Picture Of The Day

There appears to be some simian activity on my second favorite planet:

This amazing picture of the Martian landscape has got alien hunters excited about the possibility that it shows a silverback gorilla striking a pose on the Martian surface.

The image was taken by the Mars Spirit Rover in the Gusev crater, a crater over 100 miles in diameter that is thought to have once been a lake filled with liquid water.

It's one of several images taken by Spirit that appear to show a gorilla knuckle-walking across the surface of the Red Planet.

Online sites devoted to searching through pictures of Mars for signs of life have long pointed to the picture as an example of an 'anomaly' that suggests Martian life...

But it isn't a gorilla. It's a rock. Gorillas have not invented spaceflight and could not survive in the 95% carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars. Also, it looks like a rock.

I'm pretty sure that it's just a rock as well but if the first person to set foot on Mars some time in the future is suddenly mauled by a pissed off silverback don't be surprised. I'm just saying.

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Wonderbra Parodies The Cadbury Gorilla

For those not in the know, here's the original gorilla commercial. And now the breastsacular parody video:


And yes, I'm aware of all of the non-Cadbury parodies as well...

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Donald Douglas Wants To Kill My Hate Monkey

I don't believe this! What kind of a country do we live in where an "evil" neoconservative blogger like my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power can openly and wantonly threaten the life of an innocent liberal-attack-hate-monkey like Thade in his post "Blacks as Monkeys? Even When Leftists Hit Bottom, They Keep Digging" and get away with it? That's not the America I grew up in, and I'm not sure if it's an America that I can continue to live in.

For those just joining us, Don saw a picture of Thade acting out his version of male simian dominance towards himself in one of my posts. Now while he originally took this as a threat of violence from myself I assured him that Thade was flexing his monkey nuts of his own accord and that if Don wanted to tussle with him (Don was also flexing his own human nuts in response) that Thade had insisted that they fight by "monkey rules" which...

OK, I'm going to step out of my comedic voice for a second to address the absolute absurdity of Don professing that I was actually threatening him with violence by a fictional hate monkey (whatever the hell that is) or that I would ever intimate that Don was indeed the monkey I was referring to. In fact, as someone who majored in Anthropology in college it has pained me to no end to even keep referring to Thade as a monkey rather than an ape but the word "monkey" is obviously funnier so I've done so thus far and have tried to use the word as much as possible for comedic effect. And when I myself imagine having to fight a monkey the funniest/scariest thing I can think of would be that the monkey would hurl his feces at me. Now of course it would never occur to me to hurl my own feces back at him as a defense, and neither have I suggested that Don would have done the same in his fictional monkey battle with Thade.

But this latest cry of outrage from Don also illustrates the inherent mindset of victimology and persecution that he has cultivated, and which I've decried, since the outset of our little spat. If someone photoshops a baby into someone else within the context of making fun of that person, to Don they're obviously making fun of the baby instead and therefore hate and want to retroactively abort all handicapped children. If someone makes a joke about a neocon who's puffing up his chest at the prospect of a fight comedically fighting a poop flinging monkey, they're obviously calling the neocon a poop flinging monkey instead and are therefore racist and want to denigrate all black people.

As explanation for those not in the know, Don has mentioned on occasion that he is of mixed race and most decidedly not white. OK, that's cool with me. Now, of which races is Don's racial identity composed? I have no idea. None. He seems to be saying that he's part black in his last post so I'll believe him (although he's given me ample evidence to doubt the veracity of anything he says up to this point). Personally, I always thought that he looked more Hispanic than anything else and the name "Donald Douglas" itself provides few cultural clues, so I've honestly never really given it much more thought than that. I just didn't care. Of course all of these points are rendered moot by the fact that I never called him a monkey in the first place, although he seemed to have no such compunctions about calling me (admittedly a white dude) a "hate monkey" before I created the fictional Thade to redirect the insult.

Don ends his post with the following:

Enough is enough!

This pissing contest has gone on long enough. I am again calling on James B. Webb to issue a full apology to me. I will publish it here in a new post. This debate began almost two weeks ago, when Mr. Webb attacked the "everyday stupidity of right-wing religious neoconservatives." Now it's time for him to have the last word. I confess honestly myself right here: Sure, I like to debate and tussle online, and I admit that I'm pretty zealous in defending against attacks as a "stupid" neocon extremist. And things have gotten pretty ugly too.

