Hankblog: April 2005

Friday Cat Blogging

Doby is watching you....

Status Update

Going to start posting again starting Thursday 4/28 both here and at The Blue Parrot. Comments will be turned off here, but on at The Blue Parrot. This should go for about a week or so, and then the transition should be complete.

Meantime, will have lots of stuff up tomorrow. Promise.

A Wish for Wings That Work...and a bag of peanuts

Lindsay at Majikthise linked up to this photo essay. It highlights the transport of some penguins from Sea World San Antonio. The pictures are amusing enough, as the penguins had to clear security like any other passengers.

This by itself would be funny enough, but once again proving that wingnuts have no sense of humor, Michelle Malkin used the opportunity to pitch a hissy fit. Tbogg dishes on this and gived her an appropriate smack down in his usual fashion.

When militia member make movies

You get something like this query letter over at Query Letters I Love:

"I propose you a film about the greatest possible position: the President of the World (who is expected to come).

Free Masons and Jews want to unify the whole planet in a single State, a Planetary Republic which will be leaded by a King/President. An Arabian terrorist group threatens Jerusalem with a nuclear bomb because Jews want to make Jerusalem the Capital of a world ruled by Jews, the place where they will set the throne of a Jewish King/President of the Planet.

Believe it or not, it gets even MORE rambling and insane. Read the whole thing.

Truth in Advertising Award

Via The Poor Man, this story in the Nashua Telegraph:

A man convicted of stealing more than $600,000 in a business loan scam received an award from the National Republican Congressional Committee honoring his business leadership and party support.

Ira Stern, 56, of Milford was among hundreds of people nationally to receive the 2004 Ronald Reagan Republican Gold Medal award, Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Alex Burgos said Wednesday.

[snip]

“I believe the Congressional Committee gives that to people who support the Republican Party. I made a very small donation to them, and next thing I know, I was being nominated for businessman of the year,” he said.

Public records show Stern gave $250 to the NRCC in 2004.

Stern urged The Telegraph not to report his prior conviction, saying it was in the past. He is now trying to rebuild his life and support his family with his business-consulting firm, he said.

[snip]

Stern was sentenced to 2 ½ to five years in prison and ordered to pay $250,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to felony theft charges in 1996 in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

Stern admitted to bilking 14 local businesses and individuals out of a total of more than $600,000 through an “advance fee loan scam.” Stern admitted at the time he took the money as fees, claiming he would arrange venture capital loans, but never made any loans.

As part of his plea bargain, Stern read a two-page statement in court admitting various aspects of the allegations.

This dude sounds ripe for Haliburton's recruiting efforts. They can use a man like him in Iraq. For once, we get honesty from the RNCC. They reward people who rip others off :-).

Dude get your quarters up on the machine

On the heels of Norbizness' Comedy Movie bracket, won handily by Dr Strangelove, Norbizness has a post highlighting Scamboogah's classic video game bracket (pre-1990 defining classic). Round 1 was split here and here. Skip all the way to the Final Four here. Highlighting some of my favorites from the original list:

Narc - Was an Atari arcade title if I remember right, and pretty hard core for kids back in the late 80's. Course this was still more or less Reagan America, so it went over fairly well. Mowing down junkies while they attempted to tag you with drug syringes. Good old fashioned family fun.

Spy Hunter - Kicked sooooooo much ass. I preferred the sit down version over the upright console. James Bond style gadget car trying to blow up bad guys and run them off the road. I preferred the smoke screen to the oil slick as far as the weapons go.

Tron - Ate so many of my quarters, I could have done laundry for two years in college with what I pumped into the damn thing. The movie made the game so much cooler. I still get a kick out of the flick on a cheesy level. No point explaining this one. Either you know the game or you dont.

Missing from the list in a big big way:

Sinistar - This game was so wicked cool, it wasn't even funny. Shoot the rocks to dislodge the crystals that made the special bombs you used to blow up the Sinistar once it came alive. And the voice that boomed out of the machine when it came alive was too frigging cool.

Beware, I live!

And I knew the game was impossible to beat but it rocked just the same. Ah memories.

If you were raised by video games as I was, I want to hear about your favorites in the comments to this post over at The Blue Parrot. Share the love!

The Dukes of Mos Eisley

My friend Patrick tuned me into the idea that George Lucas really has sold his soul to Satan:

Two Star Wars TV series will follow the latest movie in the hit film franchise, director George Lucas has said.
Animated show Clone Wars, currently broadcast as three-minute episodes, will become "a 3D animated" series of 30-minute shows, he said.

It would be followed by a live-action series featuring characters from the six Star Wars movies, he added.

Patrick's response:

Star Wars has already gone from a cherished childhood memory to a joke. You’ll only make it worse. My little Jawa action figure, the only one to survive from 1977, now just makes me sad. Go make a romantic comedy, an action thriller, anything. Maybe, like your buddy Francis, you could get a hobby. Spend some of your money. Have fun. You’ve already killed part of my childhood, please stop pissing on the corpse. I don’t care how much they’re paying you to do it, it’s just not nice.

Having long ago ditched cable and lost faith in Lucas, I personally can't get that emotionally invested in this. I will say if we wind up with something like Queer Eye for the Jedi, I might have to rip the antenna out of my TV set that my brain may never be contaminated. EVER.

Your moment of blog zen

Again Fafblog provides the surreal:

answer

We have been to the opera. And by "the opera" we mean "the post office" and by "been to" we mean "thrown buckets of fish at" and by "we" we mean "people who are not us."

I'm not terribly sure I want to know what the question was.

BTW, if you aren't reading Fafblog, well...what's wrong with you? It's the world's only source of Fafblog for crying out loud.

Nice network there. Shame if something happened to it.

A great deal has been made in the left blogsphere about Ann Coulter's cover story on Time Magazine this week. Billmon at Whiskey Bar has an interesting theory on what might have motivated it.

When I was pissing on the chowderheads over at Time the other day for their infotainment treatment of Ann Coulter, I argued that the limo liberals at Time Warner were essentially offering protection money to the conservatives.

Something I read in the Wall Street Journal yesterday makes me suspect that statement might be more literally true than I originally thought:

Perhaps it is only fitting that broadcasters gathered here for their annual convention are obsessed with indecency.
Facing possibly higher fines and tougher enforcement over profanities or sexual content, members of the National Association of Broadcasters are wondering: What will Kevin Martin do?

Martin, of course, is the new FCC chairman -- compared to whom baby Powell was a flaming libertine with his mind squarely in the gutter. Since taking over, the new guy's been very vague (ominiously vague, from the NAB's point of view) about just how far he plans to take the New Censorship. But the industry clearly fears the worst.

So just what does this have to do with Time?

At first, I couldn't quite fit Time Warner into this hypothesis, since the company isn't all that big in broadcasting -- and, in fact, just upped its bet on cable distribution by buying Adelphia.

But of course it didn't take me too long to realize that if the broadcasters are scared of being left at a decency disadvantage, they're probably already lobbying to have the cable guys shackled and chained too. And so it turns out:

Broadcasters anticipate a move in Congress this year to raise fines for indecency. Some industry executives argue that if they can't stop that, they will at least try to persuade Congress to extend the rules to cable and satellite broadcasters who are now exempt. Senate and House leaders have signaled interest in extending indecency rules to cable and satellite providers, but there has been no agreement on timing for doing that.

Ah, now everything becomes clear. Anway, give the whole thing a once over if you're so inclined.

Friday Random Ten

Image courtesy Feministe.

Drunken Philosopher's Edition, inspired by the post below.

"Bruce's Philosopher's Song" - Monty Python
"Hot For Teacher" - Richard Cheese (as cheesy as the original Van Halen was, Richard is the ultimate lounge act and takes it to a whole different level)
"Starve a Fever" - The Atomic Fireballs
"She Drives Me Crazy" - The Fine Young Cannibals (actually just this song does)
"Don't Get Me Wrong" - The Pretenders (true story, when I worked for Star Tickets, they did a show at the Austin Music Hall, and when the tickets went on sale, after the rush was done, one of my younger employees looks up and says "What are The Pretenders?" God I felt old.)
"Snoopy and Woodstock" - Wynton Marsalis
"Marlene'd" - X-Rated Presents (a friend's band, their website's down right now)
"The Great Gig In The Sky" - Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon kicks so much ass)
"409" - The Beach Boys (It's no Little Red Corvette, that's for damn sure)
"Omnibus" - Lautsprecher

Around the blog-horn:
Feministe's 10 for today. She admits that she sometimes skips songs when selecting her 10, but today is 100% honest. I vouch I suffered through "409" and FYC completely.
Patrick succumbs to the music meme, but displays a deplorable contempt for Catblogging. His loss.
Doghouse Riley adds his old school vinyl mix again, and brings out a couple of artists I have not heard of/thought of in forever. Pere Ubu? Was (not Was)? Oh my god. And no, it wasn't Do the Dinosaur on Was Not Was.

