Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Karl Rove is either (a) a somewhat-high-functioning psychotic, or (b) so accustomed to lying that it comes as naturally to him as a morning whizz. For those not in the know, he is now claiming that the Bush Administration did not want the Iraq war vote to happen in the fall of 2002 because it would be "too political" or some such crap. Watch the clip in the above link. It's unintentional hilarity.

To one hell of a dog

We'll miss you.


Molly
??? - November 26, 2007

Lost in a hedge maze

My worst fear, played out on video:


Crave Online: Funny Videos, Sexy Videos, Music Videos, Movie Trailers, and More!

Honor the turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, bitches!!!

I like Will Ferrell's version better

Neil Diamond has finally revealed the subject of his song "Sweet Caroline."

It's this chick.

Honestly, I prefer this version of the story:



As long as we're talking about Neil, here's the only part of Saving Silverman that was at all clever:



Diamonds in the Rough rule.

Cause for my absence

I haven't been blogging much of late, once again. I've been in the process of looking for a new Cryptic PhilosoPad. More news to follow, although it won't be as fancy as some I've looked at.

Still sucking after all these years

I had noticed, back in the late '90s and early '00s, when I still attended Beer Bike reunions, that the students at my old digs were slipping in their graffiti obligations (NOTE: If you have never been to Lovett College, you probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.) It's good to see that Wikipedia has immortalized the Cobb graffiti for internet posterity.

Lovett '97. Boat racing rules.

I must be slipping...shit

Omaha Dating

I only pulled an "R" rating, based on the words "dead," "bitch" and "hell."

I will therefore now recite the Lovett Cheer, from my old college days. That ought to raise the bar a bit.

The text is shrunken down, for the kids' sake, you know?

Cock suck, mother fuck, eat a bag of shit.
Cunt hair, douche bag, suck your mother's tit.
We are the best college, all the others suck.
Edgar Odell Lovett, rah rah fuck!

According to the Wikipedia post, this is Rice's "only officially University-banned cheer." What the fuck's up with that?

It's gonna suck, but I don't care.

I just learned of the sequel to Alien vs. Predator coming out on Christmas day (interesting choice.)

The original Alien vs. Predator, while highly disappointing, really sucked, but dammit, I'm still excited.

I think it's the 5-year-old in me who wasn't allowed to see the original when it came out who's most excited.

"So, it's not a negligee situation or anything..."

Interesting compilation on how Fox News uses sexual images more than is strictly necessary:



What really gets me is the utterly unrelated footage of Daytona Beach party girls during a report on a serial killer targeting women in Daytona (about 2:30 in).

Okay, it's irrelevant unless their point is that the serial killer is there because of the debauchery. Sorry, but Jason Voorhees, "that ever-vigilant enforcer of William Bennett-style values," already took care of that, thank you much.

Anyway, my point is that Fox News sucks and Bill O'Reilley is an asshole.

When insults had class

Copied wholesale from an e-mail forward. I'm not sure that some of these quotes are correctly attributed, but I'm too lazy to do the research right now.

-----------------------

When insults had class.

These insults are mostly from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words!

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with
great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
know." - Abraham Lincoln

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it." Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response.

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -
Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." Jack E.
Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

Let's all point at Tom and laugh, now

This article is rather short on details, but apparently Tom DeLay was laughed at during his dire warning about a Hillary Clinton presidency during a speech in England.

Not that I'm a huge Hillary Clinton fan, but it's always nice to see ol' Tom knocked down a few pegs.

Have the girls gone too wild?

Judge for yourself.

Halloween Crappy-Film-Fest Roundup, 2007

My typical Halloween tradition, in lieu of braving the slutty-nurses-on-6th-Street scene, is to rent a few crappy horror movies and then bitch about them. Now that I have a blog, I can bitch to the whole world! And besides, Halloween is such a liberal holiday, don't you think?

A quick side note: in my opinion, there is only a handful of genuinely good horror movies, but that is a subject for a future post.

This year's set consisted of 28 Weeks Later, The Insatiable, and Flight of the Living Dead. Watch out for spoilers up ahead.

1. 28 Weeks Later.

