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Twisted Spinster

5/31/2004

Memorial Day

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 11:59 pm

I can’t come up with anything that would top this. This post will stay at the top until Tuesday.

(Via Ken Summers.)

Update: this is also good. (Via John Dunshee.)

To rule in Hell

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 2:29 pm

The notion that the liberal mind is attracted to authoritarian regimes is not a new one. This kind of puts the asserions of the current crop of anti-war commentators that, among other things, Saddam was “not a threat,” and “Iraq was really much better off under Saddam than under US” – never Coalition – “occupation” into perspective. Of course, it isn’t one that makes them look very good…

Notable quote:

I think that those people believe in power. It was put to me very succinctly when we were taken down to Kharkiv for the opening of the Dnieper dam. There was an American colonel who was running it, building the dam in effect. “How do you like it here?” I asked him, thinking that I’d get a wonderful blast of him saying how he absolutely hated it. “I think it’s wonderful,” he said. “You never get any labor trouble.”

(Via a commenter to this post of Roger Simon’s.)

Updated again

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:43 am

I just updated the blog to the new “Mingus” version. That’s why you see the plain default stylesheet and some info that was on the sidebar is missing. I’ll get to that at some later date; but now I’m tired and want to go to bed.

5/30/2004

Religion of Pieces

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:40 pm

I usually don’t bother linking to things on Little Green Footballs because I figured 1) everyone knows where the site is by now so it needs no promotion by me, and 2) I didn’t think my outrage meter had a higher peg. But it does: read Muslim Cop Kills “Blasphemer”. Never mind the beating to death – the man was in charge for doing his job. But see, being a Christian, he didn’t know every anal detail of the freakish laws modern-day Muslims apparently (at least in Pakistan) follow:

Masih had been in jail since Aug. 23, 2003, awaiting trial on charges of blasphemy under Pakistan’s strict “Law 295″ – which forbids desecrating the Quran and “defiling” the name of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. On the day of his arrest, Masih was collecting garden rubbish, which he heaped temporarily against the wall of a mosque in Lahore’s Lawrence Gardens section while collecting more that he planned to burn later. This action brought the blasphemy charge, which carries a maximum two-year prison sentence.

Though really, he probably just had forgotten to bribe someone or other, or maybe he looked funny at some Muslim, or maybe they just felt like arresting an infidel that day:

According to human rights groups, Pakistan’s blasphemy law is much abused and frequently used to settle personal grudges.

Good grief. And we wonder why “Muslims hate us.” They (or at least – gotta put in the disclaimers for the .0000031564% of Muslims who aren’t like this! – some of them) hate just about everything and everybody on earth. What a miserable group of people.

Another disclaimer: it occurred to me that “never mind the beating to death” is a bad phrase to use, when I actually meant “the beating to death aside,” or “in addition to the appalling fact of the beating to death.” I just see in my mind a helpless sick man being bludgeoned in his bed by some human monster – who was assigned to guard his victim! – and I wonder at the degeneracy of a culture that produces such folk. At least the killer is in prison, but I wonder if a miscarriage of what that land calls “justice” will get him a light sentence, and if so, what form will it take – bribes, intimidation by the killer’s family/tribe members, or who knows what?

The “Dummy” speaks

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:28 pm

And uses big words like “obfuscation.” I don’t agree with every single one of Bush’s ideas here, but I’m not going to get into that now; I just put this up as a kind of gift for people who keep using the “Bush can’t talk” line and also for CurrencyLad, who alerted me to this interview.

Denny’s & Racism

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:45 pm

Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm is usually more careful; but here, in a brief mention of an incident at Denny’s where a manager allegedly tried to alert the FBI to a possible terrorist sighting and was allegedly ignored by that agency, he misses something rather obvious. In the article he cites on the incidents of racism at Denny’s, he says:

Denny’s is known for being rather pathologically racist in its hiring practices across the country

But the article only recounts the numerous incidents of racism towards customers, and the hiring practices mentioned all speak of the efforts after the incidents had been brought to light to make the restaurant chain more racially diverse. It says nothing about being racist in its former hiring practices.

Update: bolds added in the quoted section for clarity.

5/29/2004

The dogs of doom are howling more

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:32 pm

Credit where credit is due: if you are going to review Lord of the Rings (aka The Best Movie Trilogy Ever) unfavorably, you could do much worse than Kim du Toit. For one thing, he doesn’t waste scads of web space like that long-winded, point-missing pansy David Brin.

Random musical observation

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:02 pm

I really can’t stand the Dave Matthews Band.

Degenerate the faithful

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:08 pm

So, to some Europeans America is too religious; to others, we are a soulless, materialistic, spiritually-shallow culture. So what are we? Among other things, we seem to be a snare and a temptation for those who can’t face the problems that are occuring closer to home.

Keep her down what a lovely daughter

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 2:40 pm

Can’t fight the Seether. Civilization is saved once again.

Well versed in etiquette

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 2:32 pm

It seems to me that much of the pacifistic movement is based on a mistaken reading of human nature. This is demonstrated in the remarks of Hugo Schwyzer, in the comments to his own post on feminism and Abu Ghraib:

I don’t want women in the military because I am troubled by the military

And here, from another commenter on the same post,

With all due respect, doesn’t being trained to kill other human beings with weapons and your hands lead to coarsening or perhaps a better word is desensitizing (even if it isn’t on the “training schedule")? I know that the military does more than kill, but killing the enemy before he/she kills you seems to be a fundamental nature of the occupation.

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the notion of pacifists that human beings are by nature gentle beings who must be “coarsened” or otherwise have their natural instincts (as they see it) to be kind and cooperative subverted or stifled, if not outright destroyed, before they can become soldiers. In fact, it seems a central tenet of most pacifism, even that based on Christianity (most pacifist Christians I have encountered seem to focus on the gentle “rabbi” Christ while passing over the Christ who knocked over the money-changers’ tables at the Temple and stated he had come “not to bring peace but a sword” as temporary aberrations if not outright false portrayals shoehorned in by Gospel-writers with an anti-Roman agenda).