Offer up your own in the comments if you're so inclined.

Part of a balanced world view

I tipped my girl onto the online comic Questionable Content a ways back, and she and I both read it regularly now. She linked to today's comic because the phrase "Oedipal marshmallow bits" just made her giggle. Sadly that got my brain going in a very bad direction. Therefore, O-pun season has begun (most of these are in her comments, but I had to share):

Nietzsche-O's, the Breakfast of Ubermensch (Nietzsche-O's were mentioned in the comic)
Camuslix: the box is empty - courtesy of Hankblog regular Constance Reader
Aristotal
Plat-O's - The Breakfast Ideal (also Constance's)
And with your cereal, you can either have toast with I Kant Believe It's Not Butter.
Or if you're keeping kosher: lox and Hegel

And yes, this was going through my head the whole time I'm coming up with this. Stop me before I pun again!

Friday Cat Blogging

Jackie very rarely sits still for pictures, so I had to get this one while I could:

My feet must not stink too bad, she's not running from the sock :-)

Bonus critters:
TBogg's Thursday Bassett Blogging includes a tale of wanton destruction.
Feministe has a stealth cat.
And my girlfriend's cat may have some Mexican in her blood. Cause she just be laying around ;-). And I can say that as a 100% pseudo-Mexican :-D.

Transition notices

The decision to migrate off of blogger is a done deal. I have registered a domain name, and purchased server space for hosting purposes. I have been getting a crash course in Word Press from my friend Patrick. He migrated over a month or so ago and the move has been a good one for him by all appearances.

Why make the move? For one thing, Blogger's performance has been spotty of late. Several of the other bloggers I read who use Blogger have been noting their dissatisfaction and talked of moving (most notably Americablog, and Tbogg's talked about the problems, but hasn't said anything about relocation).

For another, Word Press offers some options that Blogger doesn't that would be nice to have back. Some of you who were here in the iBlog days on my .Mac homepage recall that I could assign categories to posts, something I can't do here. The template options I've seen trolling around also look nicer, and offer some more flexibility for customization.

Lastly, Word Press is also functional via web, which was one of the reasons I went to Blogger from iBlog. That combined with the fact that I can also do some posts by email once I figure that trick out sold me to make the move.

If you want, you can see a brief glimpse of the new space at theblueparrot.org. As memory serves, that was the name of Signor Ferrari's cafe/bar in Casablanca, operated in competition with Rick's Cafe Americain. I had thought about doing a url more in line with Rick's, but there are already a couple of bloggers out there who've staked that riff out pretty well. So I'll take my new space and carve my own niche.

Will announce when the move occurs here, and this site will still be active for archive purposes, though there is a way to import the archives from blogger to Word Press if I can get it to work right. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, just wanted to keep all five of you posted :-). Later.

Update: Actually, do go to the new site, to provide some input on layout options. Thanks!

Your moment of blog zen

Actually, I'm not quite sure what to call this, so I figured this was as good a place to stick this incident as any.

So I applied by accident for an Apple credit card. Apple used to do their financing through MBNA, but are now in a partnership with I think it's Juniper bank. When you apply for financing you're actually applying for a Juniper Mastercard with whatever the promotional rate is at the time of application. I found this out the hard way. Rather than just cancel the card, I thought I would put a small purchase on it, pay it off and then cancel.

So I was trying to get the online account set up to pay off this card. When the options requested online didn't work right to create my online account, I called Juniper's number to get set up. At this point, the phone tree gives me a few options. When I select zero, I'm informed I'm being directed to the next available "relationship manager."

Relationship manager. What the hell? I call regarding a credit card, and I get put in touch with freaking Ann Landers or something?

Apologies for the light posting

I've not been in a good mood today. I had an interview for a possible new job/position switch scheduled for this afternoon. When I came in today, the first thing I found out was that it had been rescheduled. Needless to say, I was a bit put out. I'm gonna have to iron twice in a week for crying out loud :-).

In all seriousness, I have a review I need to write, and a retrospective/commentary on an event I attended at Alamo Drafthouse this week, so I hope to get some text churned out for you tomorrow.

Possible blog relocation

Some of the problems I've been seeing some people have with Blogger has got me thinking about finding a new home for my rants. I've got a friend who's talking with me on the pros and cons of Word Press, and I may register my own domain and brush some things off if I do. I'll note here of where I'm moving to as soon as I know more. Should be within the next month or so if I do take the plunge.

Comedy Sweet Sixteen

Norbizness has moved on to the next round. Voting here.

My picks to make it out of this round:

Animal House (losing big early)
Some Like It Hot (also down early)
Dr Stranglove (crushing Chaplin)
MASH (big early lead)
Caddyshack (close battle)
Airplane (neck and neck)
Annie Hall (cruising to the easy win)
Raising Arizona (running away with it)

Final Comedy Bracket is up

Norbizness is ready for your voting. Voting on round one ends at midnight tonight (Sunday, 12:01AM Monday). Go and vote. Do the guy a favor and make sure to read his instructions for voting in his comments. Some tough choices.

My votes:
Life of Brian, Animal House, Some Like It Hot, Blazing Saddles, Modern Times, Strangelove. Ladykillers, MASH, Duck Soup, Caddyshack, Airplane!, Philadelphia Story, Annie Hall, Hollywood Shuffle, South Park, and Raising Arizona.

Dignity...always dignity.

So Supreme Court Justice Scalia had a speaking appearance at NYU Law School last week. At this appearance, after Scalia had made comments demeaning what he termed "the homosexual agenda" he was asked by an NYU law student if he sodomizes his wife.

The student expressed the reasoning behind his question with the utmost dignity and eloquence at Wonkette's site today:

Fellow Classmates,

As the student who asked Justice Scalia about his sexual conduct, I am responding to your posts to explain why I believe I had a right to confront Justice Scalia in the manner I did Tuesday, why any gay or sympathetic person has that same right. It should be clear that I intended to be offensive, obnoxious, and inflammatory. There is a time to discuss and there are times when acts and opposition are necessary. Debate is useless when one participant denies the full dignity of the other. How am I to docilely engage a man who sarcastically rants about the "beauty of homosexual relationships" (at the Q&A) and believes that gay school teachers will try to convert children to a homosexual lifestyle (at oral argument for Lawrence)?

Although I my question was legally relevant, as I explain below, an independent motivation for my speech-act was to simply subject a homophobic government official to the same indignity to which he would subject millions of gay Americans. It was partially a naked act of resistance and a refusal to be silenced. I wanted to make him and everyone in the room aware of the dehumanizing effect of trivializing such an important relationship. Justice Scalia has no pity for the millions of gay Americans on whom sodomy laws and official homophobia have such an effect, so it is difficult to sympathize with his brief moment of "humiliation," as some have called it. The fact that I am a law student and Scalia is a Supreme Court Justice does not require me to circumscribe my justified opposition and outrage within the bounds of jurisprudential discourse.

Read the whole thing. Dude will be one hell of a lawyer some day.

Old School Random 10

Doghouse Riley goes old school on us:

I don't own an iPod. Or a cell phone. I still wear spats. You kids get off my lawn.

But dammit, I wanna have fun, too. And since sex is out of the question at my age I dusted off another relic, the lamentably no-longer-supported Apple™ Hypercard and programmed it to turn up random numbers between 1-762, which is the number of Long Playing Records stored in the basement, followed by a number from 1-15 indicating which cut was selected. (This only applies to tracks I actually listen to and intend to digitize before I die.) After that big buildup, you're just itchin' for the list, right? Me, too. But first, no, I didn't stop buying music in 1986; this is the stuff I have on vinyl. And show a little respect, I had to run up and down stairs for this:

Robin Lane and the Chartbusters: Rather Be Blind
Captain Beefheart: Candle Mambo
Adventures: Send My Heart
Scruffy the Cat: Hello Angel
Eno: Cindy Tells Me
Waterboys: A Bang On The Ear
The Church: Constant In Opal
James Brown: Get Up Offa That Thing
John Renbourn: Alman/Melancholy Galliard
Nick Lowe: 36 Inches High

Captain Beefheart scares me in this collection, but it does remind me that I need more James Brown in my collection. And as to his being a vinyl man, well so be it. Sometimes a few pops and scratches in the music are just the thing :-).

What Kind of English do you speak?

Another language quiz, courtesy of Sisyphus Shrugged.

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

30% Yankee

20% Dixie

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

I'm just curious how in the hell the Midwesterner got into my speech. I was told quite often when I was younger that I spoke like a Yankee. Now I have proof.

Leave your percentages in the comments.