So, now James can show he's a gentleman. James B. Webb can end it here with a full apology for his "blacks as monkeys" slur (see, "Blacks as Monkeys? It's Time For An Adult Conversation"). I will accept his apology and we all can move on.

Actually, I only attacked the "everyday stupidity of right-wing religious neoconservatives" in response to Don attacking the "everyday demonology of left-wing secular progressives" first but I'm not going to split hairs. And that's really big of him to demand an apology for something I never said and then offer to graciously accept it. But here goes: I'm sorry, Don. I'm sorry that you seem to take yourself and the rest of the world so seriously that you have no discernable sense of humor to speak of. I'm also sorry that you can not grasp the concept that a handicapped person could be included even tangentially in a joke about someone else without that handicapped person being the butt of the joke, nor that you can not grasp that a black person who doesn't look obviously black by most objective measurements and rarely identifies himself as such could be included in a joke about fighting a fictional monkey without that black person also being called a monkey. I like handicapped people, neoconservatives, black people and monkeys and I call many from every group friends. I'm sorry that you can't view the world without confusing several of these hominids in your blindingly righteous indignation.

At this point I had originally planned to slip back into my comedic voice to continue my faux rant against Don for posting the New York Post editorial cartoon about police officers murdering a chimp, implying that he was now threatening my own fictional hate monkey with monkeycide but I've somehow lost my zeal for this whole war. It appears that in addition to being accused of being gay (yeah, snark Don; I get it...) I am now also apparently a homophobe and a racist, all because I made some jokes about an uptight neoconservative windbag. Readers can decide for themselves as to whether I'm a gentleman as well. You win Don, and you even finally got your apology. You got me [falling over dead]. Adieu.

[Update: Don has posted my "apology" along with a few emails from his readers insulting me and complaining about his posts about me. Apparently I'm being blamed for Don's obsession and inability to keep from writing about me. So be it. The people too blind to see what really happened this past week are already too far gone to waste time explaining it to them.

I'll say this: This whole encounter has definitely opened my eyes. I knew from the outset that Don had a propensity for ignoring facts and proven points but I never dreamed that he was capable of the levels of cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty displayed towards me over the course of this little war. I'm aware that I could probably win some arguments by employing his tactics as well but at the end of the day I would just feel like a damn liar.

I truly doubt his professed ability to leave this side of himself out of the classroom. How could someone who has convinced himself of the truthfulness of the things he's accused me of ever have the self-awareness to make that distinction? One of these sides of his personality is obviously far out of whack, I just hope for the sake of his students that the personality we've seen here today is that side.

On a lighter note: Can I get a "Hell yeah!" for that fridge door photoshop? It's one of my most favoritest things I've ever posted here and I thought that it was pretty fucking hilarious. Just saying.]

[Update II: I was just reading some of the comments on Don's post. Most of these people are as deluded as Don, it's like they were reading a whole other blog war. Sad, and a tad worrisome.]

American Power And Hate Monkeys

Yes, yes, I know, I know but I just couldn't help myself. Or rather my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power just couldn't help himself by letting me have the last word, as he proclaims in his new hilariously titled post "Attack of the Leftist Hate Monkeys!":

I thought James B. Webb was a beaten man by now. But no, he's back with another depraved smear against me, "American Power Powers Down."

Actually, I didn't "power down." It was James B. Webb who was down for the count (after the brutal pounding he took in the last round). He's back up, in any case; but I'm not in the mood to deal with this sick little boy right now...

It's too bad James and his leftist friends have stooped to such a low level. But being conservative doesn't mean having to cave to these idiots.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed Don's newest favorite, homo-fanatical term "Barebacker" has now been replaced by my regular middle initial (I'm still going to call you "Don", Don), presumably because the right-wing post he quotes actually decries "low-level name-calling" (you'll notice however that I'm still a "sick little boy" and an "idiot"; are you sure he owns a thesaurus, Tim?). And "another depraved smear"? The absolute worst thing I said about him is that he's "intellectually dishonest". This unnecessarily high level of hyperbole goes a long way towards explaining the whole "They're trying to destroy Sarah Palin and her family!" hysteria though, doesn't it?

And oh yes Don, an especially brutal pounding was when you unleashed this predominantly monosyllabic string of capital letters and exclamation points in your previous last words to me in my comment section:

Hey, if it helps you get 200 hits a day, so be it. MORAL. EPIC. FAIL.

And LOSER. FAIL. SUZANNA. DISSED JBW BIG TIME!!!

Does anyone else find it a bit disturbing, or at least slightly bewildering, that Don equivocates one's level of morality with how many Sitemeter hits they have on their blog? I only ask because Don has made it quite clear in the past that he considers friend of this blog Andrew Sullivan a morally degenerate, AIDS-ridden faggot (I'm paraphrasing Don's rantings, of course) yet the guy gets over 200,000 hits a day. Looks like his massive hit-count cock dwarfs us both. Moral epic victory for Sullivan then, eh Don?

Or perhaps just more transparent neoconservative hypocrisy. Hey, as Master Enforcer for the Annihilation of Non-Hypocrisy I'm uniquely qualified to make this judgement. Keep up that good wingnut crazy, buttercup. It's pure gold.

Inhofe Closes Eyes And Puts Fingers In Ears

If this doesn't just ooze class I don't know what does:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is dead set on voting against Sonia Sotomayor's nomination. In fact, he's so certain of his position that he refuses to even meet with her.

Sotomayor has been meeting privately with Senators over the last few weeks, but when it was Inhofe's turn, he declined.

Inhofe's spokesman explained that since the Senator has already decided to vote against the nomination, there's no reason to waste time on a sit-down discussion.

Some free advice to the Republican party: when you start acting like mature and intelligent adults the rest of us will start taking the things you say and do seriously again. Until that day, enjoy the wilderness.

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No Eye-Contact Glasses

I have to say that I think these are a really good idea:

The Rotterdam Zoo is giving away cardboard glasses that make it appear that you're looking off to one side; these are gorilla-viewing glasses, meant to avoid incidents in which gorillas attack visitors for making eye contact with them. The glasses' introduction follows an attack on a woman by an escaped gorilla; the specs are sponsored by a local health-insurance company.

"You lookin' at me? You lookin' at me?! I don't see any other gorillas around here so you must be lookin' at me!" Of course those on the political right will just accuse the zoo officials of appeasing the gorilla terrorists but what can you do?

Stimulus Bill Writing Chimp Or Racist Cartoon?

I'm really having trouble understanding how this is funny:

The cartoon in Wednesday's edition of the tabloid New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, links two prominent US news stories – controversy over Mr Obama's economic stimulus proposals and a recent incident in which Connecticut police had to shoot dead a pet chimp that went berserk and mauled a woman.

In the cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas, a regular Post cartoonist, two officers are staring gloomily at the blood spattered chimp's corpse after one of them has shot it.

"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," says the other officer.

The cartoon drew immediate criticism from Al Sharpton, the black activist and community leader.

In a statement, Mr Sharpton said the cartoon was "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys".

He said that it could be asked whether the cartoonist was "making a less than casual reference to this" and could be "inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill".

So a monkey wrote the bill? That's the joke? That's terrible. But if that's not the joke then what else could this cartoon possibly mean other than that those who wrote the bill (Democrats) are monkeys themselves. And if that's the point of your cartoon, you must know that a black man is the new leader of that party and if that's true then your are either racially tone deaf or a flat out racist. Am I missing something here?

Bigfoot Found In Freezer

OK, they actually found him in northern Georgia (ours, not Asia's) but yeah, we finally found one of the elusive sons of bitches:

Two Bigfoot hunters claim they have the body of one and plan to release a photo and what they claim is DNA evidence at a news conference in Palo Alto on Friday.

The Bigfoot is claimed to have been found in the woods of northern Georgia by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, and the claim is being supported by a Bay Area Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi, a multiple local Democratic candidate.

Is this going to turn out to be real? I don't know but I hope so; if true, this discovery would turn the field of Anthropology on it's ear. The skeptic in me is leaning heavily towards the "not real" side but I guess we'll find out tomorrow. You have to admit that this is a pretty cool picture regardless.

Gorillas In The Air Tonight

Although I had never seen or heard of it until recently, apparently this commercial for Cadbury chocolate has become the most popular and successful UK ad in recent years. In fact, blogger Ian Leslie thinks it's popularity is a reflection of the same phenomenon that has propelled Barack Obama to political superstardom:

Obama and that Cadbury ad are both successful, at least in part, because people are not quite sure what they mean. So people want to talk about them, and write about them, and debate them at length. And - crucially - email, post and create their own user-generated videos about them. In this way do the chocolate bar and the politician become media phenomena. In the age of the web, a little bit of ambiguity is a very powerful thing.

He's right in that the ad itself makes absolutely no sense as far as it's link to selling chocolate but again, that's part of it's appeal; I just like the way it builds as he goes through his warm up ritual. Enjoy: