amblin around stage in a folksy manner to win the confidence of his audience. At one point he builds a barn, which prompts the audience's lone Amish member to comment "Good work, English." George Bush tends to assert his strength in the debate by jumpin up behind John Kerry, clubbing audience members over the head with a wrench, an by launching himself out of a cannon wearin a unitard emblazoned with the logo "The Mighty Thor."

and:

John Kerry says he has a plan to pay for his programs by negotiatin with leprechauns for their rich supply of leprechaun gold. George Bush indignantly points out that this would be "givin the leprechauns exactly what they want" an calls for an invasion of Leprechaunland which he points out will pay for itself.

Funny enough throughout to be worth going and reading it even though the dreaded Green Screen of Fafblog will make everything else you look at all funny-colored for several minutes afterwards.

Nuff Said...

[Thanks, Mark]

The Aptly Named Rude Pundit

Courtesy of Atrios, I found that "The Rude Pundit" (subtitle: "Proudly Lowering The Level of Political Discourse") has some advice for John Edwards tonight.

Here's the beginning of it:

If, at tonight's "debate", when Edwards is asked, "How do you believe your career as a trial lawyer affects your approach to government?", he doesn't answer, "What the fuck kind of question is that, Gwen? What the fuck are you implying? Holy fuck, have you even looked at the cases I've tried? Doesn't the press do any actual goddamn research on, say, Lexis-Nexis or even fuckin' Google? Or maybe my fuckin' book? My legal career was based on helping individuals dicked over by the very kind of corporate and government culture this evil motherfucker across this stupid ass table has fostered. And don't you fuckin' gimme that stroke victim smirk, Dick, or I'll come across and start shovin' aluminum tubes up your ass, all 60,000 of 'em, one anodized tube at a goddamn time. Then, with all those tubes up your ass, you can tell me, tell all of us, if they feel like centrifuge tubes or just plain ol' rocket tubes.

If you can believe it, that's the CALM and POLITE part. After that, it gets rude. Read the whole thing for some serious catharsis.

Fox News: Hacked, or just Hacks?

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.

I held my nose and went to the Fox News website today, to see how they were covering the debates. I was on the phone with Lisa, and saw that Fox was talking about the DNC's Faces of Frustration video, so I clicked on the link and started reading her the article.

"The Headline is 'The Metrosexual and the Cowboy,'" I say.

Huh, I think, that's odd, what does metrosexual have to do with anything?

"'Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator had outperformed the President,'" I read, noting that Fox was admitting the pro-Kerry consensus.

I continue: "'Didn't my nails and cuticles look great! What a great debate!' Kerry said Friday."

We both pause, dumbfounded.

"Wait a minute... What?!" says Lisa.

I keep reading, coming to this quote: "'Women should like me. I do manicures!' said Kerry."

"What the hell are you reading me?" says Lisa.

I keep going: "'I'm metrosexual, he's a cowboy,' the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent."

We're both goggling. "Kerry said this?! says Lisa.

Turns out, no. Kerry didn't say it. Josh Marshall is all over it, as are the folks at DKos. [UPDATE: And now, Kos himself.]

Fox has since pulled this page. No explanation has been forthcoming. Either they were hacked, or someone wrote a joke piece that got accidentally posted.

Anyway, here's a sample (click on the picture to see the whole page as a .gif, or click the "continue reading" link below):

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has not only the answers to the above mysteries, but the questions the press should be asking about this.

Turns out the fake Kerry quotes were written by Fox's lead Kerry Campaign reporter, Carl Cameron. They were written as a joke, whether just for his own amusement or for distribution to friends at the network is not clear. Then somehow they got posted - again, it's not clear if he did it by accident or somebody just grabbed the file and posted it, thinking it was real.

Either way, as Josh Marshall points out, it makes it clear that Fox has a guy covering Kerry who thinks it's a laff riot to write down fake quotes of Kerry claiming to be a metrosexual. To paraphrase Marshall, imagine the outcry from the right if the lead CNN reporter from the Bush campaign accidentally posted a story with Bush quoted as saying "Of course I lost the debate! He's a Yale cum laude and I'm a shaved chimpanzee!"