BJ Nation

So some days ago Rush Limbaugh made some stupid crack about how the new network Al Gore is going to start up is going to be all blowjobs all the time, taking a potshot at Al's old boss Bubba. That led to this post from Echidne of the Snakes which I snarkily linked to here.

Well today James Wolcott just shows how the snark should be done.

Limbaugh seemed to be implying at the top of his voice that blowjobs are an integral part of the liberal agenda, an argument which he may want to rethink. The popularity of blowjobs is difficult to metric but undeniable; they cause little harm and zero unwanted pregnancies. If the plentitude of blowjobs is part of the Clinton legacy, millions owe the former president a debt of gratitude and an annual pilgrimage to the Clinton Memorial Library in Arkansas.

Read the whole thing. God I wish I could write as he does.

Friday Random Ten

You know the drill. First 10 tunes to come up on my iPod after hitting shuffle today are:

"War" - Low Rider (Viva La Raza! ;-))
"Nothing Left (breeder remix)" - Orbital
"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" - Tears for Fears (ah...High school memories....shudder)
"Girl" - The Beatles
"(I'm Gonna) Kick You Out and Let the Sun Shine In" - Caesars (Thank you Berry, you "Man with a fork in a world of soup")
"Passion" - Purple Penguin
"The Tennessee Toad" - Leo Kottke
"Zig Zaggity Woop Woop Pt. 2" - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
"One More Time" - Daft Punk
"Save My Soul" - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Just a BBVD kinda day I guess :-)

Friday Cat Blogging

Doby seeks to protect his home from evil ribbon.

Bonus: Norbizness has Friday Now-Dead Cat Blogging (which is to say the cat is now dead, not that the photo is of a dead cat. Who do you think he is, Bill Frist?).
My girlfriend shows off her pussy at Non-Exhibitionist. Go figure ;-).

The Comedy of Brackets

Norbizness has completed his comedy film bracket, and I think it's a pretty solid one all around. He's seeking input in his comments for the individual representative from certain "conferences"/categories before finalizing things and playing it out. Go give it a look and cast your vote. Tell him Hankblog sent you (he delisted me off the blogroll rightfully when I disappeared for a couple of months). My two cents that I'll offer up in his comments later (the titles in bold are his preferred picks):

BRACKET 1:

#1 Monty Python Movie (Life of Brian, Holy Grail, Meaning of Life)
#8 Wild Card 1 (completely open)

#4 Preston Sturgis (Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Lady Eve, Miracle of Morgan's Creek)
#5 1978-1982 Seed 1 (Pick one: The Jerk, Strange Brew, Stripes, Animal House, Vacation)

#2 Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot; One, Two, Three; The Apartment)
#7 Black 80's comedy (Heathers, Used Cars, Repo Man, or other)

#3 Mel Brooks comedy (The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles)
#6 Buster Keaton (The General) or other hidden silent-era gem

I've still not seen Life of Brian beginning to end sadly enough, so I'm inclined to go with Holy Grail. My Preston Sturgis knowledge is nil, so can't offer anything there. Animal House is a no brainer (no pun intended). Some Like It Hot from the Wilder collection for me. Heathers is a sentimental fave. Much as I love Blazing Saddles, I think Young Frankenstein gets my nod from the Brooks grouping. And I need to see more Keaton before I can comment.

BRACKET 2:

#1 Charlie Chaplin (City Lights, The Great Dictator, Modern Times)
#8 Wild Card #2 (completely open)

#4 Black 1960s comedy (Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, Billy Liar, The Ruling Class, Bedazzled)
#5 Early Eddie Murphy (Trading Places, 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop)

#2 Ealing Studio comedy (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers)
#7 Miscellaneous 80s At Large (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, The Princess Bride, A Christmas Story, Lost in America, or any another)

#3 Christopher Guest mockumentary (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Spinal Tap)
#6 Robert Altman comedy (M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, California Split)

Modern Times is a priceless classic. Strangelove is absolutely brilliant. Trading Places is damn funny and has Jamie Lee Curtis' breasts. Easy choice there. Not familiar at all with the Ealing Studio features. Pass. The #7 seed is ridiculously tough for me to choose. For sentimental reasons, I'm going Princess Bride, but anything in this slot could brew an upset. On the Chris Guest front, I'm going with the Tap (but then wouldn't this seed go all the way to 11?). And from the Altman grouping, I'll take M*A*S*H.

BRACKET 3:

#1 Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, etc.)
#8 Wild Card 3 (completely open)

#4 Wes Anderson movie (Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums)
#5 1978-1982 Seed 2 (Pick one: Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Caddyshack, Blues Brothers, Stripes)

#2 Zucker Brothers movie (Airplane!, Naked Gun, Top Secret!)
#7 Any movie starring Inspector Closeau (I pick the one where the Chinese guy comes out of the fridge to attack him)

#3 Smart 90's comedy (Office Space, Election, Dazed and Confused)
#6 Something with Cary Grant (Arsenic and Old Lace, Bringing up Baby, Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday)

Duck Soup is a solid pick for the Marx Brothers. From Wes Anderson, I love Tennenbaums, but I think Rushmore had more laugh out loud moments for me. Rushmore gets the nod. In the #5 seed, it comes down to Caddyshack, Blues Brothers, or Stripes. In a tough battle, I give the edge to Blues Brothers. If Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher can't stop them, no one can. From the Zuckers, gotta go with Airplane! and start sniffing glue again. For Cluoseau, got to go with the original A Shot in the Dark actually. I like Office Space well enough, but I don't get the fixation most people have with it. Gimme Election, which made me laugh despite being slightly uncomfortable with the characters. Cary Grant should be seeded higher than a 6. Tough choice all around here, but I'll go with Philadelphia Story in a squaker over Arsenic. Philly is more a team effort.

BRACKET 4:

#1 Pre-1980 Woody Allen (Sleeper, Annie Hall, Bananas, Love and Death)
#8 Wild Card 4 (completely open)

#4 Harold Lloyd (Safety Last) or Laurel/Hardy (Way out West) film
#5 Axis of Wayans / Robert Townsend: (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!, Hollywood Shuffle, etc.)

#3 W.C. Fields (My Little Chickadee, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, The Bank Dick)
#6 Broad 90's comedy (South Park Movie; There's Something about Mary [or other Farrelly Brothers film], other);

#2 Coen Brothers (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski)
#7 Recent animated feature (Toy Story, Toy Story II, The Incredibles, Shrek, Monsters, Inc.)

Annie Hall gets my early Woody nod, but I must include a note of consideration for Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex. On the #4 seed, I'm gonna have to pass. On the Axis of Wayans, I have to go with Hollywood Shuffle for the Black Acting School. WC Fields conference gets my vote for Little Chickadee. South Park gets my vote too (blame Canada). Coen Brothers has to go with Raising Arizona ("Unless you think round is funny" ranks among the greatest comedy lines ever written). And from the animated features, Incredibles stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Offer up your own thoughts as your see fit.

The Selig Code

This appeared in a post on The Hardball Times:

Reader Jim Mohl, who will eventually receive co-writer credit one of these days, has been closely following my investigation of the alphabetical order of American League teams. As noted last week, the re-christened Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim broke up a five-team stranglehold by the American League Central over the middle of the alphabet, but it has had other, sinister, ramifications in the AL West. Here are Jim's comments:

When the 4 teams are put in alphabetical order now, you get this:

Los Angeles
Oakland
Seattle
Texas

Now, what is the most popular new show on television this year, not counting Desperate Housewives? LOST. Not only that, but it appears on ABC, which is owned by Disney. And Disney formerly owned the Angels. The plot thickens.

The title of Jim's email to me was "The Selig Code." Which, all kidding aside, is a great title for an article.

Does this spell doom for the Texas Rangers? Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode...

The evils of socialized medicine

When people talk about changing the current health care system to something similar to what they have in European countries, someone invariably brings up the bugaboo about the evils of socilaized medicine, and how much better the US system is.

Over at Wampum, they illustrate in plain dollars and sense just what the true difference is. The numbers will make your jaw drop.

Given that both my ex-wife and current girlfriend read my blog...

It should be interesting to read their respective takes in the comments after they read this post from Echidne of the Snakes.

The seeds for this post are in something Atrios has on Rush Limbaugh. Supposedly Rush has been foaming at the mouth about Al Gore's proposed entry into the media. Rush fears (or hopes?) that the planned liberal media would be all about blow jobs.

Which of course is as silly as most of Rush's ramblings. But what caught my feminist interest about this whole thing was the question whether blow jobs are an egalitarian form of sex. Does the giver enjoy the gift as much as the receiver? More? Less? Is the charm of blow jobs at least partially in their one-sidedness? And if so, what does this tell us about the underlying mores?

She has a bit more, but it's the answer to this question I am most looking forward to hearing.