Let me first say that 28 Days Later (2003) is probably going to be included in my list of good horror films, whenever I get around to writing it. The sequel seemed to have all the components of a good action movie, but the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Here's what the original had going for it: a gritty, low-budget look that somehow made it more real to the viewer; and real characters that the audience got to know and care about. A good sequel needs to do at least one of the following: (1) delve deeper into the characters first introduced in the original, or (2) continue the story begun in the original in a gripping and intelligent way. A good sequel does at least one of these (e.g. the "Dirty Harry" sequels), while a great sequel does both (e.g. Godfather 2, Aliens). A bad sequel does neither (e.g. The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions).

28 Weeks Later has exactly none of the original cast returning, so there is no delving to be done. Does it continue the story intelligently? Let's see--Americans enter Great Britain to start the reconstruction process once all the "zombies" have starved to death, allowing Brits to return to controlled areas a few dozen at a time. One survivor turns out to be a Typhoid Mary for the rage virus, she infects her husband, he infects a few people, the military starts shooting and blowing up everything that moves, and it is difficult to remember what the various characters' names are or what they are doing. So I guess the answer is no. The movie also wastes several highly underrated but very talented actors (e.g. Rose Byrne, Idris Elba), and uses its one almost-big-name actor (Robert Carlyle) as a Patient Zero (so he has very little dialogue except grunting.)

All in all, very disappointing. The special effects, given the grittiness of the original, were actually too good. If we learned anything at all from Blair Witch 2, sometimes a big budget is not a good thing.

Here's what I would've done: After holing up in a remote farmhouse for several months, the leads from the original (Cillian Murphy as Jim, Naomie Harris as Selena, and a more grown-up Hannah played by Sienna Guillory) lead a NATO expeditionary team back into post-apocalypse London, braving the few stragglers who somehow managed to survive, and facing the mutated, airborne version of the rage virus. Eventually, they have to blow up a bunch of shit, but we (the audience) actually care if one of them gets blown up as well. I'm working on a screenplay. It will be as if this last sequel never happened (cf. Halloween H20).

2. The Insatiable.

First, you have to believe that one of the original Boondock Saints is a pathetic loner, which is about as likely as Sandra Bullock or Rachel Leigh Cook being pathetic loners. Must be a movie thing.

Next, you have to believe he can steal $32,000 worth of equipment from his place of work to build a steel cage in the basement of his (rented) apartment building, that no one else will find.

The point of all this is that he traps a ridiculously hot female vampire in the cage and then tries to keep her alive by feeding her rabbits.

He also has a ridiculously hot blonde neighbor who is always flirting with him and inviting him over for dinner. Of course, when you think he has finally come to his senses and tries to kiss her, she becomes enraged, leaving him with no one except the hot vampire.

The only particularly memorable scene is the denouement, after he has allowed hot vampire to bite him. We see that she has niot killed him, but rather turned him. He knocks on blonde neighbor's door and asks "Are you ready to feed me now?"

Hardly a progressive ending, but I guess the nerd wins out in the end. All in all, this movie was crap--Netflix said I might like it, presumably because I told it I like vampire movies.

3. Flight of the Living Dead.

Maybe the funniest part is that I am not making this up--this movie actually exists. It's basically 28 Days Later meets Executive Decision, except Steven Seagal doesn't die in this one, alas.

I actually quite enjoyed this one. It doesn't take itself seriously, it is actually fairly well-paced, the acting is suprisingly good, and it didn't strain credibility any further than was absolutely necessary. I went into this one with perhaps the lowest expectations (I still have not seen last year's highly anticipated movie with the snakes, but I hear it didn't go over so well), so maybe I am just filtering it through that sort of lens. But really, it has the bully from the 80's classic Three O'Clock High playing a TSA agent, and the old guy from "Heroes" plays a sort-of mad scientist character who gets his face ripped off.

Horror movies (here I go making a list again) should do one of two things: (1) scare hell out of us in thoughtful, unexpected ways (e.g. Psycho, The Exorcist); or (2) entertain us with not-to-be-taken-too-seriously scary hijinks (e.g. Halloween). This one accomplished goal #2 in abundance.

I have to give my award for best crappy horror movie for Halloween 2007 to Flight of the Living Dead. Sorry, British zombies.

Juveniles among us

Elizabeth Kucinich has a tongue stud, and her husband wouldn't be afraid to conduct actual, you know, diplomacy to protect the nation.

Works for me.

Yet the tongue thing freaks people out, apparently. Grow the f*** up.