Something tells me that guy would no longer be covering the Bush campaign, and that CNN would feel like it had a lot of 'splainin' to do. Fox, in their wisdom, has announced that they are "moving on" and have said all they're going to say on the matter.

The Face

From roving reporter Peanuthead comes a link to the DNC site, where you can see their video of the President smirking, grimacing, and looking dumbfounded in the debate last night.

Check it out.

And remember (if you weren't already, which you probably were), that Bush "won" the debate with Gore because the GOP came out and said "yeah, but didja notice? Gore was all huffy and puffy and looked all pissed off. That's not very presidential." And people bought it.

So two lessons:

a) turnabout is fair play; and

b) payback is a bitch.

Open Letter from Michael Moore

Okay, so I have as many mixed feelings about Big Mike as the next pseudo-moderate lefty. I worry that his self-congratulatory adenoidal tone probably puts off a lot of people I'd rather not have associate "the left" with "big pushy sweaty smug guy." So just 'cause I'm linking to him here shouldn't be read as a blanket endorsement of the Michael Moore oeuvre.

But holy crow, this open letter he wrote to Democrats is a work of genius.

Excerpt:

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Go read the rest - it's great. It's that rarest of beasts: a political harangue that's fun to read.

Hat tip to Naji for sending me this.

Outside the Bounds of Civil Discourse

The fine folks at whitehouse.org are up to their hijinks at their new venture, georgewbush.org (still can't believe they got that domain).

If you have a taste for and high tolerance of scathing, immoderate political satire, go read their "transcript" of Zell Miller's keynote. If you don't have a high tolerance for scathing, immoderate political satire, grow a sense of humor and go read the transcript. Or don't grow a sense of humor, go read the transcript, and be very, very offended. Then go punch a liberal. Or whatever turns your crank.

A sample:

Yes, make no mistake that Al Qaeda, unlike the Soviet Union, which was a real and palpable military threat, is gunning for every one of you jiggly-armed xenophobe crackers standing before me today. Al Qaeda, which is basically the 700 Club with RPGs, is an ephemeral, conceptual threat that can never be defeated. Why is that? Because without them, the Republican party which I so revere and emulate would turn on itself like a steak-wrapped piranha. I mean let's face it: quasi-fascism, faggot bashing, and treasury rape just isn't enough to hold the GOP together. But raw, unhinged, illogical fear is! And unlike the Cold War, this fear can be turned on and off and the threat misrepresented whenever poll numbers dare to nosedive.

Oh no they dih-nunt. Oh, yes they did.

Canadians Can Be Jerks Too

The only thing uglier than a bow-killed bear is a pissed off Canadian playwright. Rural Canada's very own redheaded stepchild, Graeme Gillis, defends his capacity for belligerence over on fellow playwright Edith Freni's site.

Key passage:

One day, I was out sweeping congealed blood off the stoop and this big, old grizzly showed up out of nowhere and started barkin' at me. I beat him to death with my broom. It was easy. He didn't put up a fight or anyhing. Pa, he came out of the cabin and started hollering and doing a little dance, right? Then he got on the CB and spread word near and far that the Gillis' were throwing a big old Grissly bear-be-que. Damned near 18 people showed up that night! Course Pa took all the credit for killing the bear. I had to lug coal up the hill all night long while Grand-pap got wasted and tried to have sex with me. Yep. Just a regular night with the Gillis men.

Go read the whole thing.

(Disclaimer: while Graeme Gillis is a real person, and certainly capable of great belligerence especially while under the influence of untoward amounts of Johnny Walker, the article in question was in fact written by Ms. Freni. You wacky Youngblood playwrights you.)

Online Cardio

So I would post this under a new category, "Stuff to scare the crap out of you," but since this is the first thing I've ever seen on line that has, in fact, scared the crap out of me, it would be a pretty sparse category.

Still.