The thing is, the pacifists are wrong about human nature, and the briefest observation of a group of two-year-olds could make their mistake known to them, were they not blinded by their own misconceptions and pride. I say “pride” because (again, as the Christians are always pointing out, and this is one of their least popular lessons) human beings like to think well of themselves, and tend to think they are better than they really are. Instead of being natural paragons of sweetness and light that bad old Life, or Society, or Experience, darkens and twists, human beings are only too apt to be quarrelsome, combative, and violent from the get-go, and killing is all too easy for us. If the humans-are-naturally-good crowd were right, neighborhoods full of highschool dropouts would be paradises of comity and kindness instead of places you don’t dare drive through with the windows rolled down and the doors unlocked. Far from turning a man or woman more beast-like in order to “turn them into killers” the military serves the purpose of disciplining and controlling the human killer instinct so that men and women will be less apt to kill or commit other violence indiscriminantly, and any deviation from this course can be laid to the failure of either the recruit to learn or the instructor to teach the lessons of military education.

(Via Sarah.)

5/27/2004

Troll-be-gone

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:11 pm

What do I like most about Wordpress and other blogging programs like it? Besides the price – free – comment moderation is built in. (That is, you don’t have to add it as a hack.) Sure, I’ve gotten a couple of whiny “you don’t have the courage to let me shit on your blog and then smell it and tell me how good it stinks” emails when I rejected someone’s trollfart, but so what? Like I care what a troll feels.

5/26/2004

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:56 pm

Quoth the Gorebot: “Yeeeeaaarrggghhh!!!

(Via Michele.)

Tale of the Tongue

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:45 pm

It ain’t easy being a he-ho.

5/25/2004

“it’s a sorry state” I say to myself

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 11:30 pm

So in the comments to this post on Buzzmachine (yes, I was visiting the monkey cage again) I came upon those of one Robert S. He was being dressed down by another commenter for, among other things, calling the president a “cowboy” as a term of disapprobation. Mr. S.’s response was to triumphantly announce that he had dug up the American Heritage Dictionary and found “cowboy” there defined as “A reckless person who ignores potential risks.” Not so fast, kemosabe.

Just because a colloquial use of a word is included in its definition does not mean that the word can or should be used in such a fashion. C.S. Lewis coined a term for this word-misuse: “verbicide.”1 His example was the word “gentleman,” which used to mean merely a member of the landed gentry. Later on, when people wanted to identify themselves with (or as) members of this supposedly exalted class they started to use the term to refer to a man whose manners were polite and civilized. By then the original definition of “gentleman” had vanished, all so it could be used to define something that already had a term for it.

An example of today is “cowboy.” At one time it merely meant a man who helped herd cattle from horseback. Later on, people began to use it to any man from the West who rode on horseback, with or without the big herd of cattle. Now that the idea of the cowboy has been tarnished (mostly by PC whiteman-sucks bullshit) the term can indeed mean “A reckless person who ignores potential risks” – even though in real history a cowboy who was reckless and ignored potential risks wouldn’t have made it through one year on the range. In other words, not only has the word had its definition expanded, it now means the opposite of what it used to mean. Language needs to expand and be flexible, but reversing the meaning of words that once had a very specific and concrete original meaning cannot be a good thing. George Orwell thought* it would be a tactic of the totalitarians in the future; I say it is what leads up to a totalitarian future. Because if the meanings of words can be twisted so easily into their opposites, how can you trust yourself to know what the truth is? Instead power will be given to those who are willing to use brute force instead of untrustworthy words.

Of course, I doubt this will divert or even give pause to the strugglers against the Bushitler!™ Junta. They have too much personal pride** at stake this time.

*PS: this is an odd site – “Instant Essays” it calls itself. I was just looking for a good quote on the famous “War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength” and so on stuff from 1984. Why do I get the feeling that this is one of those websites where students get their plagiarized research papers?

**Common English term used in a futile attempt to drive the word “hubris” off the lips of the mob, who have done their usual other trick of appropriating a word and using it until the entire human race is sick of it.

Note: source of the title, link kept here because you have no idea how hard it is to find lyrics to “Words” by the group Missing Persons on the internet. Try searching with the bolded terms and you’ll see what I mean.

1. In the Preface to Mere Christianity.

5/23/2004

War Sim is hell

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:16 am

David Wong wants The Ultimate War Sim. It sounds… well here, read a sample:

Forget about the abandoned building wallpaper in Red Alert 2. I want to have to choose between sending marines door-to-door to be killed in the streets or leveling the block from afar, Nuns and all, with 30 carriers. I want to have to choose between 40 dead troops or 400 dead children, and be damned to Hell by chubby pundits from the safety of their studios regardless of which way I go.

Then read the whole thing.

(Also via Brian Tiemann.)

Judenhass U

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:10 am

It’s Berkeley, where else? If I were a parent of a college-age kid today, I’d encourage that kid to go to trade school. You can read books on your own.

(Via Brian Tiemann.)

Killer Bikes

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:17 am

It’s us or the bicycles, people. You know it’s true; you are just afraid to speak out. Well, I’m not. I say we must band together and rise up against this two-wheeled scourge– Hold on, there’s someone at my doo

(Via Sondra K.)

Armageddaboudit

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:10 am

You know, some day I am going to tell the world about the shocking goings-on at the Methodist church I went to in my childhood. Not only did we actually have to dress up in nice dresses and hats and little white gloves (in Florida, a torture), but then after the sermon we’d do the circle dance where we’d wave knives and chant “death to all homosexuals and Catholics and fashion models!” and then we’d all line up to eat raw baby. I never much acquired a taste for it. Presbyterians cook the baby first, but we were Methodists, so raw baby it was.

What? You don’t believe me? Well heck, that’s at least as believable as this story in the Village Voice. Note to Mr. Perlstein: maybe when you write something this silly you should leave out breathless exclamations like “It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see” and “But now we know” and so on. It gives your revelations (oops! pun not intended) a vaguely fraudulent and cheesy air. I’m just saying.

(Mark Shea fell for it.)

(PS: for those who don’t get my Methodist thing, I remind you that George Bush belongs to that church. Methodists aren’t really known these days for their hellfire attitudes and intense interest in the Apocalypse. But I guess it’s really easy to fool people in New York who work for the Village Voice when it comes to certain religions.)

5/21/2004

Sir Serena

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:08 am

Ian McKellen, one of my favorite actors, cleverly deals with some occasionally silly questions in the Independent.

5/20/2004

He’s Undead, Jim!

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:48 pm

JIm Treacher sums up life, the universe, and everything – at least as it is for bloggers – in this part of what was ostensibly a post-Angel-finale review:

6. When they finally slammed the door on the whole “Shanshu” thing. You know, the ancient prophecy that Angel would someday become human again? The carrot that’s been dangled in front of him since the end of the first season? Gone, signed away in a heartbeat (so to speak) as a test of his loyalty to the secret society he’d infiltrated. WHICH WAS AWESOME. It summed up the whole show: You keep going even when there’s no hope, no possibility of reward. You just keep going. Hell, the guy is practically a blogger.

