Pictures Of The Day

I was perusing the site of my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas yesterday when I came across a couple of artistic and political gems. The first is from a post entitled: "New York Times: Oversamples Democrats, Push-Polls Respondents in Health Care Survey". The body of the post is unimportant (and never mind that it was Republicans who first perfected push-polling), as it's just Don bitching about a political poll that he doesn't like the results of but the accompanying graphic is the real payoff:

But of course that's not nearly the best part. That comes when you check out the fear mongering post "Healthcare Bondage? The Uninsured as Chattel Slaves":

Are you sufficiently worried about your children's health and futures now? Are you scared yet? Because that's the point! Be scared! Be fearful! Because it's only through fear and paranoia that you'll eventually come around to the neocon political point of view. That strange and mysterious "other" is out to get us and they can't be trusted and must therefore die in a huge and costly war, foreign or domestic, cultural or otherwise. Stoke your fears now because Obama will only charge you to do the same in the future. You've been warned, America.

Perpetuum Jazzile Performs "Africa"

Yes, yes, I've made my anathema to a cappela music quite apparent in the past (although I still maintain that McFerrin totally had that beat down coming to him) but I have to say that I really liked this performance. From TYWKIWDBI:

The featured song is "Africa," a chart-topper from the early 1980s by Toto. The performers are Perpetuum Jazzile, an a capella jazz choir from Slovenia. What impressed me about the video was not the song itself, but rather the 2-minute introduction during which the choir produces the sounds of a gentle rain in Africa escalating into a thunderstorm.

I suggest starting the video, then looking elsewhere (down this page, or open another tab for browsing) so you can hear the sound effects (note - no instrumental or percussion help). You'll probably then go back to see how it was done.

I really love how they did the opening but I'll also admit that I dug the Toto song (although if you had held a gun to my head and demanded that I tell you who had originally sung this song my brains would have been cherry pie on the wall quite quickly). Check it out:


[Update: OK, I officially hate this song now. It's been playing repeatedly in my head ever since I watched this video yesterday. I'm seriously considering taking a power drill to my right temple to make it stop. Do-do, do-do, do-do-do-da-a-ah...Aargh!]

Michael Savage Is An Old, Old White Man

Yet he's still one of the most popular right-wing talk radio hosts in the country, and one suspects that it's partly because of statements like this:


While I'm neither married nor a Christian, I am white and heterosexual (I'd like to sound like a pussy-magnet sex-machine and say that I'm more heterosexual than white but dude, I'm Irish. I love the Sun but the Sun hates me. What's a Caucasian to do?). Does that make me the epitome of half of everything that's right with America? Or am I the epitome of everything that's right with America only half of the time? I have a feeling that Savage would dispute the extent of my halfness in either of these situations. I also have a feeling that Savage is a racist, douchebag dinosaur and that very few decent people will mourn his eventual passing from this mortal coil.

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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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He's Barack Obama

This new parody cartoon from Jib Jab cracks me up, mostly because if you've been listening to the Republicans lately it's their animated wet dream. The Obama-Signal is the best:

Josh Womack's Crazy Bat Skills

When I watch Tiger Woods doing his thing with his club I always assume that athletes from other sports probably perform equally impressive time wasting feats with their own equipment. Case in point:


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2012 Trailer

I can't wait for December 22, 2012 to arrive so that we can be done with all of this superstitious nonsense, although I'm sure that the Apocalypse watchers will just come up with a new date that never happens. That said, these effects look pretty sweet:

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Something Someone Else Said

"The error in 1956 was on the part of Radio Free Europe, in holding out to Hungarian resisters the false hope that the West would or could intervene on their behalf. It would be similarly cruel and immoral to give Iranian demonstrators the false idea that we in the democratic world can offer them anything more than our sympathy. We can’t. We will not invade Iran, and nothing else we do will have much of an effect on the behavior of a regime fighting to retain its hold on power. The demonstrators in Iran must know that they have to win the struggle for a fair election on their own, and must be prepared to face the consequences of failure. And they do know this. That is precisely what makes them so courageous. It would be stupid and irresponsible of the US to use their struggle as an occasion for ineffectual rhetorical grandstanding, and fortunately President Obama, unlike our last President, seems able to resist the temptation." -Matt Steinglass, Accumulating Peripherals

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Powdered Red Wine

I think I just found what I'm going to substitute for Tang when I eventually take my space flight. This an English translation of the German website:

The beverage powder that comes in convenient portions packed in pouches has an alcoholic content of 8,2%, which is similar to a light bottled wine.

One would assume that you add a measured amount of water to achieve the correct taste and alcohol content. Yes, yes, I know: to a true oenophile this is assuredly viticultural blasphemy but I plan on drinking when I'm in space, goddamn it! I assume that I'll have to make due with some sort of zero-g sippy cup rather than Riddell crystal though. This undoubtedly illustrates the term "roughing it".