You've been warned. (Needs Quicktime)

[Hat tip: Procrastimom's friends at The Meta Network]

Build a Better Bush

Now, let me say right up front that stuff like this is the lowest possible form of political discourse. It's the kind of stuff that all responsible people should shy away from, as it increases the polarization of our society and makes it harder to find a common ground across an ideological spectrum. I object in principal to all such juvenile potshots, as they do nothing but further entrench beliefs already held on both sides of the debate.

As such, I have no excuse for having spent several minutes perfecting this.

There's something relaxing about Building a Better Bush.

I will say that, in the interests of bipartisanship, as soon as someone sends me a "Build a Better Kerry" link, I will do him up good and post the results. After all, juvenility knows no party.

Thanks to P'net roving reporter TheNickChic for this one...

Monday Cuteness

So, because last week I got a little... erm... angry and rant-y, here's some pure silly cuteness to start the week.

Don't let it get your cursor.

[Hat tip: The Morning News which you should read every day.]

New Goodness from Get Your War On

Get Your War On has updated, and again David Rees makes with the mad funny.

A sample:

(click on picture for full comic)

Awwww...

Oh my god it's just so sweet. (Picture from the New York Times)

Thanks to AP over at Daily Kos for posting this over there.

Click on the image above for the large version, in all its glory. Is it just me, or does it always look like McCain is wearing someone else's face on top of his face, sort of like The Bug wearing the Edgar Suit in Men In Black? Of course, if that's some kind of scar from his Vietnam captivity then I'm going to feel like a huge dong for making fun of it...

Bush's Rugby Daze

No comment (though a lot of former Rugby players call Bush out on his bad form here at Daily Kos).

Boy, he was a cutie though, wasn't he?

UPDATE: Got a better scan of the image from Daily Kos. Still tickled by how much he looks like the punk rich kid in every John Hughes movie ever. If it were 1985 he'd be driving his dad's Porsche 944 with the collar on his polo shirt up.

Wonkette Covered in Bush Sweat - No, wait, "Covers"...

If you're not familiar with Wonkette (despite her recent cross-pollination with the political journalism heavy-hitters at MTV -- oo that Gideon Yago...), it (she) is a snarky gossip/commentary column(ist) based in DC. Wonkette (edited by the adorable Ana Marie Cox) tends to be non-partisan in a Daily Show kind of way - she goes where the funny is, and makes fun of whatever is vulnerable to being made fun of. Especially if it lets her say the word "assfucking."

Today she covers the President's underwhelming appearance at the UNITY Conference of Minority Journalists.

Key graf:

No, really: It's one thing to "misspeak," which everyone does, it's another thing to be so drenched in flop sweat that you start channeling David Foster Wallace, which usually only Dave Eggers does.

The real acid in her reference at the end, "It's hard when you're used to speaking to pre-selected fanatics," may be lost on non-political-junkies. In a bit of Orwellism that probably merits a post of its own some time, Bush/Cheney '04 has been requiring all audience members at campaign appearances to sign Loyalty Oaths pledging allegiance to the re-election of the administration...

Good God, I wish I was kidding.

UPDATE: No, this time I did NOT steal the post from Brad DeLong. I posted mine a full twenty minutes before his. It just proves that great minds think alike. And so does mine.

I've only beaten Professor DeLong to the punch once before: I posted about Carville's joke back in May.

So far 11 of my 114 posts reference DeLong's site. So my blogstalking remains under 10%. Um... barely.

The Nihilist Dog on Craigslist

So I've never posted a link to Craigslist, as I tend to assume that everyone pretty much knows about it. On the off chance that you don't: Craigslist is the bona fide, all-time, world-beating way to kill time online. People who don't have blogs use it for random thoughts, and you can buy shit.

Here's a great post from the Best-Of-Craigslist (you can nominate posts you find particularly amusing), where a guy (or gal - Craigslist is pretty much totally anonymous) complains that his dog is a nihilist.

A sample:

I thought he was depressed. One day I was coming home from work and he was laying like a dead rat in the window looking at me with a face that screamed 'so this is what it sounds like when the doves cry' which creeped the hell out of me. I took him to the vet and when I walked in his first words were "it doesn't look like I can do anything for your pet." I answered "I thought they had dog prozac?" His response was "oh, I thought he was dead." I put him on the prozac but all it did was level out his highs and lows, which meant he no longer cocked his head ever when people enter/exit my apartment and he sits under the table instead of laying under it. The anti-depressant experiment ended after three weeks.

UPDATE: Once you've read that one, read this one. It's thematically linked. It also has an M. Night Shyamalan-style "twist ending"!

Wedding Options

Our friends Dan and Noreen got married recently (hence the Bachelor Party posts...) at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

The ceremony was lovely, in a little ampitheatre overlooking the Japanese Pond (through which prowled carp the size of nuclear submarines). The reception in the all-glass Palm House was gorgeous, the food was great, the band was superb.

I don't know why they bothered, when they could've had this:

Read all about the lovely woodland wedding of the Hummel-Shavers -- a "double-tattoo" ceremony that culminated in the ritual burning of the groom's "interactive sculpture" -- through this posting on Dave Barry's (very funny) blog. Definitely check out the whole photo gallery.

Now I'm sort of regretting that when Lisa and I got married, we missed the change to have a strange little man in a tail coat, sneakers and a bowler hat prance around us wrapping us up in ribbons from a paint roller. While, apparently, singing "The Mock Turtle's Song" from Alice in Wonderland.

Actually, as easy as it is to scoff, the Hummel-Shavers clearly had exactly the wedding they wanted. God bless 'em.

UPDATE: Though the comments on the Dave Barry blog are pretty down on the Hummel-Shavers and their wedding (rude, people, rude), I did pick up this little tidbit:

My personal favorite caption: "Men singing "Long live Love!" and women singing "Prepare ye the way of the heart" called the couple to enter from opposite directions accompanied by pixies strewing flower petals, blowing bubbles and spewing faerie dust."

Prepare ye the way of the HEART? Were he dead, Stephen Schwartz would be rolling in his grave. Oy.

Notorious Kerry Hamster Breaks Silence

Thanks to intrepid Procrastinet roving reporter La Beeg (though I suppose for proper Frenchness that would be "La Bigue"), my mental sprain has been somewhat relieved by some political levity.

The following is reprinted from "Licorice Speaks," the New York Times Op-Ed piece by Colin McEnroe.

Since I've reprinted it below in its entirety, and I'm not sure that's technically, erm, *legal*, I do strenuously encourage you to please go lawfully register (it's free) and read it here on the Times site instead of reading it below. Where I've reprinted it. In its entirety. Please.

My name is Licorice, and I am a hamster.

I have never shared my story before because, frankly, sometimes all a hamster has is his privacy. Thursday night, however, Alexandra Kerry described the circumstances of my rescue by her father after I had fallen off a pier in Massachusetts.

I have come forward now to set the record straight.

I was the hamster of Alexandra's sister, Vanessa, and she, on balance, was a good person, although a bit of a tickler. On this occasion, as the family gathered on the pier to depart for a vacation, somebody - I'm not saying it was Alexandra; I'm not saying it was on purpose - "bumped" my cage, and
the next thing I knew, I was in the water and sinking fast.

I saw my whole life pass before my eyes. My life has not been all that interesting, so it wasn't exactly like watching "The Godfather I and II." I mean, I'm a hamster. I could see a bright light, but I seemed to be on a wheel that rotated as I ran, so I never got any closer. But I was aware of a shining, all-loving divine rodent presence telling me: "It's not time yet. You have more to do on earth."

"Like what?" I asked, but I could already feel myself back in my body, could feel strong hands yanking open my cage and pulling me upward to safety.

Yes, it was John Kerry. Help was on the way. Yes, he did perform CPR. Yes, he did perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. There is no doubt that I owe him my life. On the other hand, the water went up to his chest, O.K.? I mean, this wasn't exactly PT-109.

It's also true that I wound up suing the family. I have continuing health problems, including a partial paralysis on my right side that makes it difficult for me to drink out of a regular water bottle. And let's just say there aren't going to be any Licorice Jr.'s. One of the small pleasures of hamster life denied.