I am not worthy. He almost makes me regret never seeing one episode of the show. Almost.

5/18/2004

Harry Potter vs. Satan

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:18 pm

Actually, I think the only important comparison one can make between the Harry Potter books and the Left Behind series is that the former is good storytelling and decent writing and the latter is utter crap in every way (except some of the jackets on the Left Behind books have nice Ominous Sunset imagery). Then again, I suppose that there has been a lot of cheese associated with Christian literature, but it seems to me that there also used to be a whole lot of good stuff, whereas today we are invited to either peruse the various volumes in the Help Yourself to Financial Success and Salvation (Because Obviously Jesus Didn’t Mean Christians When He Spoke About the Camel and the Needle’s Eye) genre, or…. to go back to some of the Old Ones if we want to read some good Christian literature for a change.

By the way: no, I don’t think the Harry Potter series are “Christian” – they are adventure stories written like the old ones used to be: for anyone of any age to read.

(Via open book.)

5/17/2004

Apropos of nothing

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:41 pm

Could someone tell me when Vincent of the Insignificant Thoughts weblog became such an unpleasant dipshit? Did it have anything to do with his association with this Sammy Hagar wannabe? Oh wait – it just occurred to me that my last bit of caring died right after I typed in that question mark. Oh well, have fun speculating if you want. I’m calling it a night.

(Seriously, what the fuck is the matter with people? Is the entire Blogocosmoversistan on the rag or something? Take some effing Aleve then. I’m serious, quit serving up the five-turd-high shit sandwiches. I mean, do you all talk to your mothers with that mouth?)

(My mother could cuss the paint off a Navy battleship, by the way. Could yours? I don’t think so.)

Update: shyeah, Vinnie, like I’m going to approve that lame comment. By the way, I see you’re one of the I Think The Internet Revolves Around Me Because I Saw My Name Mentioned On Someone’s Web Page people. Well, I’ll just make sure you won’t be able to even see my site, lest you be caused more pain. I do care just that little teensiest bit.

Plastic movie disasters

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:20 pm

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.

(Via cut on the bias.)

PS: “Jeffery Godsick” – I love that name, it’s hilarious. I don’t believe it for one minute, though, it’s just too Wodehouse to be real. But I love it.

I can’t help it

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:07 pm

I just love this little guy:

8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O
8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O
8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O

Update: okay, there he is. There needed to be spaces before and between.

Update the second: you want more, I know you do:

8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O
8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O
8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O 8O

*****

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:22 pm

what?
(more…)

Oh lord, stop me from being snarky but not yet

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:03 am

See the comments.

5/16/2004

Your smile is a thin disguise

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 11:31 pm

I know I said at some point that this would be an election-matters-free blog but I can’t resist pointing out yet another good reason to not vote for Ravingloon Democrat Party candidate (and former minor cartoon character) John “I was in Vietnam but never My Lai!” Kerry: torture was a-ok as a terrorist-nabbing device the last time the Dems were in power. And we have it on the good authority of Our Betters™ in the media that torture is bad, nasty, and awful. Right?

The Shame-eaters

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:13 pm

Looks like I won’t be watching the Olympics this year. Not that I bothered the last time they were on either, but while the last Olympics all I had to avoid were the endless gooeysoft sob stories about how all the athletes had to overcome all sorts of “personal dramas” (death of parents, death of favorite teachers, not enough jelly on their pb&js) this time I’ll get to avoid the spectacle of the athletes being told to not fly the American flag or wear their colors because “We’re not the favorite kid in the world right now.” Well, hey, guess what, Bill Martin, you aren’t my favorite person right now either. Gee, hope that the corruption, steroid abuse and bribery don’t interfere in the fun too much this year.

The Shrewing of the Tame

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 4:22 pm

Always a a bridesmaid, never a bride.

First objector to the nuptials: Kathy Shaidle.

Update: and a-two, and a-three

5/15/2004

If I’m going to hell, I might as well have a good reason

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 2:01 pm

Isn’t suicide a sin?

(Via Dustbury.)

Celebrity Skin

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:06 am

Just a note before I go: why do people take pictures of themselves doing the nasty and then get all upset at their appearance in the public eye? I don’t just mean celebrities; by no means are Hollywood types the only people who can’t seem to do anything without a lens focused on them. I used to know someone who worked for a photo development store; this was before the widespread availability of affordable digital cameras. He used to tell us stories, and let’s just say some “mistakes” were saved, not thrown out; all I can say is there are things that people are willing to put into the hands of perfect strangers that I wouldn’t allow to be recorded on film if you offered me a billion dollars. Think of it: people would drop off at the local photomat their 35-mm rolls of the previous night’s swingers party, as if they were no more than pics of Grandma’s 80th birthday at the Baptist rest home. And now, in the age of the internet, people are putting things on their hard drives – and gee suddenly, out of nowhere, Aunt Marge is on a website in full birthday suit glory. That’s ‘cos Aunt Marge has no idea how to password-protect her computer or files, and stores her pics of herself in her Windows “My Pictures” folder under names like “menaked1.jpg” and her mischevious fourteen-year-old son had a fine idea of how to take mom down a peg or two for grounding him last week. Celebrities are no smarter than Aunt Marge; most of them are stupider than Aunt Marge’s handbag.

Complain complain complain

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:51 am

Oh sure, it’s only Saturday morning, but I can see that the weekend is already going down the toilet. First, I have to wait for the Cable Guy. I was given a time slot of 8am-11am which of course means he’ll probably get here at 11:20, and take an hour to set things up. I wouldn’t care, except that I need to go to the drugstore to pick up yet another prescription for antibiotics, because I have an abscess that will not go away, and they can’t remove the afflicted tooth without it gone. This means a walk of about a mile in the hot sun. Grr.

The reason I am waiting for the Cable Guy is because Brighthouse coaxed me into getting a free month of teevee cable. What can I say, they called when I was sick and feverish. I have no willpower. On the other hand, I will have Cartoon Network again.

I was going to clean up this place. I did the dishes, that’s it. The floor is a mess. All my clothes are in a pile of dirty laundry. I never put my tables together. I have to buy a bus pass. I need to go grocery shopping. They never removed the abandoned (I hope) wasp nest from my patio wall. Large black ants are invading my bathroom from god-knows where, and I have had to play musical cat-food dishes because the small red ants have taken a liking to Whiskas. I will have to have them come over and spray again. Whatever they use, the insects seem to find it refreshing and nutritious.