Why I'm posting so much

As if you couldn't tell, I've had an inordinate time to be chatty today. Some of it is due to the fact that I'm on a run of cards so cold at my poker games right now, I couldn't catch cold. The other is the fact that things slowed down for me a good bit this afternoon.

Based on the numbers that came out today, that looks like that could change soon:

Apple Computer Inc.'s (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) quarterly profit blew past even the most optimistic Wall Street targets, powered by sales of iPods, Macintosh computers and Mac minis, but Apple's revenue forecast was less rosy and the stock edged down.

Profit rose more than sixfold on sales of its iPod digital music players, the Mac mini personal computer and new PowerBook notebook PCs. Apple sold 5.31 million iPods, accounting for 31 percent of the company's revenue.

5.31 million iPods!!! That's more than Apple sold in the quarter ending at Christmas! Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick.

With that in mind, I thought I'd link to this post on Mark Cuban's blog that I thought was interesting, given what Apple has done with the iPod so far:

BAck in the day , it was all about the desktop PC. Starting with the Altair in the 70s and accelerating with the IBM PC in 1981, the desktop PC was the focus of personal computing innovation.

Used to be all the good stuff started as an add on for the PC and found its way on to the motherboard. It was an all too predictable obsolesence curve. Remember the AST 6 Pack, Hercules Graphics Cards, 3com Network Cards, US Robotics Modems ? When you bought a PC, you used to have to buy all these cards to make it get where you wanted it to go. How many slots the PC had was actually an issue because any power or corporate user expected to add features via cards. There was even a time when it seemed like a good idea to try to upgrade the CPU .

[snip]

Not any more. Could the PC desktop be any more boring these days ? Could it be any more emblematic of a mature product ?

Sure, HP, Dell , IBM, Gateway are trying to liven it up. The hard drives are bigger and faster. THere is more memory. The graphics cards can do more . The industry tried to juice the PC by coming up with a faster , better express slot on the motherboard, but next to nobody is even using it !

[snip]

Remember the frustration of shopping for a PC in the 90s. EVery couple months the PC would have something new and cool in it, and the price would drop. It was tough to know what to buy and whether you should do it now or wait.

Thats exactly what is happening in the portable.mobile device market. My Ipod, My Sidekick, my hard drives,my PSP,my Xbox even my laptop all have overlapping features. Each is getting closer to each other in feature set every day.

Which means that the war for my pocket is on. Which is going to allow me to only fill one pocket rather than the 2 , or 1 plus beltclip that Im filling now.

I think he's got a good read on the way the technology is evolving, and given Cuban's track record in this field, he's someone I would definitely listen to. He knows what he's talking about, and he's always been a geek on the tech edge. Now that he can afford anything he wants pretty much, I would imagine that feel for the tech edge is even greater now.

Here's hoping Apple comes up with a way to stay ahead of the pitch.

Culture, politics, and liberalism

There's been a fair amount of back and forth going on in the lefty side of the blogsphere about whether Democrats/liberals can/should make any effort to take on Hollywood/the entertainment industry in an effort to appeal to moderate voters. Amy Sullivan started the discussion in this post at The Washington Monthly:

These last few points are especially critical. In recent talks--including one this morning--I've been telling people that voters find it odd when Democrats bash big business and oil companies but turn a blind eye to the entertainment industry. Wouldn't their Hollywood funders rebel if Democrats spoke up?, someone asked this morning. Frankly, it wouldn't exactly hurt the party to have Susan Sarandon stand up and denounce the Democrats.

She was making the argument in larger context, but Matthew Yglesias latched onto the culture war meme and offered a response:

Amy Sullivan and Dan Gerstein team up to offer a litany of complaints about Democrats and Hollywood that I've been hearing more and more lately. Roughly speaking, it boils down to this:
We need to recognize that these concerns about the culture are legitimate.
We need to stop accusing people of advocating censorship.
Democrats take on non-media corporations, so why can't they take on major content-providers too?
The Hollywood campaign contributions aren't worth it.
Okay, fine. From where I sit, though, I kind of resent the implication (well, okay, it's not just an implication, they come right out and say it) that the only reason one might have for disapproving of the New Prudishness is a cynical hunger for campaign contributions. Indeed, it seems to me that it's the liberals on the other side who are playing the pure cynicism game here. What, after all, is the policy problem that Amy, Gerstein, Ed Kilgore, Hillary Clinton et. al. are purporting to solve here? Almost every major indicator of child well-being is getting better, not worse. The big exception is obesity, where the lobby to be taken on isn't Big Smut but Big Unhealthy Food. It's simply not the case that Grand Theft Auto has sparked a youth crime wave, or Friends an uptick in teen motherhood, or whatever else it is people are worried about.

Both writers extend their arguments well, and it would behoove you to read the whole post to get the nuance. I'm just trying to hit the highlights. In any case, both Amy and Matt offer a second volley. Amy's is here, Matt's here.

There have multiple follow ups here and there, but I wanted to highlight two of them in relation to my own personal feelings on the issue.

Digby at Hullabaloo has a well worded take that I will be quoting from extensively. I hope he doesn't mind.

This whole argument about pop culture reminds me of a conversation I had in 1977. I was sitting around with my friends and somebody put "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols on the stereo. Afterwards, I said I thought it wasn't really music --- to which a friend of mine replied that I sounded just like his parents when he first played the Beatles. I was only 21 at the time, so this hit me pretty hard. I never forgot it.

This "kids today" stuff has been going on for a long, long time. Anybody who was a kid in the 60's like I was, remembers endless sermons and lectures and handwringing about how the world was coming to an end because the boys were growing their hair long and the girls weren't shaving their armpits and marijuana was going to fry your brain like an egg. Before that, in 1956, there was the fear of "juvenile delinquents":

[snip]

Yes, the public does wonder what we stand for. And in this debate it seems we can either stand for better V chips and Terri Schiavo's mother-in-law, or we can stand for this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like it actually means something. Even has a bit of a ring to it.

Look, I don't care if we legislate for "better" V-chips. (From what I have read people aren't using the one we have available, not because it's too hard, but because they just don't want to be bothered. But whatever.) We can express our empathy for how difficult it is to parent in this environment. We can bemoan the coarsening of the culture and try shame people to stop selling useless consumer items to children. None of those things are particularly dangerous in themselves. But neither are they going to be politically advantageous.

I think this hits it exactly right. There are a world of dangers if we take steps towards the "more regulation" side of the argument in an appeal to moderate voters, with drastically little real gain at the ballot box. At the same time, putting forth concession on the issue of free speech runs the potential of opening the floodgates to further and further concession that ultimately leaves the left holding onto nothing save the bag of empty promises given to win the concession. Digby goes on further in his post to compare the need to hold ground here to the way the gun lobby has held absolute ground on the 2nd Amendment, and he's right in making that comparison. I think this is one area where we should draw a line in the sand and hold our ground because the 1st Amendment should be every bit as important to us as a nation as the second.

I remember my senior year of high school I was on the debate team and the topic for the spring semester was "Resolved: that communities in the US ought to have the right to suppress pornography." Most of the debate on both sides focused on the court ruling in Miller v California. Miller broadened the definition of obscenity to some degree allowing leeway for prosecution at local levels. As the Wikipedia entry linked above mentions, it also brought into place the following criteria that had to be met for a work to be considered "obscene":

the average person, applying contemporary community standards (not national standards, as some prior tests required), must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and
the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

I could not argue the affirmative position on this topic to save my life. I ran through one tournament where by luck of the draw, I only debated the affirmative in one round out of six including eliminations. That one was against someone so clueless it would have been virtually impossible for me to lose the round. The main point I kept raising was what standard could possibly use to ascertain what "the average person" within a community is. Demographics isolate the individual characteristics too much. The person who falls into the median demographically is going to be skewed by outliers, as would the mean individual, though not as much unless there were significant numbers of outliers.

Today I think I'd have to add that there's a very real danger of manipulation of media and the message that augments this problem. One need only look at the way the Schiavo case was handled to see how grotesquely there could be a potential tyranny of the minority on an issue like this. Every poll conducted reflected that the will of the people was that the government butt out of the whole mess. That didn't stop the media from painting the issue like the nation was divided almost evenly, and congress, the state lege in Florida, and Jeb Bush behaved as though the supermajority favored them. What kind of havoc on the First Amendment would they wreak if any concessions were received on this point?