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OK, Let's Talk About David Letterman...

I'm sure everyone who reads this site has heard about the apparent "controversy" surrounding David Letterman and Sarah Palin over the last week and I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to mention it because I figured that it was merely just another example of faux right-wing outrage that would blow over fairly quickly but it seems that these people have no other arrows in their persecution complex quiver to string so here goes.

Full disclosure right from the outset: I absolutely loved Letterman when I was in junior high and high school. I taped (yes, we used VHS tape to record media back then) his show every night and watched it when I got home from track practice every day. This was back when he was at NBC with Larry "Bud" Melman and Chris Elliot, when he wore Adidas tennis shoes with his suit and when he would routinely wander across the hallway to fuck with Al Roker and the other anchors while they were filming the Live at Five news broadcast.

For those outside the know, here's a recap of the infamous joke:

Letterman, in his monologue Monday night, noted that the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate attended a Yankees game during a trip to New York City, where she was honored by a special needs group. Letterman referred to Palin, Alaska's governor, as having the style of a "slutty flight attendant."

The "Late Show" host also took a shot Palin's daughter, while poking fun at the Yankees' third baseman.

"One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game," Letterman said, "during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

Now the apparent controversy was that, apparently unbeknownst to Letterman, the daughter accompanying Palin and her husband to the game that day was not her 18-year-old daughter Bristol (who was knocked up out of wedlock and then attended the Republican National Convention with her son and baby daddy, Levi Johnston, in tow) but rather her 14-year-old daughter Willow.

So let's now review the joke in question: 1) Any joke made about a Palin offspring being impregnated was obviously about her 18-year-old (legally an adult, I might add) daughter Bristol. This girl is the most popular pregnant, out of wedlock girl in America in several years (and I'm counting Britney Spears' younger sister in this equation). 2) I fail to detect any inference of rape within Letterman's joke. In fact if one peruses the Urban Dictionary, there are 10 definitions of the term "knocked up". And while they are all mostly alike there is absolutely no reference to rape in any of them at all.

Now some people may say, "Well, he made the joke and the 14-year-old daughter was the one in attendance at the game that day so it still constitutes statutory rape." But Letterman offers this rebuttal:

Apologising in front of his TV audience, David said it was a "coarse joke", adding: "I never thought it was (about) anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure, in fact, that she is of legal age, 18."

So, we know that he wasn't speaking about the younger Palin daughter and that the prospect of rape was never even brought into question. But I'll now let Dave defend himself and what he said on his show:


One thing I have to disagree with: Sarah Palin's look is not that of a "slutty flight attendant". If anything she's sporting a naughty librarian look, and incidentally one that I much prefer to the slutty flight attendant but I love books much more than I love flying, so there you go. Also, I dig the (once Lisa Loeb, now) Tina Fey glasses.

Now the reason I even bring this whole issue up this late in the game is because of the aforementioned right-wing outrage across the blogosphere, personified by posts like this one from my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas, "David Letterman: Washed-Up Left-Wing Pervert" or this from blogger Bob who I assume found me through Don's site, "David Letterman is a disgusting pig!" Cookie cutter comments like, "Well, if Sean Hannity had said the same thing about Barack Obama's daughters the left would have gone apeshit!" are completely disingenuous.

Yeah, people would have gone apeshit! Because Obama's daughters are 10 and 7 years old! If anyone on any side of the political spectrum had made a joke about either of them being impregnated it would have been horribly and unambiguously apparent that they were making a reference to prepubescent sex. But don't tell that to the just over a dozen protesters outside Letterman's studio the other day:

A protest rally against David Letterman over a failed joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughter attracted more members of the media than protesters Tuesday afternoon.

A crowd of 15 protesters upset with the late night comic held signs and occasionally shouted as they stood across the street from Letterman's studio.

But they were often hidden from view by the more than 35 members of the media there to cover the protest, and out-shouted by a few very vocal counter-protesters.

But those fifteen people must have at least made some pretty convincing arguments against Letterman to warrant this level of media coverage for this bullshit controversy, right? Oh yes, they certainly did:


Classy. Also, three things: 1) A Rod plays basketball? 2) Letterman's kid is a girl? 3) Admitting that Letterman's kid is indeed not a girl, is he any more of a bastard than Palin's grandchild? I doubt that Sarah Palin would ever refer to her grandson in that manner. But hey, the fact that a child is innocent of any wrongdoing is no reason not to attack him, right? Although I suspect the term "grasping at straws" is a metaphor that people this intelligent would fail to understand. OK, so what's the next outrage du jour, Republicans?