There was a settlement. I can't talk about it. I got enough to pay for a daily home health aide.

How do I feel about John Kerry? Mainly, I'm grateful he wasn't married to that Heinz woman when this happened. You think she would have allowed him to jump in the water in his J. Press poplin slacks? Food pellets wouldn't melt in
her mouth. I'd have drowned and been eaten by lobsters.

And I'm glad I wasn't a Bush family pet. Their hamsters probably have to rescue them, from the looks of things.

I might wind up speaking at the Republican convention, though. I'm opposed to stem cell research. With any kind of research, hamsters always wind up taking it right on the chin. And we barely even have chins.

Colin McEnroe is a radio talk show host and writer.

TMN on Summer Vacation

By which I mean they write about summer vacation, not that they're away on... never mind.

The multifariously talented writers at The Morning News weigh in with delightfully short tales of summer vacations gone awry.

Danny Gregory has a particularly excellent entry, terse but chilling:

During the summer of the Iran-Contra hearings, my wife and I rented a remote farmhouse in Delhi, upstate New York. Each day, we would lie on inflatable rafts in the pond as our dog hunted for frogs in the reeds. Each evening, we would barbecue and play gin rummy. Each night, the terror returned. The darkness was impenetrable. The silence was unbroken but for the occasional creak from the old house or the vermin skittering in the walls. We lay awake, clutching the counterpane, as the same lone pickup rattled back and forth across the county road beyond our front door. We whispered to each other: Gein, Gacy, Bundy, Berkowitz, Bianchi, Buono… In the morning sunshine, those fears seemed absurd. But finally, unable to get a decent night’s sleep, we cut our vacation short.

That Christmas an item appeared in the Times. A serial killer had been arrested in Delhi. Operating in the area for years, he had been particularly active the previous summer, burying six prostitutes and hitchhikers in the farmyard directly next door to the one we had rented. The following summer, we went to Disney World.

—Danny Gregory

There are thirteen in all, most of them not much longer than the above. Check 'em out. Them's good readin'.

George Says!

Go to the website George Says! Go to George Says, right now.

You get to pick a pose and a background, and choose what goes in the thought balloon. Then you can save the picture to email, post, whatever.

The fun never has to end.

If you come up with one you're proud of, email it to me.

The Dadaist Poetry of Babel Fish

Here's some creative Procrastinetting: go to the Babel Fish translator, and play the phone game with a chunk of text. It makes for some great dada poetry.

Here, for example, is what happens when you translate the first two verses of Mary Had a Little Lamb from English into Korean and back:

The store maul li it was small
and the lamb it was it is small
there was a lamb, maul Riga
her the lamb positive and it went,
it was small and the young German silver
maul li his both hairs with the eye white
and or this maul Riga for maul of that
li for were small to where and the lamb,
maul Riga they went to where it is

Here is Hamlet's soliloquy, translated from English to Greek to French and back. It keeps up nobly for a while only to break down entirely by the end:

For qu'il either or qu'il is not, this one is the question. S'il is nobler with the brain for exist the slings and the arrows of the offensive chance, or for the weapons against a sea of the problems are received and, thanks to resistance, for telejwcoy'n

Then there's this rather beautiful piece, which is Jack and Jill into Chinese and back and then into Japanese and back. I think you'll agree it's an improvement on the original:

Jake and Jill
rise to the hill
in order to come
having the barrel water

Jake falling down
falls down

in order to come afterwards,
breaks that crown
and Jill

Eat yer heart out, William Carlos Williams.

Yes, the Subservient Chicken

To anyone who pays a lot of attention to these things, this will be "so June." But man, is this a good way to kill some time online.

The Subservient Chicken.

And yes, it would constitute the most outrageously successful viral marketing campaign if I believed it was going to sell even a single Burger King chicken sandwich.

Get creative in your commands to the chicken. My favorite so far? "Do yoga."

Try something obscene, just because it allows you to see the chicken up close.

I'm working on a big long heavy meaningful post for later, but for now: enjoy the Chicken.

My Articulate Son

This week, Max has proved that you don't have to be able to talk to be able to talk back.

You see, as he has emerged from his babyhood into his proto-toddlerhood, Max has been experimenting with moods. Apparently the old repertoire of content/delighted/upset was getting stale, so he decided to spice it up with the addition of: uppity, defiant and frantic.

One manifestation of the above is his urgent desire, several times a day, to smack whoever is holding him soundly on the face with the flat of his palm. Hard. While thus employed, he gets a look of utmost concentration, like someone playing a very difficult video game. Often, the urge to smack someone in the face will come upon him while he's taking a bottle, making it necessary for him first to hurl the bottle to the floor, freeing up his hands for the attack.

This has triggered my first attempts at Big Serious Dad Voice. It is my theory that every dad must master Big Serious Dad Voice, and stick to his guns once it has been deployed, so that the child will understand that we are No Longer Kidding Around.

So the other day Max set about battering his mother in the face, and I said to him in Big Serious Dad Voice: "Max. Stop it. That's not funny, and it's not allowed. Now STOP."

He stopped and whirled to face me, incredulous.

And then he deployed his one word, the one and only sound he can make intentionally as a form of communication.

"Thbbft!" he said.

Sharply.

With his tongue stuck out.

Since then, every time our tone becomes stern because he's throwing something or hitting something that should be neither thrown nor hit, he shoots us the incredulous look and goes "Thbbft!"

Amazingly, that look and that one raspberry of a syllable convey a great deal of meaning.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he says. "Why are you taking that tone with me? Well, I won't have it, I'll tell you that much. You can take that tone and figure out where to stick it," he says.

Sigh. My son has just turned a year old, can't talk and is already talking back.

It's going to be a long couple of decades.

NY Post Surpasses The Onion as NYC's Most Popular Parody Newspaper

Yes, the New York Post got Kerry's Veep pick totally, flagrantly, publicly and humiliatingly wrong, as they went this morning with a full-page spread about how Gephardt got the nod. As of 9:15 this morning, as Kerry's speech in Pittsburgh announcing Edwards was wrapping up, the Post's website still had the Gep headline on the first page.

The upside: the Post has now publicly sacrificed whatever shreds of credibility they may have had, hopefully for the duration of Election 04. I suspect a great many New Yorkers will be taking Post cover headlines with a pretzel-full of salt for a while. Let's all resolve to treat the NYP as what it is: entertainment masquerading as news.

Proving, however, that the Post will remain the Post, here are some clips from their (belated) Edwards coverage:

Obsessed with secrecy, Kerry kept his decision to himself until the last possible minute, giving Edwards no time to get to Pittsburgh in time.

Oh Kerry, you eccentric paranoid.

Pouring millions of his own dollars into North Carolina's 1998 Senate campaign, he challenged Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth. The incumbent failed to persuade people that Edwards was no more than a lawsuit-happy lawyer, losing his seat to the upstart politician by 4 percentage points.

Hmmm... he failed to persuade people of that, did he? Odd.

Bush/Zombie Reagan 'O4

Some of the stuff over at Bush/Zombie Reagan '04 is truly brilliant, some of it is truly tasteless, and all of it is worth killing some time with. Preferably by eating its brains.

If disrespect to the newly dead bugs you - um... don't go look. This'll bug you.

More Baby Hijinks at Defective Yeti

Key quote: "Warning, may abruptly cease to exist!"

Add Defective Yeti to the list of sites that you should bookmark and read regularly (vis DeLong, Fafblog) since I'm clearly going to be linking to them a lot anyway.

For those that missed it the first time around and enjoy "father convinced his family is in grave peril from a cheap product" stories, here's the posting on the Killer Blimp from April.

Get Your War On throws a Sovereignty Party

No fancy commentary here, just a link to a must-read site.

Here's my earlier post about GYWO. I've bought and read the book - I *highly* recommend you click on the link in that post and buy it and read it and laugh much and mightily.