I think Daniel Munz hits on the real way this needs to be approached. He actually sides with Amy Sullivan to a fair degree. But one of this things he mentions really brought it to a head for me:

Back in January, William Saletan chronicled Hillary Clintons new rhetoric on abortion, noting that Hillary Clinton just endorsed a goal Ive never heard a pro-choice leader endorse. Not safe, legal, and rare. Safe, legal, and never. Once you embrace that truththat the ideal number of abortions is zerovoters open their ears. They listen when you point out, as Clinton did, that the abortion rate fell drastically during her husbands presidency but has risen in more states than it has fallen under George W. Bush. Im sure these trends have more to do with economics than morals, but thats the point. Once we agree that the goal is zero, we can stop asking which party yaps more about fighting abortion and start asking which party gets results.
Isnt the parallel dynamic here obvious? If anything, acknowledging voters concerns about violence in our culture makes it easier to talk about stopping actual violence. Once you acknowledge that our society has a problem, voters listen when you talk about what should and should not be done about it. It frees Democrats to say, We cant censor artists, but I agree that our society is too violent, and heres what we can do about it: Gun control, aggressive anti-poverty measures, responsible and comprehensive sex education, universal health insurance. Its just like Saletan says: Once we agree that the goal is a less violent society, we get to start talking about which party talks and which party gets results.

Moreover, this kind of move helps liberals in a much broader fashion. Liberal domestic policies are premised fundamentally on the idea that were all in the same boat. We fight for economic security, not economic gain. We believe that the wealthiest have a responsibility to the poorest, and that we all have a responsibility to each other. Of course, I count myself a proud participant in this ideology, which is exactly why Matts argument just doesnt connect with me. We spend countless energy fighting Bushs Social Security plan, because it violates this value and creates an every-man-for-himself world in which life is - to borrow an apt phrase - solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Fine, but how is it that we can then turn around and applaud this very same vision in a cultural context? Make no mistake about it. When we refuse to acknowledge the violence that has so obviously gripped our culture, this is precisely what we tell American parents: We are not in this together. You are on your own. Could anything be more antithetical to core liberal values?

While I think he overstates the message being conveyed to American parents, the idea he presents extending on Saletan's analysis of Hillary's recent statements on abortion. I am an ardent pro-choice individual. But I personally would not have an abortion, were it possible for me to get pregnant. It's just something that I can't articulate very well but feel in my heart would be wrong for me. As such, I agree 100% with the position Hillary takes: that the goal should be zero abortions performed, but how the liberal/progressive viewpoint would get there is vastly different from the right wing perspective. One need only look at the fight over allowing pharmacists to refuse birth control prescriptions to people who request them to see that. The right would rather someone who took a stand on "moral grounds" have their right trump those of a person taking an action that would affect only themselves, nay even prevent their actions from having a direct effect others (via child support, etc.). Who's really taking the moral stand here?

In the end, Ezra Klein sums it all up best:

This isn't about video games, it's about an economy where both parents have to work, where their incomes are slipping, where their hours are increasing, where their benefits are eroding, and where kids are paying the price. And so signaling our understanding that kids aren't able, and shouldn't be able, to traverse this world alone is crucial to completing the critique. GTA and the rest are low-order examples in a large phenomenon -- they should be invoked, a la Daniel, to lend a concreteness to our argument, but they can't become our focus.

And that, as they say, is that.

Tax dollars at work

From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

What follows is a section from a resolution before Idaho's legislature to commend Jared and Jerusha Hess for their production of the movie Napoleon Dynamite:
"WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"
The Idaho Statesman notes the legislature did pass the "sweet resolution."

Ok, I get that Jared and Jerusha Hess are from Idaho, and the lege there want to honor a native son and daughter and all that. But did they not have anything better to do? I know it's Idaho, but there must be some kind of governing that needed to be done that they could work on. And phrasing the language of the resolution in the language of the characters from the movie makes it worse. It sounds like it's being written by a tragically unhip person trying desperately to sound like they're cool and with it, and failing miserably.

God help us if the lege here ever tries to pass a similar resolution for Richard Linklater or Robert Rodriguez. Phrasing it out of one of their movies is going to sound like either a stoner convention or a Bill Hicks monologue.

Laying the House smack down

Atrios links to this press release from House Minority Leader Pelosi. The opening paragraph:

The Republican majority promised after the 1994 elections to manage the House in a way that fostered "deliberative democracy," which they defined as the "full and free airing of conflicting opinions through hearings, debates, and amendments." They also pledged in their Contract with America to "restore accountability to Congress" and to "end its cycle of scandal and disgrace." Instead of sticking to their word, they have broken their promises, betrayed the public trust, and abused their power. Specifically, they have undermined the ethics of the House, abandoned any principle of procedural fairness or democratic accountability, and overreached into private family matters and the federal judiciary.

I like the idea of hoisting the house Republicans on their own pitard with the Contract with America. In addition to hanging them with their own supposed ideals, it also helps bind the current house Repubs with the ousted House leader of the time, Newt Gingrich. A nice way to tie in the idea that the current House corruption has run full circle.

Couple of other choice bits I liked:

Republicans effectively shut down the ethics process. Republicans made their first order of business for the 109th Congress to attack the Ethics Committee, rewriting many of its bipartisan rules in favor of rules that will make ethics investigations more difficult to pursue. The new rules seriously weaken enforcement by automatically dismissing any ethics complaint after 45 days unless a majority of the bipartisan committee votes to begin an investigation. The GOP rules change allows one party to block the Ethics Committee from investigating the facts of the complaint. The former Republican chairman of the Ethics Committee said: "The rules package adopted by the House in January stands to undermine the committee's mission, not to mention the integrity of the House." (Congress Daily AM, 3/16/05) That the GOP's first priority for the 109th Congress has been to lower the bar of integrity should be a warning to the American people.

Not only did Republicans undermine the ethics process, but they stacked the Ethics Committee. At the beginning of the year, the Republican Leadership dismissed Republican Members of the Ethics Committee, even the Chairman, who had refused to compromise the ethics rules for the party leadership. And then, the newly appointed Chairman unilaterally fired non-partisan Committee staff who assisted in the ethics work in the last session. In a statement to the press, the departing Chairman of the Committee stated "(t)here is a bad perception out there that there was a purge in the Committee and that people were put in that would protect our side of the aisle better than I did," and a replaced Republican Member noted his belief that "the decision (regarding his dismissal) was a direct result of our work in the last session."

Helps counter the charges by DeLay that this has been some kind of partisan witch hunt. It also really brings to the fore just how much they've contorted the rules to try and circle the wagons to protect their own. Hopefully a sign of things to come from the minority leadership as they try to take back the House and Senate.

Perhaps if he had succeeded...

...they could have used the finished product for a "This is your brain on drugs" commercial (link is in the title in case you missed it)? No word on whether the corpse was a Republican, though that might have facilitated the bong making, as there would be less to hollow out.

Thank you, I'll be here all week...

Movie Madness

Inspired by this awful attempt at seeding 64 comedies like the NCAA basketball tournament to determine the ultimate comedy, Norbizness is taking a crack at fielding and seeding a bracket of 32. He needs help with categories and films. Go here and offer up anything you think he might have missed in the comments. I'll link up once he gets the field narrowed down.

Toying with religion

First, Tbogg brings our attention to the talking Jesus doll. No joke, 100% for real.

A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families.

The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse.

I wouldn't be surprised if churches were giving these away with a copy of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Should that not be available, maybe this would be a via alternative?

In any case, if action figures aren't your thing, maybe you can get your kids into the Bible via the wonderful world of Legos. (Courtesy my friend Patrick).

And to think the subtitled dialogue might be better than the real

From Boing Boing by way of Norbizness' round up of Hollywood inanity, we have a captioned version of the full Revenge of the Sith trailer done entirely in leet speak. If you're not familiar with leet, check this out. Then watch the new version of the trailer here. Lucas has never read better.

Your moment of blogging Zen

Courtesy of Amanda at Pandagon, we see that just when you think human vanity can't sink any lower...well...from the story Amanda links to:

HEARD of sphincter bleaching? Beauticians are billing it as the new Brazilian wax.

"In the last couple of months I've had a lot of requests, so I've started some experiments," says Sydney beautician Anna Marsiano from The Bees' Knees salon.

"I've got one client who's a divorced woman with a couple of kids. She was looking at a Playboy magazine with her new boyfriend and he was making some comments about how clean and light the women looked. My client started to get a little paranoid."

Now granted this is in Australia, but how long you think it's going to take for this madness to make it to our shores? And the potential price you pay physically?

This beautician has treated sex workers and strippers for years, but says mainstream demand has risen sharply over the past six months. She acknowledges that her long-term clients (many of whom come in for treatments every six weeks) suffer serious skin problems. "I explain that it will give them eczema and so on, but they want it anyway," she says.

[snip]

The good news on sphincter bleaching is that it's safer than anything involving general anaesthetics or fat-vacuuming gizmos. The bad news is that you could be in for a lifetime of skid marks. The chairwoman of the Australian Medical Association's ethics committee, Rosanna Capolingua, says the use of harsh bleaching substances could cause anal burning and scarring. This, in turn, could lead to anal incontinence or an inability to pass stools at all.

One of Amanda's comments on the matter I think sums up the absurdity nicely:

Well, Im not going to throw a march over this (a blog post is more to scale), but I will say that my hearty feminist perspective makes it easy enough for me to say that I know when too much is too much. When you have your ass in the air and someone is scooping bleach between your cheeks, its too much. Call me a crazed man-hater if you like, but that humiliation is beyond anything that Im willing to undergo.

Amanda couldn't let you just set with that image in your head though. She came back later with another post in which she links to Lauren at Feministe challenging her readers to redo the story in verse in honor of National Poetry Month. Some of the contributions in the comments:

There once was a girl from Perth
Who had a dark pucker since birth.
But one day she saw
(and this dropped her jaw)
a new way to bolster self worth.

Now, unlike the Crest strips or lasers,
Which naturally wouldnt have phased her,
This new fad was bleach
Where the sun doesnt reach,
so much worse than makeup or razors.

Read further in her comments if you dare. And so, for your moment of zen: asshole bleaching. What more do you need?

Are they trying to piss on all my childhood memories?

Tbogg has a post about the latest romantic drivel to come out of Hollywood (Fever Pitch). In clicking the links he puts into his post, I find that Drew is slated to star in a F-ING Curious George movie. With Will Ferrell.

Please, make the hurting stop.

Showing I'm not a hater

Figured I would link to this post at Sadly, No! and give some love to my Red Sox peeps.

I'll come to my senses eventually ;-)

Big Brother knows what you drive

Or it will if this bill gets passed (registration required, try Bugmenot if you don't want to mess with it):

With the help of a dime-size adhesive tag on a vehicle's windshield and cutting-edge technology that detractors equate with Big Brother, police soon could track Texas cars and trucks — if a legislator's bill makes it into law.

Though the bill hasn't made it out of the Texas House of Representatives' Transportation Committee, it already has generated outrage among technophiles and privacy advocates who believe the technology, once introduced, will creep into other law enforcement areas.

Jesus christ, don't these people realize that Orwell was writing fiction, not a how-to manual?

(via Amanda at Pandagon)

Amen brother.

David Neiwert at Orcinus has always been an enjoyable read for me, but I rarely link to him because his posts are usually quite long and involved analyses of various issues in the world today. However, this post really bears reading:

One of the many holes in civil-rights protections for minorities in Washington state is that it remains legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians -- in hiring and employment practices, as well as in housing.

It's one of our blue state's ugly little secrets, largely because the GOP remains a potent force. Changing the law, you see, would advance the "homosexual agenda," even if everyone knows that this kind of discrimination isn't right.

So with Democrats finally in charge of both houses of the Lege, party leaders had their sights set on rectifying that oversight. After a bill adding gays and lesbians to RCW 49.60, the state's anti-discrimination law, passed the House readily, some late maneuvering, and a couple of DINOs, have helped to apparently scuttle the bill in the Senate.

Interestingly, there was this:
The Senate Republican caucus yesterday handed out a five-page "talking points" document opposing the measure. One of the talking points states: "This bill establishes minority status for individuals based on sexual behaviors many believe they choose to engage in."

Ah yes. We've heard this line before. Because being gay is a "chosen behavior," it is undeserving of civil rights protections.

It's the same reason given by many evangelicals -- and particularly black and minority evangelicals, and people who claim they support civil rights -- for not supporting gays and lesbians in hate-crime protections: "You can't compare being gay to being black. One's immutable, one's chosen."

Well, yes, this is true when it comes to race. And even ethnicity. These are, after all, two of the three main legs of anti-discrimination and hate-crimes laws.

But it's not true of the third leg of these laws: religion. Last I checked, this too was a "chosen behavior."

This is something I've said and believed for a while, but David just brings it home so eloquently. Give the man a look, and nose around his other stuff if you have time.

Weird Science

Couple of interesting tidbits I picked up trolling Majikthise today. I was going back over posts accumulated in my Bloglines aggregator.

First off Lindsay links to this story about what I believe is the first ever microbe bank, established in Brazil.

Hundreds of bacteria, fungi and yeast species, mostly collected from the wilds of Brazil, have been made available to researchers looking for new chemicals with scientific or industrial applications.

The microbe bank — dubbed the Brazilian Collection of Environmental and Industrial Microorganisms — is housed at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and was inaugurated on 24 February.

''We intend to put this collection at the service of the scientific and industrial community, by preserving, identifying, maintaining and distributing these microorganisms,'' says biologist Lara Sette, the collection's curator.

Given the progress made in cloning in recent years, I wonder if this will be the salvo that leads to copyrighting someone or something's genetic code? Or am I behind and that area's already been broached?

On a slightly less scientific and more morbid level, she also links to this:

When Josiah Spode died in l797, his son Josiah II revolutionized the production of European porcelain with the invention of bone china. The translucency of Spode’s brand of fine English china was the result of adding powdered cow bone ash to the company’s secret clay mixture. Granulated calcified human cremains -- commonly known as mortuary ash -- added to a porcelain "slip" which can then be be cast into a variety of shapes is ceramicist Charles Krafft’s visionary idea for revolutionizing the American funerary arts. Why leave the funeral parlor in a cardboard box or homely urn when you can can extend your memory and usefulness to family and friends for generations to come by actually becoming a lovely hand painted SPONE® commerative portrait plate or vase instead?

Jesus, you could become your own funerary urn to hold the rest of your ashes? Uh, no thanks. Man that's just messed up.

Coffee snobbery

I'd been sitting on posting about this for a while. I freely admit to being a bit of a coffee snob. For the office, I pick up Costco branded stuff because I can score two pounds for the same price one pound of a cheap store brand variety costs, and the java itself is actually very driankable. When I get an itch to go to a coffee shop, I try to go local though. I very much am behind the Keep Austin Weird campaign, and I love the local coffee shops here in Austin. On a nice day or night like tonight, Mozart's can't be beat for a place to sip a cuppa joe and surf the net or listen to music on the weekends. Flightpath Coffee House (no official website, but a neat picture) also has a lot of charm, if not the best snacks to go with the brew. The Hideout downtown offers coffee, snacks, wireless internet, live music, and even a small cabaret style theater with live improv comedy (their website appears to be gone). So like most everyone who's a coffee drinker and a "commie liberal" as my brother likes to tag me, I ranted and railed over the ubiquitous way there seems to be a Starbucks at every turn. Corporate=evil in the simple math of my mind as far as coffee was concerned.

So you can imagine my cognitive dissonance when Ezra Klein had this post up about Starbucks, linking to this story about what Starbucks has to offer its workers. Made me realize things aren't always so easy:

Starbucks Coffee Co. puts a huge premium on customer service, knowing that when you plunk down a couple of bucks for a cup of coffee, the way you're treated may well determine how eager you are to repeat the experience.

That people-first philosophy extends to Starbucks' 15,000 employees, 12,000 of whom work part time. They're all referred to as "partners" and indoctrinated into the company philosophy from the get-go. New hires attend 24 hours of training before they're put to work--and usually end up liking their jobs. Not because they earn great wages or can get their fill of free espressos and a free pound of coffee a week but because any Starbucks partner, whether full or part time, gets premium perks. Among them: paid vacation and sick leave, subsidized health benefits, stock options and a 401(k) plan. Hardly any other U.S. company is as generous with its part-time workers (See the box on page 50). While many retailers and other firms with large part-time workforces might view the Seattle-based company's efforts as West Coast feel-good philanthropy that's too costly for them, Starbucks has shown that its strategy makes good business sense. The proof of its success is in its annual report in black and white. For the fiscal year ending Oct. 1, 1995, Starbucks had sales of $465 million and earnings of $26 million, or 36 cents a share--up from sales of $248 million and earnings of $10.2 million the prior year. The company has grown from 17 stores in fiscal 1987 to 842 now, and the numbers keep growing.

God forbid, a corporate entity that actually invests in its workforce and sees its profits grow as a result. What will the Enron's of the world think?

Seriously though, look at some of these offerings:

Health benefits are available to anyone who works at least 20 hours a week, with eligibility beginning 90 days after an employee's starting date. Starbucks pays about 75 percent of the premium; staffers pay most of the remaining 25 percent, although the actual amount varies according to salary level. Premiums are based on six eligibility categories: partner only; partner plus child; partner plus children; partner plus spouse or domestic partner; partner plus spouse and child; or partner plus domestic partner and child.

Starbucks extended health benefits to domestic partners of the same sex in 1993 and to unmarried heterosexual couples a year later. No proof of partnership is required; couples simply sign an enrollment form guaranteeing that the information they supply is true. Employees and their dependents are offered a two-tiered managed care plan administered by Aetna, which Starbucks switched to in 1993 when it began to self-insure. The deductibles, co-pays and benefits are the same for all Starbucks employees. About 5,400 U.S. workers and 800 Canadian employees are enrolled, some 15 percent of them with dependents.

The gatekeeper plan has no deductible and a $10 copay for a doctor visit and for a brand-name prescription. Preventive care is fully covered, and 90 percent of inpatient care is covered after the first $100. Out-of-network care has a deductible of $300 for an individual and $900 for family and covers 70 percent of physician fees and prescription costs. The point-of-service option also allows workers to see specialists without a primary care physician's authorization. Those who live out of Aetna's network area--only about 2 percent of Starbucks' insured employees--are served by a more expensive indemnity plan.

The health plan offerings to part time workers is better than I got working for the state of Texas at the Frank Erwin Center. Never mind the domestic partner bennies. And the health plan sounds like it really offers a lot to those who are enrolled in it. I mean you're far less likely to call in sick as a barista at a shitty coffee house if you've got the health benefits to get problems nipped before they become unmanageable. Read the whole thing, it's one hell of an offering for workers.

I'm writing this post from Mozart's now, and I'm happy they got my money today. Bought a bottomless cup of joe, a tart, and a coffee mug because they have some new ones that I really liked. I feel good about them getting my money. But I'm also going to not feel so bad about stopping in at a Starbucks every now and again and getting a latte to go. Big companies that do good things by their employees should be rewarded and encouraged at every opportunity. It's nice to see that it can be done right.

Tiger by the tail

I don't think there's been another athlete in my lifetime celebrated as much as Tiger Woods. Michael Jordan is comparable, but Woods wasn't even nineteen when he started making the covers of magazines and such. I think when Tiger's had his day, the number of words printed about him will be double or triple that written about Jordan.

That much can pretty much be a given considering what Tiger did at Augusta National today:

Tiger Woods is The Masters champion once again, turning back a surprising challenge Sunday with a shot of sheer magic and a birdie putt to win a playoff he never expected.

A spectacular finish of birdies and bogeys finally ended when Woods produced the most important shot of all -- a 15-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole to capture his fourth green jacket and finally put away the gritty Chris DiMarco.

To say what Tiger is doing in his sport is unprecedented is underselling his accomplishments, possibly by an order of magnitude. Look at the boxed info on the link above, as to the number of major tournaments in a career the top golfers have won. Nicklaus is 65 and retiring after this year. Hagen and Hogan have long since passed away. Player, who's tied with Tiger, is 69. Tom Watson, one major behind Tiger, is 55.

Tiger is a comparative pup at 29. He is averaging a Major per year in his career as a professional, and that's with a three year drought between his win today and the last one (the US Open in 2002). Let's assume he plays as long as Nicklaus, who is his idol. Also assume wins majors at half his current pace. He'd finish with 27 Major titles, 33 percent more than arguably the greatest player to play the game before Tiger.

Behold the power of the cablanasian.

In all seriousness, as great a player as Jordan was within his sport, I think that Tiger exceeds him in career accomplishments already. By the time he's done, he will rank amongst Jordan and Muhammad Ali as the most notable American athletes of all time. As a sports fan, I find that beyond description.

Let's see if he can show us all and get the other three Majors this year. On to Pinehurst.

Friday Saturday Cat Blogging

My kitties have been a bit under the weather lately so no pics of them this week. Pinch hitting for Doby and Jackie...

Deja is brown bagging it today.

Bonus kitty: my girlfriend has started up he own blog, though posting will be sporadic until her thesis is done. But for now, go take a look at my girl's pussy ;-).

Atrios' kitties enjoying a nice nap.

Feministe gave us some Friday Dog Blogging.

And just to be completely fair and balanced, TBogg provided some Friday Bassett Blogging as well.

We now leave Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom....

Update: Lindsay posts photos of one of the most adorable Meezer kittens you're ever going to see.

More literary considerations

Driftglass is a recent new addition to the blogroll, and the post he has up here is a big reason why he's been tacked on. I hope he'll forgive me if I copy an extensive part of the opening (also if it turns out he is a she):

Ok, honestly, I dont remember my first time.

I remember the season, sort of, and if I wanted to I could probably bring all kinds of flashy CSI reasoning to bear and to deduce the approximate time and place, but frankly I dont remember and I dont really care, because First Times suck.

Theyre necessary, but lets not romanticize it they are, at best, Run Dick Run. See Dick Run.

You dont know what the fuck you are doing. The person youre with doesnt know what the fuck theyre doing. You havent developed an educated palate yet and have absolutely zero capacity to appreciate the different between, say, stale Ho Hos and the almost feloniously perfect alloy of ginger, wasabi, sesame seed and dark chocolate that is a Black Pearl Truffle from Vosges.

You are, in a word, an idiot. Or at least I was...so I dont remember my first time. I remember my First Good Time.

I was in fourth grade obviously precocious and it all went down in the school Library, and loosely involved the following: a sudden thunderstorm, Vincent Price and a beat-up Electro Tone, Deluxe Model 444 suitcase record player.

And oh my yes it was Gooood, and I remember every detail.

I remember the damp smell of the old books in the little back room. I remember the sharp tang of Ohio Bluetip match sulfur and Camel unfiltereds that always swam up from the basement when the janitor was smoking. And I distinctly remember the thrill that we were probably doing something very wrong, and might get caught at any minute.

See theres something I probably dont have to explain to anyone here. Its a dirty little secret that we dont talk about it public, but we all know its true.

Reading Is Sex.

It goes on for a while after that, but you get the gist of what he's trying to say and I have to agree. Reading for pleasure is almost as good as sex when you've got a really good book in front of you. You get started and you simply do not want to stop until you're good and satisfied and well...you know ;-).

Anyway, Driftglass carries this on for a while before wrapping up with the following observation:

And which is why I dont remember my first time. But my first Good time was in the library, on a rainy day, with an Electro Tone suitcase record player, listening on scratchy vinyl to the slowly rising horror in Vincent Prices voice as he read Berenice. And then in the most calm, refined tone you can image, Basil Rathbone explaining that he had borne The thousand injuries of Fortunato as best he could, but when he ventured insult, he simply had to waste his sorry ass in The Cask of Amontillado."

I could feel it, down deep, in a way I wouldnt be able to articulate until years later, that this was different. This was Important, and suddenly it was screw Dick and screw Jane, and screw the Spot they rode in on.

Because this was my First Good Time.
And this was my introduction to Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.

I remember learning to read from my Grandma China ages and ages ago. I remember how she would parade me around to her friends and family asking me "How old were you when you learned to read, mijo?"

"Three years old Mama China."

"And who taught you how to read?"

"You did Mama China."

At this point some random piece of written material would be produced for me to perform like a trained seal and to show that I was actually reading, and not just memorizing certain words or sounds.

She taught me on kid's primers with various fairy tales and fables and what not. I also got my fair share of Dr. Seuss as all kids should. I still have a copy of Green Eggs and Ham on my bookshelf because, you know, everyone should have a copy of one of the classics of literature in their possession.

The first real read I had, my "first time" if you will in the Driftglass metaphor, was probably A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. By rights, any book that starts with that cliche bad literature line "It was a dark and stormy night." shouldn't be that big a deal to anyone. Nevertheless, I was mesmerized by the story of Meg Murray, her brother Charles Wallace, and if I remember the names correctly Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit. It was a bit darker than most children's books as I recall. The concept of the "tesseract" just boggled my mind. L'Engle didn't even really get into the concept in that great a detail but I still thought it was the neatest thing.

Nothing really grabbed my attention in quite that same way again, until the first "adult" book I read, which was Stephen King's The Stand. To this day Randall Flagg is still the only fictional character that has ever creeped me out or given me nightmares.

So this is the opportunity for those of you out there to tell me about your "first time". Read the whole of what Driftglass says about his, as it's pretty damn enjoyable. And then come back here and share.

And please...be gentle...it's all about first times in this post ;-).

Book Meme

Some of the bloggers I read have gotten into a literary frame of mind. Lindsay at Majikthise was the first blogger I read who had the below questions. Amanda at Pandagon follows up. My offerings:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be [saved]?

That's a tough one to start, but an important question. I think if I had to save one book that I've read, and extending the analogy further if I were to have to memorize said book to share as one of the Book People, I'd choose Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. One of the most compelling anti-war arguments I've ever read in the fictionalization of one survivor of a horrific explosion during WWI. Deeply disturbing and very moving.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I used to associate the character Frannie in The Stand with my friend Alisa (before you got pregnant dear, so no, that wasn't the connection ;-)). So I think by extension, since Alisa was my first love, I think that connection lead to a short term crush.

The last book you bought is?

Reflecting my current obsession, Playing Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth.

What are you currently reading?

The Hellmuth book, and in the same vein Positively Fifth Street by James McManus about the Binion murder and the World Series of Poker. I'm also most of the way through Seabiscuit, and it blows the movie away.

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

1. Stephen King's The Stand (if I'm going to feel like the last man on Earth, why not?)
2. Live from Golgotha by Gore Vidal (irreverant humor would be needed)
3. Ball Four by James Bouton (need my baseball fix)
4. Fight Club by Chuck Palhanuik (catharsis ahoy)
5. A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare (my favorite Shakespeare)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

My girlfriend, because she just started a blog, and needs material ;-).

Paddy, because I work with him, and he's also got a blog.
Eric at Websnark, because if by some fluke he reads my blog, I think it would be cool to see what he reads.

Offer up your selections in the comments.

Update: Ezra Klein offers his up here, and makes me feel like a chooch for not remembering to bring Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the island.

Thank god I remembered my towel.

Mad hops, hot hoops, and feminist foibles

Hey, I was feeling alliterative.

So the NCAA basketball tournaments are over. Roy Williams and North Carolina reigned supreme on the men's side Monday night, showing talent does win over team. The numerology nuts had a field day with the fact that Sean May scored 26 points on his 21st birthday, 29 years after his father played in the final for the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers. In the winning effort Scott May scored...26 points.

May won Outstanding Player honors for the game. He has said he plans to be back for his senior season, though we'll see if that really plays out. Since his team looks to send at least three first rounders if he does go, and perhaps as many as five total to the NBA next season, he could come back and be a very big fish in a very lonely little pond. Either way, he had one hell of a game.

It was also nice to see Roy Williams get his first title after three or four previous tries while head of Kansas. As someone who had frequently been labeled as "unable to win the big one" despite a very good career at KU, it was nice to see Roy get the monkey off his back. He's one of the good guys out there. He had this coming.

As far as my bracket went, I did ok but not great. Finished in the middle of the back in the office pool (look for Hankdog). As for the Bloggers Bracket at Yocohoops.com, I finished 151 out of 347. Decent.

Of more interesting note as far as I see things were the results from the women's tourney. I never thought I would ever live to write these words, but the Baylor Bears are national champions. They didn't just beat Michigan State to win the title. They destroyed the Spartans. Not something I would have seen coming. Baylor apparently made the smart choice in bring in Kim Mulkey-Robinson to be the head coach 5 years ago. This is her 12th Final Four as either a player, assistant coach, or head coach. She won two titles as a player, the first ever to win both as a player and coach.

Amusingly enough, King Kaufman who writes sports for Salon called the shot on this one.

Women's basketball seems to be coming loose from the clutches of Tennessee, Connecticut and, to a lesser extent, Stanford, which is an odd thing to say considering UConn is the three-time defending champion, Tennessee is a No. 1 seed and Stanford is a 2 that's whining that it should have been a 1.

But I think it's true. For all I know Tennessee or UConn will win and make it nine of the last 11 championships divided between those two schools. But the competition is tougher all the time. More teams have a chance to win. UConn is only a 3 seed. Duke dropped down to a 2. Michigan State, Baylor, Minnesota and Ohio State are all seeded in the top three without having been dominant Tournament teams in the last decade.

My pick to win it all, coming to you directly from thin air: Baylor.

Maybe I need to start making my picks this way :-).

The only reason I include feminism in the title on this post pertains to two things that came out the Baylor win. King hits on the first one in his column today:

One last thought on the women's Tournament: I wish women's athletic programs that haven't done so already would get rid of that obnoxious word "Lady" in their nicknames.

It comes from a time when female athletes were considered so odd that they just couldn't be labeled the same way as the men. The men's teams at Baylor were called the Bears, for example, so the women's teams had to be the Lady Bears, because who ever heard of a female bear, right?

The Lady Bears name persists. It's all over the official Web site.

In the mid-'80s, when I was covering women's basketball at Cal, the sports information director would frequently have to politely inform opponents of the team's correct nickname when she saw "Lady Bears" on their posters and schedules. "We're not the Lady Bears," she'd say, "we're the Golden Bears."

I figured then that within a few years this antiquated, condescending practice would be a quaint memory, like those sleeved jerseys that were all the rage in Old Dominion's heyday. But two decades down the road, three of the Final Four teams still use "Lady" -- and who uses that word "lady"?

Here's hoping the Lady Bears, the LSU Lady Tigers and the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, or Lady Vols, join the Michigan State Spartans in the 21st century.

I still remember when I started school here way back in 1990 (god I'm old), the University of Texas women's teams in everything were referred to as the Lady Longhorns. I don't recall if we would have gotten in trouble not using the name correctly when I worked at the Erwin Center for UTTM (now Texas Box Office), but I do remember that being everywhere on every piece of promotional material they put out. And then all of a sudden, poof. It was gone. They were just the Longhorns, or if a distinction did need to be made if say both teams played on the same day, the Longhorn Women. Longhorn Women is kinda clunky to repeat, but I'm glad UT came to their senses and got rid of the Lady part a long ways back. It does seem antiquated for the most part to me.

Making these terms a thing of the past would be a hell of a lot easier if not for the other thing that caught my attention related to the Baylor win. I was headed home from my girlfriend's, listening to the game on the radio. It was late in the second half, the game was already pretty much settled with Baylor in control. It was at this point the broadcast team for ESPN's radio coverage (I have no idea who it was now but both broadcasters were women, and I'm pretty sure one was a former player) thought now would be a good time to talk about Baylor coach Mulkey-Robinson's outfit for the evening.

(photo from sportsillustrated.cnn.com)

You can see her partially here. Powder blue, it was a women's suit I believe with a modest skirt (I saw a full length photo somewhere but can't run it down). One of the broadcasters mentioned the fact that the suit matches roughly the colors Mulkey-Robinson wore when she was a player at Louisiana Tech (the Lady Techsters back then as long as we're talking about absurd team nicknames). So far, no problems as I hear it.

So do they then segue into her playing career at La. Tech? Perhaps talk about her career as an assistant coach, maybe some of the other Final Fours she's been involved with?

No, they go on for about 30 second about how fabulous she looks in her outfit. I am NOT kidding. Then when they get back to the game, after it's done, these same people have a chance to talk with her on the court. After hitting a couple of points about the game itself, they come back to the damn outfit again for chrissakes. Do you hear anyone commenting about Roy Williams' suit after he's lead North Carolina to his first championship? Perhaps you got regaled with tales of the sartorial splendor of Coach Pat Riley during his Showtime days with the Lakers? No? You know why that didn't happen?

Because it's friggin bullshit that doesn't have a damn thing to do with the game. And why the hell the talking heads at ESPN thinks anyone listening could give a good Goddamn about what the coach is wearing is beyond me. Unless they're playing back to the silly stereotypes that women are only concerned with how they look and think that's how their listening audience thinks. But look there I go being cynical again.

Christ.

Seriously, it is silly things like that keep the women's game behind the men's, playing into the bullshit macho ideal that the men's game is superior and all about the action on the court. And as women broadcasters, ESPN's crew should have known better than to go there. I enjoy listening to/watching women's collegiate sports to get away from all the facetious crap that fills out a TV/radio broadcast. It takes a lot of work to get dumber than that. ESPN lived down to expectations.

End rant.

One last note: how great is it that Baylor has a national championship in a major sport more recently than A&M?

Hook 'em!

Hankblog

Friday, April 29, 2005

Friday Cat Blogging

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Status Update

A Wish for Wings That Work...and a bag of peanuts

When militia member make movies

Truth in Advertising Award

Dude get your quarters up on the machine

The Dukes of Mos Eisley

Your moment of blog zen

Friday, April 22, 2005

Nice network there. Shame if something happened to it.

Friday Random Ten

Part of a balanced world view

Friday Cat Blogging

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Transition notices

Your moment of blog zen

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Apologies for the light posting

Monday, April 18, 2005

Possible blog relocation

Comedy Sweet Sixteen

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Final Comedy Bracket is up

Dignity...always dignity.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Old School Random 10

What Kind of English do you speak?

Your Linguistic Profile:

Friday, April 15, 2005

BJ Nation

Friday Random Ten

Friday Cat Blogging

Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Comedy of Brackets

The Selig Code

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

The evils of socialized medicine

Given that both my ex-wife and current girlfriend read my blog...

Why I'm posting so much

Culture, politics, and liberalism

Tax dollars at work

Laying the House smack down

Perhaps if he had succeeded...

Movie Madness

Toying with religion

And to think the subtitled dialogue might be better than the real

Your moment of blogging Zen

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Are they trying to piss on all my childhood memories?

Showing I'm not a hater

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Big Brother knows what you drive

Amen brother.

Weird Science

Coffee snobbery

Tiger by the tail

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Friday Saturday Cat Blogging

More literary considerations

Friday, April 08, 2005

Book Meme

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Mad hops, hot hoops, and feminist foibles

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