I just got an email from “Al Gore” which contained the following:
Last weekend, the movie broke the all-time per screen record for any documentary movie in history – and, incredibly, according to Variety, broke the all-time per-screen record for any movie opening on Memorial Day weekend. (Incidentally, that record was set by The Shining, back in 1980.)Cool. Even if you’re a progressive who doesn’t like Gore, you’ve gotta be glad this message is getting out there.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The latest Pew numbers about how we're viewed in other countries:
[Okay, so although this is mostly a political blog, sometimes I and the other contributors have to distract ourselves with other things, or else all of our heads would explode. Hence, we occasionally write about rugby drinking games or homophobia on American Idol. For some people, this probably makes the blog more enjoyable. For others, they wonder why we’ve suddenly lost our minds when such posts appear. To that latter group, I ask for your indulgence. Consider the following a necessity to stave off the therapy I would require if I never thought or wrote about anything besides politics.]
I am not a pageant-watcher. I am, however, an Oscars-watcher, and that is, by any definition, the biggest pageant of the year, chock full of frozen-smiled women in alternatingly beautiful and disastrous dresses, men in all but identical suits (bless you, Johnny Depp; bless you, Sam Jackson), tears of joy, tears of disappointment, desperate attempts to look happy for one’s competitor after s/he’s just stolen the glorious golden prize out from under you, and plenty of knit-browed faces muttering some bitchy snark suddenly breaking into an embarrassed grin upon the realization they’re on camera. So why would I need to watch some dumb old pageant like Mrs. World?
Well, that’s just stinkin’ thinkin’, as it turns out. Because failure to watch WE’s presentation of the Mrs. World 2006 pageant left me dependent on the always-reliable FourFour to fill me in on The Grandest Television Debacle of All Time.
First of all, Alan Thicke, reeking, as usual, of the faint scent of perv. Why am I convinced that “fulfilling your obligations” as Mrs. World starts with a backstage blowjob for the creepy Canuck? Second of all, a flying, crown-bearing cherub. I need to check Revelations, but I’m fairly sure that kid is a sign of the Apocalypse. Third—and best—of all, they crowned the wrong fucking woman. OMG—the drama, the tears, the melting mascara! Help me, Jeebus!
The nightmare unfolded in Russia’s Oktriabrskii Theater; according to Thicke, the "monumental Oktriabrskii Theater,” a classification a FourFour commenter agrees is correct “if ‘monumental’ means ‘hideous Stalinist pile in desperate need of cleaning and renovation,’” thusly answering my question, “Why was the Mrs. World pageant being held in a high school gym?”
From here, all I can tell you is: just watch it. It is truly a thing to behold, from the other contestants following the lead of the evidently brain-damaged sash-bearer, to some sidestage heavy completely freaking out on her, to the backstage breakdowns, to the insane “redo” where flying crazyangelchild flies once again and Mrs. Russia assumes her rightful position as Mrs. World, rubbing it in on her “Royal Walk” with a hip-swinging strut that launched a thousand (or however many contestants there are) visions of spiking her vodka with hemlock. Perfection, my sweets. Simply perfection.
As you know, I have great informants all over the place, and one of them has just shipped me this amazing image, captured during a National Geographic documentary on the rare and wonderful chickenhawk:
“I'm a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke-free, a diversified multi-cultural post-modern deconstructionist, politcally, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect. I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputed and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I'm a high-tech lowlife, a state-of-the-art bi-coastal multitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond. I'm new wave, but I'm old school, and my inner child is outward bound. I'm a hot-wired, heat-seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice-activated and biodegradeble. I interface with my database, and my database is in cyberspace, so I'm interactive, I'm hyperactive, and from time to time, I'm radioactive. Behind the 8-ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave, dodging the bullet, pushing the envelope. I'm on point, on task, on message, and off drugs. I got no need for coke and speed. I have no urge to binge and purge. I'm in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistics missionary. A street-wise smart bomb, a top-gun bottom-feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps. I'm a totally ongoing bigfoot slamdunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach. A raging workaholic, a working rageaholic, out of rehab and in denial. I got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda. You can't shut me up, you can't dumb me down, 'cause I'm tireless, and I'm wireless. I'm an alphamale on beta blockers. I'm a non-believer and an overachiever, laid back, but fashion forward, up front, down home, low rent, high maintenance; super size, long lasting, high definition, fast acting, oven ready, and built to last. I'm a hands-on, footloose, kneejerk headcase, prematurly post-traumatic, and I have a love child who sends me hate mail. But I'm feeling, I'm caring, I'm healing, I'm sharing, a supportive, bonding, nurturing, primary caregiver. My output is down, but my income is up. I take a short position on a long bond, and my revenue stream has its own cash flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds, I watch trash sports. I'm gender specific, capital intensive, user friendly, and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex, I like tough love, I use the F-word in my e-mails, and the software on my hard drive is hardcore, no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a minimall, I bought a minivan at a megastore, I eat fast food in the slow lane. I'm tollfree, bite size, ready to wear, and I come in all sizes. A fully equipped, factory authorized, hospital tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle. I've been prewashed, precooked, preheated, prescreened, preapproved, postdated, freeze dried, double wrapped, vacuum packed, and I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I'm a rude dude, but I'm the real deal, lean and mean, cocked, locked, and ready to rock; rough, tough, and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide, I got glide in my stride. Drivin' and movin', sailin' and spinin', jivin' and groovin', wailin' and winnin'. I don't snooze, so I don't lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hardy, and lunch time is crunch time. I'm hangin' in, there ain't no doubt, and I'm hangin' tough, over and out.” — George Carlin, Life is Worth Losing
Check out this Tonight Show line-up:
"Tonight" host Jay Leno might want to consider wearing referee stripes on Wednesday's show when Ann Coulter and George Carlin are his guests.Except, of course, when he’s busy doing racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic sketches.
Coulter, the acid-tongued conservative with a new book out, and Carlin, the quick-witted, antiestablishment comedian who's in the voice cast for the new animated film "Cars," were booked at separate times for the NBC late-nighter, a spokeswoman said Monday.
But the duo's meeting could produce serious fireworks for "Tonight," which usually limits its political fodder to Leno's bipartisan monologue jokes.
Fox News Anchor Julie Banderas goes nose-to-nose with Westboro "God Hates Fags" Baptist Church member Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of unhinged founder of the traveling freak show, Fred Phelps. (You can find past posts about the odious Phelps here. Hat tip to The Angry Fag.)
Those of you that have seen An Inconvenient Truth will probably remember a short animated clip of an exhausted polar bear swimming in a vast ocean, struggling to climb up onto a crumbling bit of ice. It's rather heartbreaking. Polar bears are in particular danger when it comes to global warming; with the bear's habitat vanishing, not only won't they have anywhere to stand, they're also unable to find food.
Which is why they're beginning to eat each other.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.You can almost hear the sneer when the word "environmentalists" is used.
The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.
[...]
"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.
Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century.
The Midwestern Gentleman slipped this into comments:
[H]as anyone noticed that the War Cabinet convened at Camp David is conspicuously without its "Decider"? I mean, he calls everyone together yesterday for a supposed two-day strategery meeting, and then bails after day one? WTF?! Did he finish all his decidering in one day on a war that took him three+ years to fuck up royally?!?!And that’s not even the best part. In what certainly seems to be a betrayal of Bush’s assertions about how swimmingly progress is moving along in Iraq, he also didn’t tell the Iraqi government he was coming, for fear of his own safety.
The Post notes today that he "slipped out" last night without telling anyone but his top advisors.
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] learned of Bush's visit only after his Nighthawk helicopter had landed in the Green Zone following a six-minute ride from the airport, part of the extraordinary security measures associated with the trip.Spreading freedom, bitchez.
I don't wanna, and you can't make me."[T]he truth is that it's conservatives themselves who blow the whistle on their bad boys and go after the real extremism on their side of the aisle."[p. 9]
And while conservatives zealously police their own ranks to exclude extremists and conspiracy theories, extremism and conspiracy theories have become the driving force of the Democrat Party. [p. 169]
Oof:
The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.Raw Story has a statement from Joe Wilson.
The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.
In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."
Al Gore, if you don't want my heart to shatter into a million, zillion tiny, tragic pieces if you decide not to run for president in 2008, then you have to stop giving me reasons to love you, like, for instance, deciding to train 1,000 messengers to travel the country giving the presentation made famous in An Inconvenient Truth:
The former vice president, a Democrat, said on Monday that by the end of the summer he would start a bipartisan education campaign to train 1,000 people to give a version of his slide show on global warming featured in the film "An Inconvenient Truth" and book of the same name.Swoon.
"This moment cannot be allowed to pass," Gore told reporters in New York. "I have seen and heard times before when the awareness of the climate crisis has peaked and then a few months later it's gone. I think this time is different, but I have to say I'm not certain of that."
...Gore said all the profits from his film and the book will be donated to train the messengers. He said the carriers of the message will give the slide show at high schools and rotary clubs in the United States and around the world.
Stephen Hawking, one of the planet’s smarter hairless apes, has finally confirmed what many of us have long suspected- humanity, at heart, is just a “virus with shoes.”
HONG KONG - The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.Basically, we’ve screwed up our own planet so badly, things are only going to get worse. Time to jump ship now, before we melt to death or get wasted by a meteorite (admittedly, not our fault) or blow each other up with those magnificent doomsday machines that nobody ever tells us about, so really, how were we supposed to know going in that blowing up your country would result in the destruction of the species, hmmm? You could’ve text messaged it- “Yr pwned- the Doomsday Device is fully fuctional. No bombs, plz, or we all die. n00bs.” Would that have been so hard?
Well, I'll be greased and fried. Looks like a conservative Christian eyed the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game (background here and here) , shook themselves awake and realized that peddling a video game where Christians kill non-Christians might not be the best idea.
The Christian supremacist video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces has drawn the wrath of conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson. He has denounced and cut ties with Tyndale House, publisher of the Left Behind novels that inspired the video game, and he is now threatening a lawsuit over its licensing of the game. Talk to Action has obtained a letter from Mr. Thompson in which he has urged Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Ph.D., to join him in repudiating Tyndale House.
Mr. Thompson has charged that in licensing the game, Tyndale House, publisher of his own book against video game violence as well as the Living Word Bible and several of Mr. Dobson's titles on child-rearing, "has now become one of the mental molesters of minors for money."
"What is more," Mr. Thompson continued, "we as a nation are involved in a war on terror, and this game gives radical Islamists two arguments: that we indeed do export pop culture sewage to the rest of the world, and we Christians entertain ourselves with the notion of killing infidels, now in a `Christian game'."
From his confab on the Iraq War at Camp Branch Davidian (which is where the below picture was snapped), President Bush issued this statement today:
I keep reminding the American people that the stakes are worth it. It is worth it to help Iraq succeed. It is worth it to have a democracy in the Middle East. It is worth it to show other reformers and people who want to live in a free society what is possible.
So, the question of the day is, what do you think of that assertion? Do you believe it’s even possible for any success to emerge from the war, that we’ll ever see a genuine Iraqi democracy? If something good does, miraculously, manage to eke its way out of all this, will it have been worth it? Basically, I’m just soliciting Shakers’ current thoughts on the war.
I never supported the war; I vainly hoped when it was launched that at least some humanitarian success could come out of it; I don’t believe we will see, anytime in the near future, anything that could be categorized as a “success,” but, at the same time, I don’t want Iraq to be a total failure for the sake of its people. And yet, I’m not sure that anything but a total failure is possible, unless we leave, and even then, who knows what will happen. I find myself in a constant state of flux, ranging from hopeless to slightly less hopeless. And sometimes incredibly angry. What is Bush talking about when he suggests we’re showing “other reformers and people who want to live in a free society what is possible”? Do Middle Eastern reformers really need an example? Isn’t that just dreadfully fucking arrogant? Even if they did need an example, how is our endeavor in Iraq providing one? The whole thing makes my brain spin, and as soon as he starts talking about it in his ghastly spinspeak, it makes my brain want to explode.
Russians playing a game of amateur rugby were arrested by police who mistook the match for a mass brawl, local media reported Monday.So typical. Why? Because rugby players are bloody mad, that’s why. (Read on only if you’re not the squeamish or easily offended sort.)
"We got a call to our control room saying there was a fight involving a lot of people on some waste ground just outside town," RIA news agency quoted a police official in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don as saying.
The players and supporters -- nearly 100 people in total -- were taken to the local police station. They were released without charge when officers realized they had been playing rugby, the news agency reported.
Actual headline:
Probe into 'naked civil servants'
Ha.
Apparently being a civil servant at the Newcastle Rural Payment Agency is way more interesting than one might think. Check it out:
The agency said it was investigating claims that staff leapt naked from filing cabinets, had sex in office toilets, held break-dancing competitions during working hours and fought in a reception area.
