Has it really been 10 years since The Big Lebowski?
Does the Dude still abide?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Depp In This Style: 10/6
Ooh yes, please!
Admittedly, it might be hard to get Isabel to see this movie, since she doesn't always get along well with Tim Burton, and she didn't like Tom Petty's video from the mid-Eighties.
So ... Johnny Depp, yes, especially when he's a pirate, but Tim Burton, maybe not. And the trailers for Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory didn't help much.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
New Category!
Introducing the category "God Luke She's Your Sister," wherein I shall file things heavy with irony.
And not that pansy sarcasm that masquerades as modern irony, neither. I'm talking full-blown "Zeus knows Jacosta is no blood kin of mine, and I will put out my eyes and cut out my tongue if I'm wrong" irony. Irony with blood in it.
Irony like claiming Obama is weak on foreign policy, while propping up John McCain based on his five years' POW status, only for McCain to turn around and talk about Chekoslovakia or tensions on the Iraq-Pakistani border.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Reverse Magazines
Over at Something Awful, they're having a reverse-magazine week. In among such titles as Unpopular Mechanic, U.S.S.R. News & World Report, and Unscientific American, this is my favorite:
Damaging My Calm
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers is pulling out all the stops on the assholes who are threatening his life over this whole communion wafer flap. He's taken to posting particularly inane or idiotic emails, along with people's names and IP addresses.
An excerpt from one posted earlier today:
Really? That's all you've got? Lennon didn't say anything more damning than that in over twenty years as a celebrity? Okay, we'll go with that, then.
First off, here's what (Wikipedia says) John Lennon really said:
So there's inexact quoting to be getting on with.
And secondly, John Lennon said that thing he said in 1966, prompting a whole heck of a lot of album burnings here in the buckle of the Bible Belt. He was shot four times by Chapman in early December, 1980. (I was almost two.) More than fourteen years passed between his comments and his shooting, and this bozo wants to cast it as an immediate and awesome sign of divine vengeance.
Yeah, real convincing argument you've got going there, buddy.
Who was it said we don't get out of life alive? Morrison?
An excerpt from one posted earlier today:
Here are some men and women
who mocked God :
[J]ohn Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
'Christianity will end, it will disappear.
I do not have to argue about that. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, today we are more famous than Him' (1966).
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Really? That's all you've got? Lennon didn't say anything more damning than that in over twenty years as a celebrity? Okay, we'll go with that, then.
First off, here's what (Wikipedia says) John Lennon really said:
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
So there's inexact quoting to be getting on with.
And secondly, John Lennon said that thing he said in 1966, prompting a whole heck of a lot of album burnings here in the buckle of the Bible Belt. He was shot four times by Chapman in early December, 1980. (I was almost two.) More than fourteen years passed between his comments and his shooting, and this bozo wants to cast it as an immediate and awesome sign of divine vengeance.
Yeah, real convincing argument you've got going there, buddy.
Who was it said we don't get out of life alive? Morrison?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Drinks Warning
Swallow before you click.
The Falcon's Gyre, its affiliates and employees are exempt from liability for damaged keyboards or monitors stemming from rapid liquid oral expulsion as a result of viewing this video.
The Falcon's Gyre, its affiliates and employees are exempt from liability for damaged keyboards or monitors stemming from rapid liquid oral expulsion as a result of viewing this video.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Whoa, Dude
You been holding out on me.
You got all this great space underneath that noisy box you watch all the time.
Why you do me this way, bro? Why you hold out on me? That ain't no way to treat a sister!
Sheesh!
You got all this great space underneath that noisy box you watch all the time.
Why you do me this way, bro? Why you hold out on me? That ain't no way to treat a sister!
Sheesh!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Small World
I found someone familiar in the oddest of places today.
I have been following Slacktivist's Left Behind critique for some time now. He's gotten to the last few pages of the first book, in which the Antichrist is finally getting around to being a villain and killing people.
With a gun.
As a link from Slacktivist shows, he was a lot scarier when he was just a boy:
The Omen, 1976.
Patrick Troughton, ladies and gentlemen. I thought the priest looked familiar. And I also have a deeper understanding now of Good Omens.
Via.
I have been following Slacktivist's Left Behind critique for some time now. He's gotten to the last few pages of the first book, in which the Antichrist is finally getting around to being a villain and killing people.
With a gun.
As a link from Slacktivist shows, he was a lot scarier when he was just a boy:
The Omen, 1976.
Patrick Troughton, ladies and gentlemen. I thought the priest looked familiar. And I also have a deeper understanding now of Good Omens.
Via.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Turkle! (Updated)
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present for your viewing pleasure, a rescuee from the middle of the road, Charlotte the box turtle:
Currently residing in a very fetching cardboard box on the exclusive back porch of Chez Gyre, refusing to snack on the most succulent lettuce and tomatoes that our refrigerator could produce, and overturning her water platter in protest of her accommodations.