Thanks to roving reporter J for pointing out the new funnies.

Giblets on the Veepstakes

I promised myself, no more Fafblog links.

Then Giblets weighed in on the Veepstakes.

Sigh.

Maybe I can set up a system whereby I can email Fafblog every time I'm going to write about something and make sure they don't intend to write about the same thing anytime soon and be way way funnier.

Baby Logic

Over at Defective Yeti, an entry that makes me regret that Max is heading out of babyhood into toddlerhood and that I missed many opportunities for hilarity-through-babyblogging.

A sample:

We've been patiently waiting for The Squirrelly to develop a personality, but, now that he has one, we're kinda wishing it wasn't that of a insatiable vortex. Trying to put every object on Earth into his yapper has become his full time hobby. He's committed to the cause even while sleeping. Last night I reached out and patted his belly while he slept; he responded by seizing my arm and going at my wrist like it was a cob of corn, looking like the world's most ineffectual wolverine.

When you're done with the Baby Eats Everything entry, if you want to know more about The Squirrely (as I did), the whole archive is hilarious and worth reading.

It includes these new lyrics for Brahms' Lullabye, with which every parent can relate:

No, for real
Go to sleep
Or we'll sell you
On E-bay ...

Bulgaria is Annoying!

Of 213, votes: 60.09% think Bulgaria is annoying!

Thus the wisdom of www.amiannoying.com - which we are eternally grateful to roving correspondent Scott for alerting us to. Quoth Scott:

Can't decide if it's just a pretty amusing website, or yet another sign that the apocalypse is upon us. Probably both.

So far I've only skimmed the surface of this site, and the potential for time-wasting seems legion.

So go weigh in on what celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, countries, and whatever else may or may not be annoying. There's also a hall of fame. Of note: the all-time Most Annoying is apparently Seoul, South Korea. Star Jones is, by .20%, more annoying than Al-Qaeda, which has to smart. Least annoying is Vince Lombardi, followed closely by American Idol's Carmen Rasmussen which makes me think the whole thing is bunk.

The Continuing Insightful Funnies of Fafblog

If you're wondering what to think about this whole Prisoner Abuseapalooza, what with the memos and all, AND looking to have a grin or titter at the same time (sounds like a bad pub: The Grin'n'Titter), go check this out on Fafblog.

In case nobody has noticed, it is my fervent recommendation that everyone who likes Procrastinet should check out Fafblog and Brad DeLong every day (see links on the right), as about 1/3 of my content is stuff from them.

And since it was through Brad DeLong that I found Fafblog to begin with, I'm actually a derivative of my own derivativeness. Someday, I hope to reach a state of pure zen cross-self-reference and disappear up my own butthole.

Giblets goes off

My current favorite character in all of pop literature is Giblets, one of the three authors at Fafblog.

The description of Giblets on the sidebar says it all:

Here is Giblets. "Giblets demands satisfaction!" says Giblets. Giblets is a very demanding Giblets.

Which is why now when Max fusses for no apparent reason and won't be satisfied, we call him Giblets.

Anyway, over at Fafblog, Giblets is going off. (Keep scrolling down - Giblets goes off over the course of several posts)

Get Your War On

Holy crap. So you ever have that experience where you're trying to be funny, and you're being kinda mildly amusing and people are all chuckling and stuff, so you're feeling okay?

But then you run across something so god damned funny it makes you feel ashamed, and you seriously think about vowing to never try to be funny again?

Yeah.

So have I.

About ten minutes ago.

Here's a small taste:

Start reading "Get Your War On" here, to pick one of 36 pages that seems the most densely packed with funny. Then read the rest. At least one strip per page will make you choke on your milk.

Then, when you need a break from the funny, check out the guys the proceeds of Get Your War On's book sales are going to benefit. And then go buy the book.

Gadget Rorschach at Gizmodo

I admit, I read Gizmodo every day. It's very funny, very readable, and talks about the electronic goo-gaws that make me frantic with gollum-like need about once per quarter. I'm linking to this particular article for one reason and one reason only: it includes the phrase "circus titties."