Oh, I’m going to go… do something. :x

Update: oh, it’s not so bad so far. The cable guy came at about 9:45; it proved to be a difficult install (for one thing, the apartment maintenace crew had painted over all the cable plugs, so he had to pry the old one off and install a new plate; and then the one cable box was bad so he had to get the other one from his truck, then the wires out in the box were loose and had to be tightened – and after all that, the subscription channels like HBO and so on that were part of my special offer are having a problem in my area). Then it turned out that the apartment management was throwing a pool party for the residents so I got a hamburger – free food always makes me happy. ;)

Another update: well, now it’s raining. This is a good thing, actually, and it makes me happier – it will cool things down a bit, and we really need the rain here. I think I’ll get out my umbrella and walk to the store now. (No doubt the horrid sun will come out while I am still outside, but such is life in Florida. But the pharmacy closes at 7pm, and it’s already nearly 4:30.)

Seeds of our demise, part 579415

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:05 am

I don’t know what frightens me more, the fact that Jeff Jarvis says Berlin is his favorite German city, or the fact that he thinks there is something wrong with the fact that Americans generally are not in favor of people gallivanting about in the public street mother-naked, and certainly aren’t about to use taxpayer money to fund a special “Love Parade” – which event, per Jarvis, features lots of public nudity and sex. I am trying to connect this attitude, which apparently is endemic to a certain older generation, to the fury of outrage at the Abu Ghraib video nasties, and failing. Then again, maybe I’m not. It is the twisted reasoning of some people that persons such as Lynndie England are “forced” to become skanky sluts because of our sexual repression. To hear them say it, we are still living in the age of Cotton Mather.

Oh wait – the most frightening thing of all: naked Germans. Just think about it. 8O

(I except the communities of Berkeley/San Francisco, which I am sure will be on top of this Sex Love Parade thingie like white on rice ASAP. Heh heh, I said “on top.")

5/14/2004

Movable Type Movements

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 11:37 pm

Movable Type has released its new spiffy paid version. The problems people are having (read the trackbacks) aren’t from this so much as from what will, apparently, be removed from the free version. This could be a problem; my own blog might no longer be powered by Movable Type but I do run a couple of others on one MT platform which are therefore in violation of the new license because they each have two authors (me as admin and the two people they belong to); and I also have a couple of test blogs and my blog from last year, Too Much to Dream, is still archived on that same install.

Oh well – stay tuned: I will read more on this later and see if I can figure out what’s going on. Adding my trackback to the rest…

Update: a somewhat more reassuring analysis of the situation, along with a response from Six Apart. (Via Dave at Dave Does the Blog.)

What in blog’s name is that?

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:18 pm

I… miserable… prospect… a… half-inch… [f]ornicator…

Bwah! :twisted:

5/13/2004

Okay, I’ll just lighten the mood here a bit

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:16 pm

I could read this post and the ensuing comments all day. Which quote did I like the best? So many to choose from. There is

DONT LISTEN TO ANY OF THIS GUYS ADVICE! HES A CLOWN AND ID BE SUPRISED IF HE HAD EVER EVEN PLAYED PAINTBALL BEFORE!!!

And then there is

EVERYONE AGAINST THIS STUPID SITE SAY “I”

And then, there is this:

ha

ha

pineapple

penguin

fruby

ha

So this is what happens if you play paintball too much.

Now it’s our turn

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:08 pm

Here’s the url to the video of monsters sawing off the head of a tied-up, helpless American, as he screamed:

http://isntapundit.com/images/iraq2vediow.wmv

For all our lives we’ve let the television, newspaper, and radio media control the flow of information. I’m willing to bet the majority of us have even taken for granted that we are getting the truth, or at least some form thereof, even as we wax cynical about the “lying, biased” media.

I haven’t watched tv news in months.

I open the paper, skim the editorials, spit, and go right to the recipes (on Wednesday), the car stuff (Thursday) and the ads.

I don’t listen to talk radio and the only radio news I listen to is the weather and the traffic; the rest I ignore as background noise.

I get most of my news from blogs, where other people with stronger stomachs and better skills at sifting the wheat from the chaff sort through the news for me.

In other words, I do my best to ignore the bullshit, ever more blatant and open and in our face, that passes itself off as the “news of the world.” But still, I do see news reports every now and then, and of course there are the internet versions of the tv/deadtree/wireless giants. And I don’t go into a huge skeptic-fest; I generally accept what I read is what the so-called reporter saw, heard, and felt. Of course, some things are more report-worthy than others, aren’t they?

First we had the images of the people jumping from the World Trade Center, which were a no-no, because people might get all upset and sad (or worse, upset and mad). Now there is the butchering of Nick Berg by orcs disguised as humans. Wouldn’t we, Precioussss, prefer instead to watch the Abu Ghraib video nasties over and over again? Watching a fellow citizen have his head sawed (not chopped or cut – sawed) off by some man-shaped piece of sewage might get us all angry at other people, which is a no-no. (Unless those Other People are George Bush and crew. It’s okay to get mad at them. Just don’t get mad at any foreigners. Foreigners, especially ones who hate us, are Our Betters™. They know we don’t deserve to live.) Watching some grinning female diddling a prisoner in a hood is good, because it makes us feel all crawly and disgusting, and people who are paralysed by self-disgust can’t do anything to defend themselves.

This is all to lead up to tell you to read everything from here down, and to download, and upload to your own site if possible, the video* that Nanny News Media doesn’t want you to see. Because it might make us angry, and we might damage all of her cute little preconceptions.

(Note: give dipnut’s site a chance to rest. I tried to get the video and the download cacked out on me. I’ll try again later.)

*Update: hotlink removed. Also, if you have a Hostmatters blog, you won’t be able to host it on your site. It’s a server-killer, probably due to the perverts. Maybe the perverts will rupture their organs of reproduction this time and die of gangrene so we won’t be bothered by them anymore. Hey, a girl can dream.

5/12/2004

Lending Library

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:06 pm

Ooh, I want to play:
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5/11/2004

Cry me a river

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:33 pm

Via the idefatigable Tex we are introduced to one Joseph Wakim. This poor child needs his diaper changed or something. I won’t bother quoting his dribble – it basically translates to: “I hate you! I hate you! It’s all your fault! I wont eat! I’ll hold my breath! Give me candy! I hate you! Waaah! Waa waa waaahh!”

Dear Muslims Like This Wakim Person: Grow. The. Fuck. Up. Now.

What are Friends for?