Isabel will take her out to the lake tomorrow, and let the boys release her there, where there are significantly fewer cars.
I believe Charlotte is a she because her eyes are brown, not red. She's named for Charles Darwin, who did some work with the Galapagos tortoises, upon which subject we stumbled while discussing whether box turtles are true turtles or tortoises, since their shells are rather taller than many swimming turtles we have around here.
Update! So Charlotte had a cunning plan. When she knocked over the water platter, it soaked into the cardboard box. Eventually the cardboard was soggy enough for her to dig her way through. She escaped onto the porch, whence she dropped a story to the gravel below without apparent harm.
In the meantime, we discovered that Isabel's young cousins actually had found and rescued a turtle in similar circumstances, so they were not so turtle-deprived as we thought.
So the upshot was we decided to release Charlotte into the woods behind our place, with some trepidation as to foxes and hawks and things, but presumably those are not new threats to her, on the assumption that she was wild and not domesticated.
So crawl free, little turtle! Crawl free!
Currently residing in a very fetching cardboard box on the exclusive back porch of Chez Gyre, refusing to snack on the most succulent lettuce and tomatoes that our refrigerator could produce, and overturning her water platter in protest of her accommodations.
Isabel will take her out to the lake tomorrow, and let the boys release her there, where there are significantly fewer cars.
I believe Charlotte is a she because her eyes are brown, not red. She's named for Charles Darwin, who did some work with the Galapagos tortoises, upon which subject we stumbled while discussing whether box turtles are true turtles or tortoises, since their shells are rather taller than many swimming turtles we have around here.
Update! So Charlotte had a cunning plan. When she knocked over the water platter, it soaked into the cardboard box. Eventually the cardboard was soggy enough for her to dig her way through. She escaped onto the porch, whence she dropped a story to the gravel below without apparent harm.
In the meantime, we discovered that Isabel's young cousins actually had found and rescued a turtle in similar circumstances, so they were not so turtle-deprived as we thought.
So the upshot was we decided to release Charlotte into the woods behind our place, with some trepidation as to foxes and hawks and things, but presumably those are not new threats to her, on the assumption that she was wild and not domesticated.
So crawl free, little turtle! Crawl free!
For Isabel
Who hasn't heard anything Paul Simon wrote since Garfunkel wised up and left the two-bit jerk:
Man, is Chevy Chase a long drink of water.
Man, is Chevy Chase a long drink of water.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
My Barack Obama
Barack Obama has been moving to the right since the middle of June. He's always advocated Social Security "reform," and several times he has praised Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party as "the party of ideas," but now he's folded on FISA along with most of the so-called Democratic Congress.
That's right. Barack Obama, right now at least, has no use for the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, he's basically promised to use his powers to spy on us without warrants only for good.
Do you believe him? I don't.
I admit, I was angry and I got down. Obama is pandering to the conservatives in hopes of getting their votes. Leaving aside the question of why he thinks they'll ever vote for him, I think this is a self-defeating strategy: the further right he goes, the more people to his left fall off the bandwagon.
I felt powerless. I have a vote. I could abstain from voting at all, but who would notice? And if Obama lost in November, how much blame would they heap on the collective shoulders of the abstentions? Voting for McCain is out of the question, never mind that if Obama doesn't stop his slide to the right, he's going to end up somewhere in McCain's vicinity.
Then, today, I found this. It's a group set up on my.barackobama.com to pressure the presumptive candidate to uphold the filibuster on the House FISA bill that immunizes the telecoms from civil prosecution.
If I'm angry and upset, and I admit that I still am, just sitting around counting my grievances won't help the country. I need to get involved. So I joined up.
Maybe I can get something done.
That's right. Barack Obama, right now at least, has no use for the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, he's basically promised to use his powers to spy on us without warrants only for good.
Do you believe him? I don't.
I admit, I was angry and I got down. Obama is pandering to the conservatives in hopes of getting their votes. Leaving aside the question of why he thinks they'll ever vote for him, I think this is a self-defeating strategy: the further right he goes, the more people to his left fall off the bandwagon.
I felt powerless. I have a vote. I could abstain from voting at all, but who would notice? And if Obama lost in November, how much blame would they heap on the collective shoulders of the abstentions? Voting for McCain is out of the question, never mind that if Obama doesn't stop his slide to the right, he's going to end up somewhere in McCain's vicinity.
Then, today, I found this. It's a group set up on my.barackobama.com to pressure the presumptive candidate to uphold the filibuster on the House FISA bill that immunizes the telecoms from civil prosecution.
If I'm angry and upset, and I admit that I still am, just sitting around counting my grievances won't help the country. I need to get involved. So I joined up.
Maybe I can get something done.
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