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:33 pm

I’ve never understood the appeal of these shows where everyone sits on a couch and then someone bursts in (none of these shows ever have people locking the doors of their trendoid TriBeCa apartment lofts) and says something goofy and they all go “Whaaa-aat!?” and then the next scene they are in a bar and the hero inadvertently insults a waitress which results in a Comically Menacing Dude and/or Lesbian (this is the 21st Century) making threateny noises which gives the lead guys the chance to trip all over themselves in Comically Cowardly mode in that puppyish way that makes women go “Awww….!!” and then they end up back on the goddamn couch in the trendy TriBeCa (or Soho or West Hollywood) loft apartment which still has all its cute Craft & Barrel and Urban Outfitter gewgaws despite the fact that no one ever locks the fucking door on any of these shows.

I just don’t get them.

5/9/2004

Changes at Blogspot

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:29 pm

Well whaddaya know – Blogspot has a bunch of changes, including comments. Check it out. (This is my emergency OMG-my-site-is-hosed Blogspot blog.) Now there is no excuse for everyone not having a blog if they have internet access and something to say.

Uh oh

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:18 pm

(Looks at calendar.) Come on, Change! Come on, Change!

By the way: not that there’s anything wrong with SDB, it’s just that uh, um… er… I have scabies! And liver spots. And I snore. Yeah. That’s it. 8O

Hanging like this

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 6:12 pm

(I was going to post the following here but it just got too long. This is pretty much a continuation of what I posted about here.)

Charles Krauthammer is worried about how we will look to the Arabs now. Here is what I say to that:
(more…)

Buttinskys

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:34 pm

I was going to paste this in the comments to this post but they have some script-prevention thing that prevents the same person from commenting more than once every two days, or something (I had commented elsewhere on the site) so here is what I was going to say:

You know, I think it is possible to both apologize for atrocities committed by members of our armed forces, while not grovelling to the “we bad, we the worst” school of thought people – but I think that point has been left far behind in the frantic fight to get Dubya Out of Office. A part of me almost wishes Bush would lose to Kerry – the misanthropic part, who wants to sit back and laugh at the fools’ inevitable bungling when they find themselves with this hot potato in their hands.

I’m too tired for havin’ fun

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:16 pm

Another weekend has slipped by without my accomplishing one damn thing. Oh no wait – I went ahead and bought this teapot, after weeks of trying to make up my mind amongst all the catalogues and internet sites. Of course I immediately felt guilty, even though I chipped my best teapot and therefore needed a new one. (I can’t make tea in a chipped teapot. I just can’t. Don’t ask. And teabags suck.) So that is my purchase for the week; no frivolous trips to the mall for me.

Since I’ve been sick I haven’t done anything, except I forced myself to do some laundry day before yesterday. I had run out of underwear. I am re-thinking my idea of selling my washer dryer and moving to smaller digs without a hookup. Of course, if I do decide to keep the things, I will have to hire a moving crew. I can’t ask my friends to strain their backs again. I still have to move closer to work, though – this taking-three-buses thing sucks big time. Speaking of which… it’s time to buy a new bus pass. Sigh.

Maybe I will try to put my tables together. Maybe that will make me feel that I’ve at least done something except lie around and host germs.

PS: of course, this is the one I really had my eye on. Drool drool. Maybe in a month or two.

The preceding Bore-Blogging Post™ has been brought to you by Twisted Spinster, a subsidiary of Spleenville.com.

So deep inside a cold fire

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:57 pm

You are advised not to make La Shawn Barber angry. You might not like it when she’s angry.

But I like it.

Kenn Summers, Honorary Jew

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:49 pm

All I want to know is, was it done by injection? (Don’t yell at me, “I can make you Jewish by injection” was my ex-boss’s joke about his days dating shiksas.)

Crocodile Tears

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:38 pm

This is what I meant about Arab (other than Iraqi) reaction to the Abu Ghraib affair being worthless, if I wasn’t entirely clear. Sample:

Bush was right to apologize to the Iraqis for what was done, and, politically it may have been shrewd to couch that apology in wider terms to all Arab peoples, but we should be clear about one thing. The denunciations of America by the Arab press outside Iraq has no more moral (politically speaking, it is something else) significance than the sight of a weeping Goebbels. It’s nothing more than the howling of a coterie of hand-picked hypocrites, flaks for the fascists, theocratic or otherwise, who run their countries, journalistic attack dogs who, it seems, have learned to love their leashes.

Western journalists need to look closely at these “fellow journalists” that they have accepted into their club.

(Via Rand Simberg.)

A break for a word from our sponsors

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:14 pm

To “ginny rose":

I might have approved your off-topic, partisan comment even though you left a fake email address and used silly pseudo words like “in-terror-gator,” and if your double-posting clearly indicated that you did not read the comment note on the sidebar, if you HADN’T USED ALL CAPS.

On second thought, no I wouldn’t have. And I don’t care if you are on Rumsfeld’s side.

5/8/2004

Can I have some remedy?

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:34 pm

Dang, this is scary:

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with
Twisted spinster’s Syndrome
Cause: genetically-modified polystyrene
Symptoms: mild absenteeism, drooling, excess mucus, vague appetite changes
Cure: take four paracetamol every day for the rest of your life
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

(Via a small victory.)

Take me to the water

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 6:01 pm

Had enough of the sale going on in the basement of human nature? Here’s some activity on an upper floor. I read about this a couple of weeks ago on dead tree before That Issue took over the front page of all the papers. I was quite frankly surprised that something so obviously Christian was given page one treatment, even in the Orlando Sentinel, which is one of the slightly less-stridently liberal newsorgans around. But I guess even the press needs a vacation from hopelessness every now and then.

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

Season ticket on a one-way ride

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:12 pm

I’ve updated this post too many times, so here’s a fresh one on the same subject. Fred Reed has a typically acid take to the torture issue. I still say – if they didn’t play Air Supply while doing their dirty deeds, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of real torture.

I kid! Air Supply isn’t that bad. Well, at least I don’t get the urge to toss radios across the room when Air Supply songs come on them, but then that’s usually because the radios are in cars, and that would throw my back out.

I had another thought: I wonder if some of the problems in the military (how did all what Fred calls “special people” get in here) could be solved by ditching that dumbass “Army of One” advertizement. I keep imagining some yob taking this slogan to its logical conclusion because he’s been raised on a steady diet of MTV and beer: “Yeah, I’m a motherfuckin’ Army of One, and I rule!” I could be wrong, though. But I keep in mind that many of today’s commanding officers, who should have known better, are younger than me and therefore are more susceptible to degeneracy in the time-honored fashion of the older generation running down the younger.

No, as Fred says, it’s a problem indemic to life in wartime, and human history in general. Of course, we could go back to concentrating on being moral, pure, and above-it-all instead of getting our hands dirty in the grubby mess of the Rest of the World. That served us so well before. Sure, we will lose a few thousand people to sudden death by terroristattackitus, the cure of which is almost as bad as the disease, every few months or years or so. And millions of people not insulated by our wealth will suffer and no doubt die painful deaths. But our souls will be pure. They’ll look pretty in Hell.

(Via a commenter on Michael Totten’s blog.)

Strike dear mistress, and cure his heart

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:42 am

Oh my. As usual, Robert Fisk’s shrieks-to-text don’t say much about his subject (which is this time, of course, the Abu Ghraib “tortures” – a subject tailor made for La Fisk, he must have nearly passed out with ecstacy when he heard about it). But they do say a great deal about Mr. Fisk himself, all of it rather disgusting. By the way, look for news of the former Robert Fisk donning white robes and changing his name to Rab al-Osama Batt-Kissar, or something like that in the near future – I’d be willing to bet money on his eventual conversion to Islam. Come on – what would you rather be associated with: a nasty, sexuality-obsessed ("the sexuality of the Old Testament” – what did go on in the staid chapels of La Fisk’s youth?) Christianity or a pure, clean religion (that the “sexuality-obsessed” Christianity can only collide with “revoltingly” and “obscenely") like Islam? Besides, that way he can be closer, in spirit anyway, to his hero Osama Bin Laden. (Hey, I don’t even have to infer all this by reading between the lines – Fisk does all but shoot us in the head with his Bin Laden hero worship. Personally, I find that to be “obscene” and “revolting,” but I’m a partisan American so don’t pay any attention to me!)

(Via Tim Blair.)

5/6/2004

Abyss

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:27 pm

Phillip Kennicott is only happy when it rains:

But these photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military’s own internal report calls the abuse “systemic"). But armies are made of individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done…

Here is my noble, civilized response: blow smoke up someone else’s ass, you smarmy, pompous dickhead. Collectively responsible – I’ll bet Mr. Kennicott has recused himself from this “us” – obviously he sees himself as being one of Our Betters. The heck with all the good that we have done in Iraq; instead, against every principle of liberal thought, the actions of a handful of butthead MPs just invalidated over two hundred years of history – nay, the entire two-thousand years of history since the death of Christ – which was, of course, exclusively the fault of Americans.

At this point all I can do is laugh. These people don’t want to live, they don’t want to carry this civilization into the future – they don’t want to give it even as long as the Romans gave theirs. They had 800 years – we don’t even get to make 250? Sometimes I think that the Baby Boomers not only want to spend all the money before they go, they want to take the civilized world down with them. And I am nagged by the feeling that even our government is sliding closer and closer to embracing this viewpoint – witness the grovelling before the entire Muslim world today for something that, should it have been done by military personnel in, say, Syria, would have been considered four-star fine treatment.

And another thing: this should have been between us and Iraq only. What the fuck does Egypt or Al-Jazeera or any other fucking Arab organization have to do with this? Who asked them to jump in? Were the humiliated POWs your imported thugs, fuckos? If I were Bush I’d have told all the other so-called Arab spokesbeings who were not from Iraq to stay the fuck out of this, no one asked you your opinion. I wouldn’t be nice about it either. But you know, once some moron started the “hearts and minds” bullshit, we had to play comfort woman for every single joker in the Middle East except the Israeli Jews.

Let’s get something straight: we will not win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world. From what I can see a significant number of them have black hearts and minds rotten with inherited centuries of Jew-hatred and resentment of the way the rest of the world has passed them by in their self-imposed cultural and spiritual prison. Most of the rest of them are either too timid or ignorant for their organs of feeling and thought to be accessible. I am disgusted with the constant backing and filling every time a “Muslim spokesperson” lets out a squeal because he came upon something somewhere that reminded him that there are other ways of thought and living than his own. And I am sick and tired of being accused of “narrowmindedness,” “racism,” “ignorance,” and all the rest of the bullshit because I happen to express my dislike of real examples of the above coming from someone whose ancestry was not primarily European.

No wonder (chorus) They Hate Us. So many of us so obviously hate ourselves and our fellow citizens. Our enemies must be frustrated as all heck right now: if only they had known it would be that easy.

I will probably add to this later; right now I have to go to bed.

(Via Random Jottings.)

Update: this post of Dipnut’s is highly instructive. Since he says pretty much what I was going to say, I don’t have to add anything more to this entry.

Update 2: one final link – I meant to mention this too – what the hell was it with the picture-taking? The closest thing I can come to is something a co-worker said her husband, who was in the military, told her: “those GIs, they sure do like to take pictures.” Then again, there are sickos right here at home doing sick things – no links, just google around – and not only do they whip out the Polaroid and the camcorder, they get out the digital devices and upload the results for all to see and enjoy. Why? Like Natalie Solent said, it’s not as if these images showed the perpetrators in any good light according to the laws and customs of modern Western society. But when you ask people why they take pictures of themselves doing things that are, supposedly, still considered shameful and disgraceful by normal people, they either equivocate or just look at you. The current impetus is, maybe, the “self-esteem” movement which we can see now has done more harm, or at least as much harm, as it has done good. Sure, people think better of themselves, and are not so crippled by guilt and shame as the psychiatrists – our priests – told us we used to be back in the bad old days – but I haven’t see that this has led to an increase in esteem for others as we were told would be the result of this loosening of inner bonds and focusing on the self instead of others. Quite the contrary.

OK, yet another update: Nelson Ascher has some interesting observations from outside the fray (ie, he’s not an American and doesn’t live here). By the way, it is clear to me that what he means by this being a “conspiracy” is the sudden huge “get rid of Rumsfeld” component to the scandal, not that there were Bush-haters who went to Iraq and planned the whole thing. I did wonder, though, whose idea it was to pass the photos around like candy. (Via Charles Austin.)

And one more: how the photos got to CBS is explained here.* (Though not how they got to Al-Jazeera. Then again, the press is just one big club, whose only membership requirement seems to be “we are beholden to none but our deadlines.") Before they had apparently only been known to “among soldiers and military investigators.” Well we can’t have that – even if disclosure of evidence of wrongdoing to the general public before the investigation is finished might compromise that investigation just as badly as a coverup would, it is important because the Public Has a Right to Know™! Right? (Via Tim Blair.)

*Registration required, though it’s free. Use “laexaminer” for both the password and the id.

Jarvis vs. Friedman: a rout

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:50 pm

I’ve slapped Jeff Jarvis around a lot lately for his wacky Howard Stern mania, but pry his attention away from the Great White Radio Ass and he’s often spot on – as he is here in the critique of a column written by Tom Friedman while deep in the grips of hysteria. I have to copy this sample from Friedman, because it’s just so pathetic on so many levels:

I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. It’s no wonder that so many Americans are obsessed with the finale of the sitcom “Friends” right now. They’re the only friends we have, and even they’re leaving.

Good god, is Friedman a grown man or a teenager who yearns to be accepted into the popular group at his high school? So some Japanese people (I doubt he talked to the entire population) expressed some sort of America-hatred. Well damn me, having the Japanese love us is what keeps me going through this vale of tears called life; now that they hate us, I’ve got nothing to live for! Except the final episode of Friends, which I will watch while wearing deepest black because I base my entire life on what Phoebe, Ross, and the rest of the gang whose names I can’t remember because I always find things better to do (cleaning my cat’s litter box, laundry, spackling tiny cracks in my walls, scraping the grease out from the grease trap under the stove and rolling it into symmetrical balls and packing them in neat rows in cardboard boxes which I tie with twine) than watch the show, and now that it’s ending I realize that all that is left between me and the void is the caring and concern that ooze out of nervous nellies like Mr. Friedman, who was once thrilled to bits when a Saudi prince told him he (the prince) had a peace plan that didn’t involve destroying Israel – well, not destroying it all at once, anyway, just sort of whittling away at it slowly until there was nothing left of the Jewish State but something that could be jammed into the bottom of a matzoh box, but in a peaceful way.

Anyway, Jarvis takes Friedman’s trash out to the curb. RTWT.

5/5/2004

Sick Dings

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:50 pm

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get supposed admirers of philosophy and philosophers who get so bent out of shape about a “long post” on the internet. Have these people ever read any actual works by philosophers, or just the Cliff Notes versions?

Equally hilarious is the fury of the commenters (paraphrased): “Augh! I read it! It hurt my brain!” So why did you read it? Did it only hurt your brain at the very end?

(Oh yes – updated to include the observance that of all the bloggers that commented upon Den Beste’s essay, the only one that didn’t seriously respond to Den Beste’s theories was the one at the portentiously named, Kant-invoking, self-consciously cerebral Crooked Timber. Make of that what you will.)

You can’t hide the knives

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:09 pm

What do you call people who were on the verge of getting what they said they wanted, who then let it go for some trifle?

Speaking of losers – what do you call people who shoot two-year-olds in the head to make sure they were dead? Well, there’s a part of the world that calls them “heroes,” and it’s not just confined to the Middle East. But George W. Bush = Hitler, and Jews are the new Nazis. I see.

And then there is this fellow. It occurred to me once that the phrase “I want to crawl up inside you and die” is a curse more evil than a thousand so-called obscenities. It denotes the state of mind of a certain sort of person – someone, perhaps, like the person who could “ink” this cartoon and then write these words. There is something going on here, but I don’t know what it is – and what’s more, I don’t care.

I think I will now go dig out my tape of Troublegum. I need to clear my head.

5/4/2004

Drinking Game help needed

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:48 pm

I don’t know why I never thought of this before: I’ve decided that what the Sphere O’ Blogs needs is to invent a proper comment troll drinking game. Looking for “troll drinking game” on Google had amusing, but irrelevant results (a Troll2 Drinking Game, a Lord of the Rings Fan Fiction Drinking Game, etc.). I suppose, though, you could use them as templates. Anyway, help us out! (Unless you are a troll. We’re against you, not with you. Our revenge will be sweet. Just say to yourself: “Comment Troll Slash Fiction.")

All I wanted was a Pepsi!

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:31 pm

I have had trouble with trolls in the past on my own site and currently on the couple of blogs I run. On the subject of Micah Wrongright. Sean Collins has advice for people dealing with trolls and other online neurotics:

My real point here is that people should remember that when they see someone acting needlessly belligerent or bizarre online, chances are good that there’s something wrong on the homefront too.

His solution to dealing with them is much kinder and gentler than mine, but then I am not as nice or as patient a person. Also, I haven’t seen any evidence so far that Wright has “alienated” his most devoted fans – on the contrary, the revelations of his dishonesty seem to have, by all accounts, upped his cred with a large number of these people. What that says about them isn’t very good, of course. Anyway, comment moderation, control, censorship, and the crushing of dissent on comment-enabled blogs and other online forums rule as far as I am concerned.

(Via Jim Treacher.)

Fight to the end

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:16 pm

Salvadorans rock.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Professional Victim follies

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 11:24 am

Kathy Shaidle remarks upon the whitewashing of Kent State. I was thirteen in 1970, but for years I accepted the popular notion that the riot at Kent State was nothing but a peaceful demonstration of gentle flower children who were ruthlessly attacked for no reason by drooling prognathous-browedjawed Neanderthals in National Guard uniforms. Perhaps if I had actually watched the news with my parents instead of regarding such as part of the uninteresting duties of maturity that my tender years gave sanction to avoid, I would not have spent so many years under this delusion.

She also notes that one of the victims of the shooting, Alan Canfora, has a memoir coming out. Of course, he is against the Iraq War, which he calls “exactly similar” to the Vietnam War. Leaving the matter of Iraq vs. Vietnam aside for now, how can anything be “exactly similar"? “Similar” means “almost like” or “resembling,” while “exactly” means, in this context, “the same.” Canfora can’t have it both ways – either the war in Iraq is the same as the war in Vietnam, or it resembles, to a greater or lesser degree, that earlier conflict. Is this stupidity, a typo, or a clumsy attempt to CYA in case the war in Iraq is found to only superficially resemble that in Vietnam, by dint of, oh, I don’t know, it occuring in a different country, there being no draft, the stakes being somewhat higher and closer to America than the apparently faraway “fight against the spread of Communism in Asia,” and so on.

5/3/2004

How much is that doggy in the window?

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 5:11 pm

Bwahahahahaha!

(Via Tim Blair.)

I said doctor, is there nothing I can take…

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 3:25 pm

Why can’t people die from colds? A suicide bomber could be useful in my right lower sinus passage about now. Press the switch already, Ahmed. What are you waiting for, chickenshit? What do you mean you’ve “changed your mind"? Sorry, you drew the short straw – Mohammed gets to blow up Israelis, you get to blow up impacted mucus. Them’s the breaks! Hey–! Come back here! Oh yeah? Well, I’ve got the cell phone

[Boom]

Damn. Bugger slid out the nostril at the last minute. I hate when that happens. Excuse me, I have to open another box of Kleenex.*

Ode to Nyquil.
Nyquil ice cream?
Denis Leary.

(Actually, I just ended up buying a generic decongestant/antihistamine combo because – shut up, I know about antihistamines not really doing anything for colds – it makes me feel better without knocking me completely unconscious. If I was unconscious I could not have shared these, my lovely thoughts, with you, my lovely readers.)

*I like calling it “Kleenex.” I also sometimes call copy machines “Xerox machines.”

She saw my TVC15, my baby’s gone

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 2:18 pm

No wonder Germans love David Hasselhoff. He was on tv.

Life under rocks, part 756453

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:42 pm

I swear, the boy’s a masochist or something. Now that’s just sad.

Update: I arise from my sick couch to take note of this. Is it a sin to want a mack truck to run Rall over as he crosses the street? I suppose it is. Imagine getting Rall bits all over your nice truck. Ugh.

5/2/2004

Nemo me impune lacesset

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:59 pm

Fox rocks. And after tomorrow Saturday, May 15th, I’ll have them 24/7 again for at least a month.

(Via Random Jottings.)

Truth is stranger than we thought

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 7:44 pm

Re the post below on faux-human Micah Wright, here’s an interesting addition to the story offered by Mrs. Spoons.

Frodo likes girls

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 7:29 pm

Elijah Wood says: “I just love them. I’m so enamoured with… women. They’re beautiful and amazing and altogether feminine.” (Emphasis mine.) I’m so, er, relieved, or something.

(Yes, this is my first “where is the goddamn dvd?” post of the year.)

Update: I just wanted to say… I didn’t intend this as an “Elijah Wood is gay” comment; what amused me was his doofy “women are feminine” verbal stumbling. Actors supposing to be so eloquent and all…

Good morning, Vietnam!

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 7:12 pm

I really would like a nice bowl of pho right now. Some of that lemongrass chicken would also go down quite nicely as well. And for desert – Banana-Coconut-Tapioca Pudding. Man, I love Vietnamese food.

It looks centered if you lean to the left a little…

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 6:38 pm

Shyeah, as if. There’s this dude calls himself “Truthprobe” who has a Blogspot blog (no link – you’ve probably already got the email – subject heading “link me” – or the spam in your comments) he claims is “centrist political commentary.” So I’m curious, I hitch on over there to take a gander… and I see that the subheading says this:

“The probe for the conservative truth never stops.”

Centrist, my ass. Not that I think there is any such animal anyway, it obviously being Leftover-speak for “thinks Karl Marx was too right-wing.”

Hack Hack Koff Koff

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 6:16 pm

Argh.

Curveball of the month

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:43 pm

The hell–?

(Via protein wisdom.)

I CAN’T HEAR YOU

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:24 pm

Someone needs a hug. Or an enema.

(Via C. G. Hill.)

5/1/2004

Americans targeted in Saudi attack, suspected terrorists killed

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 10:30 pm

I just wanted to rescue this bit of news from Jeff Jarvis’ blog, where it has been abandoned to the ravages of a troll called “Faramin.” Needless to say, due to comment moderation, that won’t happen here. This leaves us free to discuss this latest atrocity. I don’t know how permanent SFgate’s links are, so here is the whole thing:
(more…)

Solid flesh, empty spirits

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 9:44 pm

Best post ever on the subject of the ultimately strange hatred that the Leftovers (that is my name for the washed-out leftists, dictator-admirers, America-haters, and other freaks that have come out of the woodwork since September 11th) for the very culture that enables them to spew their bile from comfort and safety. Blogspot’s links on this site seem to be broken, so scroll ye down to April 17th’s post entitled “Cupio Dissolvi” and read:

These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won’t it be great, dancing on the ruins?

That’s just a sample. Read it all.

(I found this soliloquy from Hamlet appropriate to the subject.)

Monitor shopping, Part 1

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 8:50 pm

I’m too poor to pay admission fees to Epcot just so I can wander around the Japanese gift shops. Fortunately, God created the internet for people like me. Ooh, look – authentic Japanese futons. Drool.

Tatami mats available here. Did I ever mention that I always wanted to live in a traditional Japanese house? I don’t know why – I just did. Still do, it looks like.

Why can’t I download Nyquil over the internet?

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 7:33 pm

Dear God: these cold and flu things. I’m not impressed. CUT IT OUT.

Some nicked from old Saigon

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 7:29 pm

And here’s a word to antiwar poster-scrawler Micah Wright: saying “I had to keep lying because you believed me!” is not an apology. (Via A Small Victory; further via Jim Treacher.)

(Apropos: Sing along with the Thompson Twins)

Update: here’s why Wright “confessed” – he was going to be outed on the verge of a book sale. Oopsie. (Via Weekend Pundit.)

Update no. 2: what Greyhawk said. (By the way, where does all this acclaim for Wright’s “art” come from? As far as I can tell his claim to artistic fame is based on him adulterating the work of other people – namely, the World War I and II posters he Photoshopped. Frankly, I think it’s ironic that “his” art was cribbed from others better than himself, just like his bio.)

Update no. 3: bwah! If I felt better I’d play with Photoshop myself…

The updates just keep coming: more details, including the fact that he edited his “apology.” Also – Seven Stories has cancelled the publication of his new book. Wright can look on the bright side – at least it won’t ever be remaindered.

The only film with “Michael Moore” in the title that I might see

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 1:32 pm

…would be the one these guys are making. (Via Kathy Shaidle, whose Blogspot blog keeps going on and off like a lightbulb in Falujah.)

Soy-crow pie

Filed under: — Andrea Harris @ 12:13 pm

Note to Rene Gonzales: “I’m sorry you were offendedis not an apology. I’d have a modicum – very small, but it would have been there – of respect for him if he’d stuck to his position, instead of hiding it behind the skirts of PC catchphrases. “Insensitive” hell – what Gonzales wrote was openly adversarial, not to mention obscene. And towards someone he didn’t even know – what was he to Pat Tillman or Pat Tillman to he? And don’t even get me started on the quality of his writing. I mean, if you are going to go ad hominem on a national hero at least be original about it. Comparisons of soldiers to Rambo was a moldy technique when both Tillman and Gonzales were in diapers.

(Via C.G. Hill.)

Late update: here’s a nice fisking of the creep’s blattings. Enjoy. (Via MCJ